Tina Leonard - Catching Calhoun

Olivia blinked. “Why would you be depressed? You don’t even know us.”

He shifted, pushing his back against the seat cushion. “What am I supposed to do, Olivia, if I see your kids again? Walk on by?”

Her eyes opened. “The rodeo’s only going on for one more night. After that, it won’t matter.”

“No, it won’t—but, to be honest, I’ve never had a woman ask me to stop being friendly to her kids. And I will admit that it kind of sucks.” He frowned. “I don’t see what harm I’ve done.”

“You haven’t. It’s very difficult to explain, Calhoun, but my children are sort of…thinkers. Worriers, if you will. And they try to manipulate their environment. In this case, the environment is you.”

He really didn’t know what to say to that much honesty.

She looked at him, and he could tell she was embarrassed.

“So you’re saying I’m just a target for their attention?”

“Right. One in a long line.”

Ouch. He didn’t like to be in long lines anywhere, unless it was a cattle parade at the rodeo.

With a sigh, she said, “This isn’t easy to say about my children. But I’m sure you can appreciate my position as a single parent.”

“Sure. You don’t want your kids scoping out potential fathers.”

She frowned. “Fathers? I don’t think that thought ever entered their mind. They have my dad as a father figure.”

Hmm. He hadn’t considered that. They did have a version of the classic nuclear family. “So what do they want from me?”

“The question is better posed as ‘What do you want from us?’ Because I think that’s where the problem comes in.”

He ran his hand through his hair and put his hat back on. “Look, I think my M.O. is pretty simple. I just want to kiss you. And if being friendly to your kids comes along with the package, I’m cool with that. They’re a different sort of crew, but what you don’t know, because you don’t know me well enough, is that I’m kind of at home with strange characters.”

“Kiss me?”

Her eyes were open with something like shock, or maybe alarm. Calhoun considered that. Clearly, kissing him had not crossed her mind. Pow! One more sock to the ole ego. Man, this woman had her sex switch permanently lodged in the Off position, and it would take a god of Herculean enterprises to move the damn thing.

“A kiss is not exactly asking you to jump off a bridge, you know,” he said sourly. “Pardon me if I thought you might, you know, find me attractive. Like I do you. Although you are getting on my nerves with your lack of response to my manly attributes.”

She started to laugh. He thought it sounded more like nerves than amusement, though, so he decided to go with it. “Share the joke.”

“I can’t. There’s no joke. Really. It’s just that…you don’t want to kiss me, cowboy. Trust me.”

“I think I will be the judge of my sexual desire, thank you very much,” he said. “But let me find out for myself so I can be honest with both of us.”

Calhoun swept Olivia into his lap, just the way he’d been dying to do since meeting her, and he planted a kiss right on her lips. Olivia didn’t move, probably from surprise, so he cradled her face in his hands and began a more gentle assault on her locked-down security position. Softly, he moved his lips against hers, then lightly ran his tongue across her lips before pressing his mouth against hers over and over again.

And everything in his jeans went straight to attention. He might have burst a seam somewhere. Yowza, this little mama smelled good, she felt great, and her mouth was made for his.

He could spend a lifetime kissing her.

Calhoun shoved her out of his lap. “You’re right. I didn’t want to kiss you.”

She gasped, and then, to his everlasting surprise, she slapped him one across the face before whirling off.

Now, granted he’d been hit harder in his life, and goodness knows, it had been more a whisk than a smack that she’d landed—but it was the intention that startled him.

The little minx. And he still had an erection—blast her curvy little rump that had heated his zipper as she’d sat in his lap. “I’m pretty certain she’s annoying me,” he muttered. “She tried to slap me, and I still have the itch to go after her. Where I come from, I know that would be considered a bad omen!”

Especially since he’d been fibbing to save his soul.

He had wanted to kiss her. And he wanted to do it again—soon.

THE WORST THING a man could tell a woman, Olivia decided, was that he didn’t want to kiss her—after he’d insisted upon it. The arrogant cowboy! Once again, her theory about cowboys was proved true. The Elusive Sexy Cowboy was the most devastating thing that could happen to a woman.

He’d managed to tear apart the first budding of her heart without even trying.

Maybe not actual budding, she thought. Maybe just a scratching of new growth hidden beneath a winterized girdle of dormant seed, but she’d felt the stirring. Like a new plant turning toward the sun, she’d felt herself warming to Calhoun. A surprising ray of hope had lit inside her when he’d put his mouth against hers, touching her kindly and gently, awakening feelings she’d never known she could possess.

It had felt so wonderful to kiss him. He had no idea how much she’d delighted in finding that a man’s kiss could give her pleasure instead of revulsion.

And then, he’d crushed her new growth.

He’d think twice before he tried to steal another kiss from her—and then insult her inexperience.

Crawling into the bed inside the trailer, Olivia slipped between her kids. They curled up next to her, as they always did, making her relax with contentment. Here was what mattered to her heart. Kenny and Minnie: the best part of her life.

At the other end of the trailer, she could hear her father snoring as he took his nap. Everything was in its place. In a little while, she’d take the kids to see tonight’s fun. There would be face painting and art exhibits and other exciting things for them to do—and she was going to forget all about Calhoun and his effect on her.

She was going to forget everything except his kiss. That had been a surprise, making her tingle all over. Even if Calhoun was a bad thing for her, his kiss had been very good.

He need not ever know exactly how one simple kiss had changed her awareness of herself. Today, she felt as if life was starting all over again.

She was glad she’d slapped him for being a horse’s ass, though.

“I SHOULD KISS HER AGAIN,” Calhoun told himself when he saw Olivia and her kids wander into the exhibit pavilion that evening. “And then tell her I’d been tweaking the truth just a wee bit.”

But she’d asked him to stay away from her kids because they were seekers of some kind. He frowned, wondering what they needed so bad that they had a habit of trolling for men. It didn’t matter. Olivia was with her kids, and she’d asked him not to be friendly with them, so no kissie-kissie, duck-the-slappie for him tonight.

“Nice paintings,” a man said.

“Thanks.” Calhoun nodded. “Been painting all my life.”

“You’ve done some beautiful work.” The short cowboy had a little daughter with him, Calhoun noticed, and he hoped the child wasn’t affected by all the nudes. She was pretty young, and she was busy with the cotton candy that was smudging her face with pink webs of sugar. Calhoun exercised his right to be friendly with the child. “Hey,” he said, lifting the girl onto a barrel so that she could sit and eat her cotton candy—and be out of range of the paintings while her father shopped. “Keep my chair warm for me, would you, princess?” he asked.

She giggled and smiled at him, and Calhoun felt momentarily sad that he couldn’t enjoy the company of Kenny and Minnie this way. They’d had a good repartee going—something he didn’t expect to have with young children—and he was surprised to find that he missed them.