Page 17 of Charming the Cowboy
“You could’ve just gone to the house.”
“I didn’t want to end up trying to make conversation with Hank.”
She thought for a second he might be offended by that, but instead, he burst out laughing. “Okay. Fair enough. Though funny that you’re willing to make conversation with me.”
“Isn’t there some saying about the devil you know?”
He shot her a glare. “I guess so.”
“You guys don’t have to fix me dinner.”
And she didn’t have to come. She knew that. She didn’t have to take them up on the offer that was too generous anyway. But at this point, she just wanted to be around Cooper even if it was foolish.
She had seen him more in the past few days than she had probably in the last year, all added up. It was nice. With Marcus flitting here, there, and everywhere, they just didn’t have the opportunity to see each other quite as much. Sure, they encountered each other around town, he and Lindsay came into the Water Witch to shop, but…
You just have a crush on him.
She didn’t like to think of it that way because a crush sounded childish. And… Her feelings for him were physical. Because shewasn’t a teenage girl. Because she did no better than to get all wound up about feelings and crushes, et cetera.
“Have you actually ever ridden in a wagon before?”
His question felt like it came out of the blue. She blinked. “I… No.”
“We might as well hitch the horses up after dinner, and I’ll give you a ride. It can be a little bit bumpy. And if you’re going to ride up on a haybale in the back, you might see how that feels to you first. Since you’re going to be telling stories and all that.”
“Oh. Yeah. That sounds good.”
It was one way they were very different. He was, of course, thinking practically, while she had been thinking aesthetically. About how it would look, about the people that they would get to go on the ride, about the clothes she would wear. “We make a good team,” she said.
“Yeah. Well. I don’t know how you figure that.”
“Because. I would absolutely launch into this without ever having been in a wagon before. And you think of the practical things.”
“Wow. Practical. What a compliment.”
“I would think for a guy like you it would be.” There was a strange expression on his face, and she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. She was going to ask when he seemed to kick into a higher gear. “Come on. We’d better get to dinner.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“I can drive us over there.”
She nodded.
She scolded herself, even as she allowed herself to check him out while he walked in front of her out of the house, down the stairs, and toward her car.
She followed after him and had instant, advanced anxiety about being closed in a tiny vehicle with him. Which turned outto be very merited, once they got the doors closed, and she could smell him. His skin, his aftershave, everything.
It was intimate to share air with him like this. That was maybe the strangest thought she’d ever had.
And she had some strange thoughts.
She thought back to that night in her room, when she had grabbed hold of the crystals on her windowsill, and thought about wishing the curse away.
It was important that she remember exactly who she was. Because wishing wasn’t going to remove the reality of the situation.
Even if she wasn’t cursed, he was Cooper.
And that was an unclimbable mountain, therefore so was he.
