Can't Resist a Cowboy (3 page)

Chapter Four

Levi was going to have to quit for the day if the pain in his legs got any worse, and that just plain pissed him off. The left was always the worst, having taken the bulk of the bomb hit all those months ago. What thigh muscle the doctors had been able to save was testy about working too hard. He was supposed to limit strenuous physical activity to short sessions. Being on a horse and roping cattle for five hours straight was too long, apparently.

Because damn.

Unintentionally walking up on Darren and Carrie’s conversation gave him something else to focus on besides his discomfort. He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t just pass on by after overhearing them. Plus, Darren had spotted him, his shoulders relaxing a bit as if relieved Levi had shown up when he did.

He couldn’t read Carrie’s expression, and he didn’t mind studying her a while longer to figure it out. Dreams hadn’t done her beauty justice.

“You?” She pointed a finger at him, the narrow set of her eyes reminding him how fast her temper could be. “You’re kidding, right?”

The admonishment in her voice was a kick in the pride. What did he expect? She wasn’t going to fall all over him in gratitude—she was right to be wary. He couldn’t deny that, in part, he’d done this for her. He wasn’t going to stand by as the ranch get sold off, not with all the love and memories wrapped up in that place
.
Agate Falls and Paint River had shared help, land, and resources for as long as Levi could remember. When he’d found out the ranch was one push away from going to auction, he’d jumped at the chance to help.

“We’re neighbors. It just made sense.”

“What are you going to do with our land?” She looked to her father, but he didn’t look back. His eyes were locked on Levi.

“Carrie,” Darren said softly. “I couldn’t let Agate Falls go like that. Honey, it’s going to be yours someday—I couldn’t lose the ranch knowing I’d robbed you of that. This is a good thing.”

Her eyes clenched tight right before she rubbed them with a thumb. “No, Dad. It’s not going to be mi…” With a sigh, she pulled a pair of sunglasses from her pocket and put them on. “I have to do my insulin.” Shoving her hands in her pockets, Carried turned toward the house and walked away.

“I should have told her sooner.” Darren picked up his bowl off the ground. “It wasn’t right of me to leave her in the dark.” Levi could only nod as the older man wandered away. He was right; he should have told Carrie sooner. He understood trying to find the right time and all to talk about something like this. Hell, he still hadn’t told his brothers about his involvement in Agate Falls. It wasn’t his business to get mixed up in what happened between Carrie and her dad, so why did he feel guilty? He looked to the sky, knowing full well why. She’d had people making decisions that involved her, without her input, for years. Including him.

A deep ache went through his left thigh, reminding him he was overdue for some pain reliever before he got back on his horse. Waving down his friend and ranch hand, Jaxon Moore, Levi nodded to his horse tied at the gate. “Cover me for a few.” Jax gave a thumbs-up, and Levi headed to the house. He’d catch Carrie—smooth things over for now until they could get a better chance to talk.

He went up the back steps; it felt like a wolf was gnawing on his leg. Grabbing pain pills from the kitchen cabinet, he made it to the couch before his knee buckled and a twisted cramp rippled through his thigh.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed, gritting his teeth against the spasm as he sat. A cool line of sweat beaded along his hairline.
Pain is honor. Pain is honor
. The words rolled like a chant in his head, a familiar pattern he’d learned in boot camp, where physical pain and mental fatigue were an everyday thing. It had been a while since it had been this bad, but it would pass. It would.

He’d been working too hard, but damn it, he’d had enough of being idle. Now he was paying for it.

“Levi?” A warm touch on his shoulder followed his name. Vanilla, something spicy and girlie, met him as he glanced up. Carrie looked down at him, the smooth lines of her face heavy with worry. Her eyes were so big, so brown. Lashes went on forever.

“Charley horse?” She dropped to her knees beside him and placed a hand on the top of his knotted leg.

A flicker of panic went through him. It was bad enough that she was seeing him like this. He didn’t want her finding out how damaged his body was, too. “I just need to walk it out.” Ha. Right. He couldn’t get up right now if his ass was on fire. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” Carrie smoothed her palm over his jeans, the pressure and friction both painful and soothing. “I can help.” Help—with her hands on him? Despite the thickness of his jeans, she’d be able to feel the mangled mess of his leg beneath. There was no shame in the scars, but he wasn’t ready for her reaction. He didn’t want to see pity, or worse, disgust on her face.

“Don’t.” The request was weak, but his pride was strong. Levi leaned forward to get up. Enough of this. He’d walk it out and get back to work.

“Relax, Levi.” Her hands were already working over his jeans, pressing her fingers into the space above the knee where muscle met bone. Tingles raced up like an electrical circuit to his groin, a forceful breath rushing out of him. She held her fingers there, pressing deeply.

And then her palms moved over his middle thigh, her fingers massaging and kneading, pulling and smoothing until he was captured in a blend of discomfort and relief. Her movements weren’t gentle, but they were helping. The pain began to fade…his body relaxed and his chest expanded so he could breathe. Her touch softened a bit as she worked her magic down past his knee, to his calf and back up again.

He’d had therapeutic massages on his legs before, but he’d never felt so fluid afterward. By the time she sat back on her heels, Levi’s leg was singing hymns and angels were flying around the room.

“Holy shit.” He gripped a fistful of his hair. “That was amazing.”

She laughed. “Ah, you’re welcome.” He fully realized that she was on her knees next to him. Her hair had come free of the ponytail and lay draped in a haphazard curls over her shoulders.

“Thank you,” he blurted. A new kind of ache started in his body, the kind that got stronger when he looked at her full lips and wondered if they still tasted as sweet as he remembered. She shifted as if to get up, her shoulder brushing against his knee. The simple contact jacked his longing for one kiss…just one. Levi reached for her, moving so his legs were on either side of her as he pulled her up halfway and wrapped his arms around her.

He tensed as her full, soft breasts pushed against his chest, her breath warm and humid against the curve of his throat. She uttered something akin to a sob as her arms wound around his neck. He wanted to bury his face in her hair, hold her tighter, trail his lips over her skin…but he had no right. What was he doing? He should back away, but her fingers were wrapped around him tightly, giving the impression she wanted to stay just like this.

God, he’d missed her. If her embrace was an indication, she’d missed him, too.

With a start, Carrie released him and fumbled to stand. She tucked her hair behind her ears. Levi rose, amazed at how steady he was considering how badly he’d been feeling minutes earlier. She wouldn’t look at him, and the sudden awkwardness reminded him that they were strangers. Maybe they’d stay that way, maybe they’d come to reconnect some. Either way, they needed to find some common ground—a way to get on during the duration of her stay. He’d be around Agate Falls a lot in the coming days, and the last thing he wanted was to make her uncomfortable.

Thinking of it, he realized he had no idea how long she’d be in Montana.

“I’m glad it helped.” The sound of her voice was startling in the quiet room.

“Yeah.” He figured he should apologize for the embrace, but he wasn’t a lick sorry about it. Touching her was as close to heaven as he’d experienced in a while. That was something, considering he’d been on the very short list for a personal tour once already.

Reaching behind her head, she gathered her hair into a fresh ponytail, nailing him with a conflicted look. A chill seemed to replace the heat they’d just shared. That was his cue to get back to work and leave this on a somewhat positive note. Moving to a small side table by the couch, he grabbed a bottle of pain reliever he’d left there earlier.

“Levi.” Her hard tone made him pause. “Promise me you’ll do right by my father.”

He opened the bottle, trying to ignore the frustration creeping up. “We have a lot to talk about, Carrie. Once we—”

Her arms crossed. “Promise me.”

He poured two pills into his palm, swallowed them dry. The insult in her request was quiet, but it was there. She didn’t trust him, and he didn’t blame her. He’d love nothing more than to hash out their past and work for that common ground, but he had cattle to get back to. Shoving the bottle in his pocket, Levi walked past her toward the door. “What makes you think I won’t?”

She cut in front, looking over her shoulder at him before pushing the door open and walking out. “History.”

Chapter Five

Hands on her hips, Carrie glanced around the attic with a small sense of defeat. The space used to be neatly organized but was now crammed with so much stuff she had no idea where to find what she wanted. The disarray wasn’t just confined to this room, unfortunately. She’d taken a good, long look around the ranch and the house this morning. With her dad gone running errands, she’d been free to examine the place without worrying about hurting his feelings. He’d tried to keep the ranch tip-top, but truthfully it was a disaster.

Broken gate panels, cracked windows in the barns, and clogged water pipes were just a few things she’d noticed. Add the disrepairs on the ranch house and it all equaled one huge project. A man with as much pride as her father would keep going as long as possible, and strive to fix whatever he could. But it had snowballed, the repairs coming faster than cash flow until it all piled up and he crouched under the weight of it all.

Enter Levi, with his piles of Paint River money and hot muscles to save the day. She made a disgusted sound and began shuffling boxes around. He’d done a good thing, helping them out. He wasn’t just military. He’d been a hardworking cowboy before that. Honor and all that were ingrained in him. The ranchers helped each other around here. It’s just how things were done. But his money had secured him a place at Agate Falls, one with decision-making ability. What if he decided to bend the ranch into a tourist hot spot, like Paint River?

The thought made her nearly drop a box.

Is that what had her so on edge? It would be a cop-out to admit that was the only reason. It was his very presence back in her life. They shared a past, one that hadn’t been resolved very well. He’d waited until the night before he left for boot camp to tell her he’d even signed up for the marines. When tear-filled hours had brought the daylight, he’d been gone, and he’d stayed gone for six long years.

She’d daydreamed about reconnecting with him, but now that it was happening, she wasn’t sure it was a good thing. The hug they’d shared yesterday had sent her into a tailspin of emotions. It had felt so good to be pressed against him again, to feel the silken edges of his hair curl around her fingers. To hear his voice, and feel the soft pump of his heart under her chest. But she was leaving in two measly weeks, back to the prison of the city where her health demanded she stay. She and Levi had a huge divide between them and not enough time to close it. Even if they did, what good would come of it?

She’d fall in love with him again and would be the one walking away this time.

She yanked the cover off a plastic tub. Nostalgia hit her when she spied old Christmas decorations inside. On the top lay a crocheted angel made stiff with a wash of salt water and glue, a little golden pipe-cleaner halo on her head. Maeve Haywood had given it to her the year Carrie’s mother had died in a car accident.

Laying the angel in her palm, Carrie blew her bangs from her eyes. She should have taken care to stay in touch with Maeve more after Levi left. Selfishness had kept her from it. The need to separate herself from memories of him had been stronger than her affection for the Haywoods. All of them had expected that she and Levi would be making a wedding announcement, joining the two ranches officially as one big happy family. They’d been just as shocked as she had been to learn that Levi was leaving.

“Jerk,” she said out loud. Enough of thinking about Levi. She put the angel back and was just closing the box when she spotted a glint of yellow in the sunlight coming through the dormer window. With a squeal of joy, Carrie carefully moved away a stack of old papers. Behind it, a three-foot-tall rectangular window stood. The lighting was nearly perfect inside the attic. Not so dim that she could only see shadows, but not so bright as to blind her. Naked save for a fine layer of dust, the stained glass teased her with brilliant colors. She sighed happily and tipped the panel up. A beam of sunlight fractured off the sunflower pattern, casting myriad jewel tones.

Her breath caught. She’d dabbled in stained glass as a teen as a way to cure her boredom at being on “restricted activity” to help her diabetes. After Levi had left, she’d thrown herself into making this panel, cutting all the small, colorful pieces that created a large sunflower and ruby-red cardinals. The lead beading between each piece could have been smoother, the shapes, more carefully cut. But then it had been a way of healing and given her a huge sense of accomplishment.

Now it was a reminder that she still had her sight, and she needed to appreciate
everything
as often as possible. It could be years or it could be months, her doctor had said. With diabetic neuropathy, there was no telling how fast her sight would fade. The upside was that, for now, only her left eye was showing major decline. The right side could hold out longer, giving her hope that though her vision would be compromised, it would take a long time to fade completely. Keeping her blood sugar under control could help.

So back to the city it was, where her low-stress desk job and immediate access to health care were there to help her stay healthy.

Thinking that she’d take the panel back to Wyoming as a reminder of home, Carrie was distracted by the sound of vehicles outside. Laying aside the glass, she crossed to the other dormer and peeked out over the pasture that lined the road and eventually connected with Paint River land.

In the distance, the original cabin her great-grandfather had built when he’d settled the ranch sat in a clearing lined by a thin row of pines. Three white trucks and a backhoe rolled along the fence line until they stopped, a man jumping out of the first truck. Raising her hand to cut the glare, Carrie squinted, making out enough to see a man cut the wire fence, creating a large enough gap that the vehicles could get through.

Her dad hadn’t said anything about work being done around here today. Something about the unmarked white trucks and their proximity to the cabin made her gut sink with dread. Going downstairs, Carrie got into her Chevy and drove down the road, slowing as the backhoe made a ramble through the makeshift gate. Cell phone in hand, ready to call her dad, she got out and approached the first man she saw. An embroidered logo on his shirt read “Zane Engineering & Surveying.”

“What’s going on?”

The man smiled with a mouthful of perfect teeth and extended a hand. “Ms.…?”

“Waite. Darren Waite’s daughter.”

“Right.” He put his hands on his hips, eyes crinkling like he was thrilled to be here. “We’re getting started on the soil testing and land survey.”

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. To the left, the backhoe got awfully close to her granddaddy’s cabin. “For what?”

The man gave her a curious look, and then swept his arm to indicate a wide circle around them. “For the campground.”

…

“And this one is Choco-licious, our most popular.”

Levi gave a polite smile to the blonde sitting across from him, though he didn’t give a shit about the tube of goo she held. This was the third spa interview he’d had to sit through this morning, and he cared about Jennie’s Delights exactly the same amount as he had Viva Day Spa and Evergreen Massage & More: zero. All of the women they’d met with so far seemed determined to showcase their products and techniques on
him
. A small patch of hair-removal wax on his forearm, mud that smelled like swamp gas on the back of his hand. And worse, the all-natural energizing spray with the aroma of mint and peaches that one of them had misted him with.

Kill me. Just kill me now
. His brothers? Off taking the herd to high pasture for the next two days. Slippery bastards.

The trio of cheerful women sitting on the sofa right now made no qualms about blatantly flirting with him in front of his mother, who sat quietly with an amused grin. Levi rubbed his eyes. He had Agate Falls plans to work on today.

The phone call he’d had an hour ago, informing him that the survey crew was coming that morning, offered him a get-out-of-spa-hell card, but he didn’t want to make his mother do this alone. He’d promised her, and his brothers, that he’d be involved, so he would. Even though it was sucking the manliness right out of him.

“What’s the size of your current business space in Missoula?” He hoped his tone didn’t display how edgy he was. “And do you feel it’s adequate?”

The blonde, Misty, if he remembered right, batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes. “May I have your hand, Mr. Haywood?” Without waiting for a response, she moved closer—got on her knees in front of him—and grabbed his hand. Settling between his parted knees, she leaned back on her haunches so her face came awfully close to places her face shouldn’t be with his mother in the room. He scooted back in his chair.

Okay, so this could be a perk. The blonde was pretty, curvy, and filled out her tight T-shirt pretty damn well. And hell, she was on her knees looking up at him. If the expression on her face was any indication, she was interested. This should have made his heart flip or something. But her fingers didn’t feel right. They were long and bony, with nails too long to be useful for anything more than decoration. When she flipped his hand over, his skin actually started to crawl. She might be attractive, but she wasn’t Carrie.

No woman was Carrie.

“Wait until you feel this, Levi,” she purred as if they were alone in the room, squeezing a dollop of brown goop onto his wrist, and she began rubbing it in. The heavy, sweet scent of chocolate filled the air. “Mmmm, feels good, right? It’s our exclusive line of creamy massage oils. They’ll make you feel amazing…and smell good enough to eat.” The husky way the last word came out made his gut churn.

Levi drew his arm back. Enough. He didn’t want to be touched. It had been hard enough letting Carrie do what she had the other night. Her hands on him had been surreal, amazing. Perfect. Humiliating. Even over his jeans, she had to have been able to feel how messed up his leg was. He squirmed in his seat. He needed air, and he needed this woman to get off her knees. “Thanks for the demo.” She took the hint, rising with a plastic smile.

“So, about that square footage. How much would you need to open your spa division here on the ranch?” The rest of the interview went quickly. He barely noticed when the women gathered their things and left, his gaze drifting to the window as it had repeatedly throughout the morning. The sun was shining, the grass as green as he’d seen it yet, and he was itching to get out there and do something.

Truthfully, he hadn’t felt this limber and light on his feet in recent memory. It was Carrie’s doing, he was convinced. He kept playing it over and over in his mind, the way she worked the pain right out of him. Maybe it had been a fluke…just his body’s reaction to being in her proximity after such a long time. She’d always had a way with touch and the ability to soothe, not only him, but others in pain as well. He was more inclined to think it was just
her
. And if so, he needed more.

“Levi.” His mother’s voice drew him back. She was standing next to his chair, looking tired and pale. He rose with immediate concern. How had he not paid more attention to her during the interviews? He might have noticed then that she looked exhausted. Suffering from multiple sclerosis, Maeve had good days and bad. Luckily the good had been winning recently. But planning her wedding in two weeks and helping with the guest services portion of Paint River was taking its toll.

“You should go lie down, Ma.” When he gently took her arm, Maeve covered his hand and gave a good squeeze. Chronic disease did nothing to weaken her tough, independent resolve.

“I’m going to take you up on that.” Maeve checked her watch. “But first, which candidate did you like the best?”

Levi stifled a groan. He’d been exfoliated, waxed, slathered with dirt-colored, chocolate-scented cream, and had a strange woman’s head between his legs. Limits. He had them.

“You don’t really want me to answer that, Ma.”

Her eyes twinkled as she patted his cheek. “You’re right. I probably don’t.” She walked out of the living room and down the hall, leaving him to gather up his flannel jacket and swipe the lock screen on his cell phone. With any luck he’d be able to catch the survey team before they left. His brothers had been planning on putting in a campground on the ranch for a while, but they were out of space. Every encroachment of the tourist side into pasture ate away at Paint River’s original purpose: raising cattle.

Utilizing Agate Falls’ land could be beneficial—profitable—for them both. Darren had said he was open to possibilities, though preserving the land would be optimal. Levi wanted a clear plan before bringing it to Darren, and by proxy, Carrie, so they could weigh the pros and cons.

Levi rubbed a hand over his face as he flipped through the numbers in his cell. He knew she was nervous about his plans for the ranch, but it wasn’t as if he’d be making all the decisions himself. Ultimately, it was about keeping Agate Falls operating, but he wanted to do right by her, too.

He paused in searching for the phone number. Even when they hadn’t been together anymore, she’d been important to him. Thinking about her had gotten him through some tough shit, like gunfire over his head and long, anxious nights riddled with mortar fire—the day he’d almost died.

Everything he’d done, and everything he’d do now, was for her benefit. Because, God, he probably still cared about her more than he should. He probably still lov—

A door slammed.

“Levi Haywood, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”