Kissed by a Cowboy (10 page)

But having a job didn't make up for losing
Haley.

Every time he breathed in deeply, it felt
like knives slicing through his lungs. He missed her so much.

It had been almost three weeks, and he'd
heard nothing. Not that he'd expected to—he'd made his wishes clear
that last day. But now, he was dying inside, a little each day.

He was still mulling the new job offer over
when he got home with the boxed meal the restaurant manager had
pushed on him.

Only to find Justin on his feet, wrestling
with the old brown recliner.

"What're you doing?" Maddox dumped the food
on the kitchen table and rushed to take the weight of the chair.
Last thing Justin needed was for that chair to topple over and land
on his only remaining good leg.

"I got to thinking," Justin said, huffing.
"That it's time to get rid of this old thing."

Their eyes met over the top of the stinky
chair.

He knew what Justin was saying. More than the
recliner, it was time to let the past go.

His dad had sat in the chair and drunk
himself to death. Maddox barely had any good memories of the
man.

Ma had sat in this chair, swallowed by her
grief. After she'd lost Katie, she'd lost herself.

Justin had almost done the same. His injury
had made him give up on life.

But if he was man enough to get out of the
chair, he was on the road to total recovery. His hip might not be
fully functional, and he might always have a limp, but he could
move on.

Maddox felt a hot burn behind his eyes. He
cleared his throat. "I'm proud of you."

"Yeah, yeah." Justin leaned down to pick up
the crutch he'd laid across the fireplace hearth. "After you take
that out to the dump, you need to get in your truck and head to
Oklahoma City."

Maddox grunted. He angled the chair toward
the door, eyeing the frame. The chair wasn't going to fit
upright.

"I'm not kidding," Justin said. "You can't
just let a girl like Haley get away."

Maddox pushed the chair across the floor. It
hung up on a patch of old carpet and he almost fell over the top of
it, getting a good wallop in the stomach when it rebounded.

"Mad. I'm serious."

"She's the one who left," he huffed. She'd
left him behind. Again.

"And you've been moping around here for three
weeks. You've got two feet and a truck. So go get her and bring her
back."

His heart panged once, hard. "It's not that
easy. I've got a lead on a job, but I've got to prove myself—"

"Prove what?" Justin demanded. "Prove that
you're just as much of an idiot as our father? She's in love with
you—if you haven't messed that up. She'll stand by you."

He wanted to believe...wanted to believe it
so badly.

Maddox's heart thudded in his chest. "I've
been pretty stupid."

"No kidding. What else is new? But she fell
in love with you knowing that football players have a couple screws
loose, so this little act of stupidity probably hasn't surprised
her much."

Could he really take Justin's advice?

What if she couldn't forgive him for breaking
her heart?

Worse than that, what if he never tried to
put it back together?

#

Haley had
settled into her normal routine.

Sort of.

She went to work. And stared at her computer
screen all day. She wasn't getting a lot done.

She came home. And tried not to stare at her
phone, willing Maddox to call.

She'd called his house and spoken to Livy
several times, checking on the business, checking on the girl.

She'd shied away from asking
about Maddox. When Livy had offered tidbits like
he liked the root beer float
flavor
, Haley had
mm-hmmed
and moved on.

What was wrong with her?

She had a car. Gas. Keys. She could drive
back to Redbud Trails any time. She wanted to take the man by the
shoulders and shake him. Or maybe kiss him.

She didn't know what she'd been thinking that
last day. Maybe she'd let her grief blind her, or her fear.

She
knew
there was something between her
and Maddox. It had been too strong to deny, and too strong to fade
away.

She'd talked herself into a weekend trip and
had her keys dangling from her fingers when she exited her front
door. And stopped short.

There was a big, dusty truck in her
driveway.

She barely registered the truck before a
tall, dusty cowboy stood in her way, too.

She threw herself at him. And he caught
her.

"What took you so long?" she mumbled into his
shoulder.

He rumbled a laugh. "Sorry."
She felt the press of his chin in her hair. "It took this big,
dumb
Ox
a little
bit to get things figured out."

She tilted her chin back and squinted up at
him. "Don't call yourself dumb."

He used the opportunity to rub his thumb
along the line of her jaw.

"So what did you figure out?" she
whispered.

"Well, the financial situation is still a
little sticky," he said. "But mostly, I realized that I was
focusing on the wrong things, like your dad did."

He brushed a kiss across her temple.

"And letting the best thing in my life get
away, kind of like my dad did."

Now he brushed a kiss across her cheek.

"And I don't want to be like either of
them."

"You're not—" she started to say.

And he sure kissed her like he agreed.

When they broke away minutes later, both
panting and out-of-breath, he noticed the keys dangling from her
hand. "Going somewhere?"

"I was on my way to Redbud Trails." She
couldn't help the shy smile. "You're not the only one who was being
less-smart than they should be." She looked down briefly but then
back up at him, his overwhelming presence—and his kisses—giving her
courage. "I shouldn't have left without telling you I was in love
with you."

He lit up from the inside out.

"And not because of your bank account," she
went on. "Or your farm."

He lifted his eyebrows.

"It's definitely because of your niece's ice
cream." She stood on her tiptoes and brushed a kiss against his
lips. "I want a piece of the business."

He leaned down and kissed her beneath her
jaw. "You already own a piece of it."

"Hmm." She giggled and tucked her chin down
when his hot breath tickled her neck. "I guess it must be something
else, then."

She pushed on his shoulders until he was far
enough away that she could see his face. "It's because of who you
are. The man who wouldn't give up on his brother. Who redid the
kitchen to make a little girl's dream come true."

The quiet joy on his face made the heartfelt
confession easy.

"Wanna know why I'm in love with you?" he
asked.

Her heart soared up into her throat, and she
nodded.

He cupped her jaw in one hand. "Same reason.
Because of who you are. Your quiet spirit and gentle heart that saw
my niece's needs and found a way to meet them. You reached out to
Justin when the rest of the outside world forgot him and gave him
the courage to go on." He swallowed hard. "And you found a way
inside my heart when I thought it was too full of worrying about
everything else." His expression darkened. "I don't know how
everything's going to work out."

"That's okay. We can figure it out
together."

"Together." He breathed in deeply. "That
sounds so right."

And he kissed her again.

THE END

Dear Reader

Thanks for picking up this INSPY KISSES
novella! I hope you enjoyed it. Please consider leaving a review.
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Turn the page for a sneak
peak at the
First Kisses
Collection
...

Excerpt from
Linda Goodnight's The Rambler's Bride

So that's where she lived-the harlot who had
killed his brother.

Jericho North shifted in the well-worn saddle
and stared down upon the small ranch spread in the valley below,
his lip curled in loathing for the woman he'd never met. He'd
warned Silas against her, hadn't he? He'd done his best to stop his
brother's foolish decision. And now Silas was as dead as Jericho's
insides.

Beneath him the paint horse stomped, blowing
nostril smoke into the chill March afternoon as if to question his
master's pause. A swirl of wood smoke rose from the cabin into the
slate gray heavens, the promised warmth a lure. Like the woman had
been to his brother.

For a hundred miles or more he'd considered
exactly what he'd do when he arrived at Silas's homestead on the
Kansas prairie. He still didn't know if he'd stay. One thing for
certain, the harlot had to go.

While he squinted, thinking, a red roan horse
came into sight and stopped in front of the log cabin. A woman came
out onto the porch, hugging a blue shawl to her chest. Esther. The
harlot.

Anger unfurled inside him, a snake ready to
strike. He'd been angry so long he didn't know how to feel anything
else.

A man in a suit and black bowler dismounted
and approached the porch. He grasped the woman's arm and she shrank
back, resistant.

Jericho frowned, more interested than he
wanted to be.

Leaning forward in the saddle, he squinted
hard, saw the woman struggle against the man's superior grip.
Struggle and fail. Jericho should be happy to see her in trouble
but he wanted to be the cause. Not some dandy in a black
bowler.

Whatever the dandy wanted couldn't be as
troubling as the news Jericho carried inside the pocket of his
duster.

A grim smile flickered.

A man against a woman. He didn't like the
odds. Might as well make it two.

He clicked his tongue softly and tapped his
heels to the strong brown flanks that had carried him hundreds of
miles for this moment.

Time for a reckoning.

Read the rest in THE
RAMBLER'S BRIDE by
New York Times
and
USA TODAY
bestselling author Linda Goodnight - available
March 15!

More teasers...

Excerpt from
Janet Tronstad's Lovebirds at the Heartbreak Cafe

July 1958

A fly buzzed outside the
screened window of the Heartbreak Cafe while, inside, a truck
driver named Buddy Hamilton sat in a worn booth and nursed his tall
glass of lemonade. He'd seen the
Waitress
Wanted
sign in the café window for the past
month, but he hadn't paid it much attention. Jobs were scarce, but
working at the Heartbreak couldn't be anyone's dream come
true.

Besides, the place with its white and black
cracked linoleum and slow-moving ceiling fan was practically
deserted. Right now, it was only him and another trucker – a man he
called Shades in honor of the movie star sunglasses he wore. Buddy
and Shades never spoke, but they nodded hello and good-bye the way
truckers did with each other.

Buddy was starting to stand up and make his
farewell nod to the other man when the door opened.

Whoa
, he thought, as he stood there, trying to keep his mouth from
hanging open. A gorgeous blonde woman stepped into the cafe. Well,
not so much stepped as bounced. Then she stopped and pointed at the
waitress ad with a red-tipped finger. Buddy had always been a
sucker for polished nails on a beautiful woman.

"Well, hello there," he said in his
friendliest voice.

She smiled back at him and his heart
raced.

He was trying to think of something clever to
say when Fred Norris, the middle-aged owner of the cafe, came out
of the kitchen and saw her. Bubby couldn't help but notice Fred's
appreciative look turn a little sour when he saw where she was
pointing. The man always said he didn't hire young women because
they didn't stay on the job and this one looked like she couldn't
be much past twenty-one. Still, Fred set down the coffee pot he had
been carrying and motioned for the woman to take a seat.

Buddy sat back down, figuring he should stay
around to console the woman when Fred refused to hire her. She was
a looker, all right. Now that he saw her up close, he could see she
was more wholesome than he'd first thought with her shining golden
hair pulled into a sleek ponytail and the ends of her white
long-sleeved shirt knotted tight around the waist of her denim
jeans.

Her cheeks were rosy and Buddy didn't think
she was wearing any makeup. But then he could never tell those
things. He did notice she had a bit of what looked like grape jelly
on one cuff of that blouse of hers. She probably didn't even know
it was there.

Buddy enjoyed looking at the woman, but Fred
was right -- she didn't belong here. He figured she'd taken a break
from a cheerleading squad on some college campus. When she got the
full picture of Webster Crossing though, no amount of rah-rah
optimism would make her stay. The place was so nondescript that he
wouldn't be stopping himself if it wasn't the only place to eat
along this stretch of desolate highway.

Read the rest in LOVEBIRDS
AT THE HEARTBREAK CAFE by
USA TODAY
bestselling author Janet Tronstad - available
March 15!