Page 45 of The Cowboy's Downfall
“Myspotlight?” He had to be kidding. “She’s the baby of the family. Who do you think gets most of the attention?”
“Who do you think gets held up as the example she’s expected to follow?”
“She’s thirteen years younger than me. We’re nothing alike and no one expects us to be.”
“No? Not even your mother? Which one of you was easiest for her to raise?”
“I raised myself.” Nix’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay,” Shauna relented. “Point taken. It’s entirely possible that my mother sometimes mentions that she never had to pick me up from jail or find me a new school because I was expelled.”
“How much do you think Taryn is going to like you for that? Not love you. I’m sure she does love you. But liking you is something different.” She looked at him. He raised his hands. “Hey. I have siblings. I know what I’m talking about.”
“I know she resents me.” Shauna forced herself to admit it, although she didn’t like entertaining the thought. The thirteen-year age gap meant she’d never been a real sister to her. “She doesn’t like having a second mother.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Nix looked at her with pity. “I don’t think it’s resentment. She’s well aware that you aren’t her mother. I think she’s full-blown jealous.”
Shauna blinked. “Of what?”
“You’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re calm under pressure. Your mother values your opinion. You fight with reason. And you’re beautiful,” he said again, then dipped in for a slow kiss.
His hand slid from her throat and inside her blouse, cupping her breast. The heat from his hand melted through the lace of her bra to her skin. He thought she was beautiful? Her brain scrambled together a plan. They could lay one bucket seat down and get creative. It was close quarters, but they could manage as long as—
Someone knocked on the driver’s side window. Shauna jolted forward, her head connecting with Nix’s cheek. He pulled his hand from her blouse, but not nearly as fast as she would have liked.
She rolled down the window.
“Evening,” Pastor Harm Addams said, a wide smile in place as he leaned on the hood of the car. He stooped so they were face-to-face and he could speak to Nix too.
“Evening.” Nix nodded.
“We installed security cameras at the back of the church.” Pastor Addams pointed to where the eaves troughing joined at the peak of the roof. “Too many teens hanging around late at night. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like though,” he added. “I just thought you should know.”
Shauna’s cheeks burned.
“Thank you,” she said, although Nix’s shaking shoulders didn’t help her composure. She didn’t find this as funny as he did, but getting caught was the downside of sneaking around, and since this had been her idea, she should have been better prepared.
“Enjoy your evening,” Pastor Addams said. “Don’t forget Jesus is watching, and likely the deacons.”
Shauna rolled up the window on that parting reminder. She glared at Nix, who couldn’t stop laughing. Two adults shouldn’t have this much trouble finding alone time together.
“This is your fault,” she said, poking him in the chest. “If you’d use the phone, we wouldn’t need to meet here to plan.”
He rubbed his chest. “I’ll get a phone.”
Chapter Thirteen
Nix
Nix should haveasked for a phone a long time ago. Reception wasn’t always the greatest, but the ranch had a few spots in out of the way places where the signal was strong.
Phone sex was a lot more satisfying than he had suspected. Shauna had a real way with words. What was equally satisfying for him, maybe more so, in fact, was the amount of plain talking they did. Shauna pulled opinions out of him that he hadn’t known he possessed. She listened. She absorbed what he said and asked questions. She argued—so politely—when she disagreed. Their phone conversations were the high point of his day.
Fall was a busy season, however, and it was the first week of November before he got a chance to see her in person again. Taryn had been invited to a friend’s house on a Saturday night, and he had that Sunday off—a rare alignment of stars.
“Earth to Nix,” Levi said. His exasperation suggested he’d been talking, and unlike Shauna, Nix hadn’t been paying attention.
They’d ridden on horseback into the badlands. The cows and calves had mostly been sorted already so the calves could be vaccinated and weaned. The heifers—young females who hadn’t given birth yet—hadn’t been rounded up. These ladies had been left here with one of the breeding program’s prize bulls and Levi was checking for signs they’d been bred. He studied their genes in his lab, but he also liked to see the animals in action and check out their behavior before and after they were matched.
Meanwhile, in his head, Nix was already with Shauna. Thoughts of her kept him warm against the ice chips that stung his hands and his face and wriggled under the collar of his oilskin slicker to dampen the back of his neck.
