Page 38 of Ride Me Cowboy (Coyote Creek Ranch #1)

“For God’s sake,” I groan, and then, for no other reason than she’s there and I have this spitting fire of angry need in my chest, I pull her to me and kiss those glorious lips of hers.

I kiss her to stop us from fighting, to stop me from saying something I don’t feel, something I’ll regret.

I kiss her until I’m pretty damned sure we’ve both forgotten whatever it is we were arguing about.

I kiss her so long and hard that her hands are up behind my shirt, pressed to my back, and my cock is hard, right up against her, my knee nudging her legs apart.

I kiss her until all I can think about is lifting her and carrying her to my bed, so neither of us hears the door open, or the moment Mackenzie walks into the room.

It's only her soft, “Holy shit,” that penetrates the sensual fog in my mind, and I break away from Beth, staring down at her like I’m in a whole other vortex or dimension or something, before I glance at Mack and work out what the hell to say.

Beth whirls around, lifting a hand to her lips, her face paler than I’ve ever seen it. Her angst is obvious.

“Mackenzie, listen, please,” she says.

Mackenzie just stands there, looking from Beth to me.

“This isn’t what you think,” Beth says, and I almost laugh at that, because I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what Mackenzie thinks.

“I think you two were about to hump like bunnies,” she says, but a smile flickers on her lips.

Beth closes her eyes, and I know I need to save this, save her.

“What happens between Beth and me is between Beth and me. We’d appreciate you respecting our privacy.”

Mack looks genuinely hurt. “You think I’m going to go blab to everyone?”

“It’s just—we get that everyone would be invested in the outcome,” Beth says unevenly, her voice barely a hoarse whisper.

“And Cole and I both know this is just…a fling,” she says, dropping her gaze to the ground.

I hate that I know she’s thinking of Christopher now, feeling like the more people who know about us, the more of a betrayal it is of him. Fuck that guy.

“A fling?”

“I’m leaving when Reagan comes back. We’re just having…fun,” she says, sounding like she’s never even heard of the concept.

“Right,” Mack nods. “Fun.”

“You don’t need to approve,” I say, my voice sharp again. “But I’ll need your word that this won’t go further than this room.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, lifting her hands, frowning though, sweeping her eyes over us.

“You have my word. I won’t tell a soul.” She moves back to the kitchen door.

“But y’all might wanna think about choosing where you stage your make out sessions, else I’m not gonna be the only one to walk in on you. ”

Fair point.

She leaves and I turn to Beth, to say something, I guess to lighten the mood, but she shakes her head once, offers a weak, forced smile.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says, eyes blinking quickly, and then I’m watching her walk away, feeling like I’ve just made pretty much every mistake I could have in the space of twenty short minutes.

Well, fuck me, if this isn’t a curveball I didn’t see coming, and have no idea how to catch.

Beth

I know I’m running away again, but I can’t help it. The last person I can deal with right now is Cole. Cole, being all concerned, worried about me, needing to know I’m okay when I don’t think I am.

Because Mackenzie knowing about us—what even is ‘us’?

—makes everything monumentally complicated.

I believe she won’t tell anyone else, but that’s not the point.

My husband died almost four months ago, and screwing around with someone else is wrong.

At least, it would be perceived that way to anyone who doesn’t know the facts—who doesn’t understand I stopped loving him a long, long time ago.

“Like this?” Beau asks, grinning as he does an exaggerated tilt of his cap, and flashes a winning smile toward my phone. I look at the image, focusing back on what we’re doing, and try to relax. I’ve come out here with him to get away from all that, so I force myself to push it from my mind.

“Almost,” I say, tilting my head a little, regarding the angle of the sun. “Okay, go again, one more time.”

“Canyon here’s gonna be waterlogged if you keep making me do this,” he throws over his shoulder, but with a wink, and a good-natured grin.

“Canyon’ll survive,” I say, thinking that the big, black and brown horse is probably loving all the creek crossings given the heat of the day.

Beau made me grab a hat before setting out in his truck, so I’m wearing the light brown one Cole gave me.

It’s wide brimmed and felt, and when I catch a glimpse of my shadow in the golden dust, a cowgirl looks back at me.

“Okay, you ready?” Beau, on the other side, asks.

I crouch down this time, to catch the sun at just the right angle to create a solar flare effect, then nod.

Beau gives Canyon a nudge with his foot and the horse sets off, across the stones on the other side of the creek, then into the water with a huge splash.

Beau leans down close, like I asked him to, and the water droplets fly up almost as high as his hips.

He’s wearing chaps, boots, with a coiled rope at his waist, and a knife on the other side, a check shirt and a black cowboy hat.

He looks damn good. Funny that he’s never once made my heart race the way Cole can just by walking in a room.

The creek is wide here, but shallow, so the horse’s legs only get partially submerged.

When he comes out the other side, Beau rides the horse beyond me, like I asked him to.

I don’t look at Beau. Instead, I load up the video and rewatch it, my pulse speeding up, because I know this is the shot we’ve been wanting.

“Well?” he asks.

“It’s perfect.”

“Damn straight. Twelfth time’s a charm.” He leans low on his horse and holds a hand down to me, to help me up from my crouch. I take it, standing, then show him the footage I got.

“Looks good,” he says with a shrug. “No different to the other ones, in my opinion, but I trust you.”

I roll my eyes. “It’s completely different.”

“You know what your social media folks would really go for?” he asks, holding the horse right beside me.

“What’s that?”

“Me, on the back of a bull.”

“You’re right, they would love that, but I’m not going to wade into that battle with your brother for you.”

“Aww, don’t tell me you’re scared of the big bad Cole?”

I shake my head a little. “But it’s your battle to fight.”

“I’m not talking about joining the rodeo. I’m talking about riding a bull here; a bull I know, that knows me.”

“Is it still going to try to buck you hard to the ground?”

“A bull does what a bull does,” he shrugs nonchalantly. But there is something in his eyes, an excitement, a sense of exhilaration, that speaks of a deep yearning to do this.

“What about a horse,” I say, thoughtfully, wondering how I know this when rodeos are completely outside of my area of interest. “Isn’t that a thing?”

“A bronc?”

“Sure. If that’s a horse.”

“Yeah, you can get a bucking horse. That could work.”

“Is it less dangerous than a bull?”

“Sure. I mean, a bull’s a fair bit heftier, less predictable, too. Most bulls I’ve met are just born mean.”

“Okay, you’re not really selling me here.”

“You want this thing to work, right?” he waves toward my phone.

I bite into my lip.

“Let’s give the people the cowboy fantasy. Bull riding’s a part of that.”

“Your brother will never go for it.”

“Last I checked, I’m a grown man. Don’t need his permission for nothing.”

“Hmm, but I sort of do.”

He arches a brow.

“He’s my boss, right?”

He grins. “I guess he’s got you there. But he’d never fire you for this, Beth. He’d know it was all my stupid idea.”

Except, he’d know I’d gone along with it, and after he’d told me what it had been like, to see Beau so badly hurt.

“I’ll think about it,” I lie. “For now, this is perfect.”

“You know, whether you film it or not, I’m getting back on a bull. I gave it up for the old man, out of respect for him. It was never what I wanted.”

I open my mouth to say something, but draw a blank. How can I tell him what to do? How can I tell him how worried it would make Cole?

“You ready to head back to the house?”

I glance up at Beau, frowning. “I guess.”

“I’ll take Canyon then come and get you.” He glances back at me as he rides away and calls, “But you really oughta be able to ride a horse by now, you know.”

That’s true. This would be simpler if I could. Instead, Beau drove us out here in his truck, dropped me off, then drove to the stables to get Canyon. If I knew how to ride, I could just have jumped on a horse at the same time.

My blood thickens as I remember the way it had felt to ride a horse with Cole, to have his arms around me, his legs at my side. To feel all of him, and to know I was just exactly where I wanted to be.

While Beau’s gone, I take some extra footage, doing a slow pan of the creek, the dry plains far beyond it, then slowly circle back to the house.

It’s up on the hill, with that big old tree right in the middle.

My hand trembles a little as I focus in on it, wondering if Cole’s there, in his office.

Or if he’s out here, somewhere. I look around, like maybe I can conjure him up out of nowhere.

So much for running away.

Even when I put some physical distance between Cole and me, he’s everywhere.

In the soft summer breeze, the land at my feet, the water rushing behind me, and most of all, in my mind, seeping into all the parts of me.

Maybe fighting that is futile. Maybe I just have to accept it, and cling to the knowledge that no matter what, I’m leaving this place when Reagan comes back, and then, I’ll never see him again.