CHAPTER 8 #2
‘She’s right, you sure do pass for a fine cowgirl.’ Startled, I glanced to the left. Jesse and Cole were both watching me, Jesse smiling wide. ‘Just be careful no one else takes it and puts it on, y’hear?’
I risked a few steps towards them, Cole’s face unmoving, his features shadowed. My heart sped up.
‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me why?’ I asked, watching as Cole shifted, finally looking up, his lips curving.
‘Wear the hat, ride the cowboy – or cowgirl, Princess.’
He held my eyes as though willing a response. The darkness covered the redness I knew was spreading across my cheeks. Jesse grinned.
‘Best be careful then,’ I answered, slowly turning towards the campfire.
Eventually, after the camp had settled down, I discovered that Bailey was a liar. Despite me poking her to roll over at least three or four times, her snoring all but lifted the canvas off the ground.
I lay still, looking up into the darkness, thoughts drifting to Kyle, to his response.
Would he be sorry? Promise to change? I’d have to face him eventually, when I went home.
Sighing, I pushed deeper into the sleeping bag to find more warmth, adjusting the rolled-up towel I’d put under my head as a pillow.
My legs and back were still sore from my fall, today’s riding adding to it. Tomorrow was going to hurt.
Suddenly, an idea hit.
The pools.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I crept out of the tent, shining the small torch Bailey had brought to navigate through the trees.
The fires had been carefully extinguished earlier to prevent any chance of causing wildfire, which meant that the moon was the only source of light.
Luckily it was almost full, casting a silvery sheen across the river as the wisps and whorls of steam from the pools danced.
I climbed the bank to reach them, clutching my towel under my arm.
And froze.
‘This your way of saying you’re sorry?’
I almost choked. Cole.
Leaning back against the smooth rocks at the side of the smaller pool, exposed arms and broad chest reflected in the moonlight, he looked like he owned this space. As though he was one and the same as the untamed landscape.
‘Sorry? For what?’ I hissed, only just resisting the urge to rest my hands on my hips as I said it.
‘For calling me an asshole?’ he said, raising an eyebrow as he ran his fingers through the hair that fell across his face, chasing it back.
‘But you . . . I didn’t actually call you an asshole. I said your assumptions about me made you come across like an asshole.’
If my year of working alongside lawyers had taught me anything, it was to be careful about the words you used, how to skirt the lines between different meanings.
‘Right,’ he replied. ‘Same thing. So, you getting in, or you going to freeze yourself half to death out there?’
I hesitated. Technically it was my family that owned this ranch; these were not his pools to monopolize. But . . . I risked another glance at him and saw the open curiosity in his face, the hard planes of muscle in his chest, and under the surface of the water . . . well, that I could only imagine.
‘Well, I can’t,’ I replied, stepping back. ‘I’m not just stripping off in front of you. If you were any kind of gentleman you’d get out and leave me be.’
I turned and began to walk away.
‘Wait up, wait up,’ he called, keeping his voice low. ‘I’m sorry, I’m only teasing. How’s about I turn around and keep my eyes to myself, then you let me know when you’re safely in and tucked away?’
The deep aching in my legs begged me to return, the sincerity in his eyes egging it on.
Narrowing my eyes in response, I walked over, drawing closer before making a motion with my hand for him to turn around.
He did so immediately, presenting me with a back so toned and sculpted that I simply stared at it for a solid few seconds before shaking myself and stripping off.
I hesitated at my underwear, but figuring I didn’t want wet clothes in my bag, they followed.
‘Why are you awake anyway?’ I asked, clutching my towel to my front and stepping over to the larger pool, separated from his smaller one by a few rocks.
‘Jesse snores,’ he replied as I dropped the towel and stepped in, the warm water sending goosebumps across my cold skin.
It was the temperature of a perfect bath.
I lowered myself under the surface, twisting my hair back to keep most of it out of the water.
‘And I like sitting out here like this, it’s . . . peaceful. Usually.’
‘I’m in,’ I said, rolling my eyes at his comment and mirroring his initial position, arms out of the water on the rocks beside me, but carefully keeping my chest under the surface.
He turned back around, his eyes lingering a few seconds longer than I knew how to handle across my face, my neck and where my skin disappeared into the water.
A silence fell, even the soft sounds of the river, the horses and cows around us fading out, and a feeling crept through me, my thighs aching in a whole new way as I watched him right back.
Clearing his throat a little, he broke eye contact, leaning his head back on the rocks and looking right up at the moon.
My pulse thudded in my ears as I wondered if he could see below the waterline, and about what might happen if he climbed in here.
Once again my mind took me back to the night I’d arrived, to his hands on my body.
Imagining how they would feel now on my bare skin, where they might wander, unrestricted by clothes.
‘So given that you’re not a city girl,’ he said, gradually turning his head back to me, moonlight reflected in his eyes, ‘then what’s a country girl doing in the city?’
I arched my eyebrows at his admission of his previous misconception, a handful of sarcastic responses landing alongside the more straightforward answers I could give. But, if I was being honest, with him and myself, none of them fitted.
‘Trying to make something of myself.’ I shrugged. ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’
Admitting it out loud felt painful, especially to someone who I couldn’t get a read on and whose reaction I couldn’t guess.
I closed my eyes and leant back, waiting for the provocation to begin again. Would he try for a reaction? Maybe try and get me to stand up in the water if I was angry enough and forgot myself? Could I goad him into doing the same? Did I want to?
‘My mom was a country girl in the city,’ he said, his voice lower than before, jolting me from my thoughts. ‘She . . . felt the same thing, I think.’
Confused, I turned back to him, noting the tightness in his jaw. This was hard for him to admit too, I could see – painful, even.
‘And how did it work out for her?’ I asked, keeping my voice gentle, wanting to repay his honesty in return, the rush of empathy I felt deep down.
He paused, finding my eyes again. We stared at each other for a moment, goosebumps building across my arms, forcing me to lower them into the water.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ducking his head a little as a raw undertone crept into his words. ‘She rarely visited me, my brother or my dad after she left us. Last I heard she was running some tech company in San Francisco, found herself a whole new family over there.’
I swallowed as the pain now openly seeped into his expression.
It was all I could do not to reach over and offer a hand, a touch on his arm to express the ache of sadness I suddenly felt on his behalf.
The city girl jibes now made perfect sense, expressing the hurt that was clearly still so close to the surface.
‘Shit,’ I replied, ‘I’m sorry. No wonder you’re not keen on city people. I had no idea.’
His half-smile was sad, the accompanying shrug not quite casual enough to be convincing.
‘How would you know? It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but I’m a grown-ass man.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘I need to let this shit go, you know?’
I kept still, aware of just how vulnerable he was being with me.
It felt like a real apology somehow for the past few days; not a few words at the surface, but pulling the truth from the deep, painful though it was.
It reminded me somehow of how Hestia was, a genuine generosity of spirit shining through.
‘Or, live with it, recognize it for what it is. You don’t have to be defined by her actions.
’ I paused, considering him in a new light.
‘From what Lil tells me, you’re defining yourself in the opposite way.
She told me what you’ve done for her, for the ranch.
I get the impression you’re about as far from selfish as it gets. ’
My voice was quiet, but the words found their mark. He stayed quiet a moment, eyes on mine, softened.
‘So what do you want to make of yourself?’ he asked, shifting slightly in the water and disturbing the surface. I caught a glimpse of his abs, and fought to look away.
‘I just want to be good at what I do, whatever that is. If I could do that away from the city, then . . . that would be the dream. But that’s where all the opportunities are.
’ I stopped, suddenly hearing my dad’s voice, somehow melded with mine.
‘Maybe it’s just a temporary thing,’ I added, my voice dropping to a whisper.
‘I’m not sure I can live surrounded by concrete my whole life. ’
I felt his eyes on me, searching.
‘You and Lil kinda look alike, you know?’ he said, a new edge to his tone. He shifted across the pool, drawing closer to the edge that bordered mine. ‘Makes it difficult.’
My heart stuttered as I glanced up to see the change in his expression, the look he was giving me melting me right down to my core.
‘Makes what difficult?’ I asked, cursing myself for how breathy and ridiculous I sounded, the same way I had after he’d kissed me back in the bar. The way his lips had dragged against my neck, the feel of them as they’d brushed against my ear.
He smiled, eyes dipping.
‘I think of Lil as family,’ he began, his hands emerging from the water, gripping the side. ‘But the thoughts I’ve had about you, well, they’re not things you ever want to be thinking about family.’
I blinked, my eyes widening.
He chuckled and without warning, suddenly launched himself up by his hands and pulled himself out of the water. I turned my head away, but not before I’d caught sight of . . . everything.
‘Holy shit, Cole,’ I muttered, the image of his perfect, round ass, strong, long legs and package now branded onto my mind, filling my whole damn body with fire.
‘That’s what they all say,’ he laughed, and before I could retort, added, ‘What I mean to say is, no hard feelings, Princess. I’ve got no problem with you, never have.’ He paused, and I heard the sound of a towel over skin. ‘It’s just what to do with you.’
Speechless, I gripped the rock in front of me, still listening as he started to walk away. ‘Don’t stay out long – the other cowboys will be up soon and I don’t fancy starting my day knocking skulls together.’
Still stunned, I turned, watching him slowly disappear into the darkness like a figment from my imagination.