Page 2 of Ride Me Cowboy

The ranch is one of the biggest in the state, in terms of land, and it’s like a spur in my heel that we can’t run it with the staff it deserves. Our land reaches almost the whole way into town, cut in half by a fast-flowing river, lined on both sides by trees. In the distance, a forest wraps around the property, which is both a blessing and a curse, especially the latter when the mountain lions are around.

“It’s just what I imagined,” she says, catching me unawares. Firstly, by finishing the sentence she’d left hanging for at least a full minute, and secondly, bynotbeing surprised by the ranch.

“Yeah?” I wonder what experience she’s had in her life to prepare her for life out here. Maybe I misjudged her after all?

“It reminds me of something from Yellowstone,” she says, unknowingly condemning herself, in my mind.

I make a grunting noise in acknowledgement. “Yeah, well, it’s nothing like a TV show.”

She flinches again, and I make a mental note to tone down my voice with her. She’s as skittish as a tumbleweed in a dust storm.

“Reagan says you’ve got experience.” I jam my hands into the pockets of my jeans, wondering why I’m asking her this. Particularly wondering why I’m asking her out under the beating sun, when she doesn’t have a hat and clearly isn’t used to this heat.

Her cheeks flush a little—like I needed to feel any worse about my lack of manners.

“Come on,” I say, before she can answer. “Let’s get you inside.”

“Inside?” Her eyes fly to the house behind me and then her fingers are fidgeting with a delicate silver necklace she wears, running over it from side to side in a way that’s distracting, and not just because for a second, my gaze drops to her breasts, and I become conscious of the fact she’s a woman. Not like I wasn’t aware she was a woman, but I mean, as a man notices a woman.

How long’s it been sincethathappened? My hand shifts to my hat, touching the edge of it. It was before dad died. I was dating a girl from the nearest town—Goodnight. It wasn’t serious, and after he passed, the suddenness of it all, the fact this place became mine to run, I didn’t have time for her. For anyone. I haven’t had time ever since. Meaning it’s been more than a year since I’ve so much as looked at a woman, much less known the pleasure of one.

Which makes it particularly inconvenient to be thinking about Beth’s breasts right now, and the way they swell sweetly against her snow-white shirt, the way her hand had been all soft like silk, or the petals of one of the roses behind her.

“The office is inside. Your bedroom, too, come to think of it.” Nowthatis not exactly convenient, but it’s how Reagan organized it.

“She can’t sleep out in the bunk house, Cole, and you know it.”

I vaguely remember grunting some kind of agreement—at the time, I hadn’t particularly cared where the bookkeeper slept. There were plenty of bedrooms in the house, and plenty of spacetoo. What would it matter if, for three months, some woman Reagan hired crashed in one of them?

Well, it felt like it mattered now. But even wracking my brains, I can’t come up with any alternative. It’s been a long time since the guest house was fit to house a person, though it was on my never-ending list to see to that. At one time, it had four bedrooms and its own kitchen and living area, not to mention sweeping views of the plains that led up to the mountain in the distance, with the creek running just behind it. But an ancient Cyprus tree had fallen and landed right on the roof a few years back, and by then, things on the ranch were tight enough to mean we just had to leave it. The room above the stables could be fixed up to use, but that’d take a week or so, at least.

“You got a bag?” I ask, glad that some part of my brain seems capable of going through the motions.

“Yeah, I can get it.”

I’ve grown up with tough ass women all my life, but I’m still a cowboy and a Donovan, and it’s not in my nature to leave a woman to carry her own bag if I’ve got a free hand.

“Nah, let me,” I say, moving to the trunk, and pressing the catch to open it. Inside is a small suitcase, more hand luggage size. Not what I’d expected this woman—who gives off serious high maintenance vibes—to travel with.

“This it?” I shoot her a glance, to find her fidgeting with that necklace again, looking from her bag to me. She nods warily.

Warily?

Look, I’m a big guy, I know that. I’m easily six and a half feet, and I’m broad, strong, because you need to be out here, doingthe work I do. I can calm a bull long enough to stay on for a good stretch, ride a horse for days, outrun a coyote if I have to. Okay, maybe not quite, but you get my drift. I guess I cut an imposing figure but most people around these parts know me well enough to know I’m also the last person on earth to be afraid of. I’m the guy who saves you, not scares you.

This woman looks like a greenhorn at its first rodeo—terrified and trembling, like a slight breeze would knock her down. She nods though, as if she’s steeling herself, and when I tilt my head toward the house and start walking that way, I notice she stays a good few feet to my left, like she doesn’t want to risk accidentally touching. Which suits me fine.

I pull open the door for her and watch as she enters, her expression a mix of uncertainty and curiosity. Those ice blue eyes roam the large entrance way, cluttered with family photos my parents hung over the years that no one’s dared touch since mom passed. She always had cut flowers on the antique hall stand—you wouldn’t believe the smell on a summer’s afternoon. It filled every single room. Jasmine, gardenias, it was sweet like honey and heavy in the air. Back then, when mom was alive, the house never had a speck of dust.

A hint of something like shame curdles in the pit of my belly, because on the list of things I care about in a day, the state of the house is pretty low down.

Don’t get me wrong, I clean up after myself, but that’s about all I do. I notice now that the walls could do with a fresh coat of paint, and there’s grime along the baseboards.

“Which way?” She turns back around to face me and despite the way she was keeping her distance outside, somehow, we’re almost toe to toe now, so I see the way her blue eyes fleck withsomething like silver and her lashes, long and dark, fan her cheeks as she blinks.

“Kitchen’s through there,” I nod toward an archway and hang back a bit as she walks off, quickly, her high heels making a clicking noise against the wide, terracotta tiles. High heels! Has the house ever seen a pair of those? Somehow, I doubt it. My mom wasn’t really one for dressing up, and my sister Cassidy’s more at home in boots than heels.

The kitchen is a large, open plan space with a heap of windows showing a view of the ranch. She gravitates toward them, looking first to the hills in the distance and then toward the garden right near the house.

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