Maisey Yates - The Cowboy Way - A Creed in Stone Creek / Part Time Cowboy

Steven, so far unflappable, it seemed to Melissa, reddened slightly. Narrowed his eyes at Matt and started to speak.

Melissa cut him off before he could say a word. “No,” she told Matt. “I’m not married, and I don’t have any kids.”

Matt’s smile was glorious, like dawn breaking after a cold and moonless night. “Good!” he said. “Then you could marry my dad and be my mom. We’d help with the cooking, so you wouldn’t have to keep borrowing supper from your sister, and even do the laundry.”

“Matt,” Steven said, fighting a smile.

Without thinking about it first—if she had, she would surely have stopped herself—Melissa rested a hand on Steven’s forearm. Felt the muscles tighten and then ease again under her fingertips.

“It’s okay,” she said, very softly.

Matt looked from Steven to Melissa, and his small shoulders stooped a little. “I guess I shouldn’t have said that stuff about marrying Dad and me,” he admitted.

“Ya think?” Steven asked.

Melissa smiled, anxious to reassure the child. “Know what?” she said, addressing Matt, finally removing her hand from Steven’s arm.

“What?” Matt asked.

“If I’m ever lucky enough to have a little boy of my own, I hope he’ll be just like you.”

It came again, then. That beaming smile.

When this kid grew up, he was going to be a heartbreaker, no doubt about it.

“Really?” Matt asked.

Steven shifted in his chair, but said nothing.

“Really,” Melissa confirmed. “Now, who wants ice cream and cobbler?”

* * *

MATT RESTED OVER Steven’s right shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. Once the kid hit the proverbial wall and gave himself over to sleep, that was it. His surroundings didn’t matter—he was down for the count.

Melissa, looking better than any dessert ever could have, walked out to the truck alongside Steven, hugging herself against the chill of a high country night.

There was hardly anything to that sundress of hers, which was fine with Steven, except that he didn’t want her catching pneumonia or anything.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly, pausing on the sidewalk, turning toward her.

He wanted to kiss Melissa, but holding Matt the way he was, the logistics were just plain off.

Melissa smiled, reached past him to open the rear door of the rig.

Matt mumbled something as Steven set him in the car seat and began buckling him in but, true to form, he didn’t wake up.

“He’s terrific,” she said softly.

“I agree,” Steven told her, after Matt was secured. They stood facing each other now, on that darkened sidewalk. “Of course it would be a real plus if he’d stop proposing to women.”

There was something flirty in Melissa’s smile, but something vulnerable, too. “Does he do that a lot? Ask people to marry you, I mean?”

Steven chuckled, even though he felt inexplicably nervous, and shook his head. “No,” he replied. “Actually, Matt is pretty discerning when it comes to women.” A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “He doesn’t suggest marriage and instant motherhood to just anybody, you know.”

Melissa laughed at that; it was soft and musical, that sound, and it found a place inside Steven and stowed away there, perhaps for keeps. “He’s sweet,” she said.

Again—still—Steven wanted to kiss Melissa O’Ballivan. Full on the mouth, with tongue.

Since the direct approach might scare her away, he settled for leaning in and giving her a light peck on the forehead.

“Tonight was great,” he said, resting his hands on her shoulders.

Given that the sundress left that part of her bare, the gesture might have been misguided. Melissa’s skin felt warm and smooth under his palms, taut with vitality. Steven tightened his fingers, briefly and almost imperceptibly, then withdrew, letting his hands fall to his sides.

“Thanks,” he said again, grinding out the word.

He saw the heat flash in her eyes, the knowing, a desire that might even match his own, and everything inside him soared.

It was inevitable, he realized. Written in the stars.

Right or wrong, for better or for worse, at some point, he and Melissa O’Ballivan would make love.

Whoa, you big dumb cowboy, said the voice of reason, causing Steven to sigh. You just met the woman yesterday.

Once, before Matt became a part of his day-to-day life, Steven would have countered the voice with a resounding So what? living, as he had, by the philosophy that he-who-hesitates-is-lost, especially when it came to beautiful women and the opportunity to bed them.

Melissa certainly qualified as beautiful, and that was the least of it. He sensed a vastness within her, a fascinating inner landscape he yearned to explore.

In time.

“Go inside,” he told her, smiling down into her eyes, “you’re shivering.”

“Yes, I really should,” she agreed, shivering harder.

But she didn’t move and neither did he.

They just stood there, looking at each other.

Finally, Melissa rolled up onto the balls of her feet and touched her mouth to his, the contact light and brief, over almost before it began.

The kiss electrified Steven, left him confounded.

In the next moment, a wistful little smile playing on her lips, Melissa turned and hurried back through the gate, up the walk, across the porch, finally disappearing into the house.

Steven, wondering what the hell had just hit him, still didn’t move.

Then he heard one of the truck windows open, with a whirring sound, turned to see Matt looking out at him, rubbing his eyes once with the heels of his palms and then grinning sleepily. “Melissa kissed you,” he said.

Steven chuckled and rounded the truck, climbed behind the wheel.

“She did,” Matt insisted, as they pulled away from the curb. “I saw Melissa kiss you.”

“Okay,” Steven said, adjusting the mirrors. “She kissed me. It was no big deal, Tex. Just ‘good-night.’”

“Melissa likes you.”

“I like her, too.”

“I bet she doesn’t go around kissing everybody she likes,” Matt went on.

“Go back to sleep,” Steven responded, with a smile in his voice.

Matt giggled. He was wide-awake—so much for his usual tendency to sleep through anything. “Are you going to ask Melissa out for a date?”

Steven suppressed a broad grin. They were on the main street of Stone Creek now, headed in the direction of home.

Such as home was.

“You’re five,” he pointed out. “What would make you ask a question like that?”

Matt gave a huge sigh. “I know what dating is,” he said, very patiently. “I watch TV. Guys on TV give lots of women roses and take them on dates, in limos. At the end of the season, the guy has to decide which one of them is a keeper and gets down on one knee and gives her a ring.”

“And you watched all this stuff when?” Steven asked. In their household, television was strictly monitored, especially the “reality” kind.

“Mrs. Hooper has this big set of DVDs. We watched all of them.”

Mrs. Hooper had been Matt’s babysitter back in Denver. Steven had worked a lot of nights, tying up loose ends at his old law firm before making the move to Stone Creek.

“You didn’t mention that at the time,” Steven said dryly. Once they were past the city limits, he shifted gears and sped up a little.

“You never once asked me if Mrs. Hooper and I were watching smoochy dating shows on TV,” Matt informed him.

“You’d make a great lawyer, you know that?”

“I don’t want to be a lawyer,” Matt said. “I want to be a cowboy.” A pause. “I just need a horse, that’s all. You can’t be a cowboy without a horse. So, when are we going to build the new barn?”