Page 19 of Charming the Cowboy
“Come on,” Cooper said. “We’ll go have our ride before it gets dark.”
It was beginning to get darker a whole lot earlier now. The sun set before seven, and already the sky was getting slightly pink. “All right. Thank you. Again. So much.”
“Do you think I could come by the shop for a tarot reading next week?” Lindsay asked.
She could tell that both Cooper and Hank wanted to say something derisive about tarot readings.
“Yeah. Of course. Though you’re very intuitive, Lindsay. You can read your own cards.”
“I’m afraid I end up telling myself what I want to hear. I would rather hear it from you.”
Well, Eliana could definitely relate to that. That was where she felt like her intuition about herself got a little bit spotty. It was hard to take what you actually wanted out of an equation like that. When you started telling yourself you only drew The Tower because something new and exciting was going to breeze into your life and you definitely weren’t going to lose anything you wanted, you could be certain that you were protecting yourself a little bit overly much.
She and Cooper eventually extricated themselves from their goodbyes, and he gestured toward his truck again. She braced herself for that same feeling of being in an enclosed space all over again. “I’ll drive us out to the barn.”
“It’s really lovely the way your family all takes care of each other,” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s always been like that. I mean, after Dad died, there was such a big hole, and I think we all leaned in to try to fill it.”
“I’m sorry. I mean, that’s such a silly thing to say about such an old wound. But, I am.”
“It’s fine.”
“The barn is just this way,” he said, gesturing down the same road she had taken to get to his place. And she focused on driving, rather than his scent, which seemed like the more sane option. If she were honest.
When they pulled up to the barn, she practically tumbled out of her own vehicle, anxious to get a little bit of space between them. She wasn’t usually quite this ridiculous around him, but it was all the revelations about everything that had just passed between them. Her intense focus on it. She was basically manifesting awkwardness at this point.
It wasn’t anything magical or unknowable. It was just her not being able to think about anything else, which was only further entrenching her thoughts, which were that she needed to remember other things about Cooper. They had a long history together, and it didn’t all include her lusting after him. Some of it was very benign.
She was just having difficulty casting her mind back that far.
She walked into the barn behind him, and he slung the doors open wide, revealing an old wooden wagon. “You know, at Christmas time you could put bells on this and–”
“I am not becoming a community mascot,” he said.
She laughed. “But you’d be such a handsome one.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and her stomach tightened. She had only meant to say that in the sense that he was objectively handsome, but it had definitely come out a lot more like a personal declaration of his handsomeness. And if she commented on that, if she tried to backpedal, it would seem like protesting too much. Which she also didn’t want to do.
“Just… consider it,” she said, patting him on the shoulder, and instantly regretting that too, because the touch sent a lightning bolt through her fingertips and down to her stomach.
“We’re going to use Buttercup and Odie for this,” he said. “I’ll get them all hitched up, and then we’ll be good to go.”
“There’s no hay in the back of the wagon.”
“I’m not going to fling you on top of a haybale just yet. Also, we want nice, fresh hay. You can ride up front with me tonight.”
She waited with patience while he hitched the horses up to the wagon, his utter competence at the way he handled the animals making her dizzy.
Or maybe it was just him. The way that he was.
He opened up a set of doors opposite them. “We’ll drive out this way.”
She was about to lift herself up into the wagon when he came around to the other side and held his hand out.
She looked up at him, then down at his offered hand. She accepted it, and he pressed his other hand to her elbow and helped lift her in.
As she settled into her seat, it took her a moment to orient herself. She was all dizzy.
