Teaching the Cowboy (10 page)

She pulled her lips in between her teeth and rubbed them together. Perhaps red lipstick was a poor choice.
Wait till Phil hears about this. He’s going to laugh himself to cataplexy.

She slipped into the hard wooden bench at the end, directly to the right of Becka, and swallowed hard.

I didn’t even bring my own Bible. I’m going to get the heathen stare today for sure.

As she sat, she felt a sharp poke on her shoulder and looked down to see the hand behind her alternating jabs from her shoulder to Becka’s. They both turned around to assess the wizened bag of bones in the row behind them.

Ronnie raised a brow and managed to quirk the corners of her mouth up into what she hoped was a pleasant smile. She was out of practice. It was time to spend some time in front of a mirror with a tub of Vaseline.

“Aunt Celia, you just slipped in back there like a little geriatric ninja.” Becka laughed. “Make some noise when you sneak up or I’m going to have to tie a bell to your cane.”

“Who’s your friend?” the woman asked.

Old coot.
Ronnie widened her grin.

“Aunt Celia, remember when I told you all I was going to get some help with the kids’ lessons this year? This is the tutor we sent away for. Veronica Silver. She’s from North Carolina. Isn’t that fascinating? She drove all the way here.”

Celia shifted her dentures with her tongue and gave Ronnie a long stare.

Ronnie tried hard to squelch the twitching of her jaw and ended up grinding her teeth together in a vise.

“Why didn’t you just send the kids to the community school?” Celia asked, cold stare still locked on Ronnie’s face.

“They’ve always been homeschooled. It would have been a huge jolt, don’t you think?”

“Why, are they that far behind?”

Becka giggled, her nervousness marked in her voice. “No, not at all. I’d venture to say that the kids at the Storafalt School are well behind the progress my kids have made.”

“Then we’re all doomed.” Celia sat back and shook her head.

Ronnie turned around to face the pulpit, rage clouding her vision at the old woman’s abrupt dismissal. She may not have agreed with every component of Becka’s lifestyle, but she was a kind woman and tried hard. Becka didn’t deserve the snark. Ronnie calmed herself by counting down backward from ten in her head.

Nine.

I should have just picked up a second gig flipping burgers instead of signing on for this.

Eight.

Daddy always said I have a reckless streak. Maybe he’s right. I’m worse than Phil.

Seven.

I’m going to kill John for not getting me out of this mess.

Six.

Shit.
She looked down at her watch.
What time does Target close today? I can’t believe I have to drive all the way to Cheyenne for printer ink.

Five.

These pantyhose are too tight. I need to stop eating so much. I wonder what Becka has planned for lunch.

Four.

Maybe I can sneak out to pee and just not come back. Think they’d notice?

Three.

This red nail polish was probably a bad choice, too. Do cowgirls not wear nail polish? I’m feeling a lot like Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman
right now.

Ronnie’s sleeve was yanked from the right, and she scanned over to the aisle to find a blonde woman with pale blue eyes, clad in a modest, though funky, floral print dress under an apron, knelt down next to the pew. She was wearing the kind of grin three year olds who have no idea how silly they look when told to say “cheese” look.

“Hi?”

“Hi, you must be Ronnie. I’m Sid. Nice to meet you. Can you do me favor?”

She’d said it all so fast and in such a jumble that it took Ronnie a moment to pick apart the components of her ramble to figure out what she wanted.

“What kind of favor?”

“We’re running short on bodies back in the fellowship hall. We deliver lunch plates to the sick and shut-in, and some of our usual helpers are sick and shut-in themselves today. Bad case of flu going around. Hate to pull you away from the sermon. I hear it’s supposed to be a good one today.” She looked to the pulpit and wriggled her brows. “It’s about pridefulness.”

Ronnie cleared her throat. “Well.” She looked over at Becka, who gave her a reassuring nod.

“Someone always records the sermon so you can do the study later on. Sometimes I listen to it while I’m peeling vegetables for supper.”

“Oh, what’s for supper, Becka?” Sid asked.

“The usual roasted chickens.” Becka sighed. She leaned forward and met Sid’s gaze. “You coming over?”

“If you’re going to yap, take it out into the vestibule. Pastor’s coming,” Celia sniped from behind them.

Ronnie gave Becka one more look for reassurance, and Becka tapped her thigh. “Me and the girls’ll wait on you. We usually deliver about a quarter of the plates after they’re packed. Go on. It’ll be fun.”

Fun
probably wasn’t the adjective Ronnie had in mind, but she nodded and slid out into the aisle, following Sid closely on her heels and through the door to the right of the pulpit. Once they’d descended down a dark hall toward the smell of what seemed like green beans and corn, Ronnie noticed the tall woman’s shoulders shaking.

“Are you all right?” Ronnie asked as they stepped into a well-lit room filled with rows upon rows of plastic tables and a small kitchen at the very back.

She heard the snort before Sid turned around. When she did, her face was twisted into a devious grin. Something in her face, maybe the height of her forehead or the molding of her nose, was familiar to Ronnie, but she couldn’t put a finger on why.

“Are you going to let me in on the joke?” Ronnie asked.

Sid wiped a tear from each eye and chuckled again. “Kitty,” she called back into the kitchen. “Taylor was right.”

A girl, probably around sixteen with a remarkable resemblance to Landon, even down to the glasses, poked her head through the pass-through window. She stared at Ronnie for a moment and made an appreciative grunting noise.

Ronnie’s expression must have been telling because Sid wrapped an arm around her waist and led her farther into the kitchen. “Looks just like Lan, right? Double-cousins. Sometimes works out that way. They got the shitty eyesight. Oops.” She covered her mouth and made a hasty cross with her other hand. “From
those
people.”

“
Those
people?”

“The Darrows. John’s ex, real ray of artificial sunshine that one was, and my ex. The ex-convict.”

Whoa
. “So you’re John’s sister?”

“Guilty as charged.”

There was a note of mischief in Sid’s voice Ronnie didn’t know what to make of.

“You just stick with us rejects back here in the kitchen, and we’ll keep you out of the line of fire.”

Ronnie followed Sid to the counter and accepted the apron she offered. “Sounds like you speak from experience.”

“Oh, yeah,” she laughed. “We’ve been back, what, five years?”

Kitty nodded and circled her ladle around in the tall pot she was tending. “Shoulda stayed in Denver. Or moved to Atlanta like you wanted.”

“Shoulda, coulda, woulda,” Sid said. “Ronnie, you want to start slicing those pound cakes?”

“Sure. Let me just wash my hands.” Ronnie brought the apron strap up over her head and made a loose knot at the back as she stood in front of the sink.

Kitty watched her with interest as she turned the faucet knobs.

“Kitty, do you go to the community school?”

“Yeah, but we live in the walk zone, so it’s convenient.”

“Oh.” Ronnie lathered her hands up with foam and rinsed them carefully. “Townies.” She winked at the girl who giggled in turn.

“Yeah.” Sid held out a serrated knife by the blade and a pair of plastic gloves to Ronnie. “We live right over the hardware store. Retrofitted warehouse space. It’s small, but comfortable. Just enough room for me to run my quilt business and everything important is within walking distance.”

“Everything?”

Sid put her hands up. “Okay, I can get milk and maxi pads within a mile. If I sling my lazy ass onto my bicycle, I can even get beer and wine.”

“Wine’s important.” Ronnie took the gloves first, pulled them on, and then took the knife by the handle. “John didn’t tell me he had other family. He told me your dad is a bit of a snowbird and that your mom passed some time ago.”

“Yup.” Sid laughed as she pulled lengths of aluminum foil off the food service-sized roll. “Me and John go through spurts where we don’t talk. I love my big brother to death. He’s a good man, I swear he is, but we’ve got some philosophical differences we just can’t seem to surpass.”

Ronnie pulled the plastic wrap off the first of the pound cakes, a lemon-glazed one, and carefully sawed off one-inch wedges. “What kind?”

Kitty snorted from her station behind the stove. “Political.”

Ronnie stopped cutting and felt like her blood had ceased circulating for a long moment. She sucked in a deep breath. “Explain. Please.”

“Oh, honey, I’m about as liberal as they come,” Sid said with a dismissive hand flick in Ronnie’s direction. “The only reason I come to this church is because I want to keep tabs on who’s talking about me and see if the perceived me is having more fun than the real life one.”

“So, you’re saying John is—” Ronnie swallowed. “Republican.”

“Honey, most ranchers are. Don’t ask me why.”

Wasn’t all that conservative last night.

“Maybe it has something to do with self-employment taxes or something, I don’t know. I mean, I’m self-employed and I pay taxes out the wazoo, but I don’t have enough energy to quibble over those few dollars.”

Ronnie resumed cutting. “Are you not interested in the ranch? John is the sole owner?”

“No, I’m not interested in ranching, not even a little bit. Never had an ambition to be a ranch wife when I grew up.” She made a face and shuddered. “I decided to marry a bad boy at sixteen. Mom and Daddy thought I was pregnant when I asked them for permission. I didn’t tell them otherwise. Imagine their shock nine months later.” She laughed, and it was dry and cheerless. “Anyhow, I own a little chunk of Lunsford Land and may at some point put a house on it, but I’m not ready for that kind of stability yet. Well, technically Daddy owns it outright, but it’s understood it’ll go to John, so they just behave as if it’s already his. John pays whatever taxes I owe on my little piece and once a year I give him whatever new quilt won the state fair blue ribbon. Don’t know what he does with all of them.”

“Quilts, you say?” Ronnie had noticed the blue and green bedspread at the guesthouse and had admired it briefly, but then had been otherwise distracted.

“Mm-hmm. I used to design them for this big lifestyle brand, but I got burnt out and decided to put up my own shingle. So—” She waved jazz hands. “Ta-da! Oh, that reminds me. I’ve got a quilt in my van I’ve been holding for Liss for her new bed.”

“Mom,” Kitty said, “she got that bed three years ago.”

“Yeah, I feel bad about that. Love that little girl.”

Chapter Eight

R
onnie gave John a surprisingly painful jab in the shoulder and shouted wordlessly at him.

He chuckled as he rubbed his arm and watched her flit about the small room, depositing Target bags on the table and kicking off her sky-high pumps. She smelled like cake for some reason.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you. I came over and knocked. You didn’t answer so I just let myself in.”

“The door was locked,” she said, jamming her hands onto her hips.

John shrugged. “Cheap lock.”

“What do you want?”

“
Rawr
. What’s with the ’tude?”

“Sorry. I’m tired. I’ll try again.” She cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her expression was flat when she turned her gaze to him again. “What do you want?”

“Maybe I just want to cuddle.”

She blinked.

“Okay, maybe you’re soft and smell nice and perhaps I’ve been harboring thoughts of you riding me cowgirl style since two o’clock.”

“Ah-ha.” She started unpacking her bagged items with John curiously assessing each unit as she set them onto the kitchen table. Printer ink. Ankle socks. Ruffled potato chips. Extra-strength ibuprofen. Lactose-free milk and coffee creamer. “Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll pass on the exercise for now. I’m feeling a little wobbly.”

“From the high heels or from me?”

She growled.

“You’re so cute. Are you coming over for dinner? Anna’s expecting you.”

“Don’t know. Becka roasted chickens and the rumor is if I show up, she’ll put onions in the gravy.”

“My, she sure is a rebel.”

“Mm-hmm.” Ronnie stuffed the bags inside each other and deposited the growing mound of plastic beneath the sink. “Speaking of rebels, guess who I met today at the church?”

His grin lost some of its stamina at the edges. “I knew there was a reason I should have kept you home.” He pulled out one kitchen chair and fell into it with a huff. “What sort of lies did she tell you about me?”

“What kind of lies are you expecting? Maybe I can accommodate you.”

“There’s that attitude again.”

She shrugged. “Sorry. Feeling punchy. The fine citizens of Storafalt really do dislike strangers, huh?”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” She scooped up the bottles of super-creamy conditioner, hair spray, the brown-colored ouchless elastics, and her new two-inch ceramic flat iron and toted them to her small bathroom. She dropped it all into the little cabinet beneath the sink and slammed the door shut. When she stood, she startled at him leaning in the doorway, blocking her point of egress.

“I don’t believe you.
Nothing
would be a little more quiet.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a good long stare.

He stared right back, unfazed.

“Can you move, please?”

He turned sideways a bit, forcing her to graze against his chest as she stomped out of the bathroom. He followed her into her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed, watching her kick her pumps into a corner and jack up her dress to relieve her waist of the pinch of her hose.

“Twelve hour hose my ass
.
” She rolled them down her legs and kicked them in the direction of her discarded shoes when she was done with a long sigh of relief. “What’s that look for?” she asked, studying his face.

“Just enjoying the show. Please continue.”

“I’m done with the stripping routine for now, thanks.”

“You sure that bra isn’t giving you any problems?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

The corner of her mouth twitched. She cleared her throat and turned her back to the ogling cowboy. With a practiced flick of her middle finger, she loosened the catch and sighed yet again as she pulled her arms through her sleeves and squirmed out of the torture device. She pulled her bra through the dress’s neck hole and tossed it toward him. “There you go. Souvenir.”

He looped the strap around his index finger and twirled it like an awkward lacy hula-hoop. “I’d really like to have a matching set.”

“Tough. Besides, we don’t wear the same size.”

He widened his grin.

“Nope,” she said, crossing her legs at the angles.

“Nope what?”

“We’re not having sex.”

He tossed the bra after her pumps and hose. “Who said anything about sex?”

“You don’t have to say anything. The contents of your dirty mind are written all over your lips.”

“Oh, that’s just because I’m thinking about what else my lips are about to get into.”

“Huh?”

In one quick movement, he was up and had her in a cradle hold. He tossed her onto her bed like a sack of russets and before she could reorient herself, he had the hem of her dress hiked up to her waist and his fingers worked beneath the elastic of her panties.

“I don’t want to have sex,” she said, swatting at his hands.

“Don’t worry. You won’t.”

“By whose definition?” she asked as her thong cleared her knees.

“Bill Clinton’s. We need to get you more substantial underwear, Veronica. Gets cold up here.” He flicked them into the growing pile in the corner.

“Good thing it’s summer.”

“Mm-hmm.” He dragged her ass to the edge of the bed and draped her legs over his shoulders. “My favorite color is green, by the way.”

“Why would I care?”

“Oh, that’s cold. I told you I’d take care of you, Ronnie.” He kept his eyes locked on hers as he teased her slit with one long, slow lick. He paused at her clit and gave it a hard flick.

She gulped.

“If you’re going to wear scandalous underwear, they should at least be green.”

“I don’t have any green.”

“I’ll get you some.” He dove back in with his tongue, this time probing her gate and making her throw her head back.

She recovered quickly. “Next time you take the wagon into the big city? Gonna bring back some calico for new dresses and maybe some candy for the kids?”

He pulled his face back and licked his lips. “You know, if you’d rather talk, I could stop.”

She clamped her own lips shut and drew his head back to her crotch with her thighs.

He chuckled before resuming his
work
.

Goddamn that woman. Goddamn every delicious, sexy part of her
. John pushed the front of his hat down farther on his brow to shield his eyes and groaned. Every time he thought of Ronnie, his cock went from zero to sixty in three seconds flat. Hadn’t they screwed enough since her arrival that he should have been sated at least for a little while? The twitch of his cock said no. And then she’d gone and had the hottest damn orgasm he’d ever witnessed with him using only his tongue and lips. He’d felt like he was going to explode in his pants during the ride back to his ranch. The cold shower he’d taken after zipping past Anna in the kitchen had quelled his body but hadn’t done a damn thing for his mind. All he had to do was
think
about the way Ronnie had unbelted that black dress she was wearing to remind him she had absolutely nothing on beneath it. Well, that hadn’t been her intention probably. It sure did seem to take her an extra-long time to slip into her pajamas with him sitting there, though. She was being so slow at fastening the buttons on her top while still naked from waist down that he’d wanted to bend her over the bed, part her lips, and plow into that warm slit he’d made so wet, soreness be damned.

Should have never put her on that horse.

He groaned again.

“You all right, boss? Hope you ain’t coming down with nothin’,” Rufus called from his horse nearby. “Bad case of flu’s been going around the cowhands.”

“No. Just tired. Haven’t been sleeping well.” He gave Sandy an easy nudge away from Rufus and assessed a few distant steer he’d already seen and had no reason to look at again. That was it. He’d had it. Ronnie was moving into the guesthouse. He didn’t care whose feelings were hurt and who would be inconvenienced by the shift. He wasn’t going to trespass onto the Erickson ranch every time he got an urge to wrap his arms around that woman, and that urge was coming more and more frequent. He didn’t know what it was about her. Yeah, she was hot. Hot wasn’t even a strong enough word to describe what her whole package did to him physically, but there was something else. She was different than any woman he’d ever known, and maybe that’s why he had no clue how to rein her in. Maybe she was a woman who
couldn’t
be reined.

He pried the vibrating phone out of his pocket and held it up to his ear without reading the display. “Yeah.”

“John, did you pay my August rent?”

He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “No.”

“Oh. Are you going to? Are things bad at the ranch?”

He gritted his teeth and counted out three long, cleansing, breaths through his nose. “Things are just fine at the ranch, Charlene. Know what else is fine? Our kids. They’re just super.”

“Oh, I know they are. They’re always great. They’ve got Anna there.”

If his ex-wife had been within reaching distance of him, he would have shaken her.

“Listen, I’m heading out to an audition now. It’s for a pilot and I’m feeling really good about this one. It’s a small town comedy, and I’m auditioning for the role of a farmer’s wife. Isn’t that a hoot?”

He mumbled some bullshit assent.

“Jeez, what flew up your shorts?”

“I’ve got my hands full right now. I’ll pay the rent the next time I turn my computer on.”

“Today, you think? I know we’ve got a few days. I’m just wondering.”

“I pay you voluntary maintenance every month. What the hell do you do with all that money?”

“Hey, do I ask what you do with
your
money?”

He disconnected before he could say what was on the tip of his tongue. He’d tried being nice because he didn’t want the kids to see their mother indigent, but he’d gone beyond court-ordered nice to overly fucking generous. If he was going to spend money on a woman’s maintenance, he’d just as soon give it to his hippie sister to expand her business or maybe dump it in Kitty’s college fund. Hell, if he was going to set his hard-earned money on fire, he’d give it to Ronnie and let her buy tiny green panties.

Whoops. Zero to sixty in three seconds.

He gave Rufus some crude sign language along the lines of,
I’m out, partner. Deal
, and pushed Sandy to a canter. By the time he got the horse squared away and made it to the kitchen door, his blood pressure was at a stroke-inducing level. How fucking long did Charlene expect him to be so kind? She was a grown-ass woman, and it wasn’t like she had the kids to feed and clothe and shelter. She hadn’t even offered during the split. She just left and screwed poor Liss up six ways to Sunday. Liss saw more of the woman going than coming. Charlene had turned the little girl into a preschool cynic. If he were to ask the girl what mothers did, she wouldn’t be able to answer.

He ignored Anna’s greeting from the stove and stalked through the kitchen, making a beeline for the office. He was already plotting out the conversation with his lawyer in his head and didn’t want to forget one iota of what he was going to say, but as he stepped into his office and realized it was already being occupied, the wind quit filling his sails.

Ronnie, leaning over his desktop in a pale pink button-up shirt and khaki shorts that made her toned legs look super long, turned her gaze away from the computer monitor she and Landon were studying and made herself more upright. “Sorry, John. Landon thought you’d be out until lunch and wouldn’t need the office. We were marking off NC State’s admission requirements.”

“Oh.” What was it he was mad at? Every time Ronnie walked into his field of vision, his brain scrambled—he felt like someone had pressed his reset button without warning him. Just looking at her made him feel like that moon-eyed, awkward, teenager he once was. He swallowed. “Don’t worry about me. I won’t get in your way. I just need to get a phone number.”

Landon narrowed his eyes at his father and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Who are you calling that it couldn’t wait for lunch? That’s not like you.”

“Maybe I’m letting Rufus do his job. Like I said I would.”

The look Landon gave John indicated that he wasn’t convinced. Another damned cynic. John forced a long exhale through his mouth and walked around to the back of the heavy oak desk. He put his hands at Ronnie’s waist, moved her slightly to the right, and bent to pull out the lower drawer. He pulled out the file with the gold star on the tab, his own twisted little joke, and bumped the drawer closed with his knee.

“I’ll go make the call in the bedroom. Won’t get in your way.”

Landon shrugged and turned his attention back to the screen. Ronnie looked like she didn’t care one way or the other. The two went back to chattering before he’d even left the room, and John felt a bit at odds over the situation. Seeing Landon get the kind of help he needed had stripped away one layer of John’s big onion ball of stress. But seeing him with that woman, the one who was trying so hard to push him away and who wouldn’t be around past May, that added two layers back on. If he didn’t already know it wasn’t possible, he’d think he’d spontaneously developed a stomach ulcer.

He poked his head into Liss’s bedroom on the way past and saw her lying on her braided rug combing Barbie doll hair. “What’cha doing li’l bit?”

“Making buns like Ronnie’s.”