The Littlest Cowboy (16 page)

“Your ribs are bruised to hell and gone. Damn, Chelsea, maybe we oughtta drive into El Paso and get you some x-rays.”

She shook her head. “Nothing’s broken.”

“You sure? Would you even know what a broken bone felt like? I mean, if you’ve never—”

“I’ve had plenty of broken bones, Garrett. I know what they feel like.”

“You…?” He stopped without finishing the question, but it was in his eyes as they met hers, searching.

“Yeah. A wrist once. A couple of ribs another time. And then there was the collarbone.”

He swallowed so hard she saw the way his Adam’s apple swelled and receded like a wave moving under his skin. “Your father?” The words were like a croak.

She only nodded.

Garrett closed his deep brown eyes very tight.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I survived it in one piece.”

He opened his eyes, facing her, shaking his head. “But you didn’t, Chelsea. You think every man who cares for you is gonna hurt you somehow, and that just isn’t true.”

“Isn’t it? I don’t know, Garrett. I think believing that is what got my sister killed.”

He sighed long and deep, but said nothing more. Instead, he looked again at her exposed skin and resumed the process of smoothing ointment over her bruises. His fingers trembled a little. But he finished, wiped his fingers on a rag and recapped the jar.

“I have something that needs saying,” he told her. “And I want you to listen and not think about your father or about your sister, if you can manage it. Just think about me and about you, okay?”

She nodded, but felt suspicion welling up in her heart.

Garrett cleared his throat. “When I said I wanted you to stay…it wasn’t because I thought I could get you into bed. It was because…because I care about you. And I–”

“You can’t care about me. You barely know me.”

“Now I thought you were gonna let me finish.”

She clamped her lips together, crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

“I don’t know you very well, that’s true enough. The point is, I
want
to know you. I like being with you, Chelsea. I like spending time with you and I like the way I feel when I’m near you.”

She stared at him, sure there was a punch line coming. But there didn’t seem to be one imminent. His eyes were intense and so damned sincere that he almost had her believing this bull.

“How…how do you feel when you’re near me?” she asked, surprised to find her voice had gone whispery soft.

He shook his head, his gaze turning inward. “I don’t know…like…like maybe I’m more than just a stand-in parent to the kids. Like maybe I’m more than just the guy everybody brings their troubles to. More than just a small-town sheriff. I feel…I feel like a man. A flesh-and-blood man. I feel…alive.”

She drew a deep breath and told herself his sweet talk wasn’t working on her. Then she denied that her stomach had gone queasy at his words, or that her pulse was pounding in her temples. And that little shiver up her spine had certainly never happened.

“That’s lust,” she told him. “That’s all it is.”

“I know lust, Chelsea Brennan. I haven’t lived like a monk, you know.” He let his gaze roam down her body, but quickly jerked it back up to her eyes. “All right. It’s lust. I won’t deny that I want you. But it’s more than that, too. There’s something happening here, and I want to find out what it is, because it’s something I’ve never felt before.”

She closed her eyes. “Look, I don’t think I want to hear any more of this right now.”

“Will you at least think about it?”

She nodded, because she knew there was nothing she could do to keep herself from thinking about it. Hadn’t he told her he didn’t know the kinds of pretty words that could make a woman go soft inside? Well, for someone who didn’t know them, he was doing a pretty good job of reciting them all.

“Good. Now that that’s settled, will you join me for dinner?”

Another surprise. The guy was full of them. “The ointment helped, Garrett, but I’m still too sore to go out.”

“I know. That’s why we’re having dinner here.”

“I thought everyone had already eaten.” She scowled at him, growing suspicious all over again.

“They did. And now they’re gone. There’s a big shebang in town tonight. Memorial Day lasts all week around here. Dancing and fireworks. Jessi took Ethan along.”

Chelsea felt her eyes widen.

“Don’t worry. She’s telling people he’s our cousin, visiting from Oklahoma with his family. Everyone knows there are Brands all over the country. So what do you say, Chelsea? I want to be with you tonight. Just the two of us.’’

Panic made her throat go dry.

“And just so you know, under no circumstances am I going to lay a hand on you tonight. I just want to spend some time. Get to know you. I promise, that’s all.”

She was alone in this house with him. She ought to be bounding out of this bed right now and running away from him. But she wasn’t. Instead, she was lying here, thinking about how much she could enjoy an evening in his company.

She must be losing her mind.

“All right,” she heard herself say. “B-but I still have to leave tomorrow.”

“You can make that decision tomorrow,” he told her. Then he rose slowly from the edge of the bed without touching her. “I’ll leave you to get dressed. Just come downstairs whenever you’re ready.”

She nodded and watched him as he left the room, closing the door gently behind him.

Oh, God, this was not what she’d expected. Never in her life had she thought any man would care enough to try so hard to work his way past her defenses. She didn’t know how to deal with this. She didn’t
want
a man in her life. Not ever!

All right, so she’d just explain that to him. He could be Prince Charming, she’d tell him, but it still wouldn’t matter. She’d made a decision never to fall in love with a man, and it was a decision she was going to stick to. And if it hurt Garrett’s feelings, then that wasn’t her fault. He’d get over it.

G
arrett closed the bedroom door, leaned back against it and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. Dammit, but he’d never felt more like a schoolboy than he did right now. And the scariest part of the entire experiment was that it had worked! He pulled the index cards from his pocket, scanning the lines quickly to be sure he’d covered everything.

Never felt like this before…like the way I feel when I’m with you…more than just a small-town sheriff. Yup, he’d covered everything Jessi had written down. And tossed in some of his own lines to boot. He’d thought Jessi had gone plum out of her mind when she’d set him down to coach him on what to say. But maybe she knew a little something about what made women tick after all. Hell, she was one.

Imagine that. Little Jessi, a woman. All grown up. He’d never thought of her that way before. But she obviously understood this stuff. She’d told him these kinds of words from a man would make her melt inside, then assured him they’d work just as well on Chelsea. And by heaven, she’d been right.

Garrett flipped through the cards to the ones yet to come.

Let’s see. Music. Candles. Wine. And the compliments. Dammit, if they weren’t the most flowery things he’d ever heard, he didn’t know what were. But the other stuff seemed to have been effective.

Besides, he’d taken his own precautions as backup. He’d reserved every single seat on the two flights to New York tomorrow. Just in case.

Chelsea came down the stairs, and Garrett turned when he heard her steps. He was ready to tell her she was “a vision too beautiful to be real.” But when he saw her, he forgot his lines. Everything rushed right out of his head because the sight of her hit him right between the eyes.

She wore a silk sundress that was the same deep green as her eyes. Thin straps held it up, and it fell over her slender curves like a caress. Her vivid red hair was caught up in the back, leaving delicate curls springing free around her face. The high heels made her legs seem like weapons, deadly weapons that could bring even a man his size right to his knees. For just a second, he felt they were aimed at him.

“Damn, you look good.” Garrett bit his lip after the words escaped and tried to recall his lines. “I mean–”

“Thank you.” Her face flushed with pleasure, and she smiled. Well, hell, he hadn’t blown it with that slip after all. She reached the bottom of the steps and gazed past him. “This is nice. You did all this for me?”

He turned to survey the transformed living room. There was a small fire snapping in the grate and a little round table set up by the picture window. Two tall candles glimmered on the table, their light sparkling off the bottle of chilled wine and the dishes set there.

Garrett would have preferred a cold beer, but hell, if it kept the lady alive….

“The music is nice, too. Did you pick that out?”

He listened to the crooning of some fella named Bryan—with a
Y
of all things—Adams, and thought he’d greatly prefer Hank, Jr. “You like it?”

She nodded, then came forward.

Garrett racked his brain to figure out what came next. The wine, that was it! Oh, wait, she was heading for the table. He hurried after her to pull out her chair. Then he got lost looking down the front of her dress because the gentle swell of her bosom had captured his eyes and wouldn’t let go.

Damn.

He shook himself, dragged his gaze away and reached for the wine, filling her glass first.

“Thank you.”

Thank God Jessi hadn’t suggested he drink some from her shoe. The things had open toes anyway.

She sipped, licked her lips. Garrett’s mouth went dry. He picked up his glass and drained it, then poured more and finally sat himself down. He didn’t think he’d be able to sit still for very long, though. He was damned nervous.

“So,” he said.

“So?”

“So tell me about yourself, Chelsea.” He belatedly remembered his lines. “I want to know everything there is to know about you.”

She ducked her head quickly. “You already know all my secrets.”

“I don’t even know what you do back in New York.”

“Oh. No, I guess you don’t, do you? I work for an ad agency.”

“Doing what?” He tried to inject sincere interest into his tone, tried to maintain eye contact, which was, Jessi had insisted, vital.

“I do the artwork for print ads.”

His brows rose in surprise. “You’re an artist?”

“Some would call me one. Others might argue.” She shrugged. “I love to paint, though. But it’s best when I’m at home and I can paint what I want instead of what’s been assigned to me. My apartment gets great morning light to work by.”

“I wish I could see your paintings,” he said, forgetting about the lines he’d rehearsed. “What are they like?”

“They’re children mostly. I like painting children. Happy children. Loved children.”

He swallowed hard. “Because you never were. Happy. Loved.”

“Maybe.” She averted her eyes. “You did a wonderful thing for your family, Garrett. I don’t know if you realize just how much they needed you after your parents died.”

“I needed them just as much,” he said. Then he tilted his head. “What happened to you and Michele after your mamma went home?”

“Went home. That’s a sweet way to put it, isn’t it?”

He shrugged, unable to take his eyes off her. The candlelight made her green eyes shine, and he thought he might lose the entire thread of the conversation if he looked into them much longer.

“We went into the system. Foster care. Got shuffled around a lot until we were old enough to be on our own.” She shook her head. “I wish we’d had a brother like you to watch out for us.”

“I don’t want to be your brother, Chelsea.”

She bit her bottom lip, maybe a little frightened.

“But I’d like to watch out for you. You and Ethan. Even if you do go back to New York. You remember that, okay? If you ever need me, I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”

Her green eyes widened a little. Then she shook her head. “You really are something, Garrett Brand.”

He wondered if she meant something good, or something bad. He was straying too far from Jessi’s script here. Time to get back on track.

“Will you dance with me, Chelsea?”

She smiled a wavery little smile, took a sip of wine and slowly, gracefully, got to her feet.

Oh, God, that must mean yes. Garrett got up, too, and stepped close to her. He slipped his arms around her waist, but loosely, just anchoring his hands atop her hips. She clasped hers at the base of his neck, and he began to move with her in time to Bryan-with-a-Y Adams as he crooned a heart-wrenching love song. Didn’t the guy know any-thing else?

Chelsea sighed, and her breath fanned his throat. His stomach clenched into a hard knot, and he told himself it was just because he hadn’t eaten. It was hard to keep that in mind, though, what with Chelsea so close and Bryan-with-a-Y singing about how to
really
love a woman. Come to think of it, the song was downright erotic if you listened to the words. And Garrett was listening. Mental pictures were forming in his mind. Pictures that distracted him from the lines he’d rehearsed and his step-by-step plan of how this evening was supposed to go.