Page 59 of Sexting the Cowboy
All I can do is try.
17
ANNIE
By midmorning,the medic tent feels like a held breath. The air is warm and heavy, and I should be used to it by now, but I don’t know if you ever get used to it. With hope in my blood, I’ve propped the flap for a breeze that never quite arrives.
Outside, the fairgrounds are a low thrum—metal gates clanking, a golf cart whining, a vendor calling out specials to nobody yet. The announcer is still saving his voice, which I appreciate. The quiet makes me feel like I can think, despite the heat.
I inventory the cabinet even though I did it yesterday—saline, gauze, steri-strips, the suture kits I hope I won’t need more of. I stick a new heat-illness flyer to the wall and smooth it flat so it doesn’t curl. I’m pretending organization is control. It isn’t, but it’s close.
With cowboys, there is no control. You just grab on with both hands and hope you don’t fall off.
A shadow falls across the flap, big enough to make the temperature change, and then Brick is there—hat pushed back,sleeves rolled, that slow smile like he knows exactly what he’s doing to the morning. And me.
“Doc. You ordered trouble?”
“Absolutely not,” I say, but my mouth betrays me by curving. “Trouble wandered in on its own.”
“Can’t help it. I was walking by, minding my business, and my business heard you were in here being bossy. Had to check.”
“I’m not bossy,” I say automatically, then add, “I am the boss.”
“That’s my favorite kind of bossy.” He leans a shoulder against the center pole, and something warm unfurls in my ribs. He doesn’t crowd the space, but he fills it anyway. The tent changes shape by half an inch just because he stepped into it.
“You hurt?” I ask, because reflex is where I live when nerves show up uninvited.
“No, ma’am,” he says, drawl turned down to an intimate register that makes my brain short out for a second. “Just dusty and curious.”
“Curious about what?” I busy my hands by rearranging the stack of triage forms so I don’t look as derailed as I feel.
He tips his head like he’s about to admit to something small and sincere. “About whether you smile the same when no one’s looking.”
I roll my eyes because that’s the safest direction to look—every which way but him. “Your ego is exhausting.”
“My ego has a strong work ethic, so I understand why it’d make you tired,” he says solemnly. Then the grin is back, softer. “Alsocurious whether your sense of humor will survive a question that’s been beating the inside of my skull since the other night.”
“Uh-oh.”
“On a scale of one to dangerous, how wrong would it be if I asked about seeing you in a naughty nurse uniform?”
The laugh leaps out of me before I can catch it. “Absolutely not.”
He puts a hand to his heart like I struck him. “Shot down.”
“Out of the sky. Sorry to disappoint your inner frat boy.”
“He’s old and rarely allowed out,” he says, unoffended. “Had to check.”
“I’m a doctor, not to mention I have too much respect for nurses to fetishize them like that,” I say, smirking. “Although I could maybe be convinced to put on a naughtydoctoruniform for special occasions.”
His eyes do that bright thing like I handed him sunrise. “I’ll take what I can get,” he says, voice low and grateful, “so long as you do the naughty part.”
I shake my head, but it’s impossible not to smile back. The air gets smaller and warmer without getting heavy, and the fans pick that moment to tick louder, like they want attention. He takes one step closer, and all the things I’ve been trying very hard not to feel line up like magnets in my bones, drawing me to him.
He smells like soap and dust and a little bit of leather. I hate that it’s my favorite scent now. I also hate that I love that it’s my favorite scent now.
“You good?” he asks.
