Page 12 of Claiming Her Cowboy Kiss

“You saw the backseat of my car yesterday, right?”

“You were moving in.”

She shook her head.

“It’s like that all the time?” He twisted to look behind him, and sure enough, the mess was still there. Empty soda pop bottles. Wrappers. A jacket. An umbrella. An empty cardboard box she’d used to carry large envelopes she’d had to mail for work. “Oh, uh, it’s like this all the time.”

“I clean it out every now and then,” Maddy said. “I worked for hours at home before I came up to the ranch.”

He looked at her. “Are we stopping by your place today?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I want to get a few personal touches. Pictures and things like that.”

“The cabin is very bare bones,” he said.

“It’s like an asylum,” she said. “I was barely able to go to sleep last night.”

He burst out laughing, which brought joy to Maddy’s heart too. “What?” she asked. “It is.”

“An asylum?” He kept chuckling. “Come on, Mads. Have you ever been to an asylum?”

“Yes,” she said, puffing out her chest. “Last night. I’m going to hang curtains and put up pictures. Then it’ll feel more homey.”

“Definitely no curtains in asylums,” he teased.

Her stomach growled, despite the single piece of toast she’d eaten that morning. She hadn’t been able to get anything down at her house but a weak sip of coffee. “I’m not great at making coffee,” she said. “Another thing my momma teases me about. See, she’s this fabulous cook, and I can barely boil water.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “You brought me those brownies once, and they were spectacular.”

Maddy smiled and leaned into his touch as he brushed his hand down the side of her neck. “Those weren’t hard.”

“I like this dress,” he murmured, and Maddy suddenly felt beautiful and desirable in it.

“Thank you,” she said. “Tammy will ask you why a cowboy is wearing khakis.” She glanced over to his pants. “She asks a lot of…tactless questions. If she wasn’t married, we could hook her up with Adam.”

They laughed together, and Kyle took her hand in his. “I’m excited to meet them, Mads.”

She nodded, but her throat narrowed to the point she could barely get air down it. She’d been driving all this time, and she made the final turn. “We’ll stop by my house after,” she said. Her childhood home appeared down the lane, on the right. “That’s it right there.”

She indicated the pale yellow house with overgrown bushes out front. “My daddy planted those to hide the house,” she said. “He thought the street was getting too busy when they put in houses across the road about twenty years ago.”

“Too busy?” Kyle asked. “It’s a dead-end road.”

“He didn’t want the neighbors looking through his front windows.” Maddy smiled. “He’s a bit of an interesting person.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he planted a ton of huge trees and bushes he can’t take care of,” she said. “He’s always got these big ideas, and he rarely knows how to execute them.”

“Big ideas,” Kyle murmured as Maddy pulled into the driveway.

“Dave’s truck is here,” she said. “They’re waiting to pounce.” She put the car in park and looked at him. “Are you sure you want to do this? I can take you to The Watering Hole and say you couldn’t make it.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna work,” he said. He nodded his big, black cowboy hat toward the house. “They’re already coming outside.”

Maddy followed his nod, and sure enough, Momma, Daddy, and Tammy were all in various stages of descending the steps. “My word,” she said under her breath. “Well, come on. We might as well meet them halfway.”

ChapterSix

---