The Counterfeit Cowgirl (10 page)

“Mama and your brother are two of a kind,” Felicity said. “Let them commiserate with each other.” She admired the two beautiful dogs, called Max and Coye, and reflected that she hadn’t been too terribly far off when she thought Aaron might have lost a matched pair of fine canines.

Deborah regarded her with awe. “I wish I was as brave as you are. I’d be terrified in this house alone.”

“It’s not so bad, now that I’ve had a locksmith out to fix the locks. And when I get all the magazines and junk paper cleared out, it won’t be a fire hazard any longer.”

“You must be used to living alone,” Deborah observed. “I’d be up all night, listening to the house creaking.”

“Or the cockroaches walking across the floor. But now that the exterminator has been out, I won’t have that problem any longer. And you can tell your brother that the well will be professionally covered tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll tell him.” Deborah smothered a giggle. “I thought he was going to pass out when he turned around and saw your mother.”

They had laughed together over the image of Aaron towering over an enraged Becky Lozano and meekly accepting her scolding. Then Deborah and the two labs returned home, leaving Felicity alone.

The hot, delicious rice casserole had done a lot to assuage her feelings, and she went to bed after a long, soaking bath and slept hard. All too soon, morning sunlight called her forth from the soft, lumpy warmth of the bed.

The telephone rang. Felicity told herself she welcomed the excuse to leave the window and miss a possible glimpse of Aaron leaving his house to go to work.

“What took you so long to answer, sugar?” Becky demanded. “Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe I’d better call Aaron.”

“Don’t you dare,” Felicity practically howled. Hearing her mother speak Aaron’s name in that matter-of-fact way told her Becky thought she had found a surrogate to look after her daughter in her absence. “That man isn’t setting foot across my threshold.”

Becky was genuinely baffled. “But, why, baby? He’s just the sweetest man. Did you know he took care of his little sister like a daddy? And that — ?”

“No, Mama,” Felicity interrupted. “Furthermore, I don’t want to know. Aaron Whitaker and I are two very different people.”

Becky was silent. Felicity could almost hear the wheels turning in her mother’s brain.

“Law, you’re just like your daddy,” Becky said at last. “He’d take a downer on someone, and there wasn’t nothin’ I could say that would change that stubborn mind of his.”

Felicity’s father had died before she was a year old, but thanks to Becky, Felicity would know him if she met him on the street. “Yes, Mama.”

Becky went silent again, a state so uncommon it made Felicity nervous. Becky of all people ought to know why Felicity was wary of men.

“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Felicity went on. “I’ve got to clean this house and hunt those songs of yours, plus I’ve got to go buy a new cell phone sometime today and get this house listed with a realtor. I don’t have time to be nice to a man who’s caused me nothing but trouble ever since I pulled in the driveway of this house.”

“Well, sugar,” Becky said, “I have to say, I think you’re wrong about Aaron, but far be it from me to bang my head against a brick wall. Now I want you going back to bed, you hear me? Aaron said you’d probably be pretty sore.”

“I am not sore,” Felicity lied. “The long, soaking bath last night took care of that. But don’t worry, Mama. I’ll go back to bed if it’ll make you feel better.”

“It will,” Becky said, and hung up.

Felicity returned to the living room, where she methodically moved several stacks of periodicals to the couch. Every magazine and every newspaper had to be searched for Becky’s lost songs. Cleaning the house would be a long, tedious process.

Someone knocked at the front door. Felicity figured she’d know that knock anywhere. She ignored both the knock and the corresponding leap of her heart.

“Felicity?” Aaron called. “Are you all right?”

“I’m just fine,” she called back. “I’m very busy right now.” She settled on the sofa and bent over a magazine. Not for anything was she letting him inside.

“Open up,” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you. Will you please go away and leave me alone?”

“Look, I’d like to apologize. I can’t apologize to the door.”

“Why not?”

The truth was, she figured she had nothing to forgive him for, but God forbid he find that out. Worse, she had the uncomfortable feeling that if she opened the door, she’d melt beneath his potent charm. Aaron was dangerous to her peace of mind. Her best bet was to keep him on the other side of the door.

Aaron remained silent a moment. “Look, I don’t blame you for thinking I’m the world’s worst jackass, but — ”

“You said it,” Felicity said, with relish.

“ — I thought I had reason.”

“Hah. If you run that car dealership of yours on that kind of hearsay, you’ll be bankrupt in six months.”

She figured his silence meant he was debating just opening the door and walking in. Thank goodness the lock worked now.

“The least you could do is open the door and face me,” he said coaxingly.

“Not today, thank you,” Felicity called back. “I’ve already faced down three big roaches this morning. I don’t need any confrontations with rats.”

“Your mother wants me to look you over. For some reason, she doesn’t trust your own assessment of your condition.”

“Too bad.” Felicity grinned to herself. “Maybe you can convince her that you saw me. It’s all a matter of attitude,” she added. “Positive thinking and visualization. They’ll add the right intonation to your voice — instant believability.”

“I’ll bet.”

She heard his boots click across the creaking wooden porch and clatter down the steps. Only then did she hobble to the window in time to watch as he covered the overgrown grass with long strides. He moved like an athlete.

Felicity sighed then caught herself. Aaron was trouble. A wise woman would get away from that window and put herself back to work.

She waited until he disappeared through his own front door before turning back to the sofa. After all, a woman with sore muscles shouldn’t move too fast.

She opened all the windows of the small house to take advantage of the fresh morning air, then finished leafing through the first magazine on the stack and tossed it into the trash sack sitting beside her.

Suddenly, a loud roaring filled her ears. Felicity dropped the next magazine and hurried to the door as fast as her complaining body would allow. The lawn service she had hired wasn’t due until tomorrow.

She opened the door and shouted, “Aaron Whitaker, you stop that! I don’t want my yard mowed by you.”

He never heard her. Moving in harmony to his own inner rhythm, Aaron guided his tractor across the tall grass, leaving a flat, green path in his wake.

Felicity unlatched the screen and stepped out onto the porch, hands on her hips. “Stop.”

He mowed on, turning in a perfect square to start back across the yard. She made her way down the front steps and planted herself where he couldn’t help but see her.

Aaron caught sight of her, smiled, waved, and kept on mowing. Felicity yelled again. He waved again and mowed on, deliberately ignoring her angry motions.

Felicity glared after Aaron’s back as he turned a corner. Unless she wanted to physically confront him and probably get herself mowed, there was nothing she could do to stop him. She went back inside and locked the door.

Standing behind a curtain, she ignored her own work and watched as her overgrown front yard morphed into a smooth, green carpet. At least, that’s what she pretended she was watching. In reality, she was waiting for the moment when Aaron stripped off his blue work shirt and let the sun beat down on his bare back.

There was no doubt about it, Felicity thought. The man ought to be outlawed. He ought to be in jail. He ought to be anywhere other than on her small property. He probably knew exactly what he was doing when he stripped off that shirt. He should be arrested.

Felicity stared, intrigued against her will. She had never realized before how artistic the arrangement of a man’s musculature was, or how breathtaking the movement of those muscles as they operated together could be. In fact, she’d never been interested in watching a man without his shirt before. This meant big trouble.

She pulled up a chair. A person contemplating trouble needed to get as comfortable as possible.

She moved her chair from window to window and leafed through magazines while Aaron drove his tractor back and forth across her entire yard, front and back. When he finished and drove the tractor back to his own property, she remained at the window dreaming, only to be jolted from her semi-dozing state a little later by loud pounding.

Felicity leaped off the chair and groaned when every muscle protested the action. She jerked open the front door and realized the noise she heard hadn’t come from someone knocking her door down. Aaron knelt at the end of the porch, hammer in hand. While she watched, he took a nail from a leather pouch around his waist and drove it into a loose board.

He now wore a white t-shirt that highlighted his tan and gave her a close-up view of the way the muscles in his shoulders coordinated the motion when he reached for anything. She cleared her throat loudly.

“If you’re choking, you’ll have to do the Heimlich maneuver on yourself,” Aaron said. “This porch is going to keep me busy for quite a while.”

“If you aren’t a licensed carpenter, you shouldn’t be touching those boards,” Felicity informed him. “What if I walk across this porch and a board flips up and smacks me in the face? I’ll probably become the richest woman in Texas.”

“Not if you’re already planning on suing me, honey.” He pounded in another nail. “Assuming you win, all you’ll get is a blue pickup truck and a hundred head of Brahman cattle. The bank owns everything else.”

Felicity stepped out on the porch and peered across the road at the peaceful group of humped, red cattle grazing there. “I could use a few cows around here. A cow would probably be good company.” She glanced pointedly around her newly mowed yard. “I’ll bet a cow would keep the grass down, too. Just think. No more tractors roaring around while I’m trying to sleep.” She took a step back when Aaron’s sharp gaze went over her. “I could tie a bow around her neck and call her Elsie.”

Aaron gave her a slow, hot smile and laid down his hammer. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have my bull? He’s registered and worth a lot more than a cow.”

“Well, isn’t that just like a man?” Felicity tried to work up some indignation. “Cows are the ones that give the milk and have the calves. Since when is a bull worth more than a cow?”

“Since I paid plenty for this particular bull,” Aaron returned, chuckling. He rose to his feet with slow grace. “These cattle are breeding stock. A good Red Brahman bull can produce something like twenty calves a year, while a cow produces only one calf a year.”

Felicity gasped with feigned outrage. “The day I see a bull producing even one calf is the day I’ll win the Nobel Prize in biology.”

“Now, Miss Clayton, let’s not split hairs over the mechanics of bovine reproduction. You’re just looking for something to fight with me about.”

“I knew you were a male chauvinist the minute I saw you. Get off my porch, you sexist Neanderthal.”

“Now, honey.” He took a step toward her. “Look at it from a rancher’s perspective.”

“You’re not a rancher; you’re a car salesman.” Pleased that she was still capable of pretending anger at a man whose very movements filled her with a sense of delighted anticipation, she flung out her hand in a dramatic gesture. “Off my porch.”

Aaron took another step toward her. “In that case, let’s discuss trading that Dodge of yours in on a new Chevy truck.”

Somehow she managed to overcome the inclination to back up as he approached. This was a moment to stand her ground. After all, he couldn’t very well kiss her on the front porch in full view of anyone driving down the road.

Could he? Her breathing quickened with expectation.

“I like my truck, thank you,” she said, on a gasp.

“Miss Clayton, I admire your taste.” Aaron halted when he stood about three feet from her. “A lady with such great fashion sense shouldn’t waste her good taste on a Dodge.”

“A Dodge?” Felicity stared into his navy eyes and was lost … almost. She pulled her thoughts back to reality. “My Dodge is practically brand new.”

“A Chevy truck would do a lot more for those fancy cowgirl clothes of yours.” He reached out slowly and curled his fingers gently around her upper arms. “Why don’t you let me show you around the lot? One of the new double-cabs would be my recommendation for you. Your choice of colors, of course.”

“What?” Mesmerized, Felicity stared at his tanned face as he leaned toward her very slowly. His rugged features caught the morning sunlight on every plane.

But all male, Felicity thought dreamily, as Aaron’s lips settled gently over hers. It was a positively stunning face, one that projected strength and security. At the same time, the expression in those dark blue eyes promised excitement and challenge. Ordinarily, she relished both. In this case, her innate caution warned her that this man might prove even more dangerous to her peace of mind than she had ever imagined.

She ignored it and leaned into his warm strength. Her arms wrapped around his neck. She felt the answering quiver of his body as he pulled her to him. The next thing she knew, his tongue had slipped between her teeth, and he was exploring her tongue and the inner surfaces of her mouth eagerly.

She decided Aaron felt almost like Rhyolite during the short time she’d sat upon his back; a massive collation of muscle and sinew that spoke of speed and power. But rather than intimidate her, Aaron’s vital body made her almost heady with a sense of her own feminine power.

He shook when she drew her fingers through his dark hair and let them feather across his ear. His breath hissed through his teeth when she ran her palms down his back and traced his ribs. All that power, and it was hers to command …