Page 19 of Her Second Chance Cowboy

Colin motioned for her to follow him back upstairs. “I’ll see if I can untangle them,” he told her. “We won’t resort to scissors unless we have to.”

They went into her small bathroom, and he motioned for her to sit on the closed toilet. Gently, Colin began to detangle the extensions from her hair. The tape actuallyhadstarted to come loose in the shower, but she had been too frantic to detangle them herself. Colin started talking as he worked the first weft free. “Sabrina got this perm before her college interviews. She’s always had a baby face.”

“I remember,” Nancy murmured. It was true: Sabrina would probably be carded for the rest of her life. Annoying at eighteen, sure, but she’d probably start to enjoy it later on.

“Well, she wanted to look older for her interviews, more mature or something. She decided to do one of those at-home kits with a girlfriend of hers,” he explained as he worked out the next extension, laughing. “She came to me, crying, when her hair basically turned into green straw.”

Nancy smiled at the thought. She’d done something similar at that age. It was almost a rite of passage for teenaged girls. “What did you do?”

Colin chuckled. “I learned way more than I’ll ever need to know again about deep conditioning,” he said, “and after several treatments, we were able to dye it to a normal shade of brown before her interviews started.”

His fingers in her hair, gently working the extensions out, became relaxing as the extensions came out and her scalp stopped screaming. She realized her eyes had slipped closed, and when she opened them, he was smiling down at her. Their eyes met and held, and Nancy’s heart skipped a beat.Calm down, girl.“How’s Sabrina doing?” she asked in an effort to get her heart under control again. “Evie told me that she’s in law school.”

Colin’s smile grew into an all-out, proud-big-brother grin. “She’s doing great,” he said. His fingers continued to work through her hair, massaging the tightness out of her scalp. “She made the Dean’s list last semester, and she’s got this internship lined up at some big law firm in Colorado Springs. If she does well, they may even offer her a job.”

He looked good like this, happy and smiling. “That’s amazing,” she said. Nancy could only imagine what would have happened to Sabrina if Colin hadn’t been able to take Bex. “What’s going to happen after law school?”

Colin paused in his work. “What do you mean?”

“Is Bex—?” Nancy didn’t know how to say this right, but with Colin staring at her, she plowed on and hoped that he wouldn’t be offended. “Will she go to live with Sabrina eventually?”

“Bex is my daughter,” Colin said firmly. “She’s not going anywhere.” His fingers tightened in her hair enough to make her wince. When he noticed, he muttered asorryand gentled his touch once more. “When Sabrina told me that she was pregnant, we talked about all of the options. She couldn’t imagine ending the pregnancy, but she didn’t think she could be a mother either. I respected her decision, and we decided to look at adoption.”

His voice and fingers were so soft that she didn’t want to disturb him, but she had to ask: “What made you decide to keep her?”

Colin smiled. His eyes had this faraway look to them. “I held her at the hospital,” he said. “We were between two families when Sabrina went into labor. As soon as I held Bex, I knew that she wouldn’t be going anywhere else. Sabrina signed her parental rights over to me, and I became Bex’s father.”

There was a flutter in the pit of her stomach. He had the biggest heart out of anyone she knew, and that hadn’t changed since high school. “They’re both lucky to have you,” she murmured.

Colin shrugged, but she could see the pleased look on his face. “Last one,” he said and untangled the last of the extensions. “Now, I need your conditioner. Hopefully, it’ll help with the irritation.” Nancy got the bottle from the shower and giggled when he told her to bend over the sink so that he could wash her hair. “Very mature, Nance,” he laughed, but then she heard him suck in a breath when she did bend over.

“Very mature, Colin,” she parroted back to him. They laughed as Colin massaged her scalp with the tips of his fingers. Nancy shivered under his touch as little jolts of sensation danced down her spine. Colin quickly rinsed her hair and grabbed a towel for her to dry it off. She stood, rubbing the towel against her hair, and when she turned, Colin was smiling at her. She reached up and touched her hair. “Does it look terrible?”

He reached out and fluffed the wet curls. “No,” he assured her, eyes trained on her face. “You look beautiful.”

He’s such a damn liar, she thought, knowing that her hair was always a mess until she combed it out after washing it. But thankfully, he was a handsome liar. She leaned forward and kissed him. It was meant to be a simple thank-you for helping her, but the moment her mouth brushed his, they were lost to each other. His tongue brushed her bottom lip before he slid it into her mouth, tasting her. She sighed into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck. Colin’s hands, resting on her waist, suddenly dipped, and Nancy squealed against his mouth as he lifted her up and encouraged her to wrap her legs around him, pressing her up against the wall.

“This okay?” he asked, voice just a touch hoarse.

Nancy stared into his eyes and knew that if she said it wasn’t that he’d walk away. No questions asked or explanation needed. It made her decision easy. “More than,” she said and kissed him again. “Take me to bed, Colin.”

Colin walked them into the bedroom and laid her out on the bed. The look on his face, fierce and wholly masculine, made things low in her belly tighten with excitement. She watched as he dragged his tee shirt up and over his head.Hot damn. His body had always been great, but it damn sure hadn’t looked like that in high school. Colin could have been carved from marble. She reached up and touched him, ran her fingers down his chest, and delighted in the way he trembled. He leaned down and kissed her again as he lay down with her on the bed.

A wave of nostalgia washed over her. She couldn’t count how many steamy make-out sessions they had in high school. Though as handsome has Colin had been back then, he wasn’t the solid mass of heat that he was now. “Is this weird?” Colin asked, hovering over her.

Nancy shook her head. “More like déjà vu,” she told him. “We’ve been here before.”

Colin flashed her smile. “Little different though.”

She made a show of staring at him and let out a low whistle. “I’ll say, Mr. Rancher Muscles.”

They laughed together, and it hit her that she had never been so comfortable with a man before. Not even with Colin himself, years before. She’d trusted him more than anyone, but she’d been so insecure as a teen, so worried about doing something wrong, that she’d never been able to be relaxed and playful. And in the years since then, none of her relationships had gone deep enough for her to fully let her guard down. As a result, humor had never had a place in the bedroom for her—not without completely ruining the mood—but despite the silliness and laughter between her and Colin now, her body was nearly vibrating with how much she wanted him. He leaned in, and then they were kissing again. Colin, who had been keeping most of his weight off of her by balancing on his elbow, brought up his free hand to cup her breast through the thin material of her shirt. Nancy moaned softly into his mouth and arched into that touch. He broke their kiss and skimmed his lips down her neck, nibbling gently at all the sensitive spots on her neck that made her gasp.

Those lips tickled at her collar bone, and she reached to unbutton her shirt with shaking fingers. She wanted those lips on her breasts, and he made a grunting sound when she told him so. He yanked the cup of her bra down, exposing her nipple to his gaze and the open air. He covered her with his body then, pressing himself against her, and took her nipple into his mouth. She moaned again and squirmed, rubbing against the hardness at her hip. She smiled at the shiver that ran through him.

When Nancy reached for the snap on his jeans, however, her work phone vibrated from where it was plugged in on the nightstand. Her personal phone rarely rang—especially since she’d been back in Windy Creek—but her work phone was a different story. She knew that if she didn’t turn it off, it would keep notifying her. She sighed. “Sorry,” she said and sat up. He rolled back onto his side. When Nancy reached for the phone to silence the ringer, Colin scoffed. “Are you seriously going to get that? Right now?”

His tone set her teeth on edge, and the shine around them dimmed. “I wasn’t going to,” she said, but since the mood was ruined anyway, she sat up, holding her shirt closed, and moved away from him to sit on the edge of the bed. She unlocked the phone, expecting another long complaint from Reagan. Instead, the message was from a client of hers: he’d hired her to set up his and his wife’s fiftieth anniversary party. He was putting on a big to-do as a surprise for her. The message was filled with panic. Everything had been changed last-minute.What in the hell?The bed moved, and Nancy sighed. She hated to do this, but she had to deal with this. “Colin, I’m sorry—” She looked at him, and his shirt was back on. So much for the moment. “This is an emergency, or I swear I wouldn’t—”

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