Page 4 of Ride a Cowboy

He shrugged. “I like to eat.”

She laughed. “Yeah. Me too. Unfortunately, I suck in the kitchen.”

“I can manage simple stuff.” He handed her a glass of wine. “Like spaghetti. Tonight’s fare.”

She thanked him for the wine. Then she took a deep breath, the scent of his sauce smelling far too tantalizing. “It smells delicious. Did you have that sauce slow cooking all day?”

“Yep. Threw it together just before I came to the restaurant. Had it simmering since.”

Which suddenly explained why he’d simply ordered a beer and not dinner upon arriving at the restaurant a couple hours earlier. Macie had thought that odd at the time because Hank was a big fan of the daily specials.

She stood up and walked over to the stove to watch him cook. He put a pot of water on to boil and stirred the sauce.

“Is that homemade sauce?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Had a pile of tomatoes in the garden I needed to use.”

“Wow. That seems a little more complicated than my idea of simple spaghetti.”

“Which is?” He turned to look at her, taking a sip of his own wine.

“Open a jar of Prego and dump it in the pan.”

Coop opened the box of spaghetti noodles and placed them in the boiling water. He stirred as the pasta softened and then he gestured back toward the table. “That’ll take a few minutes to cook.”

The two of them sat together to wait, each lifting their glasses for another sip.

“Never would have pegged you for a wine guy.”

He shrugged easily. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

She agreed with that assessment. “You can say that again. This whole damn evening has shocked the hell out of me.”

He lifted his glass and tapped it against hers. “To surprises.”

As always, her thoughts came falling out of her before she thought through what she was going to say. “You know I’m still fairly certain you’ve made a mistake here.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not your type.”

He frowned. Not that the expression was all that unusual for him. It wasn’t that Coop was a miserable guy. He was just really serious. She figured that attitude was only enhanced by the fact he’d spent the last few years taking care of his wife, Sharon, as she battled breast cancer and then, after she passed, mourning her death. He hadn’t had a whole hell of a lot to smile about.

“My type?”

She was suffering from serious diarrhea of the mouth today. “You know. Sharon. She was calm and quiet and really nice.”

“You’re not nice?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m a smartass from the word go and you know it. And the words ‘calm’ and ‘quiet’ have only ever been used in regards to me when people tell me how they wish I would act. Primarily my mother.”

“I like listening to you talk.”

Macie laughed. “If I hadn’t just waited on you at the bar and known for a fact you only had one beer, I would accuse you of being dead drunk. I know I talk too much. About stupid stuff.”

“It’s not stupid.”

Macie switched gears, bored with that line of conversation. They clearly weren’t going to agree. Besides, her thoughts kept returning to what had just happened against his truck. “That was one hell of a kiss out there, Coop.”

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