Toughest Cowboy in Texas Read online

  “Soon as we get the toothpaste.” Rustin tossed two boxes into the cart. “That’s it, Mama, and now can we go for ice cream? At McDonald’s so we can play?”

  “Lila is going with us,” Emma said. “And I don’t want McDonald’s. I want the ice cream store and then we can go to the park.”

  “I should probably be getting home,” Lila said. “Storm is brewing and dust is already flying out there.”

  “Nonsense,” Kasey said. “Get the rest of your stuff gathered up and we’ll wait until you get to the store before we order and then we’ll go to the park for half an hour.”

  “The park sounds like so much fun. Can I push you on the swings, Emma?” Lila asked.

  “Yes,” Emma said with a tilt of her chin. “And then I’ll push you.”

  “It’s a deal.” Lila smiled. “I’ll get on with the rest of my shopping and meet y’all at—it is the ice cream place right beside the park, right?”

  “That’s the one,” Brody said. “They make a mean banana split.”

  Lila remembered laundry soap and hairspray but forgot at least five items on her list, which meant she’d be making a trip to Tulia to one of the dollar stores later in the week.

  Her brain ran in circles all the way to the small ice cream place. It was not a date. It was only ice cream with a family. If it was a real date, Valerie would have Brody committed and Hope would take the ranch away from him. She parked her truck and sat there for several minutes.

  Through the window, she could see Kasey and the older two kids on one side of the booth. Silas was in a high chair at the end, leaving Brody alone across from his sister. That meant she’d be sitting with him but it was still not a date. Grown-ups sat beside each other at all kinds of events without it being anything that folks would gossip about.

  Decision made, she hopped out of the truck, grabbed her purse, and slammed the door. The wind was blowing even more now, sending all kinds of dirt swirling through the air. She hurried into the store and was halfway to the booth when Brody stood up. His eyes lit up like they used to when she walked into Henry’s old hay barn. He met her in the middle of the store and draped an arm around her shoulders. She wasn’t a bit amazed when hot little shivers danced down her spine.

  “Thank you for coming. The kids are being little devils today and Emma would have thrown another fit if you hadn’t come, plus I wanted you here with me,” he said.

  “Then I’ll do double duty?” She grinned.

  “Triple. I’ve volunteered you to help carry the ice cream back to the booth as the lady gets it ready,” he said as they walked past the booth. “I’ve got the list right here.” He showed her a napkin with writing on it. “Kasey says if we’ll order and then bring it to the booth, she’ll corral the three monkeys.”

  “We ain’t monkeys. We’re childrens,” Rustin declared loudly.

  “I’ll be a monkey if they eat ice cream,” Emma said.

  “They eat bananas, not ice cream, so you can’t be a monkey,” Rustin argued.

  “Girl monkeys eat ice cream. Boys don’t,” Emma argued.

  “Enough!” Kasey said in a tired mother’s voice.

  “Brody, this might not be such a good idea,” Lila said on the way to the counter.

  He laid a hand on the small of her back and escorted her across the floor. “What? Me ordering and you totin’? I trust you not to stumble over your feet and waste good ice cream.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said, enjoying every delicious little shiver that his hand created.

  He gave the girl behind the counter the order and then drew Lila even closer. “The end—except for your banana split, unless you want to share with me.”

  “Sharing is fine.” She nodded.

  Oh, Lord! What had she just agreed to? If anyone saw them eating from the same bowl…She took a deep breath and reminded herself that she was thirty years old and so was Brody.

  “You tell her what toppings we want, then.” His hand slipped around to rest on her waist.

  She was amazed that she could utter a word with all the heat his hand created but she managed to rattle off strawberry, caramel, and chocolate.

  When everyone had their order, Kasey put a bib on Silas and Lila slid into the booth with Brody right after her. Then Kasey sat beside him so that she could help all three kids: Silas at the end in a high chair and the other two across the table from them.

  Brody was a big man and the booth wasn’t one of those huge ones, so their sides were plastered tight together. It was a miracle that the heat between them didn’t melt every bit of ice cream in the whole place.

  Brody filled a spoon with ice cream and moved it toward Lila’s mouth. She had no choice but to open wide. She’d barely gotten her mouth shut when Gracie and Paul McKay entered the store and headed straight toward them.

  “Nana!” Emma squealed.

  “Hey, kids.” Gracie smiled. “Imagine finding all y’all at an ice cream store. I saw your van outside, Kasey. Can we steal the kids for a couple of hours? We’ll have them home by bedtime. We’d take them to the park but the dust storm out there now is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a big one going to hit in about an hour. What we’re seeing in the sky isn’t clouds at all but dirt.”

  “That would be great. I can get some computer work done this evening without having to stop every five minutes.” Kasey nodded. “Drag over a couple of chairs and join us.”

  Paul was already busy getting two from a nearby table and placing them on either side of Silas’s high chair. “We had to run in to get prescriptions at the drugstore. I guess y’all heard about the new church pianist coming in. I’m glad to hear that we’ll have another person who can play. That way if Gert needs to be gone, it won’t be such a big deal.”

  “Just don’t try to fix her up with me. I’m not interested.” Brody grinned.

  “She is not my friend,” Emma said bluntly.

  Rustin pushed her arm. “She can be my friend.”

  “Mama, he hit me,” Emma tattled.

  “Did not!”

  “Did too.”

  “Whoa!” Brody said. “Let’s eat our ice cream without fighting.”

  “Emma! You haven’t even met her,” Kasey scolded.

  “She can’t be my friend because Lila is.” Emma glared at Rustin.

  Paul chuckled. “So how’d you get tangled up with this bunch of renegades, Lila?”

  “Met ’em in Walmart,” she answered.

  “Lila is my friend,” Emma said seriously.

  “And a mighty good one,” Gracie told her. “How’s your mama? Any way we could talk her into coming back to Happy and running the café rather than selling it?”

  “She’s been thinkin’ about that.” Lila wondered how quick it would be all over Happy that she was out with Brody. Maybe she’d better hightail it to Australia with him. Valerie Dawson was a pretty good shot with a rifle, the last she heard.

  “Well, tell her to think real hard,” Paul said.

  Lila smiled and nodded. Daisy had grown pretty fond of the whole family out there, so it wouldn’t be easy for her to move back to Texas.

  After they’d eaten their ice cream, everyone drove away from the parking lot. Paul and Gracie had shifted Silas’s car seat and Emma’s and Rustin’s boosters to the backseat of Gracie’s van and waved as they headed out toward the park. Kasey had driven off in the van on her way back to the ranch. That left Lila and Brody standing beside her truck.

  “I thought you drove the van for Kasey,” she said.

  “No, I like to bring my own vehicle in case I want to go home before they do.”

  “Thanks for invitin’ me. I love bein’ around the kids.” The wind swept her hair across her face and blew dust into her eyes. “I’d forgotten about sandstorms in this part of the world. We’d better get on out of here before it gets really bad. Thanks again.”

  “Anytime.” He pulled his hat down tighter, opened the door, and took a step closer, shielding her from the wi
nd. “One more thing. Will you be my date for the Hope Springs Fourth of July ranch party?”

  “I know I keep saying this but…”

  He ran a finger down her cheek. “Yes, it’s a good idea. We’ve got to get over this thing between us or embrace it and we can’t do either by running from it. Can’t rewrite history or do a thing about it. But it doesn’t have to ruin the future.”

  She laid a palm on his cheek. “It’s tough playing second fiddle to a woman who is going to play the church piano. Besides, what is your mama going to say about that?”

  He grabbed her hand and kissed the palm. “Darlin’, you will never be second fiddle to anyone and Jace can have Tara if he wants her. And I don’t really care what Mama or Granny has to say. Just tell me that you’ll go with me.”

  “Pretty good pickup line there and the kiss on the palm is a nice move. Yes, I will go with you and thank you for asking me. I’ll wear my runnin’ shoes so when your mama brings out her rifle, I’ll at least have a fightin’ chance,” she laughed.

  “I’ll lock Mama’s firearms in a safe place and pick you up at nine that morning. But we’ll see each other before then.” He brushed a soft kiss across her lips and disappeared around the back of her truck into a fog of sand blowing half of New Mexico into the Texas Panhandle. She started the truck and licked her lips. They tasted like a mixture of chocolate and sand. Not a bad combination; not bad at all.

  The passenger door opened and Brody’s big frame filled that side of the truck. Without a single word, he leaned over the console and wrapped his arms around her. Their lips met in a scorching hot kiss that made her knees weak. It was a good thing she was sitting and that her truck was not a stick shift because she couldn’t have walked and she sure could not have held down the clutch. The weatherman on the radio said something about a fierce sandstorm and then Jennifer Nettles started singing “Unlove You.”

  He looked deeply into her eyes when the words said that it wouldn’t work and would be nothing but hurt but that she couldn’t unlove him.

  “I can’t unlove you either.”

  “Like it says, we have other lives,” she whispered.

  “We can change that,” he said.

  “What are we talking about here?” Lila asked.

  Brody kissed her again. “One of those alternate endings to an old story.” He got out of the truck and walked away, his head bent against the blowing dust.

  Chapter Twelve

  Before she pulled out of the parking lot, she found her Jennifer Nettles CD in the console and slipped it into the stereo and listened to that same song over and over all the way home. Lila could have written that song when she was sixteen, but that night every word became a part of her soul as she drove home with dirt swirling around her. She’d parked in the garage and hit the remote to close the door when she noticed a shadow in her side window.

  Her door opened suddenly and with a flick of the wrist, Brody unfastened her seat belt. Then he scooped her into his arms like a bride and carried her toward the door into the apartment.

  “You sure you want to carry me over the threshold, cowboy?” she whispered.

  “Right now I’m not sure of anything except that I want to hold you in my arms and I want more than one kiss,” he said.

  She reached down and opened the door and his lips closed on hers.

  “The same room as when we…,” he whispered.

  “Yes, the same,” she said.

  He carried her to the bedroom, shut the door with the heel of his boot, and sat down in an old rocking chair with her in his lap. Light from an almost full moon flowed through the window that he’d crawled in and out of dozens of times all those years ago.

  “God, I missed you so much, I thought I’d die some nights.” His voice was deeper than usual.

  “But was it just rebellion because we weren’t supposed to be together?” she asked softly.

  Half of his face was in shadows, the other half lit by moonlight coming through the window. The story of their lives right there. One side lived in secret, the other in the light of day. One wild side, one responsible. Tonight she had a passionate desire to feed the hungry wild child.

  She slowly ran her hands under his T-shirt. “How are you not married?”

  He tugged her shirt out of her jeans and his calloused hands felt like fire on her skin. In a split second her bra was undone and he had free rein of her whole back. “How are you not married?”

  “I almost was…once. You?”

  “Never, not even almost.” He nibbled on her earlobe. “But I want to hear about your near misses.”

  “Not now,” she panted.

  Effortlessly, he stood up with her in his arms and moved to the bed. “Is this the same…”

  “Oh, yes, the same one where we both lost our virginity.” She smiled.

  He removed her shoes and socks, kissed her toes, one at a time. “I remember that night very well. You didn’t cry.”

  “Why would I? It was wonderful.”

  Her jeans went next and then her shirt and underwear, all tossed on the floor. Her breath came in short spurts but she wanted him as naked as she was, so she pushed him backward on the bed.

  “My turn.” She sat on his knees with her back to him and removed one of his boots, tossed it across the room, and then tugged off his sock. He massaged her back the whole time.

  Lord have mercy! He had learned some impressive moves since the last time they were together. She flipped around to undo his zipper and turned loose an erection that took her breath. Tugging his pants down to his ankles and then shoving them off the bed, she decided that a long, slow bout of foreplay was not going to happen. She crawled back up his long frame and held out her hands. He put his in them and she pulled him forward. Effortlessly, he went from lying down to sitting and removed his shirt. It was nothing but a blur as it joined the other clothing thrown haphazardly around the room.

  “Dammit!” he swore under his breath.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I don’t have a condom.”

  “No problem. I’m on the pill.” She covered his mouth in a long, hard kiss that left her aching, just like words to the song in her head said. “I want you, Brody,” she whispered.

  He flipped her over on her back and her long legs wrapped around his waist as he slipped inside her and they began to rock together. His mouth found hers and the last thing that crossed her mind was that she loved, loved tall men and then there was nothing but a scorching desire to put out the flames in her body…and only Brody Dawson had ever had the power to do that.

  He took her right to the edge of release, then slowed down. She tightened her legs and he groaned. “Lila, I can’t…,” he said hoarsely.

  “I know, me neither. One, two…”

  “Three!” He managed a smile as they both hit the heights together. When he could breathe again, he rolled to one side, taking her with him and holding her tightly against his side.

  “You remembered,” she panted.

  “So did you.” He snuggled his face down into her hair. “One. Two. Three. We go together.”

  “Yes,” she mumbled, and shut her eyes. She was back in Brody’s arms, where she belonged. Past and future didn’t matter—only the present.

  Brody awoke to the sound of someone tiptoeing down the hallway. His first thought was that Jace had come in late, but then he realized that Lila’s long leg was thrown over his. The footsteps stopped at her door and a female voice whispered softly, “Lila, darlin’, are you awake?”

  Every hair on his neck stood straight up. Even after more than a decade, he would recognize Daisy’s voice. In a few seconds, she chuckled softly and then he heard the wheels of a suitcase cross the hall. The hinges on that door didn’t squeak like Lila’s did but there was no mistaking the latch when she closed it.

  He rolled out of bed, landed on his hands and knees, and quickly found his clothing, jerking each item on when he located it. The door across the hall opened again and Dai
sy cussed when she stumbled over a kitten; then her tone changed and he could hear her high-pitched apology to the cat.

  He unlocked the window and, holding his breath, slid it open enough to crawl out. God, he felt eighteen years old all over again.

  The clock on the dash of his truck said it was five a.m. and the sun was barely peeking over the horizon. He broke every speeding record he’d ever set on the way to Hope Springs and had just sat down on the porch when Jace came out of the house.

  “You’re awake awfully early. Did you put a pot of coffee on?” Jace asked.

  “Not yet. Had the dust storm stopped when you got home?” Brody answered.

  “Only lasted about an hour, but that was enough. Kasey got home and then Paul and Gracie came in about ten minutes after her with the kids. They were going to keep them longer but Emma’s bandage fell off and she wanted her mama. I got involved in a television movie and didn’t go to bed until midnight,” Jace answered.

  “Reckon we ought to get back inside and get a pot of coffee going. Kasey is an old bear if it’s not ready first thing when she gets to the kitchen.” Brody stood up, stretched, and rolled his neck to get the kinks out.

  Jace frowned. “You were wearing that shirt when you left last evening. Where did you spend the night?”

  “A cowboy does not kiss and tell.”

  “You better not let Mama— Speak of the devil.” Jace pointed to the truck coming down the lane.

  “Let Mama what?” Brody groaned when he saw Valerie’s bright red truck coming toward the house.

  “Hey, I’m just sayin’ and I don’t have to spell it out for you. I can see the way you look at Lila but remember, she leaves at the end of summer. We ain’t kids anymore and Mama has never liked her. Family gets complicated.”

  Brody waved when the truck came to a stop. “I wonder what she’s doing here at dawn.”

  “Have no idea but Granny is in the passenger seat.”

  Brody quickly crossed the yard and opened the door for his grandmother. “Y’all are sure out early this mornin’.”