Once Upon a Cowboy (3 page)

Cole picked up the hose and turned it on high, filling up the water trough in the corral just outside the stable. He heard Decker’s truck coming down the driveway and shook his head. While he’d been mucking out stables and fixing the fence that Apollo had blown through yesterday, Decker’d been up at his fancy-schmancy model home, schmoozing prospective buyers in his swanky suit and shiny
shoes.

Cole looked down at the hose as he heard the truck pull to a stop. He still owed Decker for the stunt he’d pulled last week that had left Cole covered with mud and who-knew-what-else, and it looked like revenge had just presented itself in an irresistible form.

Was it childish? Definitely. Was it tempting? Oh, yeah. He weighed the consequences for a whole quarter of a second, then adjusted
his grip on the hose. He waited until he heard the truck door creak open, and then he stepped around the corner, aiming the hose squarely at Decker.

First he heard the satisfying splash.

And then he heard the distinctly un-Decker-ish squeal.

The hose was aimed squarely at a gorgeous woman with dark hair and a white—
ah, hell
—white dress on. And that dress was becoming quickly transparent under
the spray of water he was aiming directly at her midsection.

Oh. Shit.

Jess.

Her squeals finally knocked through his skull, and he let go of the hose, dropping it to the ground. Kyla stepped out of the passenger side of the truck, mouth open comically wide. She looked at a dripping wet Jess, then at him, then back at Jess, then back at him.

“Cole?”

Cole stepped toward the truck, hands in
the air. “I am
so
sorry. I thought you guys were Decker.” He took another step toward Jess, wary, but at the same time ridiculously mesmerized by the way her white dress was clinging to her yoga-toned body. “I swear, I thought you took your own car to the airport, Kyla. I never would have—oh God. Why are you driving, Jess?”

Jess calmly closed the door of the truck, and Cole braced himself for
a Ma-style dressing down. Instead, though, she walked toward him, one slow step at a time.

“Well,”—her silky voice practically purred, and that damn smile lurked at the edges of her lips—“it’s good to see you, Cole.”

He backed up a step. She looked like a frigging tiger coming in for the kill, one with a lacy purple bra that wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding the effect the cold water was
having on her.

She pulled the ends of her hair around in front of her chest and wrung out the strands. He winced as water dripped to the ground.

“Here I was looking forward to one of your big hugs, and what do I get?” She looked down at her body, but didn’t appear to realize that her dress was hiding pretty much—
uh
—nothing.

“I’m so sorry.” He swallowed hard, dying to put his arms around her
wet, glistening body.

She whipped her head around to the left, pointing toward the stable. “Oh my God! What’s going on over there?”

He shouldn’t have looked. He’d had a little sister long enough not to fall for it, but before he had time to realize she was just distracting him, she ducked behind him, picking up the hose he’d just dropped.

“You know what?” She gave him that serene, gentle smile
he remembered. “Points for an original welcome, but you really should have gone with the hug.”

And then the spray hit him directly in the chest—
and shit, it was cold
. And she was laughing. And Kyla was laughing, and it was all he could do to fight through the spray and get to Jess. When he did, he didn’t even bother to try to wrest the hose away from her. Instead, he got around behind her and
wrapped her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her sides.

“Turn off the hose, Jess.”

“Not a chance,” she answered, trying in vain to aim it backward at him.

“You’re not going to win this round.” Her body squirmed against his, and his answered, much to his consternation. He pulled away so she wouldn’t have a clue to the effect she was having on him within two minutes of arriving at the ranch.

She slithered out of his arms, planting her feet and aiming the nozzle at his stomach, but blessedly, she let go of the trigger.

“I think you really need to work on your Whisper Creek welcome package, Cole.”

He put up his hands, laughing. “I’m sorry. Why are you in Decker’s truck, anyway?”

Kyla smirked and pointed at the truck bed. “Luggage. And she’s driving because she never gets the chance
back in Boston.”

Cole peered in, then widened his eyes at the pile of suitcases and bags. “Exactly how long are you staying, Jess?”

“I don’t know. Kyla here thinks I should never leave.”

His stomach jumped at her words. “Never leave?”

“Yes.” She took one step closer to him, hose still pointed at his stomach. “She’s been talking all the way up here about how gorgeous it is all year round, how
the ranch is just bustling with guests, how the—Driscoll brothers—are just about the sweetest things on the planet. I don’t know, though. I’m not sure I see it.”

She looked down at her dress, clinging wetly to her thighs. “No. I really, really don’t see it.” Then she looked back at him, and he could swear he saw a little devil in her eyes. “But it’s all right. I’ll give it time.”

Before he saw
her hand even move, he felt the edge of the spray hit his forehead, and his Stetson flew off his head. Her face lit up when she saw the expression that must be on his, and then she bent over laughing, finally putting down the hose.

“See you at dinner, Cole.” She turned to grab a suitcase out of the truck. “And thanks for the very—original—welcome.”

An hour later, he was sitting at Ma’s kitchen
table when Decker blew through the swinging doors, his face cracking into a grin when he saw Cole. “You sprayed her down with the hose? Really?”

“I didn’t
spray her down
. I aimed the hose at what I thought was you, and then—it wasn’t.”

“You didn’t notice that your target was five-foot-ten and gorgeous before you squeezed the trigger?”

“The trigger was already squee—” Cole pinched the bridge
of his nose. “You know what? Shut up.”

Ma looked up from the bread she was slicing. “Who’s spraying who?”

Decker laughed again. “Cole. Jess.”

“What?” Ma stopped slicing. “Why in the world did you do that?”

“It was an accident. I was aiming for Decker.”

Decker elbowed Ma. “But Decker was ten miles away.”

Cole could tell Ma was trying not to laugh, but she wasn’t successful. “And how did poor
Jess react?”

“Yeah, Cole.” Decker tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth. “I’m curious, too.”

Cole pictured her in that clingy white dress, two hands on the hose trigger, aiming at him while droplets of water fell from her chin. “She handled herself.”

“Well.” Ma went back to slicing. “Let’s see if we can avoid soaking down the bridesmaids for the rest of the week, shall we?” She pointed
at a pile of plates on the counter. “You two get that table set, will you? We’ve got Daniel and Hayley coming tonight, too. Cole, maybe put Jess at the other end of the table from you this time around.”

Cole grabbed the plates and handed them to Decker.

“Here. You set the table. You’ve been sitting on your butt all day up at the model home while I’ve been working my ass off.”

Ma whacked him
with a spatula. “No swearing in my kitchen.”

“Sorry, Ma.”

Behind Ma’s back, Decker gave him the finger, then pushed through the doors and started clattering the plates onto the long dining room table. Cole reached into the fridge and grabbed a beer, cracking it open with Ma’s ancient under-counter Coca-Cola opener.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Why are you asking?” Cole took a draw of the cool
ale, letting it slide down his parched throat.

“Well, Decker would probably use a more colorful expression, but you’re acting like a big ol’ bug crawled up into your nether regions.”

“Just tired.”

And agitated. Supremely, hugely agitated.
Cole took another slug of his beer. Despite a forty-five-minute run and a cold shower, he still couldn’t get the picture of Jess in her soaked white dress
and purple bra out of his damn head. All those curves and hollows, all that lusciousness, all outlined in perfect relief.

“Well,”—Ma pointed at the silverware drawer—“tired or not, that table’s not gonna set itself. Do the silverware, would you?”

As he set his beer down and rolled his eyes, Ma winked. “It won’t take your mind off a girl in a wet dress, but it’ll at least keep your hands busy,
right?”

“How long are you staying, Jess?” Hayley’s eyes widened as she looked at Jess’s bed in the cabin, strewn with three open suitcases. Her curly red hair was restrained by a pink, sparkly headband that looked suspiciously like a nine-year-old had made it, but for some reason it just made her look even more adorable than usual.

Jess stuffed a pile of T-shirts into a drawer. “Two weeks.”

“Good God! How much did you have to pay in baggage fees?”

“I packed in a rush, okay? And the weather out here’s a little unpredictable, temperature-wise. I wanted to be prepared.” So far she’d found enough yoga clothes to hold three classes a day, but she still hadn’t found any underwear.

Hayley pulled a tank dress out of one suitcase and held it up to herself in the mirror. “I wish I could
rock this color.”

“You could.”

She smirked. “Right. Because redheads look fabulous in yellow. So”—Hayley put the dress on a hanger in the closet—“I hear Cole welcomed you with open arms this afternoon.”

Jess laughed. “He welcomed me with
something
.” She pushed a pile of jeans into a drawer. “You should have seen his face, Hayls. I have never seen a more mortified man in my entire life.”

“I
might have actually paid to see that.”

Jess pulled a hoodie out of her suitcase, but stopped before she got it onto a hanger. “I’ll kill you if you repeat this, but I somehow managed to forget how utterly gorgeous that man is.”

“There’s a reason the Whisper Creek website gets six thousand hits a day.”

“Is he still—”

“A player?” Hayley’s eyebrows lifted. “You know, the more I get to know him,
the more I wonder how much of a cover that is. I think, deep down, he wishes he could find somebody to settle down with.”

“Right.” Jess rolled her eyes. “Because that’s what every red-blooded cowboy dreams of—being tied down.”

“You asked.”

“Idle curiosity.” Jess moved to the closet again. Right. Idle curiosity, her foot. The feel of Cole’s arms around her wet body two hours ago had ignited
all sorts of feelings she was completely unprepared to deal with.

“Well, now that you’re in dry clothes again, we should probably head up to the lodge for dinner. I heard Ma’s making your favorite.”

“I’m going to adopt that woman.”

Hayley shook her head. “Too late. I already did.”

As they left the bedroom, Jess looked around the cabin, a peaceful feeling stealing in the same way it had every
time she’d come out to Whisper Creek. The living room had a big, soft couch with lots of colorful pillows, and if she hadn’t promised Kyla she’d help with the guests all week, she could easily picture spending days on end settled in the cushions with a pile of romance novels.

Maybe escaping into someone
else’s
story would help her stomach stop churning when she thought of her own past creeping
in to rope her back.

They pushed through the screen door onto the wide front porch with its double swing, and Jess sighed contentedly as she took in the sight of the big, new stable just down the hill, and the main lodge just up the pathway.

“Miss this place, did you?” Hayley slung an arm over her shoulder as they started toward the lodge.

“I never realize just how much until I’m here again.”

“Cole tends to have that effect on women.”

Jess laughed. “We’re back to that again? I was referring to the scenery.”

“He qualifies.” Hayley shrugged. “I don’t suppose you know your face gets all rosy when you talk about him.”

“Does not.” Jess put her hands to her cheeks, then snapped them back down. She was not a woman who went all blushy when confronted with a super gorgeous man. Even if that
man
was
a cowboy. And furthermore, even if that man
was
Cole, whose—scenery—she’d been appreciating for two years now.

Hayley laughed. “Totally does, but I won’t tell Kyla.”

“The only reason my face is getting—
rosy
—is because all I can think about is the fact that he saw way more than just my dress once that hose hit me.”

“And it will probably fuel his fantasies for weeks. I wouldn’t worry
about it.” Hayley snorted. “He didn’t see any more than your little undies, I’m sure. And honey, if I had a body like yours, I guess I wouldn’t be too worried.”

Jess elbowed her. “Easy for you to say.”

“I know. I’m the one who’s about to be happily married off. I don’t have to be worried about all of this flirting and stuff anymore, right?”

“Something like that.”

Hayley turned to her. “I don’t
know why you’re worried. You always had the flirting thing covered, even when you weren’t trying. Remember when you first got to college and you had that sweet southern drawl that all the guys loved, but you tried so hard to cover it up?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” Jess swallowed, but couldn’t quite get the sudden lump out of her throat. She’d tried to lose it, all right.

Because that sweet southern
drawl—as Hayley put it—had the unfortunate side effect of attracting all the wrong kinds of men.

“C’mere, honey. Gimme some sugar.” Mama’s manager was at the trailer again, drinking on the couch again. He was six-foot-two and probably weighed two-fifty under his designer shirt. The women who rented chairs at his salon all did their best to get his attention, but it was Mama who’d captured
it.

She wrinkled her nose, assaulted by his drugstore aftershave. “Sorry, Mel. No can do. Sadie and her mama are picking me up in a second to go to the mall.”