Cowboy Take Me Away (7 page)

“If I give you this job, I expect you to work,” she told him. “No screwing around.”

“I know we’ve had our disagreements,” Luke said. “But was there ever a time back then when I didn’t do my job? Ever?”

He was right. He’d never shirked his responsibility on the job. If she didn’t hire him now, it would be because she was a petty-minded person who couldn’t get over the past, and she hated to think she might be one of those.

“Fine,” she told him. “The job is yours. But only until I find somebody permanent. Even if that happens tomorrow, you’ll have to move on.”

“Deal.”

“The job requires you to work six days a week, including both weekend days, with one day off during the week.”

“That’s fine. But I have to go to Austin twice a week for physical therapy, so I’ll need another morning or afternoon off during the week.”

“You haven’t even started and you’re pushing for time off?”

“Most of the work around here can be done in off hours—early morning, late evening. I’ll make up the time.”

Shannon hadn’t liked this before, and she really didn’t like it now. But he was right. Whether the animals were fed at seven in the morning or nine really didn’t matter, as long as it was consistent.

“When can you start?” she said.

“No time like the present.”

“Good. I assume you want to move in immediately, too.”

“Yes.

“Okay. Freddie Jo will put you on the payroll and—”

All at once her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. Russell?

She hit the
Answer
button. “Hi, Russell. What’s up?”

“I just called to ask what kind of wine would be appropriate for tonight.”

She started to say,
Wine for what?
And then it hit her, that horrible sinking sensation that always came over her whenever she realized she’d forgotten something important. Sure,
now
she remembered they were going to her parents’ house for dinner. Now, less than an hour and a half before Russell was supposed to pick her up and she was a hot, sweaty mess from head to toe.

She took several quick steps away from Luke, turned her back, and spoke quietly. “Uh…yeah. A bottle of wine. That would be nice.”

“Do you have any idea what your mother is making?”

“Uh…”

“Beef?”

“Well…”

“Pork? Fish?”

She squeezed her eyes closed.
Think…think…what did she tell you?

Oh, yeah. Chicken. But not just any old chicken. She was making her prized Monterrey Chicken, famous the world over, as long as the world didn’t extend past the city limits of Rainbow Valley. When it came to cooking, Loucinda North was the self-crowned Queen of Cuisine. While other kids were eating macaroni and cheese on plastic plates in the breakfast room, Shannon remembered white-tablecloth dinners, complete with gravy boats, napkin rings, and narrow-eyed glares for any child who dared put her elbows on the table.

“Chicken,” she said.

“Then I’ll bring a white. Chardonnay. Light and crisp. Fruity. Will that work?”

“Yes. White. That’ll be perfect.”

“I’ll pick you up at six.”

“Sounds good,” she said with a smile in her voice that never made it to her face. She hit the
End
button and stuffed the phone back into her pocket.

“White wine and chicken,” Luke said. “I hear that’s a good match. Me, I’m a beer man. The darker, the better.”

Ignoring him, Shannon dashed back to the grain bin, stabbed the scoop into it, and dumped grain into the last two horses’ buckets. Then she turned to Luke. “I’ll take you back to the office. Freddie Jo will show you the caretaker’s apartment and tell you the rules.”

“Rules? Hmm. This is the first I’ve heard of rules.”

“If they’re too strict for you, no problem. You don’t have to work here.”

“I just remembered. I
love
rules.”

“Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t give me a reason to regret this.”

A lazy smile appeared on his lips. “Oh, you won’t regret it. Trust me on that.”

Yes, it was a smile, but there was nothing warm or sociable about it. What she saw now was just a grown-up version of the boy who had been at war with this town, with eyes that let no one inside. There had been a time when she was sure she’d discovered a kindness and compassion in him that no one else had ever seen, but now it felt like a dream she’d once had that bore no resemblance to reality.

Then all at once, something nagged at her conscience. She wondered if she should say something. Probably not. But guilt drove her to do it, anyway.

“Luke? There was something I didn’t say before, and I should have.”

He gave her a cocky smile. “What’s that? ‘Welcome to Paradise’?”

“I’m sorry about your father.”

His smile evaporated, and he averted his gaze. “Then that makes one of us.”

“Luke—”

“I hear you. You’re sorry. And from now on, you can consider that topic off limits.”

He folded his arms and turned away. Shannon couldn’t imagine what turbulence a man would carry inside when he had a father like Glenn Dawson, so she couldn’t really blame him for feeling the way he did.

Fortunately, he seemed no more inclined to talk about the past than she did, which was fine by her. What had happened between them was over and done with. He could work there, give her the temporary help she needed, and then he’d be gone.

Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? Nothing with Luke had ever been simple. And not only would he be working there, he’d be living there. For a moment she imagined what it was going to be like to come to work every morning and see Luke coming out of his apartment, looking even more tempting than he had all those years ago.

Good Lord. Why the
hell
had she hired him?

Because his persistence knew no bounds. Because Freddie Jo wanted her to. Because if she didn’t get help soon, she was going to hit the end of her rope. Still, no matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d made a very big mistake.

Luke followed Shannon back up the path toward the office, his knee throbbing. Yeah, he talked a good game, pushing hard for the job he didn’t want but sure as hell needed, but what she didn’t know was just how much it shook him up to see her again. It had been one thing to run into her in Rosie’s. But in that barn…

He remembered one day when he’d first gone to work there that summer eleven years ago. She’d had an Appaloosa gelding cross-tied in the center walkway, cleaning his hooves. When Luke came into the barn, she was bent over with the horse’s hoof between her knees, and he’d gotten the most spectacular view of her ass that any high school boy could possibly have hoped for.

“Getting an eyeful back there, Dawson?” she’d asked him, jabbing at the horse’s hoof with the hoof pick.

“Oh, yeah,” he’d said with his usual cocky tone. “In fact, think I’ll have a seat right here on this bench and watch the show.”

“How about you come over here and do this, and I’ll watch
your
ass?”

“That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as me watching yours.”

She dropped the horse’s hoof and turned around, her gaze slithering down his body and back up again, lingering in all the appropriate places.

“Maybe for you it wouldn’t be,” she said.

To this day he remembered the shiver of sexual awareness he’d felt as she spoke those words. Other girls had been intimidated by him. In awe of him. Scared of him, even. Not Shannon. She gave as good as she got.

After her remark, she’d pulled a pair of wire cutters from her pocket and tossed them to him. “Now, clip open a couple of bales of hay and let’s get these horses fed.”

That had been Shannon, through and through. If there was a job to do, she did it. She did it fast, she did it well, and she did it on time. As inclined as Luke had been to screw off back then just to be obstinate, hell would freeze over before he let her work harder than he did.

In the beginning, he’d hated her because of everything she had that he didn’t—rich parents, pristine home, good grades, and confidence that oozed from every pore. So for the first several weeks, sarcasm and taunting had been the order of the day. Neither of them yielded an inch of ground to the other, using every encounter as a reason to get under each other’s skin.

Then, slowly, things changed.

They still teased each other, but their sharp-edged talk softened into the kind of banter two friends might toss back and forth. Pretty soon Shannon was looking him right in the eye when she spoke to him, and it wasn’t long before they were searching for any reason they could to stay at the shelter a little longer in the evenings. Sometimes they sat in the grass down by the barn and just talked, and every second that passed seemed singular and special.

For the first time in his life, Luke let his guard down, telling Shannon things he’d never told anyone else. And before long he realized she wasn’t the privileged rich girl he automatically hated. She was a real person who maybe even had a few problems of her own. In a life that had been filled with nothing but pain and heartache, just being able to sit and talk to Shannon was maybe the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Soon Luke could barely put one foot in front of the other because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He wanted her so badly he quivered with the thought of it. But surprisingly, not all of those thoughts were X-rated. When he thought about the reputation he had in high school, it always made him laugh. According to legend, he could have a girl’s bra off in four-point-two seconds, followed by her panties in under ten. And yet every night when he went to sleep, what filled his mind was how Shannon’s skin would feel beneath his palm and the gentle way she would smile at him as if she cared.

He’d been with a lot of girls he’d never thought twice about coming onto, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it with Shannon. A girl like her with a guy like him? In what universe did that happen? Every time he imagined the elation he’d feel if he kissed her, it was canceled out by the pain he’d feel if she rejected him. And it stopped him cold every time.

Then one evening they’d been sitting cross-legged next to each other in the grass after everyone else had gone home, watching the sunset and talking about nothing. Out of nowhere, Shannon reached out and put her hand over his.

Luke literally stopped breathing for several seconds, his head dizzy with disbelief. Then slowly he turned his hand over and grasped hers. Such a small, small thing, but to Luke, at that moment, it felt huge. He began to stroke her hand with his thumb, back and forth, back and forth. It was as if a spell had been cast and they were both afraid of breaking it.

Finally he turned to face her, staring into those beautiful blue eyes. He lifted his free hand, placed it against her cheek, and kissed her. She leaned into him, circling her arms around his neck, and in that moment he was sure the Rapture had happened and he’d gone straight to heaven.

In the days that followed, they exchanged longing glances when other people were around and stole kisses when they weren’t. By silent consent, they kept their relationship a secret. Being secretive was second nature to Luke, so at first he hadn’t thought anything about it. But as time went on, he began to look ahead to the day when the whole world would know Shannon was his.

But that wasn’t how things had turned out. And to this day, in the dark of night, sometimes he felt the pain of it all over again.

No matter what happened between him and Shannon in the coming months, one thing was clear. She was never going to know how much she’d hurt him. That had been the first time—and the last—that he’d let down his guard and allowed a woman to take even the tiniest bit of himself that he didn’t intend to give her, and he’d be damned if he’d ever do it again.

Luke and Shannon went into the office to find Freddie Jo sitting behind her desk, her fingers going wild over her keyboard. She looked like Dolly Parton’s younger cousin—a little less flashy, a little more fleshy, but her mascara-laden eyes were Dolly’s through and through. He’d liked her from the moment he’d met her. She’d clearly been instrumental in Shannon deciding to give him this job, and that only made him like her more.

She stopped short and looked at Luke expectantly. “You’re still here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So…?”

“Put him on the payroll,” Shannon said.

“Well, hot damn!” Freddie Jo said with a big smile. She pointed to the chair beside her desk. “Sit yourself down and we’ll get the paperwork taken care of.”

Shannon went to her desk and retrieved her purse. “Goliath? Come on, baby.”

For the first time, Luke noticed the gigantic dog that had been with Shannon at Rosie’s lying in the corner behind her desk. He rose to follow Shannon, ducking his head like a scared puppy as he took a wide berth around Luke. They left the office, and through the window Luke saw Shannon hop into her truck with the dog beside her and take off toward the highway.

Freddie Jo had Luke fill out the obligatory payroll forms, then rose from her desk to show him the caretaker’s apartment. He followed her into the back hallway off the kitchen, then into a room with a bed, a desk, a small table and two chairs, along with a microwave, two-burner stove, and refrigerator. He’d never been inside George’s apartment, and it surprised him just how small and plain it was.

“Bathroom’s in there,” Freddie Jo said, pointing to a doorway. “I’d take you in there and show you around, but it’s so small that the two of us shouldn’t be in there together unless you put a ring on my finger.”

Luke glanced down to see she already had one of those. “I’m thinking your husband might have something to say about that.”

“Honey, I could have an affair with the entire Dallas Cowboys defensive line, and until Carl looked in his dresser drawer and saw he was out of clean underwear he wouldn’t even know I was gone.”

She reached into a closet and pulled down linens to make the bed. Luke told her it wasn’t necessary, but she had it finished in no time. After a few hard smacks that passed as fluffing the pillow, she tossed it at the head of the bed.