Teaching the Cowboy (13 page)

“So let’s be real. Give me a damned good reason why it wouldn’t work, Ronnie, and not the geography shit. Would you marry me right now if this had been New York City?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You want a marriage of convenience, but it’d be damned inconvenient for me. Besides, whirlwind romances only work out in novels.”

“What’s inconvenient about it? Yeah, I want you. Who wouldn’t? You’re beautiful. Smart. Kids like you. Staff likes you.”

Community hates me.

“But you’ve got the damnedest attitude problem I’ve ever encountered, and you’ve met
Sid
. That’s saying something.”

“I don’t need to be tamed, John.”

“Well, that’s good because I’m not trying to tame you. I just want that attitude problem to be a Lundstrom problem.”

She put down her cup and stomped toward the basement. Her plan was to check on the man’s clothes and get the hell out of there. His chair scraped against the floor as he pushed back from the table upstairs.

He’s nuts.
She stormed down the stairs and found the dryer still spinning. When she climbed back up, she yipped as he grabbed her at the waist before at the top landing.

He hitched her up to his shoulder and clamped his arms around her thighs as he carried her down the hall.

“John, put me down this instant.”

“No.”

She clawed his back and tried to kick her legs, but he was holding on too tight. “Now.”

“Save the scratching for later, Veronica.”

“What are you doing?”

“We’re going to fuck.”

“No, we’re not.”

He tossed her onto that same bed as before. “You’re right.” He unfurled the towel at his waist and she froze, staring at his erection. Obviously the man was immune to the effects of whiskey dick.

She crossed her legs at the knees and swallowed hard.

“I’m going to make love to you, but to you it’s just fucking ’cause you hate me, right? Just a warm body for you?”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t hate you. You know it’s not that.”

He rolled the covers back from the headboard, but had to stop where she sat in the middle. He climbed up onto the bed and leaned against the headboard, eyes closed, breathing uneven. When he opened his eyes again, he dared, “Prove it here and now and I’ll never ask you again.”

Is this guy kidding me?

He wrapped his fingers around the base of his shaft and squeezed his hand upward to the head, shifting the foreskin to make it visible at the head. “Want you, Ronnie.”

Her traitorous body bowed, even thinking of how he’d worshiped her body before. How he’d rendered her speechless time and time again, and had somehow managed to never make her feel used up. Just wanted.

She wanted it. God, she wanted it.

“Come on, Ronnie. Will you let me feel you?”

She swallowed hard and forced her gaze up to his pleading face. “We’re confusing things here again, John.”

“I know. Beautiful confusion. Please?”

Her shaking hands found purchase in the wrinkled folds of the quilt. “Condom.”

Chapter Ten

J
ohn had a hell of a headache when he woke in the dark. What had he drunk this time? Whiskey again? No, that bootleg rotgut shit one of the ranch hands got from one of Ted’s crew. The same shit he’d put a moratorium on. He lifted his hand to his face and rubbed the bleariness from his eyes before reaching to the nightstand to flick on a lamp.

Shit
.

No lamp there. He wasn’t at home. It all started coming back to him.

Ronnie sat up in the bed beside him and pulled the sheets up over her breasts. She started to ease off the other edge of the bed, but he made a grab for her waist and dragged her back.

“Stay.”

“I’m not a puppy, John.” She slapped his hands away but stopped moving. Her face, shadowed by the bare light from the moon through the lightweight curtains, wasn’t quite angry though he suspected that would be its next stop.

“Stay anyway. No need to rush home now.” He propped his elbow onto his pillow and rested the side of his head on his fist. “Come here.” He patted the space right in front of him with his unoccupied hand.

She shook her head, her disheveled hair falling in heavy swaths into her eyes. She was so pretty with her hair every which way, but he didn’t want to bring her attention to it for fear she’d run off in search of a brush and rubber band.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Do you remember anything?”

He closed his eyes and breathed out a deep breath as he filtered through the thoughts, some erotic, some pitiful and pleading. “I remember everything. I suppose you want to talk about it.”

“No, I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to see how much you’ll deny.”

He sat up and grabbed the woman around the waist and dragged her back to the middle of the bed. He straddled her thighs, pinning her arms over her head, and put his nose very close to hers as blood flooded his crotch yet again.

Her expression as he probed her with his half-mast erection was utterly blasé.

“I’m not going to deny a goddamned thing. I know what I said. Would I go back and do it different if I could? Yeah. You’re obviously expecting me to behave a certain way right now, so I’ll do you a favor and tell it like it is.” He managed to work the tip of his cock to the gate of her tight entrance without use of his hands. Getting it
in
without her help from that angle would be another matter.

“And how is it?”

“I meant everything I said, Veronica. Everything. Even the damned pitiful parts.” He bent his head down and searched her neck with his lips for that sensitive spot that always made her suck in air when he found it.

She squirmed beneath him and wrapped a leg around his. Just the angle he needed. He nipped at her earlobe with his teeth, barely avoiding one of the ever-present pearl studs, as he shifted his hips and pressed his tip into her.

She shifted her hips and worked him out of her.

Oh
. He shifted to the right and patted the bedside table, wrapping his fingers around the last foil packet there. Using his teeth as a vise, he tore it open and unrolled the rubber onto his erection one-handed.

“I don’t know you that well, John. I can’t just—”

He muffled her objection with his mouth over hers and flicked his tongue against hers. She moaned into his mouth as he eased his cock in and out, the pace deliriously slow, but obviously stoking a flame in her she’d left untended.

When he freed her lips, she had no words.

“Ronnie?”

“Huh?” she croaked, eyes fluttering behind their lids.

“I’m telling you sober. I love you, honey.”

Her eyes opened and that same panic from the previous night at the table was in them, but before she could squeak out an objection he kissed her again. He didn’t want a response, wasn’t looking for one. He just wanted her to know, to let it settle into her, and maybe infect her. He wanted her to know that every time he looked at her, it wasn’t because he was thinking about Landon’s S.A.T. scores, or Peter’s outbursts that needed controlling, or Liss’s damned sensitivity. Not just those things a teacher could help him navigate through, but he saw her as a woman greater than his equal. One he had no hopes of claiming, but he planned on trying anyway. He couldn’t bitch later if he didn’t try.

When she came, he let go of her wrists and she immediately reached for his ass, pulling him more deeply into her and clenching her muscles around him, and that brought him, too. He kissed her lips, her chin, jaw, and down to her neck, savoring every part of her before rolling over and settling onto the adjacent pillow.

He trailed fingers down between her breasts to her belly, watching her chest rise and fall as she spiraled down to even keel, and she quivered at his touch. She was so responsive, and he couldn’t get enough. It was almost too good to be true. He felt like he didn’t deserve it.

A couple of hours later, John had showered, again, and sat at the breakfast table back at the main house with Landon, Peter, Liss, and with Anna flitting nearby, flipping pancakes. Ronnie had begged off, saying she’d get some cereal over at her place. John had balked, but he could hardly force her to breakfast given the way he’d kept her up all night.

“What’s on your agenda today, Landon?”

Landon stretched his arms over his head and made something in that young back of his crack.

John cringed.

“Trying to make a decision about whether or not I’m going to try for any advanced placement credits for English and American History. Need to register for the tests by today, and I’m so damned behind.”

“
You’re
behind?”

“Well, not me specifically. I imagine the entire graduating class from the Storafalt Community School was at the same place. I’m just the only one having to deal with it right now.”

“When are the tests? Can you catch up by then?”

“December. And maybe. English’ll be easier since that’s composition, and not necessarily remembering facts. History’ll be a bitch.”

“Can’t hurt to try.” John wedged his wallet out of his back pocket and slipped out a credit card. He slid it across the tabletop and Landon caught it. “Do it.”

Landon nodded. “You’re right. Can’t hurt. And it’d save me from having to take two courses next year.”

“Let’s not even talk about next year.”

The side door creaked open and smacked against the stopper as Rufus stepped up into the doorway, kicking the mud off his boots on the mat just outside.

“Oh, shit,” Peter said upon spotting the frazzled ranch manager.

John nudged Peter’s shin with his foot under the table. “Language, kid.”

“Whatever. You were thinking it.” Peter went back to tucking into to his overly syrup-sodden pancakes.

“What’s going on, Rufus?” If it were something small, he would have called. Hell, if it were something big, he would have called just to have that buffer from John.

“Can I talk to you in private?”

John set down his fork. “Something wrong with the steer? Horses?”

“No, it’s not about the about the ranch.” Rufus scanned the room and when he saw Anna giving him the death glare, he jumped a bit in his skin, and cocked his head toward the door to the rest of the house. “Meet you in your office?”

John took his napkin off his lap and set it on the table beside his plate. He picked up his coffee cup, stood, ruffled Liss’s bird’s nest hair with his free hand, and made his way into the greater house. They stepped into the office and John swept a hand toward the chairs in front of the desk, indicating Rufus should sit. John took the seat behind the desk and set his coffee down.

“What’s going on?”

Rufus took off his hat and twisted it between his wringing hands. “This is kind of embarrassing, but Katie told me to man up and ask ’cause we don’t know what else to do at this point, really.”

“Do you need a loan, Rufus?”

His hazel eyes went wide. “No, no. Not at all. We’re doing real good. It’s just, Rabbit…”

Rabbit a.k.a. Rufus’ eight-year-old daughter Mara.

“What about her?”

“Well, since me and Katie and Rabbit moved onto the ranch, it’s been hard getting Mara to school since they cut the bus funding which was bad enough, but then we got that last report card in June and Mara got a D in damned near every subject except for P.E.”

John leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He had to think. All the ranch hand kids started to blur together after a while, there were so many of them, but he remembered that Mara was the one who’d taught Liss the differences between different kinds of rocks they found on the property. A little girl that observant shouldn’t have been earning Ds in science.

“What’d you have in mind?”

“Katie said to ask, so I’m going to ask, and of course I’m gonna have to ask Ted and Becka too, but we’ll pay our share, so don’t worry about—”

“Rufus, spit it out, bud.”

It all came out in one long, muffled mumble. “
WewantRonnietoteachher.
”

John’s brain took a moment to pry those words apart. He opened his mouth to tell the man that it might be a temporary thing with her leaving at the end of the school year and all, but wasn’t he trying to keep her there? Besides, she wanted it to be a secret, and he’d respect that. “Oh, is that all? It’s fine with me, but I’m not the one doing the teaching. I’ll talk to Ted and Becka, but you need to ask Ronnie. I don’t know what her limit is.”

Rufus slumped in his seat and blew out a breath. “Thank you, Lord.” He popped out the dents in his hat and squashed it onto his head as he stood.

“Why don’t you give Ronnie a couple of hours to get settled in for the day before you track her down? I think she had a rough night.” John cleared his throat. “Coyotes kept her up.”

“Will do. We’ll see if we can do anything about those coyotes, too.”

John chuckled and reached for his phone. He punched in Ronnie’s number, but the voice answering the phone most definitely wasn’t hers. He held the phone back from his ear to verify he’d dialed the right number.

“Hi, Uncle John.”

“Kitty, what are you doing answering Miss Silver’s phone?”

“She’s out on the stoop talking to one of the Ericksons’ ranch hands about somethin’. I saw your number pop up so I answered. So, hello.”

“Well,
hello
. What are you doing out here?”

“Mom dropped me off. Ronnie’s going to bring me over to your place to see Liss while she’s working with Landon.”

“Oh, well she’ll be glad to see you I bet. Hey, which ranch hand is on the stoop? You recognize him?”

“Oh, yeah, everyone knows Eddie.”

John stood and grabbed his hat. Oh, he knew Eddie. They’d graduated in the same year. Tan, with eyes the color of the sea, and with a demeanor so slick he could have a woman’s lips around his shaft without even learning her name.

“Honey, do me a favor. Go outside and say very sweetly to Ronnie that her boyfriend’s on the phone.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it. It doesn’t have to be true.”

“Hold on. Never mind. She’s coming in now.”

“See you in a few minutes.” He stabbed the end button. He was going to sit right there until she arrived, steer be damned.

Eddie Vann dropped his change into his pocket and offered the pharmacy tech a smile as he collected his bag.

She flushed red. “You’ll let me know if you have any questions?”

“Thanks, but she’s been on this one a while. I don’t think anything’s changed, but thank you all the same.”

“Well, you know where to find us.” She giggled and shifted her weight behind the counter.

“Yep.” He was halfway up the aisle toward the pharmacy’s front door when she called him back.

“Hey, Eddie? You doing anything later? We could go out.”

He pondered the proposition a moment before turning around, his smile back in place. She was cute, but too damned young for him. Truth was, he wasn’t particularly interested in most of the women in Storafalt nowadays. Sure, he’d done his fair share of womanizing as a rowdy youth, but at thirty-eight and with so many obligations now, he was really interested in settling down and finding his one great love. The baby behind the counter wasn’t it. For whatever reason, though, since coming back to Storafalt after his long hiatus, people expected the same thing of him: see skirt, chase it.

“Sorry, gotta take Mom to the doctor in the morning. Gotta get up early.”

“Oh.” She blushed again. “Well, tell her I said hey.”

“You got it.” He tipped his hat and managed this time to exit without any further distractions. His truck was parked half a block away and around the corner, and he took his time walking back to it. In the scheme of things, he was one ranch hand out of dozens at the Erickson place, and while he pulled his fair share of weight and then some, no one would care if he were gone a few extra minutes. The guys covered for each other all the time and ol’ Ted was generally out of the loop. He was too busy with his nose pressed into the seams of porno mags.

It was an okay job as far as ranch jobs went, and he’d worked at a lot, but he knew deep down inside it wouldn’t get him anywhere. There was no chance for upward advancement. He had no aspirations to ever own a ranch of his own, but he thought he could do a little better than branding calves all day. When the ranch manager job at the Lundstrom place opened up earlier in the year, he’d thought about throwing his hat in the ring. Hell, he’d printed off his résumé and had gotten as far as the ranch road before turning around.