Wild Ride Cowboy

Olivia looked surprised. “Me?”

“Yes. All three of us.”

“I can’t,” Clara said, feeling like a jerk. Because she actually could. And she maybe even should. “I mean, Alex is at the ranch. He has been all day. And I need to see what he’s thinking about doing. But once I get settled... Once everything is a little bit more settled I think maybe I can go out sometime.”

Sabrina turned her focus to Olivia, slightly less hopeful-looking now, but clearly still eager.

“I’m closing tonight,” Olivia said. “It will be really late by the time I get out of here. So I shouldn’t.”

Grassroots Winery was nestled in the trees, between the communities of Copper Ridge and Gold Valley, where Olivia lived.

“I understand,” Sabrina said, sounding slightly deflated.

“Well, Bennett dropped me off this morning and he’s getting me tonight too. I don’t want to put him out,” Olivia added.

Bennett was Olivia’s boyfriend. Clara had only seen them together a few times but she couldn’t really see them as a couple. He seemed protective of her, caring even, but in a lot of ways, more like a brother. A strange observation for someone with as little experience as Clara had, but she figured if even she got a strange vibe, something had to be off.

“Sorry,” Clara said, truly meaning it.

Sabrina lifted a shoulder. “That’s okay. Some other time.”

When the shift ended and Clara got in her car to leave, she was still thinking about Sabrina. About the offer of friendship that Clara hadn’t taken. But it felt too hard right now. Like it would intrude too much on the little bubble she’d created for herself.

Grief, she realized, was such an isolating thing.

It was just that Clara had been relishing the isolation. Accepting the social parts in small doses. In the interactions with Asher that she chose, with the job she had taken at Grassroots. The little chats that she had with Sabrina while she was working.

She wasn’t craving mass amounts of human interaction. And the potential problem with that was on the other side, she wouldn’t have a lot of connections when she was ready for them again. She wondered how long it would take her to get to that place.

Clara sighed and successfully spaced out most of the half hour drive along the tree-lined highway back to the ranch. Alex’s truck was in the driveway, and the sight of it made Clara’s heart slam against her chest. He really was here. And she really was going to have to deal with him.

She put her car in Park and killed the engine, getting out and shutting the door with gusto, hoping her completely unsubtle arrival would draw him out of hiding.

But when she saw Alex striding across the property, the very idea that he might have been hiding seemed ludicrous.

He walked out of the barn, his white hat tipped low over his face, his torso bare. He was wearing work gloves and low-slung jeans, a pair of cowboy boots. Positively nothing else.

She couldn’t look away. She was utterly transfixed.

His chest was deep and broad, well-defined with hair slightly darker than what was on his head sprinkled across it, thinning out and tapering down to a line that disappeared between the waistband of those very, very low pants. Very low.

He lifted his hand and pulled one of the work gloves off, the muscles on his torso and forearms shifting with the movement. Then he tugged off the other glove, and she could only watch the sure, strong movements of his fingers, the way his biceps jumped as he lifted his arm, then lowered it.

His ab muscles moved with each step he took, but as incredible as they were, she found herself completely taken in by another set of muscles. A line that cut in hard at his hip bone. She had never been big on science, but she had a feeling that even if she had paid attention in anatomy class she wouldn’t have known the name of that muscle, because every single one of her brain cells had been wiped out by the sight of it.

Alex was...well, she had always known that Alex was good-looking, but it had been kind of abstract in her mind. Because while she had always known he was handsome, he was also very much not the kind of man she was drawn to.

He was too hard. Too masculine. And she would have said she was definitely not the kind of woman who was into overly muscled physiques and body hair.

Apparently, part of her appreciated those things. At least, as an objective observer and admirer of...beautiful things. Though, thinking of him as beautiful in any context just seemed wrong.

Alex wasn’t beautiful. He was too hard to be beautiful.

“You’re back,” he said.

His voice sounded so casual and normal, and she realized it was because he hadn’t just experienced an entire internal episode that had caused him to question fundamental things about himself.

“Yeah. I had an earlier shift today. Are you...are you working a bachelorette party, or...”

“It’s hot,” he said, looking down at his own bare chest, which prompted her to follow his line of sight.

Good God.

There was sweat rolling down between his pectoral muscles—see, that she remembered—and it should have looked gross or unclean in some way, and instead she found it fascinating. Vital. Alive.

That made her shiver.

She wrenched her gaze away from his body, and forced herself to look at his green eyes. She found that didn’t help at all. Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton. Her head did too, actually.

“I can honestly say I’ve never decided to work shirtless just because it was hot,” she said, immediately regretting the words, because there really was no point in continuing to talk about his state of undress. Talking about it only drew attention to the fact that she was aware of it.

She did not want to be aware of it.

She took a step back.

He lifted a shoulder and she forced herself to keep her eyes locked with his. To not look down and see exactly what that motion had caused the musculature on his chest and stomach to do in response.

Her fingertips tingled and she wiggled them.

He didn’t say anything, he was just looking at her. She wasn’t sure what he wanted her to do. What he wanted her to say. She supposed it didn’t matter either way. Because since when had she cared about his expectations or whether or not she met them? She didn’t.

“What exactly did you do today?”

His lips tipped upward into a lopsided smile. “Is that the game? Are we pretending that you’re the ranch owner and I’m the lowly ranch hand?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and yet again, it was a study in self-control to keep her eyes on his face. “Because I do like to play games sometimes, honey. As long as you understand who’s really in charge here.”

She forgot about his bare chest. “You’re an ass.”

“Maybe, but I’m a hard-working one. One who’s going to help fix your situation here. Come with me.” And just like that, she found herself trailing behind him, any illusion of home-court advantage lost as she stared at the broad expanse of his back while they walked to the barn.

His back was nearly as problematic as his chest. It filled her vision, and she found herself pondering the exact nature of what a nice-looking back was. She had never really considered it before.

She didn’t allow herself to look below his belt line. Because she was a lady. A lady who had looked at Asher’s butt this morning. It was her preferred butt. Alex’s was not. And she wasn’t going to test the theory by looking. She didn’t need to.

Not that casual perusal of the male form equated to feelings.

It was just that she wasn’t the kind of person who engaged in that kind of casual perusal. She liked Asher. Had actual, deep feelings for him, harbored hopes about a future. It didn’t matter how good-looking another guy was.

Asher, seeing him every morning, getting her daily coffee—which she summarily dumped out—from him had provided a kind of light in a long dark tunnel.

Alex’s bare chest could not compete with that.

Alex paused at the barn door. “After you.”

“Now you’re being chivalrous?”

He shrugged again, then went ahead and walked into the barn in front of her. She scowled, but followed after him.

And then she stopped dead. There were coils of fence rolled up and stacked six deep against the back wall. A pile of lumber lay on its side on the ground, fenceposts, she assumed.

And there was a tractor sitting in the middle of the barn that had been pulled apart.

“What exactly are you doing with the tractor?” she asked.

“Making sure it’s fixed.”

“You’re going to fix it? Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Kind of. I have a little bit of experience doing emergency fixes on heavy equipment. Plus I called Anna McCormack for a consult. She said she could order a couple of parts for us at a lower rate, and gave me some instructions over the phone.”

“Doesn’t she want to do it so she can get paid?”

“She was happy enough to help me out. I explained the situation to her.”

Right. So Clara was on the receiving end of pity tractor help. Well, wasn’t that what all of this was? Pity help?

“Great,” she said, knowing she didn’t actually sound like she thought it was great.

“And the fencing is for the bison.”

“Right. I forgot you were actually doing that. Bison.”

“Unless you’re planning on running this place the way your father did, then I think you’re right and beef is completely pointless. But if you want to go the direction of that more organic, specialized stuff...”

“Right. I get it.”

“You only have to put up with me for a limited time, Clara, and the sooner we get things sorted out, the sooner I can get out of your hair. I’ve actually done research on this,” he said, the expression on his face sincere and not at all pitying. She wasn’t sure what to do with that. “And I mean, I went over a lot of options. Sheep. Llamas.”

“Llamas?”

“I discounted that pretty quick. They’re mean as far as I can tell.”

“Don’t they spit?”

“That is what I hear,” he said.

“I could do without spitting livestock, to be honest. Apart from everything else, I don’t need an animal hocking a loogie on me while I’m trying to take care of it.”

“Fortunately for you, bison don’t spit. I think they’re the best option for this area, and for your property in particular. But they need damn sturdy fences.”

“Apparently,” she said, surveying the equipment.

“I saw your beehives, or whatever those are. I didn’t want to get close, you know, in case I became a target.”

“I have a suit,” she said. “A bee suit.”

He arched a brow. “Like a bee costume?”

“No,” she responded primly. “The kind you put on that keeps them from stinging you.”

“Less interesting than what I was imagining.” His smile was wicked, and she wondered exactly what he had been imagining. Probably nothing. Probably he was messing with her. Or maybe it was still just the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“Less interesting, maybe,” she said, still not quite sure what he meant by that, “but effective.”

“Well, sometime you’ll have to show me. The bee suit. And the bees.”

“Sure,” she responded.

He reached over toward a peg on the wall and took his T-shirt off it. It was gray and faded, and when he pulled it over his head, she was powerless against the urge to watch the way the motion affected his muscles. The way they shifted. The way they bunched. Rippled.

The material of the T-shirt was thin, and it clung to his body, and for some reason, it didn’t seem any less obscene than his near nudity had. She swallowed, and it was hot and prickly.

“Dinner should be ready,” he said.

She blinked. “Dinner?”

“Yeah, I put something in the Crock-Pot.”

“I have a Crock-Pot?” She wrinkled her nose.

“Actually, I don’t know if you have a Crock-Pot. My future sister-in-law sent one. To be clear, I didn’t cook, I just followed her instructions.” He smiled, sure and easy. She didn’t feel sure or easy. She felt clumsy, awkward. She couldn’t figure out why.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, following him out of the barn and back up the well-worn footpath that led to the house.

She didn’t really know what to expect when they got to the front porch. If he would stop at the door or assume he was joining her for dinner.

When he opened the door and held it for her, she assumed he would be taking his leave. But then he came inside behind her, his heavy footsteps making that first floorboard squeak. It made her feel conscious of how long it had been since she’d spent any meaningful time in the house with someone else. That second squeak upon entry.

It made her feel unaccountably lonely. Sad.

She didn’t know why a squeaky floorboard had the power to do that.

Alex walked across the kitchen and opened a few cabinets, his movements confident even though he clearly didn’t know where anything was. His gestures were broad, firm. When he took the bowls out of the cabinet and set them down on the counter, he didn’t do it tentatively.

It was funny because she had watched Asher make her drink this morning and yet again she had thought of his movements as elegant. There was nothing elegant about Alex’s movements. They were like the rest of him. Rough, masculine. Somehow lethal-looking.

She had imagined that when Asher put his hands on her skin, if he ever touched her hand, he would apply that same fine elegance to his actions. If Alex ever touched her, with all that hard-packed muscle, and those work-roughened hands, he might break her.

Why are you comparing them?

A good question. Probably because she had such limited interaction with men. And these particular two men were as opposite as they came.

Anyway, Alex didn’t fare well in the comparison. And she ignored the strange tightness in her lungs that accompanied that thought.

She didn’t want to be broken. She was broken enough.

He opened the Crock-Pot, and ladled a couple big scoops of stew into one of the bowls. “Come get it,” he said, pushing the bowl away from him slightly, before picking up the second one to serve himself.

Her throat tightened. Almost closed completely. She opened the silverware drawer and took out a spoon, then retrieved the bowl. “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

He got his own spoon, then took two cans of Coke out of the fridge, sliding one over to her before he popped the top on his own and took a seat.

That was two times he had served her first. It shouldn’t matter.

But she noticed.

She pressed her spoon down into the thick stew and tilted it sideways, grimacing when she unveiled an onion. She carefully shunted it off to the side and scooped a chunk of meat onto her spoon.

“I’m thinking it’ll probably take about two weeks to get the facility prepared to bring in animals,” Alex said, taking what appeared to be a very reckless bite of stew as far as she was concerned.

“Two weeks? That’s it?”

“Should be about that long.”

“That’s not much time for me to prepare for big stinky animals to be on my property,” she said, flicking another onion off to the side before she took another bite.

“Well, there are already stinging animals on your property, so why not?”

She shrugged, then took another bite of stew, grimacing when she bit into a carrot that clearly had a hidden onion welded to the back of it. She looked around and cursed the lack of napkin.

She decided she wasn’t going to try to muscle past it out of politeness. It wasn’t like Alex himself made the stew.

Clara stood and took two quick strides to the sink, leaning in deep before she spit the carrot and onion down the drain. She turned the sink on, then the disposal and tried to ignore the fact that she knew Alex was watching her.

She straightened, brushing her hair out of her face. “I don’t like onions.”

She walked stiffly back to her seat and sat down, making a point to be a little more careful with the dissection of the stew from that point on.

“And you don’t like coffee,” he noted.

She furrowed her brow. “I like coffee.”

“You don’t.”

Clara narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know my life.”

“You don’t like coffee, you don’t like onions. You do like SpaghettiOs and apparently prefer Coke to beer.”

“Beer is gross,” she countered.

“Right, but SpaghettiOs are fine dining.” He shook his head. “Okay. You don’t like beer. What else don’t you like?”

“The list of what I like is shorter and takes less time,” she said.

“Okay. What do you like? Because if I’m going to bring you food sometimes, it would be nice if you didn’t have to tiptoe through your dinner like it was full of land mines.”

She sniffed. “Nobody said you had to bring me food. But if you must know, I like pasta as long as there are no onions. Or excess greens.”

“Hamburgers?”

She nodded. “Without lettuce.”

“What are your thoughts on kale?”

She frowned. “What are your thoughts on evil?”

“Chard?”

“Satan’s preferred salad fixing.”

“Do you like any kind of lettuce?”

She scowled. Then she realized that she was doing a very good impression of a cranky child. But, oh well, she didn’t like feeling she had to give an account of the things she enjoyed eating. No one had cared if she ate her vegetables for a long damn time.

“A salad with iceberg lettuce is fine,” she explained. “As long as it has cheese. And a lot of dressing. Good dressing, though. And not blue cheese.”

“I think I’m getting the picture. Pretty sure I can work with these instructions.”

“Pizza is good,” she said.

“Obviously. But pizza without beer?” She stared back at him blankly and he sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to stock my own, aren’t I?”

“Alternately, you could let me handle feeding myself, which I have done pretty successfully for the past ten years.”

“I think you and I might have different definitions of the word successful.”

She rolled her eyes and took an ostentatious sip of her Coke. “I didn’t ask for your definition of anything.”

“I’m going to get you eating less canned pasta.”

She squinted at him. “You’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.”

A smile shifted his handsome features, the expression as affecting as it was infuriating. “Lasagna?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Acceptable.”

“As long as there are no onions.”

“Obviously.”

“Save your canned food for an emergency. I’ll bring dinner tomorrow too.”

She rolled her eyes but continued eating in silence, putting her focus on making sure she didn’t get an undesirable bite again.

“What time do you get off tomorrow?” he asked.

The question jarred her focus away from her stew. “I’m off tomorrow. I’ll be here all day.”

“Okay. Then I’ll come in the morning, and maybe you can show me around the ranch. Show me the bee suit.”

She sighed grumpily. “I have a feeling the bee suit is only going to underwhelm you at this point.”

He lifted a shoulder, pushing himself into a standing position and bringing his Coke can to his lips. He knocked it back, finishing off the drink. “I think I can deal with it. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Okay. Tomorrow.”

She stayed sitting at the table while Alex walked out the door. And she tried to ignore the inexplicable feeling of pressure in her chest.

It was nice to have somebody take care of her like this. But it wasn’t something she intended to get used to.

If there was one thing that life had taught her at this point, it was that people didn’t stay forever. And the increased attention you got after you lost someone didn’t last.

Heck, there was a stipulation in the will that made it clear it wouldn’t last.

She swallowed around the prickly feeling in her throat, then picked up her bowl of stew. She wrinkled her nose and dumped the remaining contents back into the Crock-Pot. Then she took a can of SpaghettiOs out of one of the cabinets and set about fixing herself some dinner.

CHAPTER FOUR

WHEN ALEX PULLED UP to Clara’s farmhouse—his farmhouse, technically—the next morning, he did not expect to see Clara standing on the front porch.

But there she was, blond hair fashioned into a long braid that was slung over her shoulder, a blue speckled mug in her hand. She was wearing a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans that he thought might be too tight for doing effective outdoor work in. But they did a damn fine job of showing off her long, shapely legs.

Who knew that Clara Campbell had the kind of thighs a man wanted to lick? Get his face between. Get his body between.

You can stop that right now. She’s Jason’s sister, not some woman you want to pick up at a bar.

That thought shamed him, because the real issue was he was too used to thinking of women as a collection of beautiful body parts he might want to touch. Not that he didn’t care about the woman herself, he did. It was just that he didn’t have relationships.

Which meant that the shape of a woman’s thighs and the size of her breasts became essentially the sum total of his requirements. It made it too easy to look at a body first, and think about who she was second.

Which was why he had thought of Clara’s thighs that way. Not because he was attracted to her specifically. Because he was attracted to women.

He had seen Clara a handful of times when she’d been a kid, but not much since. And that meant it was difficult to reconcile the woman he was dealing with in the present with the child he remembered from the past.

The woman she was now...

He found her way too attractive, and that was just wrong.

He gritted his teeth and put the truck in Park, killing the engine and getting out. He might have slammed the door shut with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. It rattled the whole truck, and he hoped it would rattle some damn sense into his brain.

“Good morning,” he said, finding that smile of his easily.

Never let them see you sweat. Not when they were pointing a gun at your face. Not when they were saying you should’ve never been born. Never.

It was something Liam had always told him. In fact, it was the last thing his older brother had told him before he’d left home at eighteen.

Keep your smile, Alex. Even if it’s just to say screw ’em. Keep your smile.

She made a huffing sound. “Is it?”

He looked around, looked up at the unseasonably clear sky, the brilliant green of the pine trees that closed in around them, then he took a deep breath. “The sun is shining and we’re still standing. Constitutes a good morning as far as I’m concerned.”

“Well, seeing as it’s my day off, my requirements for a good morning centered around a cozy blanket and a soft mattress.”

He was suddenly overtaken by the strangest, strongest desire. To see her sleep. Her face neutral, peaceful even. That pale blond hair spread over her face, her dark lashes fanned out over her cheeks.

He strode toward her, reached out and took the travel mug out of her hand. “For me?”

Before she could answer, he took a long sip of the hot beverage. Then he grimaced. “What the hell is that?” he asked as the sickly sweet, borderline syrupy concoction slid down his throat.

It was her turn to grin. “Hot chocolate.”

“That’s not hot chocolate. That’s a cup of hot sugar.”

“It’s four packets and a handful of marshmallows.”

He handed the mug back to her. “That’s disgusting, Clara.”

She sniffed and treated him to a very haughty look. “I assume you were hoping for coffee? Because I think that’s disgusting.”

He snapped his fingers. “I knew it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“You like hipster boy. You don’t like coffee.”

Without deigning to answer, she stomped down the steps, heading toward the path to the barn. “Are we going to stand around talking about boys or are we going to go work? I’ve already braided my hair, Alex, so I don’t need your help there.”