One Night with a Cowboy (Paint River Ranch) (Entangled Indulgence) (7 page)

Chapter Nine

Sophie hoped Tucker would forget he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Her palms tingled to feel his silky hard flesh under her hands. Tucker’s body wasn’t sculpted with hard-cut lines and ridges found on men with gym-membership bodies. Instead, his chest and bulging arm muscles were delineated with soft edges, the flesh pulled tight and supple over each natural rise, mound, and curve of a torso built from years of hard labor and strenuous work. The strength of Tucker’s body was genuine and it was a physique no treadmill could create. It was a body she wanted to know every hard inch of. Repeatedly.

Tucker’s presence helped soothe some of the panic pumping through her at the moment. The ease of his body’s movements, the cascade of warmth from his skin, and hell, his scent, pulled her away from the fear of rabid squirrels. Pulling her gaze from his chest to his eyes was a struggle, but she managed.

“Pie?” she repeated.

“If you don’t cook, then you probably don’t make good pie.”

She scrunched her nose. “I know how to go to the store and
buy
a pie.”

“Pfff, no. That is not the same thing. I have to say, Fifi, this whole ‘no pie’ thing might be a deal breaker.” His smirk mocked her and it was cute, the way his right eye squinted a little as he teased her. This banter was easy, playful. Pie had her suddenly thinking of brown sugar melting in butter, warm and sticky and sweet—exactly how her insides felt just then—with a homey warmth trickling down her throat, filling her chest and spreading to every inch of her extremities, her scalp and the tips of her toes.

Hot gooseflesh rose on her arms and a dart of panic dinged her between the ribs. Tucker was too tempting. All that solid male flesh, the dark edge of his voice, and the sideways smile were too much. She could fall for this man in the blink of an eye and, if she did, she’d fall goddamn hard. Her future was at a permanent stall with no foreseeable change; her heart was wrapped up in trenches of constant worry over her mother. There could be no falling, and there was a good way to prevent that. Tell Tucker thanks, walk him out, and shut the door behind him as he left. It was only fair to keep him at arm’s length.

Sophie took a step back and cleared her throat. The prelude to walking him out turned into something else entirely when she opened her mouth. “What…what deal would that be?” Like it mattered. The longer they stood here talking, the more she was going to want him, so…

“I was going to ask you something, but…” He raked a hand through his wavy, auburn-to-mahogany hair before flipping his hat on. “I’ll save it for another time.” He turned slightly, showing off the smooth plane of his left shoulder blade. A flash of white caught her attention. Without thinking, Sophie’s hand snaked out to touch him. She gasped.

“Is that a…a brand?” He stiffened the moment her fingers made contact with his skin. She traced raised white scar tissue over his shoulder. She followed a side-by-side capital P with an upside down, backward R. The brand covered half the length of his shoulder blade. Tucker flinched at the ministration of her finger over the markings.

“The Paint River Ranch brand.”

Unable to help it, Sophie traced the markings again. The skin had healed in a perfect ridge to create a clear, white design over his golden skin. “This had to hurt like hell.” Before she finished tracing the R, he pulled away. He didn’t respond, snapped the T-shirt and slipped it back on, much to her disappointment.

His eyes swept over her quickly, and then went back for a slower round. Her belly quivered when his gaze paused at her lips. Then, with a quick nod of his head, he turned to the door. She walked him out, flutters swarming in her belly when he stepped onto the porch. He was walking out as easily as he’d walked in. Something told her Tucker had had plenty of practice with that.

“Ah, thanks for…getting the squirrel.”

His left hand clenched and relaxed, clenched again before he shoved it under the waist-band of his chaps. “You bet.”

“Will I see you again before I leave?” The words raced out. Her cheeks went hot. This was not going the way she’d thought it out in her head. Smooth wood met her palm as she gripped the porch railing. Seeing him again would accomplish what, exactly? Sure, she’d been lacking in the male-company department for a while, which is probably why Tucker was so delicious. Compared to the double helping of nothing she’d had in her bed in the past months, he was pure divinity. That wasn’t exactly true. He would have been Mr. Perfect even if she weren’t in a dry spell, because it was pretty likely there wasn’t another man out there who could rival him in the hot department.

Tucker pulled the toothpick from his mouth and tilted his head just right, so that were she to step into him and reach up, she could meet his lips perfectly. The little twitch of muscle in his cheek said he knew it, too.

“Do you want to, Fifi?”

Yes. No. What was the point in denying it? As soon as he went away, and she found herself, alone, in the tiny cabin, it would become painfully obvious how much she wanted to see him again. The quiet, the alone time…all that room to think, and ponder, and regret. She crossed her arms. Okay, fine. One more time couldn’t hurt. “Only if you promise not to make me eat squirrel.”

His face went impassive while he sucked in his lower lip and looked up at the sky with a frown. Sophie followed suit. It was barely late morning, and clouds had begun to move in. The warm, damp breeze hinted at rain. Maybe she’d been wrong to agree. As his shoulders stiffened a bit, and his jaw worked, Sophie figured he had other things to do—things that didn’t include making the time to see her again.

She tried to wave it off before this turned embarrassing. “Really, though, no big deal if we don’t…”

His eyes snapped to hers, the smile back. “Go grab a sweater.”

“Why?”

“Because you get to see me again right now.”

…

He was trying not to be an antsy jerk, but truth was he almost couldn’t help it. That nagging feeling was back in full force, to the effect that Tucker reached for his cell phone to call Jaxon, and realized he’d left it in the house. There was no sense in what he was doing right now, that’s for sure. Rain was coming and he had work to do. He was obviously missing something that would probably come back to bite him in the ass later, too. Yet, as Sophie’s scent wrapped around him in the humid confines of his truck, Tucker couldn’t bring himself to fully care about anything that lay outside the cab.

It was all he could do not to reach out and pull the band from her hair, let it tumble down completely from the messy ponytail it was currently in. He’d wanted to take Sophie somewhere private—it had been a whim, but he was used to doing what he pleased, when he wanted to do it. Tucker turned off the main drive onto a dirt path marked through the grass by the width of tire tracks. They drove farther away from Paint River and deeper into the completely untamed landscape Tucker’s heart belonged to. The path narrowed until they were driving on nothing but unmarked land. The mountain towered on the horizon, a constant navy-gray mass. As they drove, the open land began to close as pine trees dotted the space and the grasses grew taller.

Her gaze was all over the landscape with an appreciation that made his chest swell with pride. The remarkable differences in the land, from city, to flat lands, to rolling hills, to primitive mountain peaks, still took his breath away.

“Where are we going?” she asked with a look out the rear window.

“Somewhere you’ll never forget.” A couple minutes later, the truck sliced through a path in the trees and into a space where the ground got softer, the woods thinner, and a pristine river drew a ribbon down the side of the mountain. The water flowed across a stretch of flat land before them and interrupted the road. Sophie straightened, her mouth gaping a little. Tucker smiled. The river was impressive, yes, but that wasn’t the cause of her sudden smile.

“Wow!” Sophie reached for the handle as soon as he stopped the truck, throwing the door open and hopping down before he’d even gotten his seat belt off. She leaned her butt against the front of the Chevy, arms crossed, genuine amazement on her face as she sized up the bridge making a gentle arch over the river. Tucker moved next to her, hands in his pockets to keep from touching her.

“The floor needs a little work, but we can walk inside if you want.” He gestured with his head and they walked over, side by side. The covered bridge was over a hundred years old, and as far as Tucker knew, the only bridge like it in the state. The waterway below was fed by Paint River, which gave the Haywoods a roundabout connection to the bridge, one they’d used to fuel their secret upkeep of the bridge’s supports, roof, and floor over the last ten years. Peeling red boards lined the exterior walls and the roof was topped with row after row of weather-gray cedar shake shingles. It was a one-lane, forty-foot structure whose presence was all but forgotten. Locals barely remembered it was there and, with no clear markings to its whereabouts, tourists usually only happened upon it after getting lost.

Both were fine with Tucker. In the rare moments they were able to escape their father and the ranch, Tucker, his brothers, and Jaxon would ride their bikes the five miles here, fishing poles strapped to their backs, to poke around in the water and play pirates inside the bridge. That others rarely came this way made it all the better for four rowdy boys with overactive imaginations to do whatever the hell they wanted. Someone usually ended up getting thrown overboard into the water; Levi mostly. Tucker shook his head at the memory as they stepped into the opening of the bridge. Levi had been a scrawny kid; how he’d survived so many “accidental” falls off the bridge was a miracle.

Tucker showed her the safest path to follow and Sophie went ahead, trailing her fingers on the worn and cracked wood as she walked close to the wall. Above, intricately placed beams intersected each other to create a running V-shaped roof support while cross beams lined the walls to support the separated lower and upper halves. She paused in the middle, leaned over the waist-high rail to look at the river below.

“What’s it called?” She looked sideways at him, her face radiant. It damn near took his breath away.

Tucker blinked.“Hmmm?”

“The bridge. Does it have a name? When I visited a friend out East the covered bridges there were named.”

He moved next to her, leaned his back against the wall with his elbows on the rail. “Nope, not as far as I know.” Daylight was threatening to fade from the accumulating storm clouds that cast the interior of the bridge in shadow. A slight breeze kicked up, driving Sophie’s scent over him in a gentle cascade. His lids lowered, his jaw grinding in response. She resumed her steady perusing of the river and, for a while, they didn’t speak. Tucker turned around so they were shoulder-to-shoulder, listening to the water trickle over rocks below. He filled his lungs with a huge breath of clean, mountain air and Sophie.

“So, what do you think, Sophie-whose-last-name-I-don’t-know?” He looked sideways at her. She returned his gaze, gave a light chuckle. Warmth eased through him at the sound. He hadn’t been this at ease with a woman in a very long time.

“I think it’s beautiful, Tucker whose-last-name-I-don’t-know-either.” Sophie looked down, her shoulders slouching a little as her eyes rose back to the water. She shook her head wistfully. “It’s really, really amazing here.”

A bit of melancholy worked its way into her tone. She stared off into the distance, her smile smaller. What was playing with her emotions so much? He never wanted to know anyone’s secrets. He could care less what made people outside of his family tick, but Sophie’s mood change made him a little anxious inside.

He wanted to fix it.

God, is that what this feeling was—the urge to make it better? Ah, no. No way was he getting invested in whatever was going on inside her pretty head. He wouldn’t know how to talk to her about it anyway, or make it better. He wasn’t the knight in shining armor, nor did he want to be. Ready to direct his silly brain, he smiled wide and held out a hand to her.

“Tucker Ian Haywood. Nice to meet you.”

She took his hand for a little shake. “Sophie Anna Miller. Did you say Haywood?”

“Yep.” His heart fluttered. Well, the truth was out there if she wanted it. He didn’t have a problem telling anyone who he was, but maybe she didn’t know enough to figure it out. Being a Haywood was both a blessing and a curse around here. The blessing part was due to the ranch’s stellar reputation. The curse part was that his father hadn’t left a personal reputation near as good. The two halves clashed frequently, especially for Tucker. It sucked being the guy most like the man everyone hated.

“Related to the woman whose husband or boyfriend or whatever I helped yesterday?”

Tucker traced his tongue along the inside of his lower lip with a steady stare at the river. “He’s just a friend and she’s my mother.”

Sophie gripped the railing and leaned back on her heals, stretching her arms tight. “Wow, you own the farm?”

Tucker’s face went tingly. Farm. Please. “Third generation, yes, and it’s a
ranch
.” Sophie gave an impressed nod and brought her chest back against the ledge. Little patters broke the surface of the river as soft rain began to fall.

“Farm. Ranch. Same thing, right?”

His left eye twitched a little, the lightness of her voice letting him know she’d resumed her sunny side—the side that meant he was off the hook from trying to figure out what was upsetting her.