Page 39 of Cowboy Don't Go

“Mm-hm?”

“I bet . . . by now, Summer Boy has been married and divorced three times,” Cooper said against her hair. “And all of them have taken him for everything he has. The last one, well, I bet she smeared him on social media so bad he had to change his identity on his dating app.”

She snorted. “And he’s probably living in some lonely two-room apartment in Stamford, Connecticut, because his filthy rich father has finally cut him off for being an idiot.”

Cooper seemed to be enjoying this. “And when he’s not working his sorry butt off in his sad little white-collar job to pay his trio of alimonies, or scrambling to keep up with his golf membership at the club and the car payments on the Tesla he’s about to lose, he sits in front of the TV every night alone, watching Jeopardy! trying to outwit the much smarter players as he’s warming up his frozen dinners in the microwave.”

“Because he was a lawyer,” she went on, “until he got caught in bed with the senior partner’s wife and his firm had him disbarred and tossed him out on the street.”

“Boom!” Cooper laughed. “That’s what you’d call a karmic reimagining.”

“Ahhh,” she said, laughing now, too. “I feel so much better.” Throwing shade on Ethan in a purely karmic way felt good and weirdly empowering.”

“Oh, yeah.” That hand on her arm moved again, warming her. She made the mistake of looking directly at him and catching the twinkle of humor in his eyes. That, and something much, much hotter as his gaze dropped to her mouth.

“Just look what he missed out on,” he murmured.

She wiped a drip of rain from her nose and tipped her face up to him. “Yeah. Just look.”

“I am,” he said, his look intense and focused on her mouth.

The way he was looking at her stirred a rush of emotions. But worse than that, stirred a flutter in her belly that wouldn’t quit until she gave in to what she’d wanted all along. “Okay, then,” she said abruptly. “Go ahead.”

He tilted a questioning look at her.

“Just—just get it over with, then we’ll both stop being curious.”

“Oh, you want me to kiss you now? Well, put it that way, it’s a . . . damned enticing offer, which I’d oblige, but, you know, I can’t really risk my job.”

“I won’t fire you,” she promised with a sigh. “It’s just this once, then we won’t ever talk about it again.”

“You sure? I mean,” he said, dropping his mouth close to hers. “I might want to talk about it again.” His lips brushed hers with the briefest of kisses, then hovered there, just out of reach as he moistened his lips with his tongue, taking in the taste of her. “Because you never know how these things g—”

She pulled him toward her. He covered his mouth with hers in a kiss that was hard and long. It breached any agreement they might have struck for that kiss to be forgettable. He tasted of rain and peppermints; he filled her senses with the flavor of him. A delicious flavor that seemed to short-circuit her brain as it stirred a thousand butterflies in her belly.

He pulled her closer against his hard chest. Insensibly, she heard the small, needy sound that must have come from her. But she was helpless to stop him now. She didn’t want to stop him. She clung to him when he deepened the kiss, shifting his mouth against hers, first one way and then the other, exploring hers with his tongue. She wanted this kiss to go on and on.

If the small puppy in her arms hadn’t chosen that moment to climb up her chest and slather their faces with kisses of its own, Shay likely would have given in to that need.

But reclaiming her sanity with that small interruption, she broke away from Cooper, breathless, and laughing at the puppy staring up at her, wanting to join in on the fun.

“Apparently, our tiny chaperone is aghast at our lack of decorum,” Shay murmured, petting the puppy in an effort to disentangle herself from Cooper. To stop the tremor that had quaked up from inside her. Hadn’t she been cold only a moment ago?

On a shaky exhale, Cooper let her go, running a hand through his wet hair, sniffing at the rain still dripping down his face. It seemed to occur to them at the same time that the storm beyond the ledge had moved on. They turned to stare out past the horses who stood like quiet sentries to the drizzle that remained.

“Looks like it’s clearing up. We should get these dogs back down soon.”

“Yes,” she agreed, avoiding looking at him.

Cooper considered her again. “I gotta say, Shay, that was—”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “No, no. We promised not to talk about it.”

He frowned. “I don’t think I ever promised that.”

“It was a good kiss, okay? A great kiss even. But it shouldn’t go any further.”

“Because . . . why?” he asked in all seriousness.

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