Hot Cowboy Nights (10 page)

“But not a smartass?” Lizzy spun around, lost her balance, and fell into Toby’s chest. His arms closed around her and he buried his face in her hair. His warm breath making its way down to her scalp created pictures in her imagination that would never be anything but illusive visions.

“Y’all don’t have to do stunts like that in front of me.” Deke picked up the cat and rubbed her ears. “I know you’re not for real. I’ll take this girl home with me if you don’t want her.”

“Lizzy’s named the cat so I don’t reckon she’ll let you have her now.” Toby took a step back.

“Stormy. That’s her name,” Lizzy said.

“Fittin’ name but I want her and the kittens for my barn if you change your mind.” Deke handed the cat off to Lizzy. “You ready to get back to work, Toby? You got mesquite to plow down and I’ve got wood to cut if I’m going to take a few weeks off and help Allie.”

Stormy cuddled right into Lizzy’s arms. “You didn’t get any damage at all, Deke?”

“Not a bit, but I’m livin’ right,” he teased.

E
very song on the radio reminded Toby in some way of Lizzy that Saturday morning when he settled into the dozer seat and started pushing mesquite trees up out of the wet earth. It had been four days since the tornado stripped them of their leaves, but they still had paper stuck firmly to their limber branches.

It was hot work, and by midmorning sweat had soaked through his shirt, plastering it to his body. The sun was almost straight up when he geared down and braked. He reached down to the floorboard and opened a small cooler, took out a fistful of ice, and rubbed it across his forehead, letting the cold water mix with the hot sweat as it ran down his cheeks and dripped onto his chest. He settled his hat on the steering wheel and scooped up a double handful of chilly water and hurriedly dumped it on the top of his head.

“Ahhh,” he murmured.

Josh Turner’s song, “Why Don’t We Just Dance,” started up as Toby settled the hat back on his wet hair. He kept time with his shoulders and sang along with the lyrics. He chuckled when the lyrics said that the whole world had gone crazy. That was damn sure the story of his life, but by the middle of July, it would go back to normal.

Right now he had a job to do and then he was picking Lizzy up for dinner at six o’clock. Thinking about seeing her again brought back memories of those nights he’d spent with her in the back room of her mama’s convenience store. Imagining her soft skin and those gorgeous breasts made his mouth go dry. Without stopping the dozer, he pulled a bottle of cold water from the cooler and nearly drank the whole thing in one guzzle, unsure what was making him hotter: the midday sun or his thoughts of those sweaty nights with Lizzy.

Lizzy was in a horrible mood that Saturday night. She had dealt, finally, with the insurance company, and the work to repair the store could begin on Monday. Allie and Deke had set aside time to get it done, barring bad weather. Folks might not pray for a tornado, but they did for rain at least twice a day and three times on Sunday, and either storms or rain could slow down the work.

She dressed in jeans, a plaid pearl snap shirt, and her most comfortable boots, the ones she’d gone dancing in the week before. She brushed out her hair and thought about the curling iron but, hey, this wasn’t a real date. Why do the whole nine yards? They could each take a book, go to the banks of the river, and sit in the bed of his truck and read until time to come home. As long as he picked her up at about the right time and gave her a good night kiss on the porch before he left, the gossipmongers would be satisfied.

“Damn it, this whole play-dating thing is so childish that he should be picking me up in a little red wagon and taking me up the lane to get a snow cone.” She fussed at her reflection in the mirror.

The doorbell rang and she picked up her purse. Toby was braced against the doorjamb when she opened the old-fashioned screen door and stepped out onto the porch. Sweet Lord! He looked like sex on a stick in that plaid shirt that stretched across his chest and tucked into his trim waist behind a big silver belt buckle. His blue eyes never left hers and—well, merciful heavens—all that sweltering heat would convince anyone that they were seriously dating. A soft breeze delivered his aftershave right to her nose. The scent was something clean and fresh like a hot summer night with a hint of musk in the air after a warm rain.

“I’m leaving, Mama. See you tomorrow morning,” she called over her shoulder, amazed that her voice sounded even semi-normal.

“So you are planning to stay out all night?” Toby wiggled his eyebrows, his eyes dancing with mischief.

“No, Mama won’t be home until midnight. She and her two friends are going to dinner and then to a late movie. I’ll be snoring long before she gets home,” Lizzy said.

“Where to?” Toby ushered her out to the truck.

“I don’t care if it’s a Dairy Queen cheeseburger. Matter of fact that sounds delicious, but the closest one is in Olney and you know what happened when we went there. The next one is up in Seymour and that’s forty miles from here,” she said.

“Sounds good to me. You navigate and I’ll drive,” he said.

“I’m hungry so we’ll take the shortcut. It’s back roads but very little traffic.”

He nodded when she told him which way to turn, and they made it to the Dairy Queen in thirty-eight minutes. She’d kept count of the words he’d said during that time and it was far less than a word a minute. This fake shit wasn’t worth a damn when it came right down to it.

He parked at the edge of the parking lot and when he opened the door for her, she caught a whiff of something floral.

“Honeysuckle.” He sniffed the air.

“I’m going to plant it when I get my own place. I love that smell and the vines are pretty three seasons out of the year,” she said, and smiled.

Well, hell’s bells on a snake oil wagon! If he’d known honeysuckle could turn her pretty lips into a smile, he would have found a whole fistful and brought them to her. “Oh, yeah, and what else are you going to do to your own place? I figured you’d be content to live at Audrey’s Place forever.”

She shook her head. “That’s home and I will most likely end up living there because of default. Fiona is married and living in Houston. She has no desire to ever come home. Allie is settling in real well over on y’all’s ranch, and she won’t come back to Audrey’s now that she’s got a home with Blake.”

The scent of burgers, fries, and taco seasonings met them when they were inside the place. “But it’s not what you wanted, is it?”

“No, looks like they’ve got a special on tacos. Now I don’t know what I want. I’ve been craving a big juicy bacon cheeseburger, but those tacos sure smell good,” she said.

They lined up behind an elderly couple who couldn’t make up their minds between chicken sandwiches or shrimp baskets. Toby used the time to ask her again what she’d have if she could build anything.

“I always thought I’d start with a trailer house. When I was a kid I went over onto the Lucky Penny property to the east of us and discovered this really old water well. I used to dream that someday I would own that little bit of acreage and would put a trailer on it that was all mine and use that well for the water. Then when I got it paid for I would build a house and sell the trailer to Fiona,” she said. “But that was a ten-year-old little girl’s dream as she laid on her back and looked up past the mesquite and cow tongue cactus at the clouds in the sky.”

“Why wouldn’t you sell it to Allie?” he asked.

“When I was ten, I did not like my older sister. She was bossy.”

Toby laughed so loud that the elderly couple turned around.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Never apologize for humor,” the lady said. “It’s what makes life worth living.”

“What is so funny?” Lizzy whispered.

“I hated my older brothers and even my cousin Jud when I was ten years old, too. They were full of themselves and bossy as hell,” he said.

“So we were in the same boat. You had a bossy cousin and brothers. I had sisters,” she said. “Any chance you want to sell five acres of your ranch to me? The five over beside that old water well?”

“Hell, no! We’re going to need that well water for our cattle tanks. In a few weeks we’ll be beggin’ for rain to irrigate the fields.”

“What can I get you?” the teenager behind the counter asked when the elderly couple took a table number and moved on. “Tonight’s special is tacos or taco salad.”

They ordered and the lady set the disposable cups on the counter. Lizzy handed one to Toby and headed straight back to the fountain machine to fill hers with Diet Coke. He followed her and stuck his under the ice dispenser and then the spigot on the big metal sweet tea container.

“We could have gone somewhere else, but I thought you liked tacos,” he said.

“I’m in a pissy mood, Toby. When I get like this I eat too much and then feel guilty and it puts me in a worse mood. We could take our food to go and drive back home. Granny called this my Jesus mood and you shouldn’t have to put up with it,” she said honestly.

“Jesus mood?” One eyebrow shot up.

She slid into the nearest booth. “Even Jesus couldn’t live with me when I get like this.”

He sat across from her instead of beside her. “We might as well eat here because I’m in the same mood. Just never heard it called that before.” He removed his cowboy hat, laid it to the side, and combed his dark hair back with his fingertips.

“What’s your problem?” she asked.

“If I knew that, I could talk myself out of whatever it is.” He knew exactly what his problem was, and it was sitting across the table from him. “And yours?”

Lizzy shrugged. “Tornadoes, insurance adjustors, a sister who scares the hell out of me when she talks about roofing my whole shop, a mother who’s making friends and leaving me alone, and a granny who doesn’t know me most of the time. Take your choice.”

She was lying but she wasn’t going to admit that her problem was Toby Dawson and that when his knee touched hers every so often, it reminded her too damn clearly of how much she’d enjoyed those sizzling nights she’d spent with him.

The waitress brought their food on a tray. Lizzy removed the paper from a taco and added a healthy dose of Louisiana hot sauce from the bottle on the table.

Toby peeled the paper back from his burger and bit into it. “Like your tacos with a little fire, do you?”

Tacos weren’t the only thing Lizzy liked served hot. She hadn’t known it until she met Toby, and going back to anything less would be dull as…well, as dull as Mitch. There she’d said it, or rather thought it. Mitch was dull, both in the bedroom and outside of it. Naturally, he’d come out on the short end of the stick when compared to someone like Toby, so she wasn’t being fair. But then Mitch hadn’t been fair, either, when he broke up with her on the phone on the day of her sister’s wedding.

“So hot you can’t speak?” Toby asked.

“Not nearly that hot,” she answered.

The only thing that hot had been sex with Toby, and anything with that much heat couldn’t last longer than a few weeks. Like a flash in a pan it would burn itself out, and all that would remain would be two people that were totally unsuited to each other.

“Thoughts?” he asked.

“I’m glad Wanda isn’t here. This taco has flat out put me in a good mood and I’d hate to lose it because of her.” Maybe it wasn’t what she’d been thinking about but it was the truth. “And I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach, so I’ll be taking my burger home for a midnight snack.”

“I’d forgotten how big one of these things are, too. My tacos will go out of here in a take-out sack rather than my stomach.” He grinned. “I’ll have them for breakfast. And, Lizzy, don’t let that woman or all the gossip get under your skin. Be yourself and tell anyone who doesn’t like it to go to hell.”

“Practice what you preach,” she shot back at him.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it says. You’ve had this reputation that you work hard to live up to, but down deep in your heart, you’re not happy with it. How old are you?” Lizzy asked.

“Twenty-seven,” he answered gruffly.

“Each year you’ll get older and the bar bunnies will get younger. Think about that. The ones you’ll be chasing when you are forty are playing with Barbie dolls today,” she said.

He took a long drink of his sweet tea. “That was mean.”

“That, darlin’, was the truth. You don’t fit into that mold any more than I fit into one with preacher’s wife engraved on the outside.”

He laid the burger down and his blue eyes locked with her brown ones, searching her soul. “Go on,” he whispered.

“Nothing to go on about. I would have been miserable.”

“And you think I’m not happy with my lifestyle? That I’m miserable?” he asked.

“Fake girlfriend’s opinions don’t amount to a damn.”

“Lizzy, you are my friend. So tell me why you think I’m miserable,” he pressed.

She carefully undid her second taco and was a lot less generous with the hot sauce that time. “First, you tell me why you think I don’t fit in the mold Mitch tried to put me in.”

“I know you, Lizzy. I know you like burgers and tacos and that you are a no-fuss type of woman. That’s why I brought you here instead of some fancy restaurant where we’d have a five-course meal and it would take three hours to get through it. I know you like your work and that you love Dry Creek and you’d be miserable outside of it. Mitch was trying to change you into a different Lizzy Logan, one that he wanted. Now you tell me why I don’t like my fancy-free lifestyle. You didn’t stay in your mold long enough to get it warm. I’ve been in mine more than a decade.” He picked up her cup and carried them to the fountain machine for a refill. “It was Diet Coke, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, but this time I want sweet tea, please.”

He set both cups of tea on the table and slid back into the booth. “I’ve been in my mold so long that I’m real warm and comfortable in it. No matter what people think or say, I’m not sure I want to move over to something else. It would be like changing beds. The old one has lumps and dips and maybe the springs even poke me once in a while. But a new one would take weeks, maybe years, to get used to.”

“That’s your decision. I like my new bed, and the more time goes by the better I like it. But remember that you can stop this anytime you want and crawl right back into your comfortable rut that is so warm and cozy. We don’t have to keep up this charade a day longer than you want to,” Lizzy said.

She’d never seen a man chew as slowly as Toby did on that last bite of burger. Evidently he needed a long time to think about her suggestion. It would free him to chase his bar bimbos on the weekends instead of eating burgers and tacos with her, a plain old Dairy Queen.

His phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket, checked the message, and put it back.

“Another woman trying to chase down a morning-after breakfast?” she asked.

He nodded and picked up his tea. It buzzed again before he could even take a drink. Pulling it out again, he rolled his sexy blue eyes toward the ceiling and sighed. “Sharlene, this time! I thought she’d quit when she found out that we are seeing each other. If you’re game we might need to stretch this out past July Fourth. That woman is relentless. And she’s supposed to be your friend?”