The Cowboy Next Door--Includes a bonus novella Read online

  Cash shook his head. “Heading there now. Stand by. Out.”

  Breaking and entering? That kind of shit didn’t happen in Oak Bluff. The town wasn’t perfect. The Everett boys had had their share of hell when their drunk of a father had almost killed the oldest one, Jack. But that was over a decade ago, when Cash was studying criminal justice in college. By the time he’d come back home, the Everetts had been permanently removed from Jack Senior’s custody. Now the man was dead and gone, and the three brothers were all running the Crossroads Ranch and soon a new vineyard.

  The bottom line was, there were no major threats—domestic or otherwise—in their sleepy little town. And hadn’t he dealt with enough on what was supposed to be an uneventful Saturday night?

  When he got to Lucinda’s, he and Dixie climbed stealthily up the back steps to where they found the door perfectly shut.

  Cash gripped the handle and gave it a soft twist to the right, and it opened with ease.

  Perfect. Lucinda had set the alarm but hadn’t locked the door.

  He stepped quietly into the apartment’s kitchen—and almost tripped over a pair of pharmacy-purchased flip-flops. In fact, he’d venture to guess these flip-flops were only a few hours old.

  That’s when he saw Olivia Belle through the open archway into the living room, kneeling on the wood floor with a broken floorboard in her hand.

  And she was crying.

  “I know,” she said, her reddened eyes meeting his. “I’m under arrest.”

  Dixie ran straight to her and collapsed, resting her head in Olivia’s lap.

  She laughed through a sob. “This furry ball of love would never rip someone’s arm off.”

  “Betrayed again,” Cash mumbled. “She is trained to,” he said louder. “Just hasn’t had much occasion to do so, so she’s out of practice.” More like she never had the occasion to do so, but that was beside the point.

  He made his way through the living room to the digital panel on the wall. He typed in the code to disable the alarm, and the silent alert finally left his cell phone alone.

  “The door was unlocked,” she said with a sniffle. “I was just going to look for— I didn’t know there was an alarm.” Her brows pulled together. “Wait. You know Lucinda’s alarm code?”

  He huffed out a breath. “Lucinda is my mother. And when she gets back, we’re going to have a nice long talk about how the alarm doesn’t mean shit if she keeps on leaving her door unlocked. Also, who takes off their shoes when making an unlawful entry?”

  Olivia’s eyes widened as she dropped the floorboard to the ground. “Oh God. I broke into the town sheriff’s mother’s home? And I stepped in a puddle out back. I didn’t want to mess the place up—just find something that isn’t here.”

  He sat down on the arm of the couch and pulled the radio off his hip. “False alarm. No backup needed.” He waited for Adams and Walters to reply, then set the radio on the coffee table and crossed his arms. “Well, you didn’t exactly break in. But you did enter private property that isn’t yours. You wanna tell me why?”

  Olivia scratched Dixie behind the ear and blew out a shuddering breath. Cash had the inexplicable impulse to go to her, to pull this force of nature of a woman into his arms and comfort her.

  But Cash Hawkins didn’t act on impulse. And he wasn’t about to start with a woman who couldn’t seem to go five minutes without breaking a law.

  Her shoulders slumped. “Guess I have to tell you everything now, huh?”

  He shrugged. “Either that or say good-bye to the B and B and hello to a musty cell.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I suppose now that I’ve interrupted your evening again, I owe you that much.”

  “I suppose you do,” he said. He could just march her back to the B and B and call it a night. But he told himself he wanted to hear her story for legal reasons—to make sure this woman wasn’t going to be breaking and entering or committing another traffic violation any time soon. It certainly wasn’t because he wanted a few more minutes in her presence. Because that would go against all his self-imposed rules when it came to women. Mainly—he didn’t do the whole get-to-know-you thing. But here he was—getting to know her.

  Olivia swiped under her eyes and sniffled again. Dixie whimpered, and Olivia went back to scratching behind the non–attack dog’s ear. “My grandma lived in Oak Bluff until she was nineteen. She met my grandpa on a weekend trip to San Francisco. They had one magical night—his last night in town before leaving for basic training and then being shipped off to the war in Vietnam. They continued their courtship one hundred percent through letters for three years.”

  “I’m assuming things worked out for them since they are your grandparents and all?”

  She nodded. “He proposed to her the day he got home, and they eloped the next weekend.”

  “Get outta here,” Cash said. “One date and some letters, and just like that?”

  “Just like that. They’re coming up on their forty-eighth anniversary.”

  Cash blew out a long whistle. “Lemme guess,” he said. “You’re looking for the letters.”

  The tears started again. “This used to be her house. I didn’t realize it because the address was different and—well—it’s an antiques shop now. But I did some googling on my phone. Thank God for the B and B’s Wi-Fi, by the way. And it turns out this is the place.” She held up the loose floorboard. “See?” She pointed to small carvings in the wood. J and A. 1967–1970. “Joseph and Anna.”

  He scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t get it. If these letters are so special, why’d your grandmother leave them here?”

  “She didn’t mean to at first. But their honeymoon turned into a year of travel. Can you believe that? A year. And when they finally made their way back here, her parents had up and sold the place. By that time Gran said she didn’t need the letters because she had my grandfather, so she never came looking for them. They ended up settling in San Francisco, had my dad and my uncle. My dad married my mom. They had me. Years later they decided they hated each other, so they divorced and are still living hatefully ever after to this day.”

  “That was a mouthful,” he said, still sort of reeling from the verbal onslaught. Most of his conversations warranted nothing more than a one- or two-word response from him, and he liked it that way.

  She secured the plank of wood back into its spot, gave Dixie a pat, then stood up. She dusted her hands off on her Oak Bluff sweatshirt.

  “I’m pretty sure I’ve overstayed my welcome. If you’re not going to arrest me—again—I should get going.”

  “So the true love you came here to find…?”

  “Theirs,” she said. “I thought if I could read the letters I could figure out the secret. You know?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Secret to what?”

  She threw her hands in the air. “Love! How do you find it? How do you make it last? What happened in those letters that got them to almost fifty years of marriage when I can barely make it past fifteen months of dating a perfectly nice guy with a perfectly good job and perfect co-op who would love to put me on the deed? Do you know I ran from a man while he was down on one knee? With a ring? Why do I keep running from commitment? How the hell do I fix myself so I can find what they found five decades ago?”

  Her chest was heaving.

  “Wait. You’re getting married?”

  “No! That’s just the point. I’m not. And I probably shouldn’t. Yet I keep hoping I’ll figure it out, and maybe that’s my problem.”

  Her arms were flailing at this point, and her eyes were wild—both signs that he should probably back away. Instead he found himself stepping closer, his hands gently gripping her shoulders in an effort to calm or steady or something.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about this stuff, but I’m sure of one thing.”

  She took a few steadying breaths, then fixed her gaze on him. “What’s that?”

  “There is no secre
t,” he said plainly.

  Her bottom lip trembled, but no more tears fell. “So I’m just—broken?”

  He could feel the heat of her skin even beneath the sweatshirt, and it made the tips of his fingers tingle. He tried to rationalize that she was simply new and unexpected, and that was why he couldn’t seem to stay away. But it wasn’t like he was celibate. He spent his nights and weekends off at his favorite tavern a couple towns over. He’d found plenty of companions over the years who were good with keeping it casual.

  Weren’t they at one time or another new and unexpected, too?

  “Aren’t we all sorta broken?” he countered.

  “Well, that’s a cynical way of looking at things. Hey, wait.” She paused. “If Lucinda’s your mom, that was your stepdad who just…”

  He nodded. “Went to the burial this morning. But a sheriff can’t quite take a week off the job. It’s kind of a ’round the clock situation.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath. “And the first husband—the one who died of lung cancer—that was your dad.”

  His throat tightened. “I was sixteen. He was a good father, but hardheaded as all hell.”

  “Oh, Cash,” she said, cupping his cheek in her palm. He didn’t correct her. Didn’t give her his damned spiel about Sheriff Hawkins and Ms. Belle because right now, in this moment, he liked the sound of his name on her lips.

  “What if I could help you track down those letters?” he asked.

  “You would do that for me?”

  He laughed softly. “If it means you stop breaking laws in my town and let me get a night or two of peace.”

  Her cheeks flushed, and hell if she wasn’t beautiful when she was embarrassed.

  She held up her right hand. “I solemnly swear to stop breaking laws in Oak Bluff, California.”

  “Deal,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about your dad, Cash. And your stepdads. You and Lucinda have lost a lot, huh?”

  “We get by just fine.”

  “And getting by is enough?” she asked.

  “Has been.” Until now, it seemed. Because this woman was making him think things he shouldn’t think. And want things he shouldn’t want.

  She rested both her palms on his chest, and he could feel his heart hammering against his ribs. Could she feel it, too? And when the hell was the last time a woman had made his heart race?

  He wasn’t like Lucinda. She loved, lost, and loved again. He didn’t know how she did it, and she definitely wasn’t the norm. People were lucky enough to find love once in a lifetime, if at all. He’d had his once and wasn’t about to go looking for it again when one of two things could happen: he could search and never find it, or he could be that tiny percentage like his mother who found it—and lost it—again. Either way, he set himself up for disappointment or worse. No, thank you.

  Yet here was Olivia Belle, her fingertips searing his skin through his shirt, obliterating years of rationalization for why he lived his life the way he did.

  This was the worst idea. Period.

  “You’re not getting married,” he said plainly, but it was still a question.

  “I’m not.”

  “Ms. Belle?”

  “Sheriff?”

  “I’m gonna kiss you again.”

  She bit her bottom lip, and he wondered if there was anything sexier. “I’m gonna let you.”

  “Good.” He dipped his head.

  “But,” she interrupted, “let the record show that I am defective. I don’t know how to—”

  “Olivia.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop talking, please.”

  He brushed his lips tentatively over hers, and when she didn’t speak, he let the hunger win. Her lips parted, and his tongue slipped past. He tasted the salt of her tears, the coffee she must have had at the B and B, and something sweet, like cinnamon. She was both delicious and intoxicating, and even though he was still on call, he let himself get drunk on the strangeness and newness of wanting like he hadn’t let himself want in a good long time.

  Because wanting her was safe. She wouldn’t be here long enough to burrow her way into his heart, just long enough to get whatever this was out of his system.

  Because she’d already admitted she was a runner, and Cash knew a thing or two about being left on one knee.

  Because despite it seeming like she somehow ran to him, as soon as they solved the mystery of the letters, she’d be long gone, and everything would go back to the way it had always been.

  Chapter Five

  Olivia met Cash in the lobby of the B and B at half past ten. She bounded out of the kitchen in her favorite jeans, a green cami and cardigan, and her Chuck Taylors. The messenger Emily sent had arrived a bit past eight, and just having her own stuff made Olivia feel like today, anything was possible. Plus, the swelling in her ankle had gone down significantly, so while it still hurt, walking was no longer an issue. Then there was the big, bad sheriff waiting for her in the small foyer. Only in jeans and a form-fitting gray T-shirt, he didn’t look so big and bad. Or sheriff-y. But good Lord did he look—good.

  “Coffee,” she said in greeting, holding out one of the two to-go cups in her hand. “I wasn’t sure how you took it, so I made one black and one with cream, sugar, and a dash of cinnamon. Figured I’d drink whichever one you didn’t.”

  He gave her a single nod. “I take it black.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Cinnamon, huh?”

  She grinned. “Oh, thank goodness. I’d have run back to the kitchen if you said otherwise. I can’t do without my cream and sugar. I love almost everything a little sweet.”

  She pressed the opening of her cup to her lips and hummed as her tongue caught the first taste. There was nothing like the first sip of coffee in the morning.

  “I thought I tasted cinnamon when I kissed you,” Cash said softly.

  Olivia coughed, almost spitting the hot liquid all over the floor.

  He took a long, slow sip from his own cup, then let out a satisfied-sounding sigh.

  Right. He knew how she tasted—and she him. Who the hell was the Olivia who’d kissed a stranger last night—twice—and was now wondering when she’d get to do it again?

  They hadn’t spoken much after Lucinda’s. He’d simply walked her next door and made sure she got back into the B and B okay. They’d decided on ten for this morning and then they’d said good night—with no further lip-locking.

  But she was watching him drink his coffee now, and coffee drinking involved lips. She knew her focus today was the letters, but Sheriff Cash Hawkins had a mouth that was very distracting.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I ate a donut on the walk over. I got chocolate on my face or something?”

  “No!” she blurted. “I mean—wait, the cop-and-donut thing is for real?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I like donuts. Who doesn’t like donuts? The people-and-donut thing is for real.” Still no trace of a Sunday morning smile.

  She shrugged. “I like donuts.”

  He lifted a white paper bag she hadn’t realized he was holding in his other hand. Probably because she’d been staring at his lips. “Chocolate cake, chocolate frosted. From Baker’s Bluff. Best donut you’ll ever taste.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “Here I thought I was taking care of you this morning, but you show up with a donut. I can’t beat that.”

  He scanned the quiet foyer. “Everybody still asleep?”

  She shook her head. “There are a few people in the kitchen. A few left already on a wine tour. And then there’s me.” She grinned, taking in the wood floors, the wainscoting on the walls. “This place is so charming. I’ll have to tell Gran and Pop about it. Maybe they’ll come back for their anniversary.”

  He scrubbed a hand across his jaw. “When do they hit forty-eight?”

  She grinned because that’s what thoughts of her grandparents did. They made her smile. Gave her hope when she thought her well had run dry. “A few
months. Just after the new year.”

  “Hmm,” he said, brows pulling together.

  “What?” She waited while he sipped his coffee, as he seemed to contemplate the best course of action for his response.

  “Well…It’s just that they’re selling.” He turned toward the curtained front window and grabbed a sign leaning against the glass—a sign she hadn’t noticed last night in the dark. A sign that said FOR SALE.

  “Oh.” The one word was all she could muster. Because after her inauspicious arrival—after coming up empty-handed at Lucinda’s apartment—now there was this perfect place that would soon be no more.

  Cash cleared his throat. “I didn’t realize the bed-and-breakfast meant so much to you—seeing as how you’ve been here one night and all.”

  She groaned and grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him out of the foyer and into the sitting room to the right.

  “Look,” she said, pointing straight ahead.

  “It’s a fireplace,” he remarked without a hint of emotion.

  “And knotted pine floors, and that adorable love seat, and the rocking chair where I came up with the brilliant idea to see if I could get into Lucinda’s apartment. I’ll have you know that I did ring the bell. I don’t know what possessed me to try the doorknob. No. I know. It was desperation. But the point is—” She groaned. She didn’t know what the hell the point was. She just knew she hated the thought of this place going away before Gran and Pop got to see it.

  “I mean, I like the DaSilvas as much as the next guy, but they’ve been making preparations for retirement for the past few years. Both their kids are grown and ended up in Arizona. As soon as they hand over the deed to the place, they’re moving into a condo in Phoenix.”

  She peeked into the kitchen where the older husband and wife team, Rose and Marcus, had been cooking breakfast alongside two newlyweds. The younger couple was sitting at the breakfast bar eating, while the two owners slow-danced to a country song that was playing from a Bluetooth speaker.

  Rose waved. “Olivia! Stay out of trouble today, huh?” Then the woman winked. “Mornin’, Sheriff.”

  Cash smiled in Rose’s direction, his eyes crinkling so that Olivia knew the gesture was genuine. She wondered how long a person had to know the man before they elicited the same response. Sure, he’d laughed in the police truck yesterday, but it had been at her expense. That didn’t count.