Crystal Green - The Hard-to-Get Cowboy

Then he was gone, leaving only the background murmur of bar discussion over the strains of Merle Haggard on the jukebox.

The waitress came with the beers, and Jackson decided that if Cade wouldn’t be around to drink his, he would gladly do the honors.

He didn’t make anything out of the sassy smile that the waitress gave him, instead taking a swig of his drink, then leaning back in his chair and grinning at Laila.

There was a little beauty mark near the tip of her mouth, and he wished she would smile, just as prettily as she had on that stage last week. But he was out of luck. She only traced a pattern on the table from the condensation that had dropped down from the lemonade mug.

“Was I in the wrong when I sat down here?” Jackson asked.

“No, you weren’t. Thank you. It was one of those discussions. You know—the kind that you don’t want to have in the middle of a bar?”

“Glad to have been of assistance.”

She sighed, still tracing pictures on the table. Jackson couldn’t make hide nor hair of what she was drawing.

“If he puts the moves on you again,” he said, meaning to cheer her up, “you just give a holler. He’s big, but I can take him.”

There it was—a wisp of a smile now.

“Truly,” he added. “I know how to dodge and weave. Also, I’ve got a twin back home who’s always willing to stand up for a lady, too.”

“Good heavens—there’s more than one of you?”

He chuckled. “I’m afraid so.” Getting even more comfortable, he propped his booted ankle just above his knee. “But Jason’s far less reckless. That’s what everyone says, anyway.”

“I’d heard you’re a rebel, even before you showed up at the pageant to cause mischief.”

He took that in stride. “Heard from who?”

She had a flush on her cheeks, and it looked so sweet that Jackson’s veins tangled.

“I’d heard,” she said, “just in general. Thunder Canyon’s a small town, so gossip travels.”

“I know. That’s why I proposed to you, Miss Laila—because I’d heard you were the perfect woman for me.”

Her gaze widened.

He laughed. “You don’t have to say it again—the part about your never getting married. The message came through loud and clear at the pageant.”

She blew out a breath, as if she’d been dreading having to repeat it to yet another suitor. It made him think that Cade’s pageant proposal had been much more than just an impetuous moment, that it bothered her far more than she’d let on in public.

That she was just as determinedly single as he was?

“I happen to agree 100 percent with you about the holy state of matrimony,” he said. “I’m not sure what the appeal is.”

“Ask your brothers, Corey and Dillon. I’m sure they can wax on about it.”

“No, thanks. It’s bad enough that Ethan just got engaged, too. I never thought I’d see him strapping himself to a ball and chain. All I can do now is hope that Jason and my sister, Rose, stick with me.”

“You talk as if the rest of your family has abandoned you or something.”

He paused. He’d never thought of it that way before, but that’s what he’d been feeling during Corey’s wedding—abandonment. Being left behind while everyone else traveled ahead to what were supposed to be bigger and better things in life.

She seemed to realize that she’d hit some kind of target on him, whether he’d meant to show it or not.

“Or maybe you’re just a born rebel,” she said. “I could tell the minute you jumped into the fray at the pageant that your skills were instinctive.”

“Hey, I was only trying to ease a tense situation.” He shrugged. “And maybe have a little fun.”

“I rest my case.”

He picked up his mug, toasted her with it, then drank.

When he was done, she was watching him, her bluebonnet eyes narrowed just the slightest bit, as if she was turning over a million questions about him in her head.

If she was sitting there wondering what went into the creation of a rebel like him, he wasn’t about to give her answers.

He wanted to get back to the flirtation. He hadn’t met anyone in Thunder Canyon who’d made him forget all the tough questions that had been echoing in his brain ever since the wedding brawl, and he wasn’t about to lead her into thinking that he was the kind of guy who was even comfortable having that type of conversation.

Leaning his elbows on the table, he sent Laila his most lethal grin.

“If you’re thinking of asking me questions, don’t.”

“Questions about what?”

“Serious stuff. The kind of questions that come after a first date.”

She laughed, as if he’d stepped over a line she’d already drawn with him. “Are you saying this is a date?”

“Nope.” He lowered his voice. “But when we do go on our first one, I’m just laying out some ground rules. I don’t want to hear any of the kind of questions that make you narrow your eyes like that.”

She was flustered, and he hadn’t expected that from a graceful, composed woman like Laila Cates.

“When we…?”

“When we go on our first date,” he said, completing her sentence, enjoying the hell out of the chase.

Because he always got what he wanted when it came to women, and Laila Cates wouldn’t be an exception.

“I never said I would—”

“You didn’t have to, Miss Laila. But you know damn well that we’re going to go out.” He lifted an eyebrow. “It’s just a matter of when.”

He sure was cocky, Laila thought, her pulse racing so fast that it felt as if she was running.

Jackson Traub—arrogant and altogether too confident.

And they were talking about a date.

Her. Him .

She could just imagine what her parents—no, the whole town—might say if they caught wind of this conversation. Laila Cates, the proper bank manager, the woman who did everything according to the letter, hanging around with a rabble-rousing Texas stranger.

But then a different type of thought altogether started to take shape in her mind… .

What if going on a date with a fly-by-night man like Jackson Traub could convince Cade Pritchett that she really wasn’t longing for stability and marriage?

Suddenly, she liked the whole idea. Especially since, even if she wasn’t looking to settle down, there would be no future with Jackson, anyway. Because the talk around Thunder Canyon was that he was merely here to work on that oil shale project.

Here and gone.

There was an appeal to that. And there was a definite appeal to him , too, as he sat across from her with that crooked grin, all playful cowboy, the complete opposite of a man like Cade.

What would be the harm in just one date?

But then something went swirly in her belly, melty and hot, trickling downward until it settled in the core of her.

She shoved the sensation aside.

“Come on, Laila,” Jackson said, his brown eyes glinting with that flirtiness she’d seen before. “I’m just talking about a date, not a marriage proposal.”

Wasn’t he a card.

Or, more to the point, a wild card.

“Very funny,” she said.

“Don’t tell me a man doesn’t have a chance with you.” He sent a glance over his shoulder, toward the door where Cade had disappeared only moments ago. “Or maybe there’s something else to it.”

She had the feeling he was going to go somewhere she didn’t want to go.

“Maybe,” he said, “there really is something between you and Pritchett, even if you were desperate to get away from him less than five minutes ago.”

Jackson said it in a teasing way, as if he didn’t believe it for a second.