Cal had to admit it took gumption to do what Maggie was doing. Most city slickers would have put the ranch up for sale sight unseen. Washed their hands of the whole thing and taken what they could get. But Margaret Stanton had been cut from a different cloth. She saw an opportunity that with a little elbow grease and a bit of cash could become a solid basis to build a future on. Perhaps that’s why he’d volunteered to help her. He admired the way she latched on to spit and polishing up the place. Or it could have been the way she filled out those shorts and halter top thing. Probably the second one but he’d still acknowledge the first.
“Sweeping up roach turds is definitely an out-of-the-box action. No cheese for me.” He popped a cheese doodle into his mouth.
“You’re weird. Everyone likes cheese singles.”
“Not me,” he said, crunching the chip. “Tastes like plastic.”
“And why are you standing there watching? Open the paper plates and make yourself useful.”
“That’s woman’s work,” he joked, not moving. Instead he ate another cheese doodle and watched her dander rise.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those backward idiots who still thinks it’s the 1800s? I can’t believe—” She snapped her mouth closed when she saw his grin. “You’re intentionally ruffling my feathers.”
“I like to watch your face get red. And you start breathing hard which draws my eyes to your chest.” He looked pointedly at her breasts.
“You’re a pervert,” she said, slapping cheese onto both the sandwiches like that would teach him to mess with her.
“It will only get worse,” he said, pulling the package of paper plates out of the bag from the Stop-N-Go, Coyote Creek’s finest in gas-station grocers.
Maggie snorted and slathered the bread with mayonnaise, not even bothering to ask him if he liked it on his sandwich. He did, but she didn’t know that. This sandwich was a lesson to a man who stroked a cat the wrong way. She smushed the two pieces of bread together and grabbed a plate from his hands. The action struck him as domestic, and for a brief second he wondered what it would be like to have a woman smarting off to him in the kitchen every night. What it would be like to have the elusive family he’d once dreamed about as a child when his mother was working late and he lay in the twin bed made with threadbare sheets his mother had brought home from the motel. What would it be like to live somewhere other than his trailer or hotel rooms with another cowboy snoring in the adjacent bed? What would it be like to have a place to belong?
But as soon as the thought flitted through his mind, he chased it away.
Real cowboys didn’t have families or worry about crown molding and rain showerheads. Oh, sure, some of the guys he knew had wives and kids, but even they found comfort in Jim Beam and a soft body when they were on the road. It was the cowboy way. Charlie had been wrong about a lot of things, but when he told Cal cowboys didn’t do well strapped down, he wasn’t lying. Cal knew that firsthand. His own father had been a cowboy, hadn’t he? And where was he?
Cal knew who and what he was. Standing in the dated, dusty kitchen of the Triple J was a lark, something he did only because he was bored and wanted to be with Maggie. By mid-August he’d be in Mobile at the first event on the second leg. And Maggie would be back on the East Coast, hopefully a fine memory for him. If she played nice.
“Here,” she said, jabbing the paper plate with the lonely sandwich on it toward him.
“Thanks. You got a beer or something?” he asked, loading the plate with half the Cheesy-Os.
“No.”
“You want one? I can run out to my trailer.”
She shrugged. “When in Texas.”
“Right,” he said, toasting her with a cheese doodle.
* * *
AFTER THE SANDWICH SUPPER, Maggie pulled out what was left of the dinnerware and filled the sink with soapy water. Some of the pieces had been broken by the kids who’d busted in the back door so they could party. She’d put in a call to the sheriff’s office regarding the vandalism, but they’d told her Charlie had already filed a complaint and they’d investigated to no avail. But they would send deputies by for the next week or so until word got out that the Triple J was now occupied. Deputy Riser felt sure that the occupancy would eliminate the ranch as a go-to party zone.
Cal sat at the table, frowning at his phone. “Signal’s crap.”
“Well, since you can’t play on your phone, you can dry,” she said, tossing him a drying cloth.
“Hey, I’m an eight-to-five guy. I’m off.”
“Pay for your dinner,” she said, setting a stack of plates into the dishwater.
“That means I have to dry only one plate. Maybe a cup.” But she heard the chair scrape against the floor. He moved behind her, prickling her nerve ends, making her want to lean back and feel him pressed to her.
That kiss.
That kiss had been so good. Like the first lick of mint chocolate chip ice cream. But going there was walking a tightrope and if there was one thing she didn’t need at the moment, it was a combustible relationship turning sour in the ninth inning. She needed this place fixed up and ready to sell. That meant she needed Cal to stay focused on the job she’d hired him to do. No hanky-panky, no matter how incredible he kissed or how much she loved his aw-shucks sexiness. “So tell me about bull riding. How’d you get started?”
“When I was ten years old, my mom won tickets off the radio to a PRCA event in Fort Worth. All of it was exciting—roping, bronc bustin’ and even the barrel events. But when the end rolled around and those bulls hit the chute, I felt something electric. I’ll never forget the way my stomach dropped when that gate opened and that cowboy rode that big sucker. I decided right then and there, I wanted to do that.”
“But it’s so dangerous.”
“That’s part of it. It ain’t just holding on. It’s riding. There’s a difference. And when you can hit that zone, when you know what the bull is going to do because it’s there in your bones, there’s nothing like it. Maybe it’s like getting high or something. I don’t know. But it’s indescribable.”
His words carried a reverence. She could tell he loved climbing onto a snorting, huge monster. “So don’t you win a buckle or something? How many have you won?”
Cal smiled and took the soapy plate from her. “I’ve won a few.”
“You don’t want to talk about it, huh? Is it the injury?”
“No,” he said, his lower lip curving.
He had nice lips that knew their way around. Probably all those women who showed up at the corrals—what did they call them again? She couldn’t remember. “Then what?”
“I don’t know. I’m taking a break from all that right now. Trying to heal and get my mind right. Guess I don’t feel like talking about the bulls and the buckles and the—”
“Bunnies?” she said, finally remembering the name that escaped her. “I’ve heard that term before.”
Cal looked over at her. “Them, too.”
Something ugly moved inside her. She didn’t like the idea of faceless women in shiny halter tops and boots kissing his boo-boos better. Which was strange because she had no stake in Cal. He was a guy who’d done her a solid a few days ago, a guy she’d hired for a job, and pretty much the one person in Texas she could count on. Who he screwed or didn’t screw shouldn’t bother her.
But it did.
She peered