Sunlight poured through the bedroom window of the little cabin, nearly blinding Cleve. Kiersten’s cellphone played Lean On Me, but she showed no sign of rousing.
He silenced it, flipping it open on his way to the living room. “Hello.”
The line was silent for a second. “Cleve,” Nate said. “Is Kiersten available?”
“She’s sleepin still. Is she late?”
Nate knew he’d spent the night. His territory was effectively marked.
“Nooo.” Nate sounded miffed. “She’s meeting the adjuster at noon. I just read the paper. Did she tell you about the threat against her?”
“Threat?” He stopped, mid-stride, next to the sofa.
“There was a message spray-painted behind the shop. It said, ‘You’re not wanted here. Leave, bitch!’”
He sat down hard on the couch. “She didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell you?”
“No, and then she insisted I come back here last night so Wins wouldn’t be alone.”
“Little devil. She always this difficult?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“I’ll take care of her. It’s probably a good idea for somebody to be around the ranch there, in case this guy goes for that next.”
He hung up and paced the living room and kitchen while his guts churned. Rocky had too damn many enemies. She was such an independent little twit. He’d have to play his ace: the pregnancy.
He returned to her bed. Shielding her small body with his own, he watched her sleep. The hair around her face curled a titch, and her lips pouted. As he watched, her sleep-peaceful face contracted with worry, her forehead wrinkled and her neck muscles tensed. She woke looking upset.
He waited for her eyes to find his. He’d never wake another morning without wanting to be the first thing she saw.
“Pretty as the sunset in the evenin, and the sunrise in the mornin,” he murmured.
She bit her lip, but only succeeded in slowing a smile. “What time is it?”
“Time for you to start lookin out for that baby. What’s the big idea, comin up here all alone last night when you knew somebody’d left that nasty threat?”
Kiersten rolled, turning her back to him, but he wasn’t about to let her off the hook.
He poked her ribs. “Nate called this mornin, upset he’d read about it in the paper.”
“That was in the paper? Damn. I don’t want Grandpa hearing about that.”
“Again, time for you to quit bein bullheaded and protect that baby, instead of watchin out for everybody else.”
“There probably isn’t a baby, Cleve. I hate to think how crazy you’d start acting if there was. When and if I find out I’m pregnant, I’ll go buy some prenatal vitamins and avoid cigarette smoke with the best of ’em. If you’re so bent on having a kid, don’t waste your time banging me. You should find a suitable wife and get married.”
He felt like he’d been sucker-punched, but he wasn’t about to let her shrug off his protection.
“Nate and I already decided, you’re not stayin up here alone till this guy is caught. Like it or lump it, little lady. And another thing.” He put his hand under her bottom and bodily turned her to face him. “I’m sick of the nasty way you talk about our sex. I’ve banged women before, ones I met at bars and took to motels so cheap the mattresses were probably bought from a rummage sale at the Super 8. In high school and college, I screwed so many girls, I lost count. And I’ve fucked women in cars in parkin lots after a good night of drinkin.” He liked that she winced at each word, and hopefully the idea of his past escapades. “But when I take you to bed, Kiersten...” She blinked at her name, which he seldom used. “I’m making love, pure and simple.” He didn’t like that her eyes were shut now. Not one bit.
And when they opened, they didn’t look at his face.
“Look Tex, this has gone too far. I’m not after what you’re after. I’m sorry I didn’t meet you back in your playboy days, because you’re a great lay, but I’m not up for the whole relationship gig again.”
“Bull shit!”
* * * *
Against her will, Kiersten’s eyes darted to Cleve’s face. She couldn’t recall hearing him swear before. Was he angry, or did he not believe that she didn’t want to fall in love again?
His cellphone rang on the nightstand.
Before answering, he looked at the display. “Rowdy. One of my hands.” Into the phone, he cried, “You ugly old hound-dog! Tell me y’all didn’t get lost on the way to Colorado.”
Rowdy replied something about wiping Cleve’s baby ass but not kissing it, then Cleve’s laughter drowned out the rest.
“Quit cryin. You know I’m teasin. Y’all are slower than a three-legged turtle. Who’s drivin?”
Someone named Dusty.
“Well, that explains a lot. Dusty’s gramma once put him to shame in a drag race. I reckon you been pullin over at every titty bar along the way too.” Sharp denials brought more laughter from Cleve. “Call me when you get to Rifle. I’ll be in town, so I can meet y’all and show your sorry asses the way home.”
He hung up grinning.
“You sound like Yosemite Sam when you talk to them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a three-legged turtle...”
His hand covered her knee and tickled her until she was howling.
When she’d regained her breath, she asked, “So you’re getting cowboys before you get cows?”
“Cattle. Cows live in a dairy.” So serious about the cow word. Cute. “We’ve got a corral to build, and the rest of the fence around my ranch needs repaired. It’s not all in as good a shape as yours is. And my stock will be here Wednesday.”
“Mmm. Sounds like you’ll be pretty busy. Maybe you won’t be over here pestering the shit outta me all the time.”
“I think we’ve got enough time for a good round of pesterin this mornin before you have to leave,” he murmured against her ear lobe. “Your hair still smells like smoke.”
“How flattering. It’ll take like three more washings to get the stink out.” Of course, when she’d washed her hair the night before, she hadn’t planned on Cleve having his face in her hair again. “Cleve. Will you talk to your dad and make sure he doesn’t pressure Grandpa? Please?”
He groaned. “The only thing more likely to slow me down in bed than mentionin my Pop is mentionin my Mama. I’ll talk to Pop. But what I want doesn’t mean much to him. He thinks I’m only passin on your property because you’re pretty.”
She laughed. “Ah, so I’ve used my feminine wiles to pull the wool over your eyes, have I? What if he thought you slept with me to get something you wanted, like, say, access to the BLM across one corner of my property?”
“So you’d be payin me for sex?”
She giggled. “I guess. Unless you paid me for the access. Then it would be like you sweet-talked me into a deal, with sex.”
“How’s ten grand sound?”
“Don’t be silly. Lord, I was thinking of a couple hundred. You can pay to fence off a corner, then make a gate to drive the cattle through. But you can’t move the fence permanently.” She shook her head. “Ten grand. You Texans sure do always think big.”
“It would get me access to two thousand acres, a lot of pasture. You hold the ace, Rocky. Don’t sell it for a piddly amount.”
“You’re giving me business advice by telling me I can gouge you with this deal?”
“Consider it a way for you to get even with my Pop for costin you so much in taxes.”
As if ten grand would come close to costing Howell what he’d cost her.
“I’ll think about it. I better get showered so I can go meet that insurance guy.”
Cleve had different plans for their morning. They weren’t dressed until she had to rush to get out the door on time. He rode in her truck to his own vehicle, parked in front of her locked gate.
She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Did you get your four-wheeler running?”
“Yeah, Nate was right about the quick and dirty vandalism,” he answered with a tolerant smirk.
“Sorry.” She looked at her hands.
He tipped her chin up so she could see his grin. “Now you are. Meet me for lunch, sugar. What time you think you’ll be done?”
She drove to town in high spirits for someone on her way to deal with her lost livelihood.
Cleve haunted her thoughts, no matter what she tried to think of. Waking to him watching over her had felt good. Hell, much as she hated him thinking she couldn’t do everything for herself, his protection felt good, too. If only Cleve didn’t come in a package with all the other Howells, she’d consider carrying on with him. But no matter how good or kind he was, his family wanted to steal her heritage. She couldn’t have him taking care of her, being sweet. She’d fallen into the trap of wanting a man to take care of her before, and look what that had gotten her. No, things needed to stay on a physical-only level between them. She just had to keep things light, with no more talk about the four-letter ‘L’ word.
Colorado Loss Protection’s adjuster was thorough and efficiently brief. Nate tagged along for the meeting, filling in details for the adjuster when she forgot because her mind wandered from the subject at hand to her romp that morning.
As the representative drove away, Nate elbowed her. “You are so out of it today, girlfriend. Tell me all about your night.”
“My night?” she asked with feigned innocence. “I locked Cleve out again because I was so pissed about the offer Grandpa told me about. I even pointed my gun at him when I thought he was trying to tell me Grandpa lied.” She shrugged off Nate’s look of abject dismay. “It was CJ Senior that Grandpa talked to. Cleve offered me a loan.”
“And?”
“Please! Like I want to be indebted to that family. It’s hard enough fighting them on an even field.”
“Cleve cares about you, lady. You’ll be in that family before long.”
“Not! Come join us for lunch.”
“Nate the Third Wheel, let’s see...I don’t think so.”
“Come on. It’s not that kind of lunch. He’s killing time waiting for his three cowboy ranch hands to get here from Texas so he can show them the way to the ranch. You can come check ’em out.”
* * * *
Cleve found Nate and Kiersten sitting close, munching chips and salsa. Should’ve known Nate would show up. The two of them had their heads together, giggling like school girls. Gay or not, Nate was a man, and he’d seen Nate looking at her with more than pal-like affection.
Knowing it would make her madder than an old wet hen if he acted possessive, he swallowed his envy and took the seat across from her.
It was easy for him to forget his irritation when Rocky’s face lit in a smile and she chirped, “Hi Tex!” As long as she was that happy to see him, he could handle anything.
They’d all but ordered when his phone rang.
“Slower than a seven-year itch.” He laughed into his phone. “Never knew such a slow bunch. Did y’all make it to town or what?”
Rowdy growled, but he gave him directions to the restaurant.
“Grouchy old cuss,” he decreed as he ended the call.
* * * *
Kiersten watched Cleve anxiously scanning the parking lot. “I’d say somebody’s homesick,” she told Nate.
Cleve’s lifted shoulders told her she was right. Would he be content in Colorado, or give up and return to Texas by winter?
“There they are!” Cleve said. A shiny black Suburban—the Texas national car, since Texans were always claiming they lived in ‘a whole other country’—with a set of chrome longhorns on its hood, sailed into the parking lot.
She couldn’t resist rolling her eyes and asking, “Is there a chrome cow’s tail hanging over the back window?”
Nate chuckled at her side, but Cleve only pursed his grinning lips and gave her one evil eye.
The side of the vehicle bore the letter ‘H’ with gold eagle’s wings on each side. Flying H.
As the occupants emerged, Cleve gave them a play by play. From the driver’s door came Dusty, spindly and fair. Couldn’t be a day over nineteen. The front passenger door opened and cranky Rowdy emerged, grizzled and lighting up a cigarette. Cash, dark and wild looking, dropped to kiss the ground.
Cleve grinned, until Rowdy opened the other door of the Suburban, offering a hand down to another passenger, a female.
Taller than Rowdy, even without the three inch heels on her strappy sandals, or the bleached-blond bouffant, sprayed to withstand any onslaught of gale-force winds, she might have been a Barbie doll. Except Barbie’s clothing was more modest. Her cropped halter top dangled fringe barely below the bottom curves of substantial, unnaturally high breasts.
Kiersten owned thongs with more butt coverage than that chick’s denim shorts.
Cleve gave her a sideways look, his eyes wide.
“What the hell is that?” she demanded. “Jesus. First it’s Boss Hogg, and now Daisy Duke. You come from freakin Hazzard County, or what?”
“Whitney,” Cleve muttered, much like he’d say ‘hoof and mouth’. “Rocky, whatever you think when they get in here, just don’t believe it.”
The group, minus Rowdy, came in the front door. Cleve half waved, looking like he wasn’t sure whether to attract their attention or bolt out the kitchen door.
She shrugged at Nate.
‘Whitney’ noticed Cleve and rushed toward him. Her huge breasts nearly bounced out of their precarious perch in their sling of a shirt. She shrieked, “Cah-layv!” and catapulted against him. Her arms and legs went round him and she took his mouth with her own.
To Cleve’s credit, his hands flailed helplessly in the air, rather than holding the woman who’d attached herself to him. His eyes locked on Kiersten, at least until his sorry male body responded and they closed in what could only be pleasure.
Whitney’s dismount revealed a confused Cleve, who dashed a quick look of apology at her before Whitney’s huge breasts still smashed against his chest drew his gaze again. Her long-nailed, bejeweled right hand snaked into his back pocket, while her left hand dropped a purse roughly double the size of her shorts on the nearest chair.
“Oh mah Gawd. What a horrible trip, but aren’t you lookin handsome as ever, baby.”
They obviously had a past. Which would now make her a thing of his past.
Nate’s hand squeezed her knee under the table.
Nausea threatened when Whitney proceeded to coo over Cleve’s razor stubble and sorry need of a haircut. She stood to head to the ladies’ room, but Cleve mistook it for her stepping up to be introduced.
“Kiersten Day, this is Miss Whitney Pearson. Whitney, Kiersten.”
Whitney extended her hand with grace, but she looked down her nose—a good ten inches above Kiersten’s—at her ordinary jeans and baby tee. The lofty nose wrinkled in obvious disdain at the worn sport sandals.
“Charmed, Ah’m shore.”
Bullshit. She should knock that probing hand so far out of Cleve’s jeans pocket that this fake-blond floozy would spend her afternoon scraping fingers from ceiling tiles in the far corners of the restaurant.
Cleve completed the introductions to the men, “...Dusty, and Cash, this is Kiersten and Nate, her lead guy.”
Nate’s foot nudged hers.
Quit staring at the hand and answer. “Hi.” She flashed her most winning smile at the men, something she hadn’t bestowed upon her opponent. “Welcome to Colorado.” Her lashes batted as the wellspring of her old flirting skills bubbled to the surface. “Cleve was tossing and turning, worrying about you all night.”
Cleve’s mouth dropped open. Then he jumped from the angry pinch Whitney gave him.
The sullen pout on Whitney’s face rewarded her, but Cleve’s I can’t believe you put me in a spot look spurred her to tell Cash and Dusty, “You know, I need to run in the girls’ room to freshen up, but when I come back I want you two to sit right beside me, and tell me all about your trip.”
As she brushed past them, she grazed her fingers over Dusty’s cheek. Wiggle the hips. Thank God for Nate, making me get rid of all my ugly clothes!
Once she was out of sight, she let her feet stomp. Cleve was probably pissed, because now CJ would find out he’d been sleeping at her house. Or because Jugs With Legs would know he’d been sleeping with her polar opposite.
The ladies’ room was occupied, so she had to stand outside the door, waiting her turn.
Rowdy walked in the front door and paced the hall next to her, cellphone pressed to his ear. “Yessir, Mr. Howell. We just made it.”
Howell’s obnoxious accent carried in a hollow broadcast from the phone across the hallway. “Cleveland su-prahsed?”
“Yessir, he was surprised.” Rowdy, completely unaware she was eavesdropping, relaxed against the wall.
“Good. Hopefully Miss Whitney’ll take mah son’s mind off that little chigger next door. Ah don’t much cotton to mah youngest son dallyin with a dirt-poor field maggot rancher.”
Her hands clenched at her sides. Maybe she should snatch the phone from Rowdy’s hand and give Howell a piece of her mind.
“Well, yessir, I reckon Miss Whitney takes a fella’s mind off’n purty much everthin but her.” Rowdy moved away, and she could only hear his “mmm-hmm”s and “yessir”s.
In the restroom, she planted her palms flat on the counter and stared at the mirror. She wouldn’t scream or cry. CJ had sent the bimbo purposely to distract Cleve. What a pompous bastard! In the twenty-first century, parents did not choose their kids’ romantic interests. Hadn’t she feared exactly this scenario? That she wouldn’t be good enough for Cleve’s family and they’d disapprove of her?
“Goddammit.” She would not let the old fart win. She’d come out the victor or leave no spoils worth taking. That red face wouldn’t do. No way would she return looking crushed. She’d go back out there and make every man at that table positively hang on each word from her mouth.
Cleve would come to her cabin, to her bed, tonight and every night she wanted him to. Miss Bimbo could go to hell for all she cared. CJ’d probably paid her to come out anyway, so she’d still make her buck off the trip.
Somewhere down in the bottom of her purse was the lipstick Nate had made her wear clubbing. She dug it out and smoothed it on, worked the angry wrinkles from her forehead and amped up her flirty smile. One last look in the mirror. Unwrinkle your nose. Now go get ’em. Good thing the natural look was more her forte than the beauty pageant one. It would have to be.
Nate had aided and abetted her plan by moving aside so Cash could have his seat and Dusty would be on her other side. As she eased into her spot between the two guys, Whitney cooed and murmured in Cleve’s ear. Like they were in their own little world.
Across from Dusty, Rowdy complained to Nate about how much Whitney had slowed them down. She insisted on stopping overnight for her beauty rest, then spent two hours getting ready in the morning. She’d drawn out gas stops, in the ladies’ room with her makeup bag and giant can of hairspray. Her hair fixative had made Cash sneeze nonstop, but she wouldn’t let them drive with a window down so much as a dadgum inch, lest her hair get ‘mussed’.
“Mussed, my ass,” Rowdy said in a growl. “Ain’t seen a goddamn hurricane could muss that helmet.”
Nate smiled across the table. He cleared his throat. “Kiersten, this is Rowdy. Rowdy, this is—”
She cut him off, putting her unadorned hand forward. “...the little chigger next door.”
* * * *
Rocky’s snarled words carried over Whitney’s complaints about Rowdy’s cigarette smell in the suburban. Rowdy’s face went red. Cleve tuned in.
“How—Howdy, ma’am,” Rowdy managed.
“Don’t worry, Rowdy, I won’t hold you accountable for the underhanded tactics of your employer, any more than I hold Cleve accountable for them. Maybe you could pass on a message to CJ Senior for me, next time you speak?”
Rowdy nodded with a nervous smile.
“Just let him know he has yet to win a battle, and he sure won’t win the war.”
When Kiersten’s eyes locked on his, Cleve knew he’d become an object in the tussle between Pop and Kiersten. He didn’t feel much in control anymore, but at least she was willing to fight for him. That was more important. Right?
Whitney’s whispers in his ear barely turned his eyes away from Kiersten for the duration of the meal.
How she managed it, he didn’t know. Cash and Dusty flirted with her, and she carried on a friendly chat with an unusually smiley Rowdy, but he knew her attention was actually focused on him. He even caught bashful Dusty leaning close and sniffing her, and Cash offered to teach her how to hustle folks at cards. Time to have a ‘hands off the boss’s woman’ talk with his guys.
Pouting like only a Southern girl could, Whitney scooted next to Nate, flaunting her enhanced breasts and flipping her hair around. By the time they left the restaurant, Nate looked ready to kiss the ground outside like Cash had.
Thank the Lord for the groceries in the front seat of his truck when Whitney tried to finagle a ride. He didn’t offer to move them into the back to accommodate her. Instead, he led her by the elbow to the Suburban. Cash begged to ride in the back of his truck to avoid a flare-up of his Hairspray Fever, but he only clapped him on the back and laughed.
The Suburban had headed to the nearest gas station and Nate’s Xterra had left the parking lot when Cleve joined Kiersten.
Suddenly girly, she waited for him to open her driver’s door. And a long, hot kiss.
“You opened a hornet nest for me with Pop today,” he murmured in her ear.
“Mmm. Sorry.”
“You are not.” His mouth crossed back over to hers.
“Maybe not.” Her lips tightened in a grin against his. “You’ll come over later?”
Boiling blood again. But he was damned helpless to fight it. “There’ll be hell to pay, both here and back home, but yeah. I’ll be there, Rocky.”
“You won’t be disappointed,” she promised as he boosted her bottom up to her seat.