Bad News Cowboy
“Well, he was being an ass,” Kate said, turning and following the same path Jack had just taken out of the bar.
It was downright chilly out now, the fog rolling in off the ocean leaving a cool dampness in the air. She could hear the waves crashing not too far away but couldn’t see them because of the clouds.
The moon was a white blur of light mostly swallowed up by the thick gray mist. She could see only the faint outline of Jack, walking to his truck, thanks to the security light at the far end of the parking lot.
“Are you just gonna leave me here?” she shouted, breaking into a jog and going after him.
“I figured you could get a ride,” he ground out.
“I did not need you to come over there and intervene.” She stopped in front of him, and he turned around to face her.
She could only just make out the strong lines of his face, could barely see the way his brows were locked together, his expression still enraged. “It looked like you did. Don’t be such a stubborn child all the time. If Connor or Eli had been here, they would’ve done the same thing.”
“You aren’t Connor and Eli,” she bit out.
“No,” he said. “But I’m something. And I’m not going to apologize for being mad about a guy talking to you that way.”
“Maybe I wanted him to talk to me that way.” She hadn’t.
“Then raise your standards.”
“As high as yours?” she asked.
“At least I know what I’m doing. You’re like a...lamb being led to the slaughter.”
She laughed, an outright guffaw, in spite of the fact that she found very little about this funny. She was attracted to Jack, she had just caused a major scene in Ace’s, and now this. “Does anything about me look adorable and woolly? I didn’t think so. I’m like a...a bobcat. I’m not a lamb.”
“I thought you were a badger.”
“That is beside the point. Maybe I’m a badger-cat. Anyway, the point is I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“Maybe not. But I’m not going to stand there while he says things like that to you.”
“Why not? Why do you care?”
Her words hung in the silence, resting on the mist. And she wished they would just go away, because they felt exposing. And he was looking at her, making her heart beat faster, making her stomach seize up. Now that she knew, it didn’t seem so irritating. It seemed like something else entirely.
Her shower the other day, the way her skin had felt so sensitive, the way Jack had flashed through her mind, rose up to the top of her thoughts. She nearly choked on her embarrassment then and there.
But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t back down.
“Because I could tell he was asking for things you weren’t ready for,” he said, his voice muted now.
“You don’t know what I’m ready for.” She forced the words out, her throat scratchy and dry.
He took a deep breath, lifting his head, his expression concealed by shadow. “I guess not. But I’m going to go ahead and assume based on knowing you and the way you were flirting that you don’t have a whole lot of experience.”
Heat flooded her face. “I don’t really want to talk about this with you.”
“Why not? As we have established,” he said, his voice lowering slightly, “I am not your brother.”
A shiver ran down her spine and settled in her stomach, leaving it feeling jittery and uncomfortable. “Right. That’s been well established.”
He looked pained. “I mean, look, you could maybe...talk to Sadie about this? Or Liss?”
“I’m not looking for advice,” she said. “Anyway, Liss feels like crap, Sadie’s busy, and they would both rat me out to my brothers, who would... It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Right.”
“And I’m good at flirting, Jack.”
“You’re not.”
“Yes, I am. I could have closed the deal with him. All I had to do was shove my boobs in his face and he was good to go. It’s not like it’s hard. I mean, I didn’t really expect for him to say...all that. But it’s not like I repelled him.”
“That’s not how you flirt. That is how you get...not a date. You get something else. And really, what you did had less to do with it than...just the guy you were talking to. You have to understand some guys are just after one thing. You have no idea what you’re doing.”
The air felt thick between them, and she couldn’t blame it on the fog. It was just like earlier, when he dropped her at the bar. When she reached out and grabbed his chin, his stubble rough beneath her skin, so undeniably masculine, so undeniably something she’d never felt before.
Damn him, he was right about her experience. Or lack of it.
She’d never even been kissed. Which put Chad’s offer firmly in the no column. But...what would it be like to kiss Jack? To feel his lips, warm and firm, and that stubble, all rough and...
“Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong,” he said. “Did you want to leave with him?”
Jack’s question pulled her out of her fantasy. And she was relieved. “No.” She was certain about that.
“So obviously, shoving your... Doing the... That isn’t what you want to be doing.”
Jack tongue-tied was almost funny enough to make the conversation less horrifying. Almost. “And you’re an expert?”
“More than you. Look, what is it you want? The way you were acting is definitely going to work for one thing. But if your end goal is a date, you might want to approach it in another way.”
“If I want a date?” she asked, blinking slowly, not exactly sure how they wound up in this conversation.
“Yes, a date. And not like...an invitation to go down on a guy in his truck.”
Her face burned. “It’s not my fault he said that stuff.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m not blaming you. But you know...if you set a trap for a horny dillweed, that’s all you’ll catch. And there’s a lot of those in the circuit. If you intend to go pro, you’re going to be exposed to a lot of it.”
She let out an incredulous sound. “Are you...are you actually offering to help me hook up?”
“No. I’m not offering to help with that. But obviously, you could use a little bit of help figuring out how to deal with this kind of thing. Teaching you how to use...different bait.”
“Instead of horny-dillweed bait?”
“Yes,” he said. “I can help you.”
“I’m twenty-three,” she said.
“I know. And you’re fast and strong and smart. You’re the best damn barrel racer around, whatever you think about yourself. You’re ready to go pro and take the circuit by storm. You’re a hard worker and a good sister.”
“So what exactly are you...offering?”
“If you’re going to flirt, you should flirt with me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JACK WASN’T QUITE SURE what devil was possessing him at the moment. The same devil that had possessed him when he crossed the room and intervened in Kate’s interaction with Chad. Something hot and reckless, which he was used to but not in connection with his best friends’ little sister.
You’re just looking out for her.
True. It might not be God’s work, but it was Eli and Connor’s work. He was helping.
Leading her not into temptation, and away from idiots who only wanted to get into her pants.
“Chad didn’t hit you, did he, Jack?” Kate asked, her tone suddenly filled with concern.
“No. Why?”
“Because you’re talking like someone who has a head injury.”
“Lesson one,” he said, his tone firm. “Don’t insult the guy you want to hook up with.”
Kate took a step back, her expression hidden from him by the dim evening light. “I don’t want to hook up with you.”
“Obviously.” He felt like a moron for phrasing it that way. Things had gotten weird in the past hour and this wasn’t helping. “I didn’t mean that. I only meant that I can teach you how to talk to men.”
“I was raised by men,” Kate said, holding her hands wide. “I know how to talk to men. I know about horses, sports and even some of the finer points of tractor mechanics. I even like to compare scars.”
Jack’s throat clamped down hard on itself at the image of Kate shuffling clothing around to show off the various scars she no doubt had on her body.
Want to compare scars, baby?
Yeah, that might actually work as a pickup line. The other stuff, not so much.
“You know how to talk like a man, Kate. That’s different than knowing how to talk to men. And it’s also different than talking to them the same way you would your brothers but adding the...back arching you were doing.”
“How?” she asked, sounding totally mystified.
“It just is. I mean, I don’t talk to women the way I talk to Connor and Eli.”
“You pretty much talk to me the way you talk to Connor and Eli. Except condescending.”
Jack let out a heavy sigh. “Get in the truck.”
“See? You’re all ordery.”
“Kate,” he said, through clenched teeth, “get in the truck.”
This time something in his tone spurred her to obey and she got in the passenger side of his black F-150. He breathed into his nose and then let a slow breath out through his mouth. He was insane.
He shook his head as he got into the truck, slammed the door behind him and started the engine before Kate could say anything.
He put the vehicle in Reverse and drove out of the parking lot, gripping the steering wheel tight, tension creeping up his shoulders.
“So,” Kate said. He had known his reprieve wouldn’t last. “What exactly would this flirting boot camp entail?”
Okay, so she hadn’t forgotten. Which meant he was committed. No turning back now. Anyway, there was no reason not to go through with it. Kate was just Kate. End of story. “I figure since we’re working together on the rodeo, we might as well work on this, too.”
“Why?”
The question of the year. “I don’t want to babysit you the whole time we’re organizing this. And when you go pro, Kate Garrett, there are going to be cowboys all over you.”
“And what? You think I’m so stupid I’m gonna get tricked into bed? Like I don’t know my own mind? Or are you trying to help me get some?”
The tension crept higher, climbing up into his neck. “That isn’t what I said.”
With any luck, him taking control of the situation would keep her from getting taken advantage of. Not that it would be wrong for Kate to get laid.
Even thinking about it threw up a big fat stop sign in his brain, warning his thoughts not to go any further.
Okay, so it wasn’t as if he expected she never would. Or even that she hadn’t. Because, as she had pointed out a few times, she was twenty-three. And you didn’t exactly have to be smooth to get a guy into bed.
But she deserved better than an ass clown like Chad.
“Okay, what you do with my teaching is up to you,” he said. “But forewarned is forearmed. If you want to get better at talking to guys, I’ll help you. And what will help me is if I know that you’ll be more prepared to deal with jerks should any approach you. And that you understand you don’t have to do anything with them just because they asked.”
“Good grief, Jack. I know that,” she muttered.
“Just don’t ever sell yourself short.”
“Why not? Men do it all the time. I don’t understand what all this protecting me from shallow creeps who are only after one thing is about. You are that creep. I mean, obviously, with other women, not with me.”
He nearly choked on his tongue. “That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
There was no way for him to say how it was different without sounding like a total jackass. So he kept quiet.
But Kate wasn’t content with that. Of course she wasn’t. “Come on, Jack. I’m waiting for an explanation.”
He let out an exasperated breath. “It’s just that there are different kinds of women. There are the kind that you marry. And there are the kind that you...”
A hard crack of laughter filled the cab of the truck. “Are you kidding me? Are you trying to tell me that you marry good girls and sleep with bad girls? And that if I keep pushing my breasts out, the boys will think I’m a bad girl and corrupt me?”
“It’s not good and bad.” He had no clue how to dig his way out of this. Sure, it sounded wrong when he said it like that. Maybe it was even bad to think it. But the bottom line was there were women who were fair game in his mind, and then there was Kate. And she was an entirely different category.
“All right, then. What kind of girl am I?”
Jack tightened his hold on the steering wheel. “The type that could get taken advantage of by assholes.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
“That isn’t what I said. Stupid and inexperienced are two different things.”
“You think I’m wholesome.”
Yes. It suited him just fine to think that Kate Garrett was as wholesome as whole grains. “Comparatively.”
“Compared to what? The women you sleep with?”
Heat lashed Jack’s face. “You’re determined to take this the wrong way.”
“Enlighten me. What is the right way to take this? You’re sitting here telling me there’s a certain type of woman it’s acceptable to mess around with and a kind that isn’t acceptable to mess around with, and you’re putting me in the category that isn’t allowed to mess around.”
“It’s not just women,” he said.
“Okay, then. What kind of guy are you, Jack Monaghan? Are you the kind of guy a girl marries? Or are you the kind we’re supposed to want to bang?”
Hearing the provocative words on Kate’s lips made his stomach wrench up tight. “Kate...”
“Go on. Tell me. It’s hardly fair, since you have such a comprehensive assessment of me. I deserve one of you. So tell me, Jack,” she said as he turned the truck into the narrow drive that would take them to the Garrett ranch and on to Kate’s house, “are you the sort of guy that a girl should dream of getting in a tux? Or are you the kind of guy that a girl should think about getting naked with?”
He slammed on the brakes, without thinking, without meaning to. But he could not drive while she talked like that. “Dammit, Katie.”
“For such an experienced man, you’re acting very prudish.”
“You want to know what kind of guy I am, Kate?” He shouldn’t challenge her, and he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. Because she was pushing. And when Kate pushed, he had to push back. Now and always. “Let me lay it out for you. I’m not the guy you marry. I’m the guy you stay up all night with. I’m the guy who doesn’t call the next day. I’m the guy your mama would’ve warned you about if she had stayed around.”
The last words barely made it out of his mouth before Kate grabbed ahold of his shirt and tugged him toward her. “Now you’re being a jerk on purpose,” she said, dark eyes glittering in the dim light, clashing fiercely with his.
“You wanted to know what kind of guy I was. I think that should answer your question.” He felt like a tool. He’d lost sight of what the end goal was in this weird game they were playing. All he knew was that she was pushing, and he was pushing back. All he knew was that his blood was burning, and his heart was pounding faster than it should have been.
“You did. You’re an ass. Question answered.”
She raised her hand as if she was going to hit him, and he caught her wrist, holding her steady, their eyes still locked. She was breathing faster than he was, and suddenly, the anger riding over the heat burning in his blood fizzled out. The heat remained, his heart still thundering hard, steady. And he was still holding on to Kate’s wrist.
The feeling that had surrounded them back at the bar had returned. Deeper. Stronger. And there was no pretending he didn’t know what it was. He could feel her pulse fluttering beneath his thumb, faster and faster the longer he held her.
Fuck.
He released his hold on her and put both his hands back on the steering wheel. “I am. I’m an ass. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that.”
“Why did you?” she asked, her voice small now.
“I don’t know,” he said, lying through his teeth with the truck still idling in the middle of the driveway.
“It was offensive. Not just what you said about my mother.”
“I know. I didn’t start out meaning to be offensive. Saying it out loud, I realize it’s stupid. But definitely in my mind I think of the kind of women that I would pick up in a bar and the kind I wouldn’t. Or more specifically, the kind who wouldn’t go with me. Of course, saying it out loud forces you to listen to how stupid it is.”
“It is stupid.”
“I know.”
“So,” she said, folding her hands in her lap now like a good student. “You’re going to teach me to flirt.”
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want her flirting with the guys who were part of her group. He didn’t want her flirting with the cowboys who would come in with the rodeo.
And considering what had just happened a few seconds ago, that meant it was exactly what he needed to help her learn to do.
As long as he focused on protecting her, as long as he focused on the right angle, the weirdness between them would evaporate. It had to. It was an aberration, something he would have liked to blame on alcohol. But he couldn’t, since all he’d had was a Coke.
He could blame it on the full moon or on the way she had grabbed his chin. All things that had passed and would pass.
And since they were going to be working on the rodeo together, he really needed to get a grip.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He eased his foot slowly off the brake, and the truck started rolling forward.
“But chastely.”
“I will give you certain tools. What you do with them is up to you. And does not need to be shared. And none of this should be shared with Connor or Eli.”
Ultimately, he had Kate’s best interest at heart, he really did. But since he wasn’t related to her, he was being slightly more realistic than they would be. They would probably lock her in her room and not care about the fact that she was twenty-three.
“Okay. It will be our secret.”
He turned his truck onto the little road that led to her cabin. And he tried not to dwell on the way the word secret sounded on her lips. Illicit and a little bit naughty. Nothing he and Kate talked about should sound naughty or illicit.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
He breathed a prayer of thanks when he rolled up to Kate’s house. He needed to get home and get his head on straight. Tonight felt like some kind of weird detour out of his normal life. Suddenly, he’d become aware of some different things about Kate. Some things that he would rather have never been aware of.
And with that had come a thick, heavy tension that just wouldn’t clear up.
A new day would fix that. The sun rising over the mountains, bathing everything in golden light, chasing away the shadows that rested on Kate’s face now. The shadows that accentuated her high cheekbones and the fullness of her lips. The darkness that blanketed the whole situation and made it seem fuzzy. Made her seem not quite like Kate. Made him feel not quite like a man who had known her since she was a whiny two-year-old.
He put the truck in Park but left the engine running. “Good night, Kate,” he said, opting to use the name she preferred. All things considered, it seemed safer.
“Do you want to come in?”
His pulse sped up. “Why would I want to do that?”
“For some tea? For a flirting lesson?”
“Let’s hold off on that,” he said, his throat constricting. Right now he needed to get away from her.
“Okay. Thank you for coming tonight.” She took a deep breath. “And thank you for punching Chad in the face. He’s a doofus.”
Jack laughed. And for a moment things felt as though they might be back to normal. The kind of normal they had before the past year or two, when everything he’d said and done had been wrong in Kate’s eyes. “He really is. I hate that guy.”
“I guarantee that he now hates you,” Kate said, opening the passenger-side door and sliding out of the truck. “See you later?”
“You know you will. Probably a whole lot sooner then you’d like.”
She didn’t say anything to that. She simply smiled and slammed the door. He watched her walk all the way into the house. Because he had to make sure she was safe, after all. Not for any other reason.
Once she was inside, he put the truck in Reverse and backed out of the driveway. The air quality in the vehicle had changed since Kate had left. He could breathe easier.
He wasn’t going to overthink it. It would be a nonissue by tomorrow.
The sun would rise, he would be able to put Kate back in the proper place in his mind, and life would go on as it always had.
* * *
PERFECT. JUST PERFECT. Now that she’d made the critical mistake of admitting it to herself, it was as if a veil had been torn from her eyes and she could no longer feign ignorance of any kind. She was attracted to Jack.
Heart-pounding, bone-tingling, heavy-breathing, thinking-about-him-in-the-shower kind of attraction. How she’d spent so long pretending it was anything else was a mystery.
Self-preservation. That was clearly the answer. That and deep denial that ran all the way to her bones. Because nothing was ever going to happen with Jack. Never, ever, ever.
On a personal level, she liked Jack okay except when he was being a pain in the ass. Which was always. So often she liked him only minimally.
Apparently, though, liking him or not had nothing to do with sex feelings.
She let out a heavy sigh and dropped her bag on the floor. She had sex feelings for Jack. And it was undeniable. When she imagined getting in Chad’s truck and doing all that dirty stuff to him, it made her feel vaguely unsettled and more than a little disgusted.
She allowed herself, just for a moment, to imagine she was back in the truck with Jack, the light low, his blue eyes fixed on her. And she imagined him putting his hand on her cheek. His fingers would be rough, calloused from all the hard work that he did. No matter how much Jack tried to pretend he didn’t take things seriously, she knew it wasn’t the truth. He was a hard worker, and everything he had was a result of that hard work.
She was sure his touch, his skin, would reflect that. Then she imagined him leaning in, those eyes that were usually all filled with mischief turning serious as his focus narrowed onto her face.
And then she imagined him whispering all those filthy things to her. Except he didn’t say the words quite the way Chad had. Not in her fantasy. Of course, what he did say was all very vague and murky because Kate wasn’t exactly up on dirty talk.
But she knew Jack would be way smoother than Chad. His voice would go all deep, the way that it did when he talked about something serious, which was so rare it was like finding gold. And it would get a little bit rough, the way it did when he called her Katie.
When she thought of touching Jack, of taking her clothes off for Jack, she didn’t feel disgusted. She felt shaky and afraid, and given that this was only a fantasy, she could only imagine how terrified she would be if she found herself in this moment in reality. But she didn’t want to run away. She wanted to lean in.
Shit, shit, shit. Undeniable sex feelings.
She turned to her couch, bracing her knees against the arm and falling forward over the side. Then she buried her face in one of the throw pillows and let out a long, drawn-out moan. What the hell was she supposed to do with this? Attraction to Jack, of all people.
It was the worst thing ever.
In his eyes she was nothing more than a kid. A kid he had to protect from herself. As though her flirting was tantamount to running with scissors. And he was going to teach her how to do it right. Just more reinforcement of the fact that he did not see her as an adult woman. And even if he did, there was no point in going there. He was the baddest bet around and everyone knew it.
He was an unapologetic manwhore who did whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted and never, ever made a commitment.