Crystal Green - The Hard-to-Get Cowboy

“Listen, here, Woody,” he said. “There’s no need to—”

“You’re just itching for a fight, aren’t you?” the man said, slurring even more.

“No, thank you. But—”

The punch came out of nowhere—a slam of numb pain that blasted into Jackson’s jaw.

Instinctively, he punched back, connecting with Woody’s eye, sending the man to his rear.

Jackson’s knuckles throbbed and he shook them out, sighing. Goddamn it. And he wasn’t cursing from the emerging pain in his jaw or hand, either.

“Hellfire,” Jackson said. If his dad had been around to see this, he’d be shamed, all right. Awfully shamed. “Now why’d you have to make me go and do that, Woody?”

Woody put a hand over his eye, groaning as Jackson left him, knowing that there would be hell to pay, not only with his conscience, but with his family, too.

“So how does it feel to be the scourge of Thunder Canyon?” asked Jason Traub on the other end of the cell phone line.

Jackson moved the phone to his other ear while grabbing a coffee from the Town Square cart. The late-morning air nipped his skin as he put a tip in the server’s jar, nodded at the man’s thank-you, then strolled away, working his sore jaw before answering.

“Being a scourge here doesn’t feel any different than being one anywhere else,” he said to his twin, who’d called him from Texas after hearing about last night’s little scuffle with Woody Paulson.

“You’re just damn lucky the man didn’t go to the cops. That’s all Traub Oil Industries would need, Jackson.”

“I know.” He’d been beating himself up about it, and he was willing to take his own punches. He’d already gotten a few verbal ones from Ethan when he’d shown up in the office early this morning as well. When his older brother had inspected Jackson’s jaw, not even finding a bruise, he’d said that Jackson could’ve used some black and blue to remind him of his misstep.

“Needless to say,” Jackson told Jason, “last night wasn’t my finest moment. But, believe me, it’s not gonna happen again.”

“Isn’t that what you said after Corey’s wedding?”

Duly chastised, Jackson wandered to the edge of Town Square, to where a wrought-iron bench waited under an autumn-leafed oak. Around him stood Old West storefronts, comfortable and weathered.

Maybe it was the sight of those old buildings that made Jackson say, “I swear, Jason—I’m making a new start here.”

“Beginning when?”

“Now.” It was a vow, and he’d never meant anything more in his life.

He really had been fortunate that Woody Paulson hadn’t made a bigger deal out of last night. Then again, the other man had thrown the first punch, so it wasn’t as if he was innocent in all of it.

But that was no excuse.

Jason wished Jackson the best of luck and signed off, back to his own duties in the Midland offices. Back to his own better-brother-than-Jackson life.

After stuffing his phone into his coat pocket, Jackson took a drink of the black, bracing coffee. He peered farther down the street, knowing just what he would find.

Solace of a sort.

The bank where Laila was working right at this moment.

He smiled, picturing her—blond, blue-eyed, beautiful Laila—and the world seemed right for a moment.

Then again, that was how it always was with him. Women made him feel better, that’s all there was to it. And Laila wasn’t any different than the rest.

On a whim, he accessed his phone again, dialing what he knew to be her cell number. He’d charmed it out of a friend of a friend of hers after neglecting to have asked her outright for it the other night.

What fun would that have been? The chase was always the best part.

Her phone rang, and when she answered with a curious “Hello?” his heart gave a surprising flip.

Then he reminded himself, No different than the rest , and went on.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said, taking the chance that she would recognize his voice, even though his number wouldn’t have been identified on her phone screen.

When she didn’t answer right away, he wondered if he’d been wrong about her remembering him. Laila Cates probably had a hundred men ringing her every morning and calling her “Sunshine.”

“Jackson?” she finally asked, and he could’ve sworn that there was a sparkle in her voice.

But, just as his heart was turning another one of those odd flips, her tone cooled again.

“What can I do for you?”

He laughed. Yup—hadn’t he pegged Laila for a challenge right off the bat? “I believe we’ve got a date to plan.”

“Oh?”

“Did you think I forgot?”

“I imagined it wasn’t high on your list of priorities. It sounds as if you’ve been busy with other matters around town.”

“Ah.” He propped one booted foot on the bench, touching his jaw. “So you heard about last night.”

“I told you—news travels fast around here.”

Shooting another look down the street, to the stately bank, he pictured Laila at her desk, all polish and prettiness in a business suit. His heart gave a tug.

All he wanted was to see her again.

“Did you ever stop to think,” he said, “that if I were to be kept busier, I wouldn’t get into so much trouble?”

“Sure. And I can suggest a few things for you to do around Thunder Canyon. You can hike, ride ATVs in the mountains, shop at the resort…”

“I didn’t mean to imply that I’d like to do any of those things alone.”

He thought he heard her shuffling some papers, and his gut tightened at the image of her being businesslike. He had a thing for serious women, because it was a lot of fun to make them less serious.

“Which one of those would you prefer doing?” he asked.

“With you?” She paused just long enough to set him up. “None of the above.”

“You’re sore at me because I didn’t call sooner.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You don’t have to say it. A woman like you is probably used to guys falling all over themselves to set up dates and I neglected to follow protocol.”

She huffed out an exasperated sigh, and he grinned.

“Know what sounds good to me?” he asked before he pushed her too far. “A picnic. A good old-fashioned afternoon at the lake. I’ll get it all together and pick you up at your place tomorrow at noon.”

“But—”

“It’s a Saturday, Laila. The best date day of the week.”

“I was going to say that there’s a chance of rain in the forecast.”

He glanced up at the wide, fairly clear Montana sky. He wasn’t sure that, besides Texas, he would ever get such a fill of gorgeousness anywhere else.

“I’m willing to take a chance on it,” he said. “How about you?”

Of course, he wasn’t talking about the weather, exactly, and she seemed to know it, as several seconds meandered by.

For a moment, Jackson actually thought she was going to turn him down, and the mere possibility shot him straight through with a disappointment he’d never felt before.

But that’s why he’d chosen Laila Cates—because she wasn’t easy. And because…

Hell, because she did something to his libido.

She finally came back on the line. “Okay. Noon.”

Excellent. “See you then, Miss Laila.”

As Jackson hung up, he smiled. He’d told his brother, Jason, that he was going to be on his best behavior from now on.

But that didn’t necessarily include being a good boy with the woman who’d said yes to spending tomorrow with him… .

Silver Stallion Lake sat in a secluded spot in the mountains. Surrounded by pine trees, it was in October limbo—between the time when winter would bring out the ice skaters and when summer filled the water with swimmers.