Page 25 of Charming the Cowboy
“That’s his name.”
“Since when?”
She shrugged. Unwilling to tell him that she had just now decided on a name, because she had sensed that it would irritate him. And there was something about irritating him that really appealed to her.
Maybe because that felt like a distancing tactic, and maybe the distancing would get her mind out of the mopey-forlorn-perennially-rejected-friend’s-little-sister funk. It was worth a shot.
She cheerfully carried her spider – now dubbed Harold – to the wagon, and experimented with where she thought he might look good on the back. Then she set him down and dug in one of the bags for cotton batting. She began to unspool the batting, using it to drape cobwebs all over the wagon.
“I have to build a house for Harold first,” she said.
He didn’t sigh heavily, but she could feel that he wanted to.
Poor guy.
It was a good reminder, though, of why – again, curses aside – she had never, and would never, make a credible move on Cooper.
They were just very different.
“Oh, I think this is fantastic,” she said, surveying the work so far, and smiling. “Everybody is going to want to ride the wagon.”
“Have you figured out your ghost story?”
“No. I’m still trying to think of one that’s spine-tingling without being nightmare-inducing. I don’t want to be responsible for a whole bunch of children not being able to sleep.”
“I don’t know that you could possibly tell a story that scary.”
“Ye of little faith!”
“I just mean that you yourself are not particularly intimidating, Eliana.”
She didn’t know why, but she felt a little bit dented by that. It would be nice if he thought she was at least a little bit scary. A little bit intimidating. In some capacity.
“I dunno. You’re too much of a good witch, I think.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I think,” she said, climbing up into the wagon, and walking through the clear center aisle to the haybale that she would be sitting on during the event, “that once you see me in all my glory, you may take that back.”
“I don’t know that I will.”
“You will,” she said, raising her hands and making claws.
He rolled his eyes and got up into the back of the wagon with her. And then he was standing right in front of her, tall and broad and gorgeous. And her heart leapt up into the center of her throat.
They were alone. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Cooper were alone. There had been these little pockets of time, and today there had been several of them. But right now, they were at the back of the shop, without a single person in sight.
It was a totally different situation than she ever normally found herself in with him, and it made her throat dry. Made her entire body feel like it was on fire.
And then suddenly something in his eyes changed. He was looking at her like he… Like he might want… She took a step backward, and then just about flung herself over the back of thewagon. He reached his arm out, wrapped it around her waist, and pulled her up against him.
Her heart was thundering hard, and… so was his.
She pressed her hand lightly to his chest, and she could feel it raging there.
“Oh,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you for stopping me from… Dying.”
“I don’t think you would’ve died,” he said, but he didn’t let go of her.
Her stomach was pressed up against his. It was so intimate. She felt like she was on fire. She felt like she was going to die.
