Page 17 of The Cowgirl's Chosen Love
“Am I allowed to slather it with ketchup?” Lisa asked. “That might be wrong, you know. A bad thing to do to New York meatloaf.”
“Then we can be wrong together. I have the industrial-sized bottle,” he confessed.
She smiled, leaning casually against his side as she looked around the room again. The warmth of her body set off pinpricks of excitement all over his skin. Heck, he was having a hard time keeping his breathing under control with her so close. The scent of her shampoo, something fruity, twisted around him as tightly as a rope, encouraging him to get closer.
“Where’s—?” She interrupted herself, twisting on the spot and tilting her head to smile up at him. “Oh, you’re tricky.”
She grabbed the control from beside his chair, glancing at the buttons briefly before aiming at the ceiling above the painting. The hidden screen rolled down, and Lisa grinned happily at having unearthed one of his secrets.
“Family rule of no TV in the living room is kind of silly for a single guy who lives alone. This was a compromise my mind could accept. Plus, when my mom comes over, I can hide the evidence that I’m a heathen and eat dinner while watching a show.”
Lisa made herself at home, settling on the couch and curling her legs underneath her. “I like it. I like that you’ve still got the view outside. You don’t have to twist the chairs when you want to use them or have your furniture aimed in a weird direction.”
Josiah ignored his chair and sat next to her. Just far enough away to leave some space between them, but when he stretched his arm along the back of the couch, he could tangle his fingers in her hair if he wanted.
He resisted. For now.
“Have you lived here long?” Lisa asked.
“Been in Heart Falls for over five years. I bought the house a year after I arrived from a couple who were retiring to Calgary. Made a few changes like that projection screen, but it’s pretty much their design.”
“It’s beautiful. And comfortable.” She leaned back on the high armrest which slid her farther from him. He was disappointed about that until she shocked the hell out of him and planted her wool-socked feet in his lap. “Tell me about your family. You’ve mentioned a brother, and your mom. I take it they’re around, somewhere.”
“Aroundhere, only occasionally. They still manage to be up in my business often, though, some of them from five hundred miles away.” He picked up her foot and started massaging it, digging his fingers into her arches, because that’s what any smart man did when a woman was clearly looking for a foot rub. He pointed briefly at a picture on the side table. “That is the mess of people I call family. Mom and Dad live in Rosebud, Alberta, where I grew up. I have an older brother and two older sisters. They’re in New York, Hollywood, and, temporarily, the UK. Specifically, London.”
He wasn’t sure if that expression on her face was from the pressure on her feet or if she was impressed with the list of his siblings’ hometowns.
“That’s a lot of distance between you,” she said, wiggling her foot closer. “Oh. Right there.Yes.”
Josiah swallowed hard and ordered his cock to behave. Because that last phrase had sounded far too sexual. Everything in him had gone hard, so he focused down at where he was rubbing the ball of her foot.
He had to concentrate to remember what the last sensible comment was that she’d made.
Right. Distance.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but Rosebud is the hotspot for dramatic development in rural Alberta. My parents run the boarding house and theatre school, and all three of my siblings are very successful graduates of the program.”
“Ha.” She pulled her foot away from him and offered the other one, demanding the same treatment. “That’s where your cue-card setup came from. You’re a graduate of the theatre school too.”
“More like a dropout,” he confessed. “It’s a bit of a stretch from the stage to pulling calves. When I hit my teens I realized, while I don’t mind being in the spotlight, I didn’t love it the way the rest of them did. I wanted to work with animals, so I went in a different direction.”
She folded her arms over her chest and looked at him thoughtfully. “That must’ve been tough to do in a family full of performers.”
“It wasn’t too bad.”
He focused down on her foot, applying extra pressure in the hopes of possibly changing the topic.
Everyone in his family had known that he didn’t have the talent. They’d made that clear. Not necessarily in a cruel way, but there wasn’t much beating around the bush when everyone had roles to play except him.
Lisa was eyeing the photo again. “You get along with your Mom and Dad? I mean, other than having to hide the sin of keeping your wicked bachelor television in the living room?”
“We get along fine. They’re good people. Don’t always understand what makes me tick, but I don’t understand why they do some of the things they do. It works.”
The buzzer went off on the stove, and they got to their feet and headed to the kitchen. Josiah paused to wash his hands before they worked together, dancing around each other a bit as he piled everything from the oven onto the island.
Lisa followed his orders and grabbed supplies from the fridge before filling glasses with cold water.
“We can sit on the couch,” Josiah offered. “This is your comfort-food meal. Put your feet up if you want.”
