MisplacedCowboy (8 page)

“You’re welcome, Kerrie,” she answered back. And still she
couldn’t take her stare from Dylan. She’d never met a man like him. She didn’t
know if she had it in her to stay in his company. He was too…

Australian?

“Now,” the curator pulled away, pinched her on the cheek and
winked, “I leave you in the more than capable hands of your stockman.” He
turned and fanned his face with his hand, grinning at Dylan. “And I do mean
man
.”

Dylan laughed. “Kerri, my mate. I thank you for the beer.”

Kerrie smirked. “No you don’t. But I thank you for being dreamy
and making my girl here positively glow.”

Monet’s heart, only having just thought about returning to
her chest, leapt into her throat again. Glow? Oh God, was it that obvious?

Dylan’s gaze roamed over Monet. “She’s a bit all right,
isn’t she?”

“That she is,” Kerrie was saying, but Monet barely heard
him. Not when Dylan was looking at her with such smoldering hunger. Such
undeniable want. She swallowed.

It took a long stretch of silence before she realized the
curator had left them. Where he was, she didn’t know. She licked her lips and
looked around the gallery, seeing two years of her art life on display. The
exhibition had been meant as a statement on desire’s place in society, its
control on people’s lives. Who knew she’d be a victim to that very control
herself?

“Can I ask a question, love?”

She swung back to Dylan, her pulse quickening when she found
him standing before her. His hat was low on his head, his eyes shaded by the
brim. She drew in a swift breath, the subtle scent of clean soap and a hint of
eucalyptus doing nothing to settle her turbulent state.

“Does how much money I have make a difference?”

“To who?”

“To us.”

“There’s an us?”

His nostrils flared. “Bloody oath, there’s an
us
.”

She shook her head. “No. It doesn’t make a difference. When
we first met I thought you were just a cowboy, that’s all. I didn’t realize you
were some über-successful ranch owner. It just…threw me a little is all.”

“The same way you’ve thrown me, Monet? Like I have no idea
which way is up and if it’s night or day?”

“Should I say sorry?”

“No.” He moved closer. “You shouldn’t. You should let me
kiss you.”

His lips crushed hers, fierce, demanding. Dominating. It was
nothing like any kiss he’d given her before. It wasn’t playful. It was
primitive. Powerful. It made Monet’s pussy constrict, aching to be stretched,
filled. She whimpered into his mouth, her hands sliding up his chest, her hips
pressing to his.

His tongue delved into her mouth, taking and giving
pleasure. She groaned, the ache in the pit of her belly, between her thighs,
growing hotter. Tighter. If he touched her there now, she would come. Just like
that. She wanted him that much.

Then take him back home and fuck him. Tonight. Now.

With more effort than it should have taken, she broke away
from the kiss, holding him at arm’s length, her palms pressed flat to his hard
chest. “Dylan, if we don’t stop kissing…” She paused, her pulse so fast, so
loud in her ears she could barely hear the words forming. “I want you. I want
to make love to you. But…”

A frown pulled at his forehead. His Adam’s apple jumped up
and down his throat. He drew a slow breath, his chest swelling under her palms.
“Annie.”

The single word passed his lips. Low, deep and cut with that
accent. That Australian accent.

Monet’s pussy throbbed. Her clit ached with engorged need.
She let her hands slip down his chest to his belt, over his hip. “Annie,” she
whispered, pressing her forehead to his broad chest.

Damn it, she’d never been so dismayed to hear her best
friend’s name.

“How ’bout we go back to your apartment and make a phone
call?” He tucked a finger under her chin and lifted her head, giving her a
small smile. “Whether they answer or not, I need to get something off my
chest.”

Her breath grew shallow. “And what’s that?”

“How fucking much I want to make love to you.”

She stared up into his eyes, nodded once and then, her
fingers threaded through his, began to walk to the gallery’s exit.

She’d never been so nervous about going home. Or so damn
excited.

The taxi ride took forever. Or at least it felt that way.
Neither she nor Dylan said a word. They sat side-by-side, his palm resting high
on her inner thigh, his fingers ever so slightly brushing the damp lips of her
pussy through the silk of her trousers. She didn’t cup his crotch or caress his
hard-on, no matter how much she wanted to. It would only take one feel of his
bulge—trapped beneath the expensive fabric of his suit—and she would unzip his
fly and straddle his hips, impaling herself on his rigid cock. Right there in
the cab.

So instead, she drove her nails into her palms and counted
the city blocks until they pulled up in front of her apartment.

Tommy opened her door before she could, his gaze flicking to
Dylan, back to Monet and then to Dylan again.

She paid the cab driver. At least, she assumed she did. She
couldn’t remember getting from the sidewalk to her front door. She had a vague
memory of old Mr. Lichtenstein from 41B traveling up in the elevator with them,
but it was just that; vague.

All she could think about, all she could concentrate on was
Dylan. His presence beside her, his fingers threaded through hers, his palm
pressed to hers.

Dylan. The man who was meant to be with someone else,
someone special to her.

Dylan. The man she couldn’t exist another moment without.

By the time they made it to her apartment, she couldn’t
control herself any longer.

They fell through her door. If anyone had asked her if that
was possible, tumbling across a threshold, hands fighting with clothing,
tongues mating, the kind of thing Hollywood constantly showed couples doing,
caught up in the throes of ravenous sexual need, she would have laughed at the
cliché.

She wasn’t laughing now. She was burning up with her need to
be naked, to have Dylan naked, to be sliding up and down his cock as he sucked
on her breasts.

Oh God, she wanted this so badly.

Her heel caught on the living room rug and she stumbled,
Dylan catching her before she could hit the floor. She laughed into his mouth,
loving his strength, his reflexes, his utter masculinity.

Loving
him
.

The thought slammed into her. Hard. Hard enough to make her
gasp. She pulled away from him, her stupid heart once again forgetting it was
meant to be in her chest, not smashing into her throat. They stared at each
other, both fighting for breath.

And that’s when Monet heard it. The soft little beep that
indicated she had a message on her answering machine.

She hurried across the room, knowing Dylan followed her. By
the time she’d hit the play button on the device, he was pressed against her
back, his lips traveling the side of her neck as his hands wandered her hips,
her belly, her breasts.

“Hi, Monnie,” Annie’s voice said from the machine’s speaker,
the distance between New York and Australia obvious in the faint scratchiness
of each word
.

Behind her, Dylan froze. Monet’s heart stopped. Her mouth
went dry.

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.

“I just…I just wanted to say hi,” Annie continued.
“Australia is amazing. Hunter is…has been showing me the station. I hope Dylan
is okay. I really need to talk to him. There’s something I need to… I really
need to talk to him. Please tell him I said hello. I hope you’re looking after
him. Love you.”

The recording ended with the dial tone followed by a long
beep, indicating there were no more messages.

Monet closed her eyes, her throat so tight she couldn’t
breathe, her body one big lump of agony, the feel of Dylan’s hard body a
mocking pressure.

No more.
Just like her and Dylan. No more.

The thought cut through Monet. Slicing into her heart.

Just as Dylan’s hands slipped from her body and he stepped
away.

“Ah fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck!”

Chapter Seven

Dylan watched the two-hundred-foot Scooby-Doo float past him
and thought,
Okay, Sullivan, you
really
aren’t in Kansas anymore.

He couldn’t stop shaking his head, even as his face ached
from smiling. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was singularly the most
surreal, amazing, bizarre, joyful thing he’d ever experienced. There wasn’t
anything like it in Australia. Not even close. Every time he thought he’d
wrapped his brain around what he was seeing, around the corner would float
another gigantic cartoon character, dragging twenty-odd struggling people
underneath it at the end of ropes thick enough to hog-tie a bull, and his brain
would go,
nope
.
This can’t be real.

He’d never laughed so much.

Which was pretty bloody amazing, given the fact the last two
days had been a tormenting hell. An enjoyable, euphoric, completely
fucked-up-wrong tormenting hell.

After he’d heard Annie’s voice on the answering machine,
he’d been hit by guilt. Guilt so hot and cutting he hadn’t slept a minute.
Monet’s sofa—which was also a fold-away bed—had turned into a torture device,
the place where he tossed and turned as he replayed Annie’s words over and over
again in his head.

I hope Dylan is okay. I really need to talk to him.
There’s something I need to… I really need to talk to him.

His first response had been to call Farpoint straight away.
But when he had, no one answered. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect there
was a conspiracy afoot. Of course, he
did
know better. He was the
get-your-hands-dirty, sweat-your-arse-off brother when it came to running
Farpoint. Hunter was the don’t-fuck-with-me-bankers, let’s-talk-business
brother. With Dylan on the other side of the world, Hunter would be tackling
both their jobs.

That would explain why he never answered the damn phone, but
what about their mum? Where was she? Hazel wasn’t just the person who made sure
he and Hunter were eating right, she was the matriarch who made sure they were
running the cattle station the way it should be run. Why the hell wasn’t
she
answering the phone?

He didn’t have an answer for that. Nor did he have an answer
for his situation. The call from Annie had tied him in knots and made him feel
like shit and it had only gotten worse the next morning.

He’d looked at Monet as she’d walked from her bedroom, his
chest tightening, his morning hard-on jerking with painful want at the sight of
her, and said, “We have to talk about—”

And Monet had shaken her head and replied, “We have to start
from scratch.” Then she’d crossed the room to where he was perched on the edge
of the sofa, his bloody erection tenting the crotch of his boxers, his heart
thumping fast in his chest, and held out her hand and said, “Hello, Dylan. I’m
Annie’s friend, Monet. It’s nice to meet you. Want me to show you the city
while we wait for your luggage to turn up?”

It had been an unspoken message—we messed up.

He’d shaken her hand, said, “G’day. That would be great,”
and fifteen minutes later they were out the door, heading for Central Park.

The next two days had passed just like that. Two
acquaintances connected by an absent friend, one showing the other a city she
knew and loved, the other enjoying every bloody minute of it, even as his gut
churned and his heart ached and his mind told him over and over again he could
do this forever, with this woman. Only this woman.

Only Monet.

Two days of enjoyable, euphoric, completely fucked-up
tormenting hell. Three sleepless nights saddled with guilt, lust, desire and,
ultimately, anger. Angry that he’d let himself fall for Monet. Angry that twice
when he’d tried to call Farpoint, he’d turned into a chicken-shit gutless
wonder and killed the connection before he could hear a voice. Because if he
spoke to Annie and she said she was missing him, that she wanted him to come to
her in Australia, he wouldn’t be able to say “okay”.

Not when he wanted to be with Monet.

And now here he was, watching a collection of inflated
cartoon characters the size of Farpoint’s secondary storage shed, laughing and
smiling and enjoying himself so much with Monet that every grin she gave him
pierced his heart, every whiff of her scent drove him mad and every minute by
her side became the most wonderful, exquisite torment of his life.

“Oh look.” Monet turned to face him, her smile wide, her
cheeks flushed from the cold air, her eyes hidden by the same large black
sunglasses she’d been wearing when he’d first met her. “It’s SpongeBob.”

Dylan threw a glance at the bizarre, massive yellow
rectangle with crazy eyes, dressed like a nerdy schoolboy. “Who’s SpongeBob?”

Monet burst out laughing, her hands touching his chest,
giving him a little shove. He wished she hadn’t. It made his heart thump bloody
hard in his chest and his groin tighten. Two days he’d been denied kisses,
touches. Denied holding her, tasting her sweet sex on his tongue. That simple
contact of her gloved hands on his shirted chest was like a red-hot branding
iron searing his flesh.

“You don’t have SpongeBob Down Under? Oh my God, you poor
things.”

Dylan shrugged. “We don’t have SpongeBob on Farpoint. Who
knows about the rest of Australia.”

“When we get back home I’m introducing you to SpongeBob.
There’s bound to be an episode playing on Nick. You’ll love him. Trust me.”

Prickling heat razed over the back of Dylan’s neck. Monet’s
statement, despite its innocence, unsettled him. Home. Love. Trust. All three
things he couldn’t stop thinking about when it came to her.

The third was beyond doubt for him. He trusted her. It was
stupid, given he’d only known her four and a half days, but he did. The first
confused the hell out of him. Home. New York wasn’t his home, but he couldn’t
imagine leaving Monet.

As for the second…

Love.

The second scared the shit out of him because he knew he was
falling in love with her. Knew it as well as he knew when a storm was going to
hit back home. Knew it as well as he knew a prize bull. It wasn’t just his
heart telling him. It was his gut. His soul. His whole body.

He
knew
.

What he didn’t know was what he was going to do about it.

“I thought we were cooking dinner when we got home,” he
said.

Fuck a duck, Sullivan. Even
you’re
using the word
home.

Monet grinned, leaning into him a little, her thighs
brushing his, her breasts pressing to his chest. “No,
you’re
cooking
dinner, remember? I’m going to sit back with a glass of wine and watch you work
your magic.”

Dylan laughed. “Ah, yes. My magic. Are you sure it’s not
sacrilegious not to eat turkey?”

Somehow or another, Monet had convinced him to cook.
Possibly because she hadn’t lied when she’d told him Vegemite on toast was her
specialty, possibly because Dylan was missing good home-cooked tucker.
Tonight’s menu included roast lamb, which—based on how tricky it had been to
find
a leg of lamb in New York—was so far removed from normal Thanksgiving fare,
Dylan wondered if he was going to be booted out of the country.

Monet’s giggle was almost lost in the raucous crowd around
them. Another cartoon behemoth was floating past, one Dylan recognized. Kermit
the Frog. “It’s not sacrilegious. A long as we share with each other what we’re
thankful for, we’ll be fine.”

A thick lump filled Dylan’s throat. He knew what he was
thankful for. Did he dare share it with Monet later that evening?

The rest of the parade went by in a blur of massive balloons
dragging laughing people, marching bands playing toe-tapping music, acrobats
doing amazing feats and spectators cheering them all on. By the time the last
of the procession passed, Dylan was sharply aware of two things. The air was
bitingly cold, blowing about in gusting blasts from dark clouds overhead. And
Monet wasn’t just standing beside him, but leaning into him, her arms wrapped
around his body, her cheek pressed to his chest.

No, three things. He was aware of
three
things.

His arms were wrapped around her as well.

He had no idea when it had happened, but sometime between
Kermit the Frog and Woody Woodpecker, his arms had slid around Monet’s waist
and he was holding her exactly the way he wanted to, as if it was the most
natural thing in the world. As if she was the only thing that
mattered
in the world.

All around them New York thrummed with the happiness of
Thanksgiving and, before he could stop himself, Dylan lowered his head to
Monet’s smiling mouth and kissed her.

Because it wasn’t
as if
it were the most natural
thing in the world for him to do. It
was
the most natural. It was what a
man did with the woman he loved.

And he loved her. Fuck a duck, he loved her.

Monet didn’t want to stop kissing him. What she wanted to do
was stand there forever, in Dylan’s strong arms, against his tall, lean body
and die in the pleasure of his lips on hers. It wasn’t just that she liked
being kissed by him—whoa, did she like being kissed by him—it was that when he
was kissing her, nothing else mattered in the world. Not the people gaping at
them as they walked past, not the horse-mounted cops who would likely come by
and arrest them for public indecency, not the fact he was from Australia and
she was from New York and she didn’t have enough frequent flier miles to visit
him every damn day.

Not even the very real fact he was here for her best friend.

Annie can’t have him. He’s mine.

The thought shot through her pleasure-fogged head,
aggressive and petulant.

And wrong.

Dylan
wasn’t
hers. One day the stars would finally
align and he and Annie would actually manage to speak to each other, his
luggage would show up and he would be on a plane flying back to Australia. Away
from Monet.

She broke the kiss, her whole body aching at the loss, and
stared at his face.

She had to tell him. She had to tell him how she felt. Now.
For fuck’s sake, it was obvious there was something between them.

A gust of wind blasted at her back, pushing her into his
body and blowing his hat clean off his head.

“Bloody hell,” Dylan muttered.

He spun out of their embrace, running after it as it tumbled
along the road. Monet couldn’t help but laugh. He looked so cute, so
determined, his concentration fixed on his tumbling hat…

Right up until he rammed shoulder-first into one of New York’s
finest.

Monet’s mouth fell open.

Her breath caught in her throat. And then burst from her in
a ragged laugh as, without so much as a second’s delay, Dylan stopped the
police officer from staggering backward with one hand and snatched his hat from
the ground with the other, returning it to his head in a graceful arc of his
arm.

Pulling herself together, Monet crossed to where they stood
facing each other, arriving just in time to hear Dylan say, “not that far from
Cobar. Takes about an hour to get there.”

She slowed to a halt beside Dylan, sliding her fingers
through his. For moral support, of course. To show the cop he was friendly to
the natives, even if he did speak with an Australian accent.

Yeah, that’s why. You’re all about global politics,
aren’t you, Monnie?

“Knew a girl from Cobar,” the cop said, a small smile
dancing under a rather impressive moustache. “I haven’t seen her in years. We
kept promising to keep in contact but…” He stopped, giving Monet a quick look
before throwing a nod Dylan’s way. “This here Aussie cowboy yours?”

“Stockman.” Monet grinned. “And yes’m.”

“Have you taken him to the Statue of Liberty yet?”

“Yesterday.”

“Ellis Island?”

“Right after Lady Liberty, sir.”

“Eaten at Carmine’s yet?”

“Day before that.”

“Guggenheim?”

“Okay, I’ll answer this one,” Dylan cut in, his grin as wide
as the cop’s. “Monday. My second day here.” He disengaged his hand from Monet’s
and smoothed it around her hip, tugging her close to his body. “Did you know
this very talented woman has artwork on display there?”

The officer let out a long whistle, giving Monet another
nod. “That’s mighty impressive. What’s it called?”

Monet felt her cheeks fill with warmth. She’d never been one
to blush until Dylan came along, now she seemed to be doing it all the time.
Even at a simple compliment like “talented woman”.

Of course you’re blushing. You’re in love, stupid. When
the man you love says something wonderful about you, you blush with happiness.

“
Introspective Emptiness
.” Dylan supplied the title
of her sculpture on permanent exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. “Go check it
out.”

The cop’s moustache danced some more with his smile. “Think
I will.” He touched the brim of his cap. “If you ever meet a Jilly Anne in
Cobar, give her my regards. Robert Williamson.” A wistful expression flickered
over his face. “She’ll remember me.”

Dylan smiled. “I’m headed to Cobar once I’m back home. I’ll
look her up and tell her you said g’day.”

“The last I heard she’d bought a salon there.” The officer
touched his cap again. “Thanks. Hope you enjoy the rest of your time in New
York.”

Dylan reached up and touched the brim of his own hat.
“Cheers. If you’re ever in Australia, look up Farpoint Creek Cattle Station and
give me a call.”

The cop guffawed. “Will you throw a shrimp on the bar-bee?”

Dylan laughed. “Farpoint’s too bloody far from the ocean for
seafood, mate. But I do a mean lemon and lime grilled chicken.”

With another laugh and a nodded farewell and Happy
Thanksgiving wish to Monet, the officer left, directing the dissipating parade
crowd off the road with a firm voice and two widespread arms.