Dawn Atkins - Still Irresistible

In fact, if she didn’t need his ranch expertise, she’d be half-glad if he decided not to stay at all.

DECK SLAPPED his gesso-loaded brush in big aimless strokes across the solitary rider he’d painted, covering it up for good. The piece was as wrong as Callie was about the ranch. She planned to turn the Triple C into a place where the guests bitched if the ice came cubed instead of crushed.

Deck itched to take the place in hand, fine tune the operation, start raising certified organic beef, despite the tough requirements. The challenge appealed to him.

He could buy a spread elsewhere, but Deck loved the Triple C, knew every acre of it like home. He might still have a crack at it—if Callie and Cal decided they’d had enough.

Tastes change, she’d said, like he was some rube lost in the past. He knew all about change. People left, they died, they disappeared behind their eyes, as his mother had done for months after his pop passed. Deck stuck with what he could count on.

If Callie went through with her scheme, Deck had to leave. He wouldn’t strand her or Cal, of course, but as soon as he could see his way clear, he was out of there. Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe every man nearing thirty needed a shakeup, regardless of how well situated he was.

Deck finished the primer coat on the canvas, then left the brush to soak. He scrubbed his hands, his thick ranch calluses stained with a rainbow of acrylic colors. The same hands that dug post holes and wrestled steers to the ground could dab a hair’s width of light on a saguaro spine. He liked that.

He’d been painting more lately, getting lost in the work until his shoulders ached and his vision blurred. He had the urge to stay busy. He wasn’t sure why.

Painting had been a refuge since that terrible time when his dad died and Callie had gone and he’d taken that curve too fast, saw how easy it would be to end it all, be done. Only the thought of his mother made him yank the car back from the rail.

Since then painting kept him sane. It felt like his heart on the canvas, bad or good, but not to be denied.

Drying his hands on a paint-stained towel, he looked over the pieces he’d hung in the old Airstream he used as a studio. Most of his work fell short—too much paint, bad use of light, out of proportion, overpainted. Sometimes he wasn’t good enough to paint bar scenes on velvet. The triumphs were his private joys.

He didn’t have the focus to paint tonight. The planning and zoning meeting hadn’t helped. As chair, he’d had to cancel for lack of a quorum. Banging the gavel, he’d noticed the triumphant smirk on Taylor Loft’s face from his seat in the audience. He’d definitely had something to do with three commissioners who’d unexpectedly no-showed.

Loft was wearing them all down on the tax exemption. Go-along-to-get-along was too often the way in small towns, where you had to work, play, love and live with the people in power. Loft was the law in Abrazo and no one wanted him as an enemy.

But right was right and Deck expected people to stand up for it. Tax money was life blood to the small town. Why should Loft be exempt? Because his ancestor had founded the place? Named it Harriet, after his wife. He’d been cheated out of his holdings, according to Loft legend—and when the town incorporated they changed the name to Abrazo, Spanish for “hug.”

Insult to injury to Harriet’s progeny, in Taylor’s mind, and he wore that chip on his shoulder with the same authority he wore his badge.

The man was trouble. A friend of Deck’s, a county supervisor, had told him stories. Loft had been a security guard in Phoenix before he became sheriff. Working a convention for state officials, he’d covered up career-killing indiscretions for some pretty important people. As a result he had his hands in so many pies his fingers were permanently stained. “He’s a malevolent little shit,” Deck’s friend had said.

Deck had to stop thinking about Loft. And Callie, for that matter. The burning in his gut had started up again.

Get over it.

Deck closed the studio and started for the trailer he called home, then stopped. Hell, he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He needed a couple of beers and a soak in the springs.

Callie would be long gone, if she’d taken his advice, which was doubtful. She didn’t give a damn what he thought. He’d better get all the use out of the springs he could before she turned it into a tiled hot tub. Dammit to hell.

He grabbed two Coronas, a towel and his bedroll and set off for the springs. The ranch house lights were mostly out. He zeroed in on Callie’s window. Still lit. She was reading, no doubt. She’d been a big reader in high school. What did she sleep in? Something lacey and small, he’d bet.

These days women were too obsessed with their underwear. Those thongs had to be irritating. Naked was just fine with him.

Back then, Callie had worn bras that matched her panties. His favorites were white with hearts. She’d worn them the first time they’d made love in the springs and slept under the stars together. He could still picture her breasts spilling out of the half cup of that heart-dotted bra, innocent and brazen at once.

Deck took the turn through the rock formation. The springs steamed in the moonlight. He kept going to the private spring, where he laid out his bedroll and towel, cracked one of the Coronas, stripped to the skin and slid into the water.

The heat felt good. He lay back and let out a long, slow breath. Sipping cold beer, he let his mind go.

It snagged immediately on the sight of Callie loping toward the barn on Wiley. This was the Callie he remembered as a kid, racing on Lucky, hair flying, a little scared but pushing on. He’d loved her determination, her energy. She’d been so lively, so full of fun. She just made him grin.

He missed her. Maybe she was still there under the big city act, the rush and self-importance. She said she’d missed riding. Probably missed the ranch, too. Would she stay?

Never. She needed more. That was why he’d let her go once she’d gotten through the worst of her sadness. She’d been bored. She wanted to be in town, hanging at the diner with the cheerleaders and football players.

He had better things to do than watch guys fling French fries down girls’ blouses or race each other in their tricked-out trucks. He’d let ranch chores slide to be with her, blown his grades.

Callie had gotten what she needed from him, so he sent her back to her life. It hurt like hell, but he’d done the right thing. She’d seemed stung. He didn’t get that. What was the point of dragging it out?

He pictured her in that goofy cowgirl outfit, the jeans so tight that Deck could hardly mount Brandy without causing himself injury. Holding her, brushing the dust from her ass, he felt the old hunger times ten. In fact, if she were here right now, he’d—

“Deck?”

He popped up, startled to find his fleeting fantasy standing there at the edge of the spring in a silky-looking black robe and flip-flops. She held towels and champagne in a bucket, a mason jar over the neck.

“I didn’t think anyone would be here this late,” she said, her gaze jerking around, telling him she was embarrassed.

“You took my advice,” he said, surprised by that fact.

“I don’t suppose you’re wearing a suit…?”

He shook his head, grateful the water was opaque with minerals. “You?” He nodded at her robe, so thin he could make out her nipples. She was naked under there, all right.

She shook her head.

Great. Just that slight bit of cloth between him and her bare beauty. He had a hard-on so fierce he feared it might break the surface. “I’ll leave.” As soon as he lost his erection.