Page 40 of Cowboys Next Door

I nod vigorously. “Yes, please! Me, too.”

He busies himself with the coffee maker, and I manage to tackle the mound of plates and cutlery as the waft of fresh beans hit the air, the gurgle of percolation reaching my ears.

I wander into the living room to find Katherine and ask if she’s interested in a cup of her own, but I find her already snoring in her favorite chair, an overstuffed number that was probably orange once but has now faded to a dull brownish yellow. I wonder if it once belonged to my grandfather and if my father ever sat on it.

Tentatively, I draw closer to her, checking to see just how asleep she is, but Hudson’s voice stops me from behind.

“Leave her. She’ll be out for hours.”

I peer over my shoulder at him. “Maybe I should put her to bed?”

He shakes his head as he approaches from behind with a thick, hand-woven blanket and drapes it over my slumbering grandmother before nodding at me to follow him out the back door and onto the porch.

“She likes sleeping in that chair,” he informs me. “It reminds her of Jake.”

So, it was my grandfather’s.

He has already poured the coffee, and I take mine gratefully, realizing that like Connor and Eli, my body is too wiped from the week’s events.

“You’re making great strides here.” Hudson carefully sits on one of the wood Adirondack chairs facing the south land.

“I want to get it done,” I admit, glancing back toward the house. “Katherine deserves to enjoy the ranch while she can.” Hudson takes a sip of his coffee, and I turn to him. “What were you going to ask me earlier at the table before she walked in?”

He sets his cup down and eyes me. “You’ve heard about MVP, and how they’re trying to get their hands on the land around here?”

“I learned that the hard way, too,” I remark with a small laugh, thinking of how Eli and Connor had cornered me—not that I was complaining now.

“Connor says that you have some advice on how to deal with them. I’m interested in hearing it.”

A spark of pleasure rushes through me, but I struggle not to show it. He’s lowering his guard with me! Finally!

“I suggested that we get a lawyer,” I reiterate. “But I don’t think Katherine is in any financial position to contribute. She’s putting everything she has into rebuilding the BB.”

Hudson grunts, the sound telling me nothing, but I’m learning to read through the hardened expressions and fruitless sounds now. These men have their own baggage, just like I have mine.

“What do you think that will do?” he asks, but he’s not discounting my idea. He’s genuinely curious.

“It shows that we’re not country bumpkins, sitting around, waiting for an attack,” I reply. “At the very least, it will get them off our backs for a bit… or at least that’s the hope.” He nods thoughtfully, and I lean in closer. “What made you change your mind about helping here?”

Hudson’s face turns stony, his lips twitching. The sight of the full, handsome mouth moving in the melting twilight stirs something in me. A stirring inside me draws me closer to him, daring me to kiss him, to see what he would do.

I bite on my lower lip—hard—to stop myself. But the urge to touch him remains. Behind him, a full moon rises higher in the sky, and I consider that it’s making me act out of character, but I don’t blame the supernatural for my behavior.

“You,” he answers simply.

I can’t help but laugh again. “That was your reason fornothelping in the first place.”

Inadvertently, he leans closer to me now, and I’m all over it, soaking up his attention.

“You really made it happen,” he tells me. “I kind of thought?—”

“That I was trying to con my grandmother,” I finish for him. “I would never do that.”

His eyes are almost translucent, the tinge of gray barely a hue against the white light of the rising moon now, and I can’t resist anymore. I need to kiss him. He’s begging me for it, even without the words.

My hands reach out to cup his face, and he flinches as if I’ve burned him. Shocked, I drop my fingers. I didn’t expect that reaction. He turns his head back and looks toward the fields again, a deep silence falling between us.

“I should probably head home,” he says, standing abruptly.

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