The Cowboy Next Door--Includes a bonus novella Page 36
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come in.”
She’d expected Gran, but it was Pop. He sat down on the edge of her bed. He was a contradiction of a man just to look at him—in his worn jeans and flannel shirt hanging open over an old T-shirt, he looked more like a teen than a man of seventy-four. But then there was his tan but weathered skin and the thick salt-and-pepper hair that always seemed to need a trim.
“Sounds like I missed one hell of a trip to your grandma’s hometown. Sorry I had to work this weekend, but you know…if the garage closes, people take their business elsewhere.”
She laughed. “I know. And you’re the best mechanic, Pop, but when’s it gonna be time to retire?”
He grinned. “When I stop loving what I do or when your grandmother tells me I have to. Whichever comes first. Now, let’s get back to this little trip of yours. I’ve heard a lot about it from Gran, but I think I’d like to hear your take on it.”
He patted her feet, which were snuggled under the duvet.
She shrugged. “Michael proposed, and I panicked.”
“He proposed to you at his sister’s wedding?”
She nodded. “I know. But he’d just heard from the co-op board that he could add a fiancée to the deed, and he was really excited.” She winced. It didn’t matter how many times she said it out loud or what kind of spin she tried to put on it, the proposal never got any better. But the truth of it was that she hadn’t wanted it to be better. She hadn’t wanted it to happen at all, and she wasn’t too sure Michael had either. “A little tacky, right? I mean, if I had said yes, that would have totally stolen the bride’s thunder.”
Pop laughed. “I think your little disappearing act might have done that anyway.”
She sipped her tea, then hugged a pillow to her chest. “I wanted to find the letters. Yours and Gran’s. I thought if I read them I could learn your secret.”
This time Pop’s laugh was loud, straight from the belly. “Oh, darlin’, why in the hell would you want to see those? I was an idiot teenager who had no idea how to talk to girls. Hand me a wrench and pop the hood of any vehicle in existence, and I could talk for days. But I’m lucky your gran even answered my first letter let alone married me when I got back.”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “I think you’re downplaying a great romance, Pop. But it doesn’t matter. The letters are gone.”
“Look, I get that you’ve grown up with what looks like two extremes—your gran and me”—he groaned—“and then your dad and mom. Sometimes relationships work, and sometimes they implode so damned badly that you wonder how two people ever could have loved each other in the first place.”
Her throat tightened. “Did Dad love Mom when he married her?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Pop’s face lit up. “I never saw your daddy so head over heels for a girl before your mom or after. And she with him. But they expected it to always be easy.”
“But it was easy for you and Gran.” Olivia had never seen her grandparents fight. Not once. When it came to her parents, she couldn’t remember them not fighting.
Pop shook his head. Then he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Do you want to know the real secret that you’ll never find in some lovesick teenage boy’s letters home from the war?”
Olivia nodded, tears in her eyes. “God, yes. I really do.”
“Falling in love is easy. Staying in love is work, hard work. When you find the man who makes you fall, then makes you want to do everything in your power to keep on falling, that’s how you’ll know.” He raised a brow, grinned, and then left the room.
She thought about the past week—Cash catching her when she tripped in those ridiculous but sexy-as-hell shoes only so she could fall ass over elbow in the middle of the street seconds later. He caught her again when her ankle gave out on their horseback riding adventure. Then she collapsed right onto her behind while petting Dixie the night Cash had made her dinner.
In one week’s time, Olivia had fallen for Cash Hawkins not once, not twice, but three times.
Her heart sped up as she tore the top from the shoe box to find what she’d known was there all along—her glass pumps, the broken heel repaired.
But it wasn’t the shoes that stole her breath. It was the envelope on the bottom of the box.
Cash had written her a letter.
Dear Olivia,
Well, now you know why I didn’t want you opening the box while I was around. It’s bad enough that words aren’t really my thing, but having to watch you read those words? Well, it would have been torture—almost as much torture as letting you go.
I let myself believe that not getting my heart stomped on again was better than risking it, so I closed myself off to even the possibility of love a long time ago. I wasn’t counting on some wild-haired beauty to speed through my quiet little corner of the earth and turn it way the hell upside down. But damn it if you didn’t do just that. Now I can’t seem to put everything back just like it was. Funny thing is, though, that I don’t think I want to.
I wasn’t lying when I said you destroying my heart would be worth it. But the real truth is, you didn’t destroy a thing.
I watched Lucinda love and lose in the worst possible way three times. And I kept wondering how she did it—how she could take risks like that again and again. But I think I get it now.
You saved me, Olivia. Falling in love with you might hurt like hell right now, but you know what would be worse? Never having let myself do it.
I’m going to give you your space to get things back on track, but I’ll be here if you ever speed into town again.
So, here are your glass slippers, Cinderella. Good as new. I hope you enjoyed the ball.
I love you.
~Cash
Chapter Fourteen
Two Months Later
Cash still didn’t know how to fill his nights off, now that heading to crosstown taverns and pubs didn’t have the same appeal. Tonight was warm for early December, so he’d decided to take Dixie for a walk up and down Oak Bluff Way.
Things were uneventful until he happened by the bed-and-breakfast and saw something peculiar—a missing FOR SALE sign.
He pushed right through the front door without a second thought.
It was Wednesday, so he found everyone in the common room playing Trivial Pursuit.
“Sheriff!” Rose said. “We were wondering when you’d join us for another game!”
He’d loved playing the one time he did, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it since Olivia left. Half the fun had been watching how much she’d enjoyed it. The other half had been—well—her.
“The sign,” he said. “The For Sale sign. Where is it?”
Marcus grinned. “We got a new offer, just last week! The buyer was approved for the mortgage today.” He held up a glass of red wine. “We’re celebrating if you want to join us.”
Before he could answer, his phone sounded with an alert—one he’d heard at least two other times this month.
He radioed the station.
“Walters, it’s Hawkins. I’m off duty, but there’s a B and E at Lucinda’s. I’m next door, so I’ll take care of it. She probably just forgot she armed it again. This weekend I’m installing one with an earsplitting siren. Maybe that’ll help.”
“Roger that,” Walters said with a chuckle. “Here if you need backup, boss.”
He groaned. What he needed was for Lucinda to remember when she armed the alarm.
“Come on, girl,” he said to Dixie. Then he turned his attention back to Marcus and Rose. “I think I’ll take you up on that glass of wine in a few. Let me just check next door.”
Rose bit back a grin. “See you soon, Sheriff.”
He and Dixie were up Lucinda’s back steps and at the apartment door in less than ninety seconds. The main door was ajar, the screen door shut. When he entered, he nearly stumbled over a pair of women’s hiking boots.
“Damn it, Lucinda, how many times do I have
to remind you to disarm the alarm when you walk in the door? And since when do you wear hiking boots?”
His mother appeared in the archway between the kitchen and living room, her long gray hair pulled into a braid that hung over one shoulder.
“I think I need an alarm that makes noise,” she said, echoing his thoughts. “And the boots aren’t mine.”
His brows furrowed.
“Cash, did I ever tell you about the letters I found beneath the floorboard in the living room?”
His stomach dropped.
He hadn’t told her about the letters. Or Olivia. The truth was, despite what he’d said to Olivia in his letter, the hurt was still too fresh, and Lucinda had been dealing with a far greater loss. He wanted to be strong for her when she needed him most. When she was through the worst of it, he’d planned to tell her what she’d missed the week she’d been gone.
“No,” he said. He cleared his throat.
“It was right when we moved in. I was cleaning before the furniture came, and one of the boards sorta jiggled when I was vacuuming. I pulled it out to inspect. It was the edge of a yellow ribbon that caught my eye. The letters must have shifted from just beneath the board during a quake or something, but the light caught the ribbon, so I stuck my hand in there to grab it, and there they were. A stack of letters with postage marks that were older than you.”
His hand gripped Dixie’s leash so hard he thought the leather might slice straight through his palm.
“What did you do with the letters?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.
That was when his mother stepped out of the archway to reveal the woman standing behind her.
“She gave them to me,” Olivia said, voice shaking.
Dixie barked, and her tail started wagging.
“Oh, come here, you,” Lucinda said. “Let’s go take a walk and give these two a few minutes to themselves.”
She grabbed the leash from Cash, then whispered, “I really like her, son. Don’t mess this up.”
He let out a nervous laugh as his mother and Dixie headed back down the steps.
Olivia fidgeted with the stack of envelopes in her hands. “I drove down to deliver some paperwork, and I realized I never got to peek inside Lucinda’s shop. We got to talking, and I told her about the letters, how you tried to help me find them, how I realized I didn’t want to live and work in a hotel where I was really good at my job but not in love with it, how I fell in love with Oak Bluff and her son and decided to use all the money I’d put away not paying rent to put a down payment on the bed-and-breakfast, and—”
“W-w-wait,” Cash said. “Back the hell up, Speed Racer, and say that again.”
She bit her lip. “I used my savings to put a down payment on the B and B.”
He shook his head. “Back up further.”
“I…fell in love with Oak Bluff?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Olivia…”
“I fell in love with you, Cash Hawkins. And you let me leave here without ever telling you.”
“Wasn’t the right time,” he said. “You needed to figure out you, and I wasn’t about to mess with that.”
But she’d just said she’d fallen in love with him, right? And she was buying the bed-and-breakfast. Did that mean she was still in love with him?
He braced a palm on the kitchen counter. “I think I need to sit down.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, concern lacing her words.
He shook his head. “Not sure. This has never happened before. My knees…”
She threw a hand over her mouth, then dropped the letters on the kitchen table. She approached him slowly.
“Sheriff? Is that your old football injury, or do I make you—weak in the knees?”
He straightened and blew out a shaky breath. “Hell yes, you do, Ms. Belle. You gonna catch me if I fall?”
She threw her arms around his neck, that beautiful smile knocking the air from his lungs like only her smile could.
“You’re way too heavy,” she said. “I’d fall right with you.”
He raised a brow. “Some knight in shining armor you are.”
She laughed. “Cash Hawkins, I want to fall for you and with you as many times as you’ll let me. And when things get hard and messy, I want to work at it so we get right back to this place.”
“And what place is that?”
She rose on her toes, her lips a breath away from his. “The place where I tell you I know there is no secret to getting it right. The place where I admit that I’ll always be afraid we’ll end up like my parents. The place where I remind you every time it gets too hard that I love you, and that’s why I’m not running anymore.”
“I love you, too, Olivia Belle.” Then he asked, “Are you gonna read those letters?”
She shook her head. “I’m gonna give them to Gran and Pop for their anniversary. I already read the only letter I need.”
His letter.
He dipped his head to kiss her, but she backed away.
“Wait!” she cried.
“What?”
She grabbed one of her hiking boots from in front of the door and handed it to him. “Try it on me!” she insisted.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
She groaned. “Put the boot on my foot and see if it fits.”
His brows pinched together. “It’s your boot. Of course it fits.”
“It’s a metaphor!” She shoved the boot into his hand. “Cinderella?”
He rolled his eyes but laughed; then he knelt down on one knee, boot in hand.
She lifted one foot in the air, balancing on the other. As soon as he tried to slide the boot on, she fell backward onto her rear end.
Cash barked out a laugh, and Olivia swept her foot beneath his, sending him off balance and onto his own ass as well.
He crawled to her side and leaned over her.
“Is this what you meant by falling for me and with me?”
She winced. “Maybe not quite so literally, but then, I never could stay on my own two feet around you, Sheriff.”
He shrugged. “Works for me.”
And then her arms were around his neck again as she pulled him to her, their mouths colliding to seal the deal.
“You’re gonna have to start driving slower,” he said. He kissed her again—lips touching lips, then along the line of her jaw, down her neck…
“How else am I supposed to get the attention of the town’s sexy sheriff?” she asked.
He rose to his knees and scooped her into his arms. “You got a room at that B and B?”
She grinned. “I sure do.”
“Well then, Ms. Belle, consider yourself in police custody for the rest of the night.”
She pressed her forehead to his. “You mean yours, right? Would now be a bad time to tell you about the speeding ticket I got on my way into town tonight?”
He stood, set her down on her feet, then held out his palm.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her car keys, handing them over without protest.
“You’re not headed anywhere this weekend. At the rate you’re going, your license will be suspended by the new year.”
She shrugged. “Keep ’em. No reason to run off in a hurry anymore. I’m right where I belong.” They kissed once more, her knees buckling against his, ready to fall and save each other again and again.
About the Author
A librarian for teens by day and a romance writer by night, A. J. Pine can’t seem to escape the world of fiction, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. When she finds that twenty-fifth hour in the day, she might indulge in a tiny bit of TV when she nourishes her undying love of vampires, superheroes, and a certain high-functioning sociopath detective. She hails from the far-off galaxy of the Chicago suburbs.
You can learn more at:
AJPine.com
Twitter @AJ_Pine
Facebook.com/AJPineAuthor
Look for more in the Crossroads Ranch series:
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br /> SECOND CHANCE COWBOY
TOUGH LUCK COWBOY
HARD LOVING COWBOY
PRAISE FOR A. J. PINE
“A fabulous storyteller who will keep you turning pages and wishing for just one more chapter at the end.”
—Carolyn Brown, New York Times bestselling author
“Cross my heart, this sexy, sweet romance gives a cowboy-at-heart lawyer a second chance at first love and readers a fantastic ride.”
—Jennifer Ryan, New York Times bestselling author,
on Second Chance Cowboy
“This is a strong read with a heartwarming message and inspiring characters.”
—RT Book Reviews on Second Chance Cowboy
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