Beauty and the Cowboy (6 page)

It may have taken some liquid courage to get her here, but her head was as clear as the cloudless, blue Marietta sky on a hot, hot summer day. She knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted him. Right here. Right now. She’d always wanted him, she realized, for as long as she’d know what it meant for a girl to want a boy…woman to want a man. And she wasn’t leaving here until she’d gotten exactly what she wanted.

Her hands pushed their way between them, finding his belt buckle. As she fumbled with it, determined that nothing would stand between them—nothing fabric or leather or metal—there would be nothing but skin on skin. Him inside of her. And the sooner, the better. But before she could finish, something else pushed its way between them: the determined yip, yip, yip of…a puppy?

Lulu. Mattie’s dog.

The barking sounded like it was coming from the garage.

Jesse had obviously heard it, too, because he pulled away. With one clean movement, he’d not only removed her hand from his fly, but also managed to rebuckle his belt.

Then he stood there for a moment, stock still. His hooded blue eyes, dark with need and hunger, locked with hers. His eyes were like a mirror reflecting everything she was feeling.

“Wow,” she murmured.

“Yeah. Wow.” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not going take advantage of you, Charlie. You’re vulnerable. You’re not thinking clearly.”

“This is the clearest my brain has been in years, Jesse.”

He shook his head. “Eat your eggs. I’m going to go check on Lulu, and then I’m going to give you a ride home.”

He turned and walked away from her. If she hadn’t felt vulnerable before, she did now.

Her fingers found her lips, which were swollen and throbbing from his kiss. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel his mouth moving on hers. He’d kissed her back with the same driving need she’d felt, a need that had nearly landed them in his bed. Or right here on this couch.

The thought made her dizzy. She took a step back and landed with a graceless plop on that sexy couch.

She propped her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her hands. Oh, God, what had she done?

Her head swam, but need and longing for him—for Jesse—still coursed through her as strongly as it had when she’d leaned in and kissed him.

But then he’d walked away.

Oh, God. Oh, no. She had to fix this.

She would fix this.

She couldn’t lose Jesse, too. Tom…Tom could take a flying leap, for all she cared. But Jesse… He was worth fighting for.

Her elbow was digging into her knee. So she moved her arm to the couch’s left armrest and supported her aching head.

Maybe if she just closed her eyes, she’d find the right words to convince Jesse that what had just happened between them was a good thing. The words that would keep him from walking away from her for good….

*

Jesse stayed outside
for a long ten minutes. He had to give himself enough time to cool down. To get a hold of himself.

He’d gone out into the garage through the kitchen to feed Lulu, as he’d promised Mattie he’d do since she was spending the night with Gina. When Lulu was done with dinner, Jesse leashed her up and took her out the side garage door for a short walk. The walk was just as much for his benefit as it was for the puppy’s.

Why had he kissed Charlie?

Well, he knew why. He wanted to kiss her again and do a lot more than that. A more apt question was: Why had he let himself lose control?

He and Charlie had always connected on a deep level, but as friends. Good friends. He’d never gotten close to her like that. Not until tonight. Right. A night when she was drunk and vulnerable.

One week ago, Charlie had been looking at engagement rings with her long-term boyfriend. Now here Jesse was making a damn fool of himself and ruining any shadow of a possibility that this spark—if there even was one—might have ignited if he’d kept his libido under control.

She’d be perfectly within her right to hate him in the morning, if she didn’t already. The only choice he had was to man up and go in and apologize.

He picked up Lulu and carried her into the kitchen. Jesse’s gaze landed on the empty table and the untouched plate of eggs. For a split second, he wondered if Charlie had left. But, no, how would she have gotten home? They were a good three miles from her apartment. She was too smart to try to walk that distance alone at night.

But, then again, she probably wasn’t in her right mind. She’d kissed him, hadn’t she?

He set down the puppy and walked into the living room. That’s when he saw her there on the couch. She was lying on her side with one arm tucked under head.

God, she was beautiful. His chest tightened, and for a moment, he stood there, drinking in the sight of her.

He wasn’t going to let that kiss ruin a relationship that spanned a lifetime. He’d figure it out and do whatever he had to do to make it right. Even if that meant giving her some space to figure out her own head and heart.

But right now, he needed to wake her up and get her home.

He gave her shoulder a gentle shake. “Charlie?”

She breathed in a long, soft breath, but she didn’t open her eyes.

He gave her shoulder another shake. “Charlie, wake up. I need to take you home.”

All she did was snuggle a little deeper into the couch. She was out cold, and unless he picked her up and carried her out to his truck, she wasn’t going anywhere.

Jesse got a blanket from the hall linen closet and covered her up. Since Mattie was gone for the night, there was no harm in letting Charlie sleep on the couch.

He went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water and took a bottle of aspirin out of the cabinet where he kept the meds and vitamins. If she woke up in the middle of the night, she might need them.

After he set the glass and bottle on the coffee table, he had to ball his hands into fists to keep from reaching out and touching her smooth cheek. He’d learned his lesson. He might be a lot of things, but he wasn’t an idiot.

That jackass fool Tom Tucker was an idiot for letting her go.

“If you were mine, Charlie, I would’ve already married you.”

C
harlotte awoke in
a dark room, on the couch in a strange house. She had a dry mouth and a crick in her neck. When she rubbed it, she realized that, no, the pain wasn’t just in her neck. Her head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. Sitting up, she blinked and forced her eyes to adjust as she looked around, trying to figure out where in the world she was.

A sliver of moonlight streamed in through the living room window. It took a minute, but she remembered that she was at Jesse’s house. He’d brought her here after she’d had too much to drink at Grey’s. He’d cooked for her…and she’d kissed him.

She pulled the cotton blanket up to her chin, as if that would preserve her modesty. But then she realized she was fully clothed, and even if she climbed under a stack of blankets, it wouldn’t restore her dignity.

The day’s unfortunate happenings flooded back to her. Tom’s phone call; Mardie Griffin overhearing her conversation with Jesse and giving her the look; people seeing her and Jesse leaving Grey’s together after she’d downed whiskey and wine. Now she was going to do the walk of shame from Jesse’s house, and they hadn’t even done anything.

Except kiss.

That kiss had curled her toes and made her lady parts sing. And then Jesse had walked away.

Of course he had. She’d been drunk. What kind of guy would sleep with a drunk woman?

Better question: What kind of guy wouldn’t?

She might have been inclined to think Jesse just wasn’t into her, but that kiss had cut through the whiskey and wine and the heartbreak of the day and told her otherwise.

Right now, her head hurt too much to overthink it. Especially the part about how she’d actually gone for the goods. She’d had his belt unbuckled, and who knows what would’ve happened next if not for Lulu?

Feeling a little sick, she found her purse next to the couch, where she’d dropped it on her way in.

As she fished her phone out, she noted it was two fifty a.m. There were no missed calls from Tom.

It would be a clean break.

It was better that way.

She sat there waiting to feel something beyond confusion. Shouldn’t there have been a ripping sensation or pain from his rude means of severing six years together?

Nope. She was just…numb.

Numb and confused.

She started to put her phone back in her purse, and its light reflected off something on the coffee table—a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin.

Jesse had left them for her.

Her heart gave a little squeeze. When she remembered the way she’d thrown herself at him, her heart became a little heavier. How was it that she was more upset that kissing Jesse might’ve ruined things with him than over the way things had turned out with Tom?

She shook two aspirin into her hand and downed them with a gulp of water. She was so parched, she felt as if she’d been without water for days. She sat there in the dark considering what to do next as she drank the rest of it.

If anyone saw Jesse dropping her off in the wee hours of the morning, tongues were bound to wag, especially once word got around that she and Tom were through.

She really shouldn’t care what anyone else thought, but she did. Because if word got out, it was bound to make it back to her father and even at twenty-five, she still cared what her dad thought.

The way she saw it, she had three choices: She could wake Jesse up, she could wait until he woke up, or she could walk home.

Or, of course, she could find his keys and drive herself home. Right. With her luck, she’d get pulled over by Toby Walton, Marietta’s finest, and hauled in for DUI.

How long did it take for alcohol to get out of your system, anyway?

It didn’t really matter, because she wasn’t going to take Jesse’s wheels without asking. Besides, the rumor mill would churn out of control if Jesse Guthrie’s truck was seen parked near her apartment in the wee hours of the morning after they’d been spotted leaving Grey’s together.

No matter how she looked at it, she was screwed.

She sighed at the irony.

“What a mess,” she murmured as she hauled herself off the couch, feeling as chaste as a born-again virgin. Maybe if she splashed some cool water on her face, she’d be able to think straight.

She stood in the hallway she assumed led to the bathroom. It probably led to Jesse’s bedroom, too. The house was nice—cute—but it wasn’t very big. Two…maybe three bedrooms? After all, it was just him and Mattie.

It dawned on her that she didn’t know how many bedrooms and bathrooms because this was the first time she’d been to his place. He and his brothers had sold the Guthrie ranch shortly after their parents had died. Sometime after that and his accident on the circuit, Jesse had bought this place for himself and his sister.

The light of a full moon shone in from a skylight in the hall. It illuminated framed photos that hung in the hallway. Her eyes had adjusted to the sparse light well enough for her to identify the people in the pictures.

The first one looked like it must’ve been Mattie’s most recent school picture. The girl was so grown-up now. The next one was a picture of Jesse with Jude, Jake, John and Jackson. It must’ve been taken before Mattie was born, because they all looked so young. Probably middle school or early high school. Didn’t seem like it had been that long ago, but it was.

The next photo, right next to the bathroom door, was a family portrait. Mr. and Mrs. Guthrie were surrounded by their six children. They looked so proud. Suddenly, Charlotte felt ashamed lurking there in their son’s darkened hallway, still a little tipsy in her rumpled work clothes. If they could have seen her now, they certainly wouldn’t have approved.

With that thought, Charlotte ducked into the bathroom—or at least she thought it was the bathroom—the room was a little darker than the hall, and the light from the skylight didn’t reach in there.

One step, and she realized she was in the wrong place. She tried to squint into the pitch dark to see if it was Jesse’s room or Mattie’s. There must’ve been blackout drapes, because the room was unforgivingly dark.

“Charlie, what are you doing?” Jesse’s voice sounded husky.

“I’m sorry to wake you, but I need to go home.”

He threw off the covers, turned on the lamp on the bedside table and sat on the side of the bed. He was bare-chested, but wore dark blue pajama bottoms. He was tanned and sleepy, his golden-brown hair mussed in a sexy way that made her lose her breath for a beat…or two. Fiery attraction exploded inside her, but she quickly extinguished it, chalking it up to the aftereffects of the alcohol.

“You can sleep in Mattie’s bed.”

“No.” She said the word a little too fast.

“She won’t mind.”

“Would you really tell your little sister that you and I had a sleepover while she was at her friend’s for the night?”

Jesse made a noise that sounded like the idea wasn’t completely out of the question.