Page 24 of Charming the Cowboy
And he was tall. So tall, and sexy as hell, and he filled up the space in a way that made her feel tiny and fragile, and not in a scary way, in a sexy way.
He made her so very aware of the fact that she was female, and he was male. That he was hard and angular and strong, and she was soft and untouched. Begging to be touched.
She practically scampered toward the door. “Yes. Let’s go. Let’s go and decorate the wagon.” She sounded overly chipper, and she knew it. She hoped that he wouldn’t identify why she had gotten so overly chipper because it was straight up embarrassing.
Eliana, get up off the floor.
When she stepped outside the back door of the shop and got a better look at the wagon, she saw the hay was perfectly stacked inside of it, making a perfect place for people to sit in a circle around the perimeter. Right at the head of the wagon were two bales of hay stacked on top of each other, so that she could sit a little bit higher than everybody else as the storyteller. “Oh, it’s perfect. You really have a vision for it.” She didn’t add that his vision was clearly limited, because it didn’t extend to her idea about the spider, but she felt that he deserved more credit, less criticism. After all, what he was doing was more than enough.
“You’re a prince among men,” she said.
He snorted. “Doubt that.”
“Why do you doubt it?”
“I think that’s overstating things a little bit.”
“I don’t know about that. I think this is wonderful.”
She turned away from the wagon and toward her car, opening the back doors and beginning to ferret out her decorations. He followed, but when he got a look in the back and saw the giant spider, he gave her a terse look with his furrowed brow.
“What?”
“I don’t like that thing at all.”
“It’s charming,” she said, reaching in and taking out the massive arachnid. He had a fat, fuzzy body and wide, spindly legs. “I have a bunch of batting that can be a web.”
“Great.”
“Do you not like spiders?”
“Does anybody…likespiders?”
“They’re extremely functional. They are a friend to all.”
“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that they are a friend to me.”
“They eat garden pests!”
“Then they’re not a friend to garden pests.”
“Well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But also, I think they’re cute.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not.”
She liked all living things, if she were honest. They all served a purpose, and in her experience, when nature presented itself to you, it was often trying to send you a message. She was never going to smash a messenger.
He reached into the car and took out a few bags full of decorations, and she hefted her giant spider, wrapping her armsentirely around its fat body, and carrying it, legs sticking straight out in front of her, into the back of the wagon.
“It is a little heavy,” she said. “So maybe you’re right. Maybe on top of the wagon burden, we don’t want to put it on one of the horses.”
“I would never let you subject my horses to that thing.”
“I think you’re being very hateful toward Harold.”
“Harold?”
