Page 5 of Charming the Cowboy
She watched him walk across the street, toward where he was parked, right in front of the art gallery.
Then she turned away, and continued on up the sidewalk, off the main street of town, where the Sanderson house sat, up on a little rise, a partial view of the ocean, one of the best things that it boasted.
The house had come into their possession much the same way The Water Witch had. Her grandmother’s third marriage.
While the Sanderson women didn’t get to keep the loves of their life, they did get to keep certain… Souvenirs from the relationships. Be they children or property.
A single mother, her grandmother had shown up in Wild Rose Point, and ended up married to an older man who owned The Water Witch, which was a candy shop at the time, and this house.
When he passed, the house, and the store came into her possession. The house itself was eclectic. Filled to the brim with crystals, books on different aspects of magic, and stacks of tarot decks. While Eliana didn’t necessarily believe in magic in the sense that she didn’t think she could cast a literal spell and…transform something physically or make objects float.
But, she couldn’t deny that her life was touched by those sorts of unexplainable magics. Like a curse. And like the way other things in her life seemed to work out.
That was the trouble. Other things worked for her.
She thought about that as she walked up the little path to the house and stamped up the front steps. Things were going well in her business, as they were going well for her grandmother and her mother. She had wonderful friendships. Easy relationships in the town. When she set her mind to something, it always went well. The exception to that was romance. And sex.
She grimaced.
All her attempts had been slapstick-comedy-levels of disastrous.
She had made several attempts to understand what all the fuss was about. All had ended in peril.
While her mother and grandmother had no luck with romance, they certainly enjoyed the company of lovers. Her brother was the same. He couldn’t hang onto a relationship for very long, but he was never without a woman in his bed if he wanted one. And he seemed to want one frequently. Even though he lived in a small camper at the RV park outside town half the time, he still managed to hook up. It was a testament to his looks and charm.
Eliana herself was not unattractive; she didn’t think so, though her hair was more carrot than russet, and she had freckles all over her face, not artfully sprinkled across her nose, but everywhere. Everywhere on her body, too, honestly. They were uncontained freckles.
Her looks weren’t the issue.
Her ability to attract a man wasn’t the issue.
It was…everything else.
She’d once sent a man into anaphylactic shock after kissing her. In fairness to her, he didn’t tell her that he had a shellfishallergy, and he had taken her out to dinner, where she had ordered shellfish. She had nearly killed him.
And really not in that fun French way that an orgasm was supposed to be a little death, but in a very real, literal death sense.
That was truly the worst encounter, but there had been others that were similarly disastrous.
The closest she’d ever come to being lit on fire was looking at Cooper.
Was a few years ago at his place when —
Well, nothing at all had happened. But she’d felt like maybe it had been about to. She’d thought maybe itcould.
Except it couldn’t have been because nothing had fallen from the sky, they hadn’t been set upon by a band of wild raccoons, and Cooper’s hair hadn’t spontaneously combusted.
So it had to be all in her head.
She’d come to his house for a barbecue – rare, but they’d invited several families out to try the new beer they were working on and to have some food – and Eliana and her whole family had gone. Then the horses had gotten out.
Which was the kind of thing that would normally happen when Eliana was about to hook up with someone, not a random happenstance. But it had happened, and she’d ended up helping Cooper chase them around the property until they’d been wrangled back in.
After which they’d stood by his truck, laughing at the absurdity.
The sun had been setting, and the sky rose gold. The breeze was warm, and that brilliant light had caught the edge of his cheekbones and set off a firestorm inside of her.
Her eyes had caught his and held like that, and for a moment she’d thought…
