Cowboy Crush

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“Okay?” She sounded surprised.

“Yeah, okay. Now, how about that sandwich? I’m going for the turkey. No, the ham.”

Maggie stared at him for a few seconds. “You can have both.”

He slapped his hands together, hung his cowboy hat on the hooks inside the door and headed toward the kitchen. The living area of the Triple J had been cleared of the junk the teenagers or cats or whatever had busted windows had brought in. The furniture looked worn and stained and the whole place needed scrubbing. But it could be really nice. The fireplace was a native stone with a rustic mantel and the flooring was wood, and according to HGTV—which his mother watched with religious fervor—was desirable. All the dark molding looked intact and the horrid red paint could be changed to something tamer.

He walked into the kitchen and winced.

This would need to be gutted. Or not. Cabinets looked in good shape. Good coat of white paint would lighten them up and he could drive into the McKinney Home Depot and pick out some new stainless-steel appliances that seemed to be popular. He looked at the ugly black and white tile. That would need to go.

“The floor is ugly,” Maggie said behind him.

“Just what I was thinking,” he said, turning when she came inside the kitchen, looking calm and not so turned on. He was good with that because he’d tucked her earlier response to him in his back pocket. Now wasn’t the time for seduction. But it would come. Maggie needed to know him better, trust him a little, before she let herself go. Cal was a patient man in many ways. It was an attribute on the tour. Be hungry but be patient. Bull riders knew timing was everything.

“I hate the idea of ripping up floors, but it will have to go. And there’re some broken tiles in the master bathroom along with a cracked shower door. Whoever came here to party threw beer bottles. Not to mention the carpets in one bedroom are soiled,” Maggie said.

“Soiled?”

“Someone couldn’t handle his liquor.”

Cal made a face. “I don’t get kids these days.”

Maggie snapped her finger. “You just did it.”

“What?”

“Officially became old.” She smiled and moved toward the refrigerator. “When you start complaining about ‘kids these days,’ that’s when it happens. Wrinkles appear and gray hairs start pushing toward the surface.”

Cal smiled. “I already have some gray.” He pointed to his temples and smoothed his hair down. Definitely had hat hair.

“But that’s sexy on a guy. On women?” She shook her head and started pulling out packages of lunch meat.

“I knew you thought it was sexy,” he said, reaching for the paper sack sitting on the counter by the sink and pulling out the loaf of bread.

Maggie pulled out a butter knife. “You’re not supposed to mention that word.”

“What word?”

“Sexy.”

“I never agreed to avoid it,” he said, unwinding the bread tie. “I like that word ’cause it has one of my favorite things in it.”

She grabbed a jar of mayonnaise from the depths of the bag along with cheese puffs and a package of Oreo cookies. “I don’t see much gray.”

“I’m thirty-five years old. It’s there.”

“You’re thirty-five?”

“I’ll be thirty-six in August.”

“You don’t look that old,” she said, narrowing her eyes as if she could figure out his secret. There was no secret. He had good genes. His mother still looked like she was in her thirties and she’d turned fifty-four a few months ago. “I’m twenty-seven.”

“And I thought you were older,” he joked.

She narrowed her eyes at him again. This time it was in mock aggravation. “Just what a woman wants to hear—‘you look old.’”

“Don’t go putting words in my mouth,” he teased, opening the Cheesy-Os. “And I’ll chalk it up to your sophistication and need to play by the rules.”

Maggie unpeeled the slice of cheese. “Play by the rules? How’s that? I canceled my return flight to stay here and clean up roach turds. I’d say that was a risky decision.”

Cal had to admit it took gumption to do what Maggie was doing. Most city slickers would have put the ranch up for sale sight unseen. Washed their hands of the whole thing and taken what they could get. But Margaret Stanton had been cut from a different cloth. She saw an opportunity that with a little elbow grease and a bit of cash could become a solid basis to build a future on. Perhaps that’s why he’d volunteered to help her. He admired the way she latched on to spit and polishing up the place. Or it could have been the way she filled out those shorts and halter top thing. Probably the second one but he’d still acknowledge the first.

“Sweeping up roach turds is definitely an out-of-the-box action. No cheese for me.” He popped a cheese doodle into his mouth.

“You’re weird. Everyone likes cheese singles.”

“Not me,” he said, crunching the chip. “Tastes like plastic.”

“And why are you standing there watching? Open the paper plates and make yourself useful.”

“That’s woman’s work,” he joked, not moving. Instead he ate another cheese doodle and watched her dander rise.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those backward idiots who still thinks it’s the 1800s? I can’t believe—” She snapped her mouth closed when she saw his grin. “You’re intentionally ruffling my feathers.”

“I like to watch your face get red. And you start breathing hard which draws my eyes to your chest.” He looked pointedly at her breasts.

“You’re a pervert,” she said, slapping cheese onto both the sandwiches like that would teach him to mess with her.

“It will only get worse,” he said, pulling the package of paper plates out of the bag from the Stop-N-Go, Coyote Creek’s finest in gas-station grocers.

Maggie snorted and slathered the bread with mayonnaise, not even bothering to ask him if he liked it on his sandwich. He did, but she didn’t know that. This sandwich was a lesson to a man who stroked a cat the wrong way. She smushed the two pieces of bread together and grabbed a plate from his hands. The action struck him as domestic, and for a brief second he wondered what it would be like to have a woman smarting off to him in the kitchen every night. What it would be like to have the elusive family he’d once dreamed about as a child when his mother was working late and he lay in the twin bed made with threadbare sheets his mother had brought home from the motel. What would it be like to live somewhere other than his trailer or hotel rooms with another cowboy snoring in the adjacent bed? What would it be like to have a place to belong?

But as soon as the thought flitted through his mind, he chased it away.

Real cowboys didn’t have families or worry about crown molding and rain showerheads. Oh, sure, some of the guys he knew had wives and kids, but even they found comfort in Jim Beam and a soft body when they were on the road. It was the cowboy way. Charlie had been wrong about a lot of things, but when he told Cal cowboys didn’t do well strapped down, he wasn’t lying. Cal knew that firsthand. His own father had been a cowboy, hadn’t he? And where was he?

Cal knew who and what he was. Standing in the dated, dusty kitchen of the Triple J was a lark, something he did only because he was bored and wanted to be with Maggie. By mid-August he’d be in Mobile at the first event on the second leg. And Maggie would be back on the East Coast, hopefully a fine memory for him. If she played nice.

“Here,” she said, jabbing the paper plate with the lonely sandwich on it toward him.

“Thanks. You got a beer or something?” he asked, loading the plate with half the Cheesy-Os.

“No.”

“You want one? I can run out to my trailer.”

She shrugged. “When in Texas.”

“Right,” he said, toasting her with a cheese doodle.

* * *

AFTER THE SANDWICH SUPPER, Maggie pulled out what was left of the dinnerware and filled the sink with soapy water. Some of the pieces had been broken by the kids who’d busted in the back door so they could party. She’d put in a call to the sheriff’s office regarding the vandalism, but they’d told her Charlie had already filed a complaint and they’d investigated to no avail. But they would send deputies by for the next week or so until word got out that the Triple J was now occupied. Deputy Riser felt sure that the occupancy would eliminate the ranch as a go-to party zone.

Cal sat at the table, frowning at his phone. “Signal’s crap.”

“Well, since you can’t play on your phone, you can dry,” she said, tossing him a drying cloth.

“Hey, I’m an eight-to-five guy. I’m off.”

“Pay for your dinner,” she said, setting a stack of plates into the dishwater.

“That means I have to dry only one plate. Maybe a cup.” But she heard the chair scrape against the floor. He moved behind her, prickling her nerve ends, making her want to lean back and feel him pressed to her.

That kiss.

That kiss had been so good. Like the first lick of mint chocolate chip ice cream. But going there was walking a tightrope and if there was one thing she didn’t need at the moment, it was a combustible relationship turning sour in the ninth inning. She needed this place fixed up and ready to sell. That meant she needed Cal to stay focused on the job she’d hired him to do. No hanky-panky, no matter how incredible he kissed or how much she loved his aw-shucks sexiness. “So tell me about bull riding. How’d you get started?”

“When I was ten years old, my mom won tickets off the radio to a PRCA event in Fort Worth. All of it was exciting—roping, bronc bustin’ and even the barrel events. But when the end rolled around and those bulls hit the chute, I felt something electric. I’ll never forget the way my stomach dropped when that gate opened and that cowboy rode that big sucker. I decided right then and there, I wanted to do that.”

“But it’s so dangerous.”

“That’s part of it. It ain’t just holding on. It’s riding. There’s a difference. And when you can hit that zone, when you know what the bull is going to do because it’s there in your bones, there’s nothing like it. Maybe it’s like getting high or something. I don’t know. But it’s indescribable.”

His words carried a reverence. She could tell he loved climbing onto a snorting, huge monster. “So don’t you win a buckle or something? How many have you won?”

Cal smiled and took the soapy plate from her. “I’ve won a few.”

“You don’t want to talk about it, huh? Is it the injury?”

“No,” he said, his lower lip curving.

He had nice lips that knew their way around. Probably all those women who showed up at the corrals—what did they call them again? She couldn’t remember. “Then what?”

“I don’t know. I’m taking a break from all that right now. Trying to heal and get my mind right. Guess I don’t feel like talking about the bulls and the buckles and the—”

“Bunnies?” she said, finally remembering the name that escaped her. “I’ve heard that term before.”

Cal looked over at her. “Them, too.”

Something ugly moved inside her. She didn’t like the idea of faceless women in shiny halter tops and boots kissing his boo-boos better. Which was strange because she had no stake in Cal. He was a guy who’d done her a solid a few days ago, a guy she’d hired for a job, and pretty much the one person in Texas she could count on. Who he screwed or didn’t screw shouldn’t bother her.

But it did.

She peered out into the Texas night through a window that needed serious cleaning as she scrubbed the dishes. The dishwasher was already full of the cookware and silverware. Thankfully it had worked, as had the dried-up chunk of dish-washing detergent she’d pried out of the Cascade box under the sink. Cal remained silent, taking the plates she handed to him, drying and stacking them in a pile on the counter.

The whole scene felt strange and yet oddly comforting.

So much inside her twisted like a tornado. Everything had proved easier said than done. Her secret hope of finding a perfect place to land had been washed down the drain. Not that she had actually truly entertained the idea of moving to the middle of Nowhere, Texas. Probably had internalized all those stories Bud had told her about life in Texas and created a fairy-tale ideal or something. Like the faraway castle every little girl dreamed of. Or maybe it was she hated the thought of giving any of Bud’s selfish, whiny children part of the proceeds. Or maybe she had merely hoped things would be easier than they were. That she would have driven up to the Triple J, fallen in love with her new home and found a million dollars buried in the backyard. She had wanted to feel something for this place.

But she hadn’t. Not really.

Instead it felt like a big pain in the ass and now her life was on pause.

But perhaps being stuck on pause wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe she needed to take time to think about what her future held. For many years she’d been on autopilot, taking care of Bud’s affairs, balancing work and merely existing. Not much passion in her life and not much time to study the stars, wash a dish and listen to the absolute quiet of the night.

She’d just pulled the drain plug when a pair of headlights swept over the barn.

“Cal,” she whispered. “Look.”

He leaned over, his shoulder brushing against hers. “Shit.”

“What do we do?”

“We run their asses out of here is what we do,” he said, tossing the towel and heading toward the screened door.

“Wait, what if they have a gun or something?”

“They’re local punks. I used to be one. I know how to deal with them,” he said, pushing out the door. She saw the headlights cut off. The truck had parked right by the pens.