For Love of a Cowboy (7 page)

“It’s bad luck for whoever you’re knitting for,” Willow answered. “Isn’t that right, Ness?”

Her friend gave a murmur of assent as she poured a glass of red wine for Willow.

Booth made a sound of disbelief. “Luck is what you make it. I don’t hold with superstitions.”

And he didn’t “hold” with her, either, Willow thought privately as she watched him help himself to a beer from the fridge. He twisted off the cap and took a long pull at the chilled liquid. She found herself watching as the muscles in his throat worked, and had to force herself to look away before he realized she was staring. She wasn’t quick enough, though, and as he took the bottle away from his lips his eyes met hers and clashed. She felt a flush of warmth spread across her cheeks and turned away, unaccountably flustered.

“There are plenty of superstitions around knitting,” Ness interjected, breaking the spell between them. “Like knitting one of your hairs into a garment binds the recipient to you.”

Willow laughed and ran a hand through her long hair. “With my hair, that’s a given with everything I do, let alone knit.”

She froze mid-action as Booth’s eyes locked onto her and his eyes appeared to darken momentarily, his pupils dilating. Instead of the usual coolness he reflected toward her she was all but scorched with the heat exposed there. As quickly as the fire was there in his gaze, it was gone again, leaving Willow wondering if she’d imagined it after all. Booth looked away, breaking the tenuous link between them as if it was nothing more than a gossamer web.

“You want me to warm up the grill?” he said to his sister.

“Sure, we can eat early and then sit out on the back porch and enjoy the evening,” Ness replied, handing him a set of barbeque utensils and an apron.

Booth held up the apron and looked disparagingly at the words printed on the front. “Kiss the cook? I don’t think so,” he said firmly, putting the apron back on the countertop beside his sister.

“Oh, go on. What are you afraid of?” Ness laughed, picking the apron up and looping it over his head before he could duck away.

*

What was he
afraid of? That was a very good question, Booth thought as he suffered Ness tying the damned apron around his waist. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for her, but this came pretty darn close. If it had just been him and Ness, there’d be no question, but after the look he’d just exchanged with Willow, he didn’t need any reminders about kissing or any of the other forbidden thoughts that raced through his over-fertile imagination every time he was within sight of the woman.

“Off you go,” Ness said with a pat on his shoulder.

Booth snagged his beer bottle and headed out back onto the porch where he stood a few moments trying to rid himself of the unsettled feeling that suffused him whenever Willow was around. The feeling just got stronger. She was out here with him.

“She sent me out to keep you company,” Willow said simply when he wheeled and gave her a questioning look.

“I like my own company well enough.”

“I’m sure you do, but Ness wouldn’t hear any different.”

Booth forced his shoulders to relax and put the barbeque tongs on the table next to the grill.

“She’s a hard woman to say no to.”

“That’s for sure,” Willow agreed, settling in one of the deep wicker chairs Ness had on the porch, her glass of wine dangling from her slender fingers. “Is it just the two of you?”

“Yeah.”

“And your parents?”

Booth fought back the wave of frustration that always surged through him whenever he thought about his mom and dad. “Both gone,” he said bluntly and flicked the ignition on the state-of-the-art grill his brother-in-law had bought shortly before his death.

“It’s good you have each other, then,” Willow persisted, despite his short answers.

He had to admit she was right. Even when their parents had been alive, there had been times when he and Ness had felt as if
all
they had was each other. Especially those nights when their father had returned from town, liquored up and full of rage against the shadows—hell, against anything that moved. Their mother would tell them to hide and she’d face his fury alone every time. Booth had hated her for that. Hated that she’d put herself willingly in front of his father’s fists. Never once thinking about taking Ness and him and leaving the abusive bastard. Never once thinking of her own safety.

When his father had died, crashing his beat-up old truck on the way home from yet another drinking session, Booth had felt nothing but relief. Finally they were free. Except they weren’t. His mother’s cancer, something she’d borne in secret for months before her husband’s death, took her away before they even had time to take a breath. He and Ness had been placed with his aunt and uncle with only a handful of their things from the dilapidated house that had been their unhappy home.

Without Ness he’d have run away for sure. He owed his sister a lot, everything, in fact. She’d kept him grounded, but it hadn’t been enough to stop the worst of his father from coming out in him. Booth reached for his beer and downed a mouthful. And that was what frightened him the most—he never wanted to be that man. But he had a temper, one that the woman sitting near him provoked something awful. And it wasn’t all anger, either. Just thinking about her was enough to arouse him…and he didn’t like it. He was a man who prided himself on his control, except around Willow Phillips that control became a tenuous thing. He didn’t trust her. Hell, he didn’t trust himself around her!

Booth realized that Willow had fallen silent. He should ask her about her own family, extend the conversation, but he didn’t. Instead he left the grill to heat and stepped back inside.

“Ready for the steaks?” Ness said, looking up from putting the finishing touches to the bowl of salad she’d prepared.

“Yup.”

“She’s nice, isn’t she?”

“Willow?” he asked in surprise.

“Who else would I be talking about?” Ness teased with a poke at his hard belly. “Of course, Willow.”

“I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“Why’s that, Booth? She’s harmless and she’s been a blessing to me at the store. She’s pretty too, don’t you think?”

Harmless? Sure, the same way a prairie rattler was harmless—until you bothered it.

“Why’s she even here anyway?” he deflected, not even wanting to enter into discussion on the “pretty” aspect.

“She’s my guest for dinner, the same way you are,” Ness answered with an edge that warned him he was close to overstepping an invisible mark.

“No, I mean in Marietta,” he clarified.

“She’s waiting to meet up with her father.”

“He’s from here?”

“Apparently, although she doesn’t have the look of anyone we know around here, does she?”

He shook his head. No, she didn’t. She did, however, have the look of a woman who had the distinct knack of getting under his skin and staying there, reminding him of her existence with irritating regularity and how long it had been since he’d been with a woman.

“So why’s she looking for him now?”

“Her mom died recently and she has no one else left.”

That explained her sudden silence after their brief conversation before, he thought, taking the tray of meat out to the grill. Either way, except for ensuring she didn’t rip his sister off, she was none of his concern—and that’s exactly the way it would stay.

*

It was getting
dark when he and Willow left Ness’s place. His sister looked tired, but kept extending their stay, saying she didn’t want to be alone just yet. Now, here he was, confined in the cab of his truck with a woman who disturbed him on every level of consciousness and a few unconscious ones into the bargain. At least the distance to the store was a short one.

He pulled up in the alley out back of the store and hopped down to open Willow’s door. He may not particularly want her here, but he wasn’t about to compromise his standards when it came to the right way to treat a woman.

“Thank you,” she said simply as he opened her door.

He walked with her to the door, waiting until she’d inserted the key in the lock and turned it.

“You want me to check inside?” he asked, still exhibiting the manners his mother had drilled into him from birth.

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“Good. I’ll head off then.”

But even though he said the words, his body didn’t want to compute their meaning. He stood, rooted to the spot as Willow pushed open the door and turned back to him.

“I had a good time tonight,” she said. “Thank you for taking me. Good night.”

She looked up at him and he was hit with a bolt of need so powerful and so basic that, despite every instinct calling him all kinds of fool, it was suddenly the most natural thing in the world to lean down and kiss her.

Her lips were soft and yielding and parted on a gasp of surprise that he immediately took advantage of. She tasted of the wine she’d drunk with dinner and something exotic, something forbidden. Something he wanted more than anything he’d wanted before in his life. He traced the contours of her lips with his tongue, felt her sag against him, her arms reach around his waist even as his hands took her shoulders and hauled her tighter against him. Every cell in his body went on high alert, demanding he take this further. Passion surged within him, clouding his mind and bringing his focus solely on the two of them, of the taste of her, of the texture of her tongue as it dueled with his, of the press of her deliciously feminine curves against the hardness of his own.

The sound of some animal skittering away from the trashcans stacked in the alley intruded, waking him up to what he was doing—and, more importantly, with whom. He pulled away and let her go so fast she teetered slightly before self-correcting. Her hand went to her mouth, her fingertips pressed to lips that only seconds ago he’d possessed without a thought for anything more than the craving she inspired in him.

And that was the image that stayed with him as he strode away without a word and got into his truck. The image that burned on the back of his eyelids for long hours as he tried to sleep back at the ranch. The image that woke with him the next morning.

F
riday night, Booth
was in town for a much-needed drink. They’d put up five hundred round bales of hay these past few weeks and it was hot and dirty work. They hoped to put up another thousand by the time they reached summer’s end. He was tired and itchy and his temper had been short and foul ever since that darn fool kiss. He’d been out of his mind to give in to impulse. Impulse had led to trouble every single time he’d indulged in it and he’d spent the better part of the last five years learning to limit his baser urges. Willow Phillips had thrown all that hard-fought-for control to the wind.

Booth pushed thoughts of Willow, and the memory of her lush soft lips, firmly from his mind. There was no time to think about her. KD wasn’t one of the biggest spreads around Marietta, but what with hay making and his general duties as ranch foreman, he had more than enough on his plate. Complications were something he needed to avoid. Plus, the county fair started in just under two weeks and Booth would be busy with that, too. He’d agreed to drop three skydivers from the Cessna 172 he operated from the ranch as part of the opening ceremony, then a few days later he was registered to compete in the senior calf-roping competition. Somehow, this year, his heart wasn’t in it. The competitive streak that had seen him win most years had dulled with the need to seek some change in his life, to find newer pastures—preferably his own.

Uncle Kyle had always been an ornery coot, but this week he’d been riding Booth’s back more than usual about one thing and another. Seemed Booth always had to be at least two steps ahead of the old man just to keep him satisfied. All good training for when he ran his own spread, he reluctantly acknowledged, but helluva hard on a man at the same time.

“You going to drink that beer, or just look at it all night?”

Booth looked up to see Reese Kendrick, Grey’s Saloon’s manager, wiping glasses in front of him. He’d been so wrapped in his thoughts he hadn’t even noticed the other man.