How to Kiss a Cowboy (20 page)

Brady shoved his hand in his pocket as he headed for his truck, then groaned. He was always losing his keys.

He retraced his steps in his mind. He wouldn't have left the keys in the barn; he'd had no reason to take anything out of his pockets there. He wouldn't have left them in Suze's room either.

It had to have happened when they were leaning against the counter, eating their sandwiches. His wallet had felt bulky, and he'd taken it out of his pocket and set it on the counter. For some reason—habit, he guessed—he fished out his keys and set them beside it, probably so he wouldn't forget the wallet.

Naturally, he'd forgotten both.

He glanced back at the house. Suze had barely been able to rein in her emotions when he'd left, and she probably wouldn't be happy to see him back. But, heck, he ought to help her up the stairs anyway. The woman was so exhausted, she probably couldn't even get into bed on her own.

Now there was a dangerous situation—him, Suze Carlyle, and a bed. The last time those three things had gotten together, sparks had flown and he'd been burned to a crisp. If he let that same situation happen now, he had a feeling emotions would fly around the room like wild shots from a Smith & Wesson.

But he wasn't going anywhere until he got his keys. Hopefully she'd already gone upstairs.

He glanced around with pride when he passed through the sunroom. That was one thing he'd gotten right. He'd spent hours cleaning the room, and even dragged one of the recliners from the living room out so she could sit in the sunshine and watch her horses.

Make that the horse. Singular. Thanks to him.

It had been hard to resist showing the porch to Suze, but he'd decided not to mention any of the work he did unless he absolutely had to. That way she wouldn't have to acknowledge any kind of debt.

Because there was no debt—not on her side, anyway. On his side? He'd owe her forever for what he'd done.

He eased open the front door and almost stepped in a pool of milk that was spreading across the hardwood floor, away from the crumpled body of Suze, who was lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. A broken glass lay beside her.

No.
Had she fainted? Fallen down the stairs?

He dropped to his knees. She was breathing, but it was more like gasping. Her shoulders heaved with every breath. Her thick hair had come mostly undone from her braid, but when he tried to brush it aside, it kept flopping back over her face so he couldn't tell if she was pale or flushed.

“Suze? Hey. Sweetheart, hey.”

She made a choking sound. Something was terribly, horribly wrong. Was she having a seizure?

“Talk to me, Suze.”

She turned away, her shoulders trembling as she struggled to catch her breath. It had to be a seizure.

He tried to remember the first aid classes he'd taken. Like most cowboys, he knew a lot about broken bones and head injuries. But seizures? He couldn't remember what to do.

There was something about the tongue. It was coming back to him.

The patient could swallow it, that's what it was. You had to keep that from happening. And you were supposed to make them bite on a stick. He looked around the room and couldn't see anything remotely sticklike except for Suze's crutches, and they were a little big for biting.

She was still bent over, hiding her face. He didn't see how she could swallow her tongue from that position, but he needed to check. He tried to turn her head, but she fought him, slapping at him with both hands.

It was one powerful seizure. Maybe he'd save her life. Man, she'd
hate
that.

But he had to try. He sat a couple steps up and pressed her head against his thigh. He had to manhandle her a little so he could ease his hand into her mouth. He figured he'd grab her tongue and hang on. It wouldn't be pretty, but what else could he do?

Dang, her tongue was slippery, though. She was trying to say something, but it was all garbled. This was getting scary.

He grabbed for her tongue again and almost had it. Then suddenly he wasn't conscious of anything but pain. Intense, very localized pain. In his finger.

She'd
bitten
him.

Well, it might not be a stick, but she probably couldn't swallow her tongue while she was biting his finger. That was the first thing he'd done right, but how far would he have to take this? The way things were going, she was liable to bite his finger
off.

Finally, she let go. He tried to grab her tongue real quick, but she got away from him. He grabbed for one of her crutches, figuring there must be something on there she could bite, but since it was leaning up against the wall, he only succeeded in knocking it down. The armrest hit him on the head.

Good thing it was padded.

Suze was still breathing funny, but something had changed in the rhythm of it. Did seizures have phases? He really wished he'd paid more attention to those first aid classes. What did it mean when the patient's breathing was still heavy, still intense, but…

Wait a minute.

“Are you
laughing
?” he asked.

She shoved him away and sat upright, gasping for breath. He was glad to see there was plenty of color in her face, and though her eyes looked glassy and wet, and her lips were swollen, she didn't seem to be having a seizure at all. In fact, she was laughing so hard she could still barely breathe.

Hysterics.
What did you do about hysterics?

“Suze.” He took both her hands so she wouldn't be able to hurt herself. She hadn't tried, but you never knew. Naturally, she fought him, but he held on.

“Are you all right?” He spoke slowly, so she would understand despite her mental state. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”

“No.” She struggled to speak, she was laughing so hard. “I'm fine. Let me
go
.” She wrenched her hands away. “What the heck were you
doing
?”

“Trying to save your life,” he said. “But you
bit
me.”

She was still having trouble containing her laughter. “Save me from
what
?”

“A seizure. I thought you were having some kind of, um, episode.”

She only laughed harder. Well, at least she was smiling. He might as well play it for all it was worth.

“I was trying to save your life. Then your stupid crutch clonked me on the head, and all you can do is laugh.” He rubbed his head and did his best to look put-upon. Actually, he was mostly relieved. But it was obvious Suze had been crying, so if she wanted to laugh at him, that was fine with him.

She held her stomach, wiping her eyes and gasping. “Maybe you did,” she said.

“Maybe I did
what
?”

“Save me,” she said. “I was having one heck of a pity party.” She sniffed a few times and wiped her eyes again. “It wasn't doing me any good. So you saved me from myself.” She chuckled, as if she couldn't help herself. “You made me laugh. It was just what I needed. Oh, Brady, it was so
funny
! Why did you stick your finger in my mouth?”

“I was making sure you didn't swallow your tongue.”

“So what were you going to do, hang on to it?”

“Well, what else was I supposed to do? You were breathing funny.” He imitated the way she'd been heaving and sobbing and—sobbing.

“Oh.” The truth dawned on him. Dang, he was an idiot. “I guess—I guess you were crying.”

Suze's laughter slowed, then stopped. She gave Brady a wide-eyed look of unfeigned amazement.

“Haven't you ever seen a woman cry before?”

He squirmed. “Probably, once or twice. I—I try to avoid that kind of thing.”

“I'm sure you've
made
a few cry. What do you do, run away when the emotions get too hot to handle?”

He looked down at his lap. “Yeah, pretty much.”

He expected her to lecture him or make some dismissive comment, but she just shook her head, her smile screwed down tight to hold in more laughter. “You don't even know the effect you have, do you?” She straightened and rested one elbow on his knee.

He wondered if she realized she was touching him. Then he wondered if she realized what that did to him. Then he decided to stop wondering about stuff and just enjoy it.

“It's like you're a big, happy, affectionate puppy, and you jump on people and knock everything over, and then you just go on being happy and affectionate while they try to clean up behind you,” she said. “You have no idea the destruction you leave behind.”

That didn't sound like a compliment. He bent down and drew her hair back from her face again, noticing her nose was still red and swollen, her eyes damp and bruised-looking. Was that the kind of destruction he left behind when he walked away from a woman? Shoot. Sometimes they yelled at him. Once in a while they even threw stuff at him. But crying? He sure hoped not.

“I've seen women cry before.” He stroked her hair absently, as if he hadn't noticed her face. “I've just never seen a woman cry that
hard
. You couldn't even stand up. What happened, Suze?” He bunched her hair up around what was left of her braid so she couldn't hide her face. That made a handy handle so he could turn her head to face him. “I've never seen you break down like that. What's wrong?”

“Well, for starters, I'm not your Howdy Doody puppet.” Wrenching her hair out of his hand, she pulled away and shook her head, wreaking more destruction on what was once a tight and tidy braid. “I dropped my glass of milk.” She rested her elbows on her thighs, letting her hands hang limp between her knees as she stared straight ahead. “Then I, um…” She lowered her head, as if a sudden pain had struck. “I slipped trying to catch it. That's all.”

He had a feeling she wasn't telling the truth. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No,” she said. “
You
hurt me. Remember? Horse? Rope? Dumb move?”

This was the Suze he knew. Things couldn't be too bad if she could still be mad at him.

“I know I hurt you,” he said. “But something's going on.”

“It got to me, okay? I had to go up the stairs again, and it got to me.”

“What got to you? Your ankle? Your wrist? You need to go to the hospital?”

A tear skimmed down her cheek and dropped onto the knee of her sweatpants. “Jeez, Brady, you are so clueless.
Everything
got to me. The whole situation. I'm
worried
, okay? I'm worried I won't be able to ride again, and I'm scared. I get tired of pretending I'm okay, and I
thought
nobody was around. I
thought
I could let loose and cry a little without anybody making a big deal out of it.”

“So you didn't slip?”

She shook her head. “Clueless.”

Another tear fell, and he couldn't help reaching out and wiping it away with the backs of his fingers. “I'm so sorry, Suze. You can't even imagine how sorry I am.”

“Sorry doesn't help much.” She looked away again, ignoring the fact that she was staring directly at the side of the newel post, two inches from her face. “I'm hurt, and I'm pretty damned helpless. And unfortunately, people aren't exactly lining up to help, you know?” She sucked in a shuddering breath, and he could tell she was still on the edge of tears. “You're the only person who's offered, and I'm sorry, but you're the last person I want around right now.”

“I know,” he said. “I understand.”

He was lying, of course. He didn't understand a damn thing—not about women in general, and certainly not about Suze in particular. His friends were always calling him a ladies' man, but all he did was love them when they'd let him, and stay away when they threw stuff.

But he couldn't stay away from Suze. He owed her. And if he was honest with himself, she'd been something special to him even before the accident. She was worth ten rodeo queens, twenty buckle bunnies—a million. He probably ought to tell her that, but he doubted she wanted to hear it now.

Another shudder racked her body and he scooted down a step, so he was sitting right beside her, and put his arm around her shoulders. When she didn't shrug it off, he edged a little nearer. While he'd been trying to figure out what to say, she'd lost the fight to fake it. She was crying again, harder than ever, without shame.

Suze might have every reason to hate him, but Brady knew nobody should ever feel this bad without someone to comfort them. Pulling her head down to his shoulder, he wrapped his other arm around her and drew her close.

To his surprise, she let him hold her. And she wept. That
was
a new experience for Brady. Women cried when they were mad. They sobbed when they thought their hearts had been broken forever. But Suze was weeping, and it was all his fault. Her loss went way beyond anger or heartbreak. She'd lost her sport, her vocation, her career, her everything. She'd lost her
self
, and that's what she was mourning.

He'd done that—him and his ego and that stupid horse, Booger, along with the rope he'd hung on to a second too long.

He whispered into Suze's ear. He didn't know what he was saying or where it came from. It was mostly
there,
there
's and
now,
now
's, along with some nonsense words. It must have made her feel better because her shoulders shook less and less. He swayed gently, rocking her as if she were a child, and she clung to him as if she needed him. He was surprised and ashamed at how good it felt.

All this was his fault. And here he was, using her misery to get close to her. He was the biggest jerk in the universe. But, dang, it was nice to rub her back, slow and steady, in an easy rhythm he thought might help quiet the tempest of emotions that had demolished her rigid self-control.

He prayed the phone wouldn't ring. He prayed her father wouldn't come home and ruin the moment. He prayed this would last forever, the two of them on the stairs just holding each other, but of course it had to end.

Slowly, Suze regained control. He'd known she would; a great competitor never let things rattle her for long.

She pulled away, but only a little, and scanned his eyes for a long time, as if searching out his deepest thoughts. He never knew what to say to women, and when he tried to express his feelings, he usually said the wrong thing. But he knew how to open up and be honest with his eyes and with his touch. He'd learned that from horses, just as Suze had.

But women liked words, and he liked Suze. So he had to try.

“When other women cry, I feel bad,” he said. “When you cry, it's like the whole world's falling apart.”

“I'm sorry.” She sniffed. “I don't normally cry that hard.”

“No, that's not what I mean. I know you don't cry much. That's why it feels like
my
whole world's falling apart. I just want to fix what's wrong so we can get back to normal, and you can ride away mad like you always do.”

“Ride away…”

Her expression was so sorrowful he didn't just want to kick himself; he wanted to pound himself to a pulp in a bar fight. Why did he go and say
ride
?

A tear leaked from the corner of her eye.

“Hey.” He wiped it away with one finger and stroked her hair back from her face. And then he kissed her.

Miracle of miracles, she kissed him back.

He went slow, giving her every opportunity to pull away and laugh it off, but she reached up and knotted her fingers in the hair that curled over his collar. She pulled him in and kissed him like she was hungry, like she needed him every bit as much as he wanted—no,
needed
—her.

He ran his hands down her back, moving softly to soothe the bruises and brush burns from the accident. She whimpered—a sweet, kittenish sound he'd never expected to hear from Suze—and wriggled closer to him.

And then she pulled away. He opened his eyes, expecting her to be angry, but she was smiling. They looked in each other's eyes a long while, smiling like a couple of fools, and he felt his world shift, as if everything had changed.

“Brady.” She started fooling with the top button on his shirt, and he held his breath, hoping she'd move down and undo the next one, and the next. But she just kept smiling and twisting that same button. “Why do you have to be so darn sweet?”

“What?”

She touched her lips with the tips of her fingers, as if she could still feel the kiss. “I'm mad at you, dang it, and you made me forget.”

His disappointment must have shown in his face, because she gave him a pitying look.

“You don't think we're going to carry on some torrid romance while I'm recovering from my Brady-inflicted wounds, do you?”

“No.” He raked his hand through his hair. “No, I wasn't thinking that way at all. It's just—I couldn't help it.”

“Get a grip, Brady.” She huffed out a bitter laugh. “Guys like you don't go for girls like me. Not for the long term, and I don't do the short term.” She glanced around the room like a trapped animal, and he knew she was remembering their brief liaison. “Anymore. I don't do the short term
anymore
.”

She tossed her hair, then winced as if that hurt too.

He winced with her. “Guys like me? Girls like you? What are you talking about?”

She nodded. “You know.” She gazed up at the ceiling as if she needed strength from above to deal with him. “You're a ten, Brady. You can have anybody you want. Someday, when you're ready, you'll find some sweet, pretty, young thing, and you'll build you a little nest, and she'll make it all cozy and nice, and you'll have it made.” She sighed. “I might win races, but you win at life.”

He ran his hand down his face, struggling for control.

“And what are you going to do, while I'm off nesting with my pretty, young thing?”

She grinned, and suddenly the old Suze was back. “I'm going to win races.”

“So if we're so different, how do you explain what happened that night?”

“You mean the night I got drunk and slept with you? Easy. I got drunk.”

“You had two beers. Maybe three.” He held up three fingers, in case she'd missed his point. “And I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about everything else. Don't you remember anything about that night?” He sat back down beside her. “Don't you remember how we couldn't stop talking?”

“Until the next morning. You didn't have much to say then.”

He tugged at the collar of his T-shirt, as if the room had gotten too warm. “I really did have a meeting, and I was late. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

She looked away, seemingly transfixed by the doorknob. “You know, it doesn't really matter to the hurt person whether it was on purpose or not. It still hurts.”

“Guess I never thought about that.”

“Guess you never did.” She started to stand and he stood with her, leaving her nowhere to go. She stared down at her cast. “We're just bad for each other, Brady.”

“No,” he said. “You're wrong. We're too much alike to be bad for each other. We both lost parents when we were young. We both found solace in horses. We both love taking risks, riding hard. We're alike, Suze.” He dodged around, forcing her to look at him. Finally, he took her face between his hands, as if he was about to kiss her. “When you kissed me just now,” he said, “you meant it.”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“You aren't drunk now.” He brushed her lips with his. She let out a little sigh, scented with some sort of mints, and her lips moved, then her tongue, just a little, the tip flicking out to stroke his lower lip.

It was a short kiss but a sweet one.

“So explain
that.
” He had her there. He knew it. There was no way she'd be able to explain away that kiss. Not to herself, and certainly not to him.

“Painkillers,” she said. “I took a double dose.
Phew
.” She wiped her brow with one hand. “Better not do
that
again.”