The Cowboy Takes a Bride (40 page)

“When did that ever bother you?” He laughed and swatted her bottom.

She giggled and took the baby to the nursery. She diapered him, dressed him in a onesie, and put him in his crib to play with his stuffed horse while she got changed.

“What time is it?” Joe asked, slipping his arm around her and drawing her into their bedroom.

“Six. We need to get a move on. The dedication is at seven.”

They were dedicating the Dutch Callahan Equine Center for disadvantaged children, built on the site where the wedding chapel had once stood. Now there was a new chapel on a plot of land Joe had bought for her in Jubilee. All the cutters from the co-op would be there.

“Hmm, we have just enough time for some hanky-panky.” Joe nuzzled her neck.

“Honey, eight seconds might be a great score for a bull rider, but for a lover, not so hot.”

“Ha-ha.” He danced her to the bed.

“The babysitter will be here at any minute.”

“Too bad.” He started unbuttoning her blouse.

She giggled. How could she refuse her man anything when he made her happier than she’d ever been in her life? She kissed him. Felt his erection stiffen.

With Joe and Jubilee, the ambivalence she’d always felt about her life, about where she belonged, disappeared. She opened herself to him. Not just her mind and her body and her heart, but the very soul of her emotions. She stopped resisting. Stopped being scared. Anxious to show him how she felt, she reached out to take his hand and led him to bed.

He kissed her gently, grazing her mouth.

Their kisses quickly escalated, and soon they were in a fevered rhythm.

Heaven. He was in heaven. Joe sank into his dear sweet wife, wondering how he could ever have been afraid of loving her. He’d never been so happy, and everything they’d gone through to get here was worth it.

Mariah impishly squeezed him tight with her love muscles, working him over as only she could. Her soft moans drove him wilder. Then she came in soft, sweet gasps.

Joe’s body gave one last shudder and he lay gasping against the mattress. He raised his head, glanced over at Mariah. Her eyes were closed, an angelic smile on her smooth face.

“Little Bit of dynamite,” he murmured.

She trailed her fingers up his chest to his shoulder, and then turned her face into the side of his neck with a satisfied sigh. Only the sound of the ticking clock and their harsh breathing interrupted the silence.

He felt great. No, not great. Alive. Mariah had breathed life back into him. Resurrected his soul. Mended his broken heart.

Joe ran his fingers across her cheek, slipping them through the silk of her hair. She’d given him such pleasure. Made him whole again.

“Miracle,” he whispered. “You’re the true miracle.”

Mariah leaned over, sassily nipped his bottom lip with her teeth, and whispered, “And don’t you ever forget it.”

Acknowledgments

I grew up in cowboy country, not far from Fort Worth. I live in the cutting-horse capital of the world, and Jubilee is loosely based on my hometown. I’ve been observing cowboys my whole life. So writing about them wasn’t much of a stretch. All I had to do was walk outside my front door and look around.

A big thank you to the folks at the Cutting Horse Association, who so graciously answered my questions. Also, many thanks to my brother-in-law, Michael Rountree, who is a true cowboy through and through. Stalwart, honest, brave, he epitomizes the cowboy spirit and is an example of what a real cowboy hero should be.

Keep reading for

a sneak peek at Lori Wilde’s next book

The Cowboy and the Princess

Coming in Summer 2012,

only from Avon Books

You might be a princess if . . . you have to ditch your bodyguards to get some “me” time.

B
rady Talmadge had five unbreakable rules for leading an uncomplicated life.

One stormy June night in Texas, he broke them all. Starting with rule number five.

Never pick up a hitchhiker.

He’d honed the rules through twenty-nine years of trial and error, most of them compiled while towing his vagabond horse trailer from town to town, and as long as he stuck to his edicts, life flowed as smooth and simple as the Brazos River ambling to the Gulf.

In regard to the hitchhiker rule, he learned it the hard way. He had a permanent whup-notch on the back of his skull from a pistol-whipping meted out by a wiry, goat-faced thief who’d taken him for thirteen hundred dollars, his favorite belt buckle, and a pair of ostrich-skin cowboy boots. Never mind the four-day hospital stay that drained his savings account to zero because he’d had no health insurance.

On the satellite radio, the weatherman warned of the fierce line of unrelenting storms moving up from Hurricane Betsy. “It’s gonna be a wet night, folks. Find someplace warm and dry to hole up with someone you love.”

Brady took the exit ramp off Interstate 30, heading for the parking lot of Toad’s Big Rig Truck Stop on the outskirts of Dallas. His headlights caught a lone figure huddled on the road shoulder, thumb outstretched. Automatically, his hand went to his occipital bone.

No dice.

Lightning flashed. Thunder crashed. Rain slashed. The hitchhiker shivered violently.

Sorry about your luck, fella.

The eighteen-wheeler in front of Brady splashed a deluge of water over the skinny stranger. Small, vulnerable. Been there. Done that. Lived through it. The fella raised his face, and in a flash of fresh lightning, from underneath the hooded sweatshirt, he saw it wasn’t a guy at all, but a woman.

No, a girl actually. Most likely a runaway.

Don’t do it.

Trampas, his Heinz 57 mutt—who, come to think of it, was a hitchhiker of sorts as well—peered out the window at the dark night and whimpered from the backseat. A year ago, Brady had found the starving puppy, flea-bitten and tick-ridden, on a long stretch of empty road in the Sonoran desert.

He was already driving past her. He’d almost made it. Then hell, if he didn’t glance back and meet the girl’s eyes.

Please
, she mouthed.

Aw, shit.

He didn’t mean to do it. Hadn’t planned on doing it, but the next thing he knew he was slowing down and pulling over. And that’s when he broke rule number four.

Avoid damsels in distress.

That rule came to him courtesy of a short-skirted cowgirl broke down off Route 66 in Flagstaff. She thanked him for changing her flat by inviting him back to her place for a home-cooked fried chicken dinner and rocking hot sex, except she neglected to tell him she had a grizzly bear-sized husband with a high temper and a hammy fist.

Brady rubbed his jaw. He wasn’t going to give the runaway a ride. Just get her inside the building and out of the storm. Maybe buy her a meal if she was hungry. He would toss her a few bucks for one of the cheap bunk-and-bath motels attached to the truck stop and advise her against hitchhiking.

Meddling. That’s meddling in someone else’s business.

Yeah, and where would he be if Dutch Callahan hadn’t meddled in his life fourteen years ago?

Prison, most likely. Or the bone orchard.

He hit the unlock button, knowing it was a bad idea, but doing it anyway. The hitchhiker ran for his truck. She was short enough so that he couldn’t see anything but the top of her head from his perch behind the wheel without peeping into the side view mirror, but he heard her fumble the door handle on the passenger side.

The howling wind snatched at the door, ripping it from her pale, trembling hand and throwing it wide open.

Brady glanced down.

The hitchhiker looked up.

Her eyes were a dusty gray, too large for her small, narrow face, and she stared right into him as if she knew every thought that passed through his head, yet didn’t hold it against him.

He tried to take a deep breath, but to his alarm, discovered that he couldn’t.

For one brief moment, they dangled in suspended animation. Their gazes meshed, their futures strangely entwined.

Drive off!

Of course, he didn’t, couldn’t. Not with her standing there looking like a soaking wet fawn who just lost her mother to a hunter’s gun. But the impulse to run, Brady’s instinct to avoid complications at all costs, fisted around his spine and wouldn’t let go.

“Thank you for stopping,” she said in a voice as soft as lamb’s wool. Looped around her shoulder she carried an oversized satchel. “Your kindness is much appreciated.”

The breath he’d tried to draw finally filled his lungs with a swift
whoosh
of damp night air. He nodded.

Somehow, she managed to plant her feet on the running board, grab the door in her right hand, and then swing up into the seat in one long, smooth, ladylike movement. Her satchel rustled as she tugged the heavy door closed behind her, and with a solid click they were cocooned inside.

Alone.

Her scent, an intriguing combination of rain and talcum powder and honey, filled the cab, vanquishing his own leather, horse, and beef jerky smell. The sweatshirt hoodie was tied down tight under her chin so that he couldn’t see her hair, but her eyebrows were starkly black in startling contrast to skin the color and texture of fresh cream. She possessed the cheekbones of a Swedish supermodel, as high and sharp and cool as the summit of Mount Everest, but in spite of that barrier of heartbreaking beauty, there was something about her that had him yearning to toss an arm around her shoulders and tell her everything was going to be okay. Maybe it was because she was so ethereal—pale and slender and wide-eyed.

She wore dark blue jeans. Plain, brown, round-toed cowboy boots shod her petite feet. In spite of being drenched, both the jeans and boots looked brand-new.

Trampas leaned over the seat, ran his nose along the back of her neck.

“Oh.” She startled, laughed. “Hello.” She reached out a hand to scratch the mutt behind his ear. He whimpered joyously. Attention hound.

“Down, Trampas,” Brady commanded.

The dog snorted, but reluctantly settled, his tail thumping against the backseat.

The hitchhiker turned to snap her seat belt into place, the satchel now clutched in her lap.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Brady said, his words hanging like a curtain in the air between them, not making a lick of sense coming from a traveling man who dragged his home behind him.

She raised her head and met his gaze again. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

Speech eloped. Just ran right off with his brain. On closer inspection, her eyes weren’t simply gray, but loaded with tiny starbursts of sapphire blue. He motioned toward the gas pumps. “I was just . . .”

She canted her head and studied him as if every word that spilled from his mouth was golden. “Yes?”

“Gonna get some gas.”

“That is acceptable.” She folded her hands over the satchel.

Huh? As if she was giving her permission? “And supper. I was gonna have supper.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you stop to pick me up?”

Beats the hell out of me.
“You looked cold. And wet. You looked cold and wet.”

“I am,” she confirmed. “Wet and cold.”

He reached over to turn on the heater, angling the air vents toward her. He had never turned on the heater in June in Texas. First time for everything. “Why didn’t you go inside the truck stop?”

She shrugged as if the gesture said it all.

“No money?”

Her slight smile plucked at him.

“You hungry?”

The shrug again, accompanied by a shy head tilt. She licked lips the color of red honeysuckle, and for no good reason at all, he thought of caramel—sweet, thick, chewy. If he kissed her, she would taste like caramel. He just knew it.

You’re not going to kiss her. Get that idea out of your head right now. You don’t need the hassle.

But the more Brady tried not to think about kissing her, the more her lips beckoned.

“You got a name?” he asked.

“Do you?”

“Brady. Brady Talmadge.” He put out a hand.

She looked at his palm as if shaking hands was an alien concept, then finally took it for a brief second, smirked like someone enjoying a private joke, and said, “Annie.”

“No last name?”

She paused. “Coste.”

“Well, Annie Coste, you can join me inside for a meal, my treat, or you can find yourself another ride and be on your way. It’s up to you.” Damn, he hoped she chose the latter option. She had trouble scribbled all over her. Yeah, so why had he broken his own rules? Because he was a sucker for doe-eyed damsels.