Page 6 of The Cowboy's Surprise Return

By him.

But still… Cole knew better. Those shadows were still there, even if he couldn’t see them at the moment.

“Point me to your bathroom,” he said. “We’ll get you fixed up.”

“You’re supposed to be at your party.”

He leaned forward, placing a hand on her thigh, above her uninjured knee. She froze, her breathing coming to a halt. Maybe she still had that crush on him, after all. Or maybe she wasn’t immune to the tension that suddenly coiled and crackled around them. “And what kind of host would I be if I allowed one of my guests to go home alone, wounded and without care?”

Jackie rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. He frowned. They were having a moment here; couldn’t she see that? Had his moves grown that rusty?

“What?” he protested, when she continued to act unimpressed. He lifted his hand from her leg, unable to stop smiling. “I’m trying to be a gentleman.”

She raised her brows, amusement dancing in her eyes.

“It’s new to me,” he muttered, moving aside the torn denim to study her injured knee, eager to avoid meeting her gaze.

“Okay, well, in that case you’re doing very well. If I were a teacher I’d give you about a B. Maybe a B minus.”

“Only a B?” He looked up indignantly. “I scooped you up off the street. I escorted you home. I haven’t once done anything inappropriate.”

“Well, obviously you don’t read your audience very well,” she said, sucking in her cheeks as though fighting a smile. Her eyes were dancing again. They were losing their darkness, turning a deep shade of blue, almost indigo. It was mesmerizing, and incredibly heady knowing he’d had that effect.

He set his hat on the table beside him, and her dog stretched and groaned with contentment. Surprised, Cole felt a sting of envy.

He fiddled with his hat before slowly looking up at Jackie again. “I’ll admit I’m confused about what it takes to be a gentleman.”

She was a flirt, and he knew enough to be aware that her hints to do something inappropriate weren’t genuine invitations.

Not that he’d take them. He’d spent many hours sitting in a brew pub in the small mountain town of Blueberry Springs, sipping whiskey and considering the various ways he could make things right again once he returned home. If he ever did.

One of the possible solutions was to focus on his family. Another was to swear off women for a while, to give himself time to mend his reputation, instead of slipping back into his old life and reinforcing old images of himself.

He’d already spent several years alone, moving from job to job across the country to keep himself distracted from his homesickness. So another six months—long enough to prove to the town that he was a stable adult, no longer prone to making the impulsive errors of youth—wouldn’t kill him.

There was also the minor fact that he wasn’t much of a catch at the moment. His childhood bedroom had been turned into an office during his absence, and he was currently crashing in one brother’s old bedroom on the family ranch—an operation that was profitable because of his eldest brother’s hard work. Not his own. Levi had been the one to stay, take care of family, pick up and hold all the pieces Cole had left scattered when he’d left. Now that he’d returned, he didn’t feel he could simply waltz in and claim his share. He had to earn it back, along with his family’s trust.

In other words, he had little to provide right now. And being thirty-three, he needed to have something to offer. A house. A real stake in the family ranch. Something more than nothing.

Hence no women, even if Jackie flirted outrageously and had the most kissable, moist lips he’d seen in eons.

Realizing he was staring, he leaped from his spot on her coffee table and strode toward the back of the apartment, pausing in what turned out to be the bathroom doorway. The array of beauty products cluttered on the vanity amazed him. This woman couldn’t pack her life into a duffel bag and be on the road in fifteen minutes or less, that was for sure. He opened the medicine cabinet, flicking through the contents until he located a box of bandages. Next he found a stack of facecloths on the small rack above the toilet. He dampened one of the cloths and headed back to where his patient was waiting.

Jackie was wriggling out of her jeans, a flash of white thigh burning an image into his brain.

He pivoted, turning his back to the room, his breathing ragged.

“Sorry, I can’t access my knee.” He could hear her struggling with the denim and his mind roamed, imagining the full expanse of bare thighs, calves and ankles, the style and color of her underwear.

His resolve to forgo women was dissolving like tissue paper in a rainstorm. It had been a very long time indeed, and another six months felt like self-imposed torture.

“Can you help?” she asked, frustration thickening her voice.

Cole swallowed hard. “I have a feeling you’re not decent…”

“Well, a lot of my jokes aren’t, but at the moment I have my jacket covering anything interesting. So if you don’t mind being a gentleman and tugging the cuffs of my jeans, that would be great.”

“If stripping you means being a gentleman, then I might just have this in the bag,” he joked, reining in his libido as he headed to the couch. Her dog had abandoned his spot and was now stretched out on an area rug near the door, belly to the sky.

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