turned in the saddle, holding his hat to shield his face from the wind. “You could have gone to California, you know. You didn’t have to stay out here with me and Minnie.”
“Didn’t want to.” He was surprised at how much that statement felt like a lie.
“Man, why not? Pretty woman like that offers to give you money for nothing to go where the sun is shining? Shoot. I’d have gone.”
J.R. chose not to respond to this. It had been two days since Thalia Thorne had shown up. On the surface, nothing had changed. He was still the boss, cattle still had to be watered and it was still cold. But something felt different. Minnie had been quiet after their visitor had left—not happy, like J.R. had hoped she’d be. But she hadn’t scolded him on his lousy behavior. She hadn’t said anything, which wasn’t like her. And now Hoss was laying into him.
He saw the something that was different as soon as they crested the last hill between them and the ranch house J.R. had built a year after he’d bought the place. There, in the drive, was a too-familiar car.
“Would you look at that,” Hoss mused, suddenly sounding anything but grumpy. “Looks like we got ourselves a pretty guest again.”
“What is she doing here?”
Hoss shot him a look full of humor. “If you ain’t figured that one out yet, I’m not gonna be the one to break it to you.” Then he kicked his horse into a slow canter down to the barn.
Damn. And damn again. If he weren’t so cold, he’d turn his horse around and disappear into the backcountry. Thalia Thorne might be able to find the ranch house, but she wouldn’t survive the open range, not in her sexy little boots and tight dress.
The fact of the matter was, he was frozen. “She better not be in my chair again,” he grumbled to himself as he rode toward the barn.
Hoss whistled as he unsaddled his horse. The sound grated on J.R.’s nerves something fierce. “Knock it off. She’s not here for you.”
“And you know that for sure, huh?” Hoss snorted. “She came for the shiny gold man in your lair up there—but that don’t mean she won’t stay for a little piece of Hoss.”
J.R. felt his hands clench into fists. One of the things that had always made him and Hoss such fast friends had been that they didn’t argue over women. Hoss went for the kind of bubbly, good-time gal that always struck J.R. as flighty, while he preferred women who could string together more than two coherent, grammatically correct sentences at a time. In the eleven years he’d been out here, he and Hoss had never once sparred over a woman.
There was a first for everything, apparently.
“She’s off-limits.” The words came out as more of a growl than a statement.
“Yeah?” Hoss puffed out his chest and met J.R.’s mean stare head-on. “I don’t see you doing a bang-up job of getting her into your bed. If you aren’t up to the task, maybe you should stand aside, old man.”
J.R. bristled. He was only six years older than Hoss. The idiot was intentionally trying to yank his chain, and he was doing a damn fine job of it. J.R. did his best to keep his voice calm. As much as Thalia’s reappearance pissed him off, he still didn’t want to walk into the kitchen with a black eye or a busted nose. “I don’t want her in my bed.” Hoss snorted in disbelief, but J.R. chose to ignore him. “I don’t want her in my house. And the more you make googly eyes at her, the more Minnie gushes at her, the more she’ll keep coming back. She doesn’t belong here.”
Hoss didn’t back down. But he didn’t push it, either. Instead, he turned and headed for the house at a leisurely mosey, still whistling. Still planning on making a move on Thalia Thorne.
Cursing under his breath, J.R. groomed his horse at double-time speed. He did not want Thalia in his bed, no matter what Hoss said. She represented too big a threat to his life out here, the life he’d chosen. The fact that she was here again should be a big, honking sign to everyone that she was not to be taken lightly.
So why was he the only one alarmed? And why, for the love of everything holy, was his brain now imagining what she’d look like in his bed?
He tried to block out the images that filed through his mind in rapid succession—Thalia wrapped in the sheets, her hair tousled and loose, her shoulders bare, her everything bare. Waking her up with a kiss, seeing the way she gazed at him, feeling the way her body warmed to his touch …
J.R. groaned in frustration and kicked a hay bale as he headed toward the house. When had this become a problem? When had he let a woman get under his skin like this—a woman he didn’t even like? When had his body started overruling his common sense, his self-preservation?
And when had Hoss decided a woman was more important than their friendship?
His mood did not improve when he walked into his kitchen to find Thalia, sitting on his stool, leaning into a hug with Hoss. That did it. J.R. was going to have to kill his best friend.
He must have growled, because Hoss shot him a look that said I got here first and Thalia sat up straight. The way her cheeks blushed a pale pink did not improve J.R.’s situation one bit.
“J.R., look who’s back!” Hoss’s tone of voice made it plenty clear that he was going to keep pushing J.R.’s buttons. His arm was still slung around her shoulders. “I was telling Thalia how good it was to see her pretty face again.” The SOB then gave her another big squeeze. “You found a casting couch for me yet?”
Thalia laughed nervously as she pulled away from Hoss’s embrace. “Sadly, I haven’t found the couch that can handle you, Hoss. But I’ll keep looking.”
Then she turned her bright eyes to him. “Hello, J.R.” She made no move to get up, no move to shake his hand—much less hug him. He wouldn’t have trusted her if she had, but damned if it didn’t piss him off all over again that she didn’t.
Behind the Thalia and Hoss tableau, Minnie tapped her big wooden spoon on the counter as she looked daggers at him. Be nice, her eyes told him. Why was it his job to make nice when everyone else was flaunting his rules in his house? Screw it. Without a word, he turned away from the interloper and the two traitors and walked—not stomped—upstairs. He heard Hoss coming up behind him, but he didn’t wait.
The shower did little to improve his mood, mostly because he couldn’t stop thinking about that woman. At least this time, she was dressed appropriately. A cowl-neck sweater in an ice-blue color that matched her eyes had clung to her curves, revealing as much—if not more—than the short dress. Instead of those teasing tights, she was wearing jeans that hugged every inch of her long legs. And instead of delicate stilettos, she had on a pair of real cowboy boots. Her hair had been freed of the severe twist so that now it fell in loose waves around her face and shoulders.
She looked like someone who did, in fact, fit out here. Worse than that? She looked like she belonged out here.
It’s a costume, he reminded himself as he rubbed dry with more force than normal. That wasn’t the real her. He didn’t know what the real her looked like, but it couldn’t be that cowboy’s dream come true down there.
If Hoss touched her again, J.R. would have to kill him.
He almost put on his favorite
