Page 31 of His First Baby Rodeo

“No—”

He picked her up in one arm and tossed her over his shoulder, hooking his hand carefully behind her knees so that she wouldn’t fall. She let out a cry of shock. “Mac, your arm!”

“Hey, I’m as good with one arm as any ordinary man is with two.” He strode down the hall, kicked open the door to his bedroom and tossed her down on the bed.

She gazed up at him, wide-eyed. This was a whole new side to the woman who had ridden bareback around the grounds with such poise and confidence. It occurred to Mac that it would take a powerful force to reduce her to such a submissive state — and that force washim.

He hadn’t felt this good since his accident. He felt satisfied and capable and sure of what he was doing.

He crawled up onto the bed and kissed her again, relishing the fact that their bodies could be fully together now. He kicked off his boots and twined his legs with hers.

She leaned back into the pillows, reached up to wrap her hands around his neck, and pulled him down to kiss her.

CHAPTER14

EL

It’s only temporary. The words had become a refrain in El’s head over the past few weeks.This is only temporary.

But it had also become increasingly possible to forget the fact that it was supposed to be temporary. It didn’t feel temporary. Which wasn’t to say that it felt permanent, either — it simply felt like what was happeningright now, and El didn’t feel too compelled to think about the future.

The two of them kept separate bedrooms, which felt important. If she had fallen asleep in his arms, El thought, it would have meant something more significant than their current occasional trysts did. She wouldn’t have been able to write that off nearly as easily. And waking up in his arms would have been another ordeal entirely. She had no idea how that would have made her feel, but she was sure it would make her feelsomething.

Hooking up in the stable was something else altogether. It was fun — wildly fun — but it definitely didn’t leave her feeling anything more complicated than a deep physical satisfaction. She pulled her shorts back on and brushed the hay out of her hair — she was definitely going to need a shower later.

“I think we gave those poor horses a show they won’t forget anytime soon,” Mac chuckled as he straightened his clothes. “Was it good for you?”

“It always is,” she said, grinning. “If I’d known you were this good, I would have tried to get in your bed years ago, Mac.”

“If I’d knownyouwere this good, I might’ve let you,” he said. “Maybe that other jerk you dated would never have been in the picture.”

This was the closest either of them ever came to referring to themselves as a couple in any sense — implying that if they had discovered one another sooner, there would have been no need for Dean’s presence in El’s life. It felt a little risky to put things in those terms, since her relationship with Dean had been a romantic one, but even so… Mac was right to say it, and it was a fun thought to banter with.

“Dean couldn’t hold a candle to you,” she said. “I mean, I always knew he was no superstar, but I never knewhowmuch better it could get.”

“If you’d known, would you have dumped him sooner?”

“Probably,” she said with a grin, even though she didn’t know for sure. “I’d have dumped him and had wild affairs with as many men as possible.”

“Hey, as long as one of them was me, that sounds pretty good,” Mac teased her.

“Of course one of them would be you,” she said. “That part isn’t up for debate.”

He stayed out with her that day while she finished the ranch chores. It was a pattern the two of them had fallen into, even though it was understood between them at this point that she didn’t need to be monitored, that she could be entrusted with the chores without having him looking over her shoulder. He seemed to want to be out there, to enjoy spending time with her. And El had discovered that she liked having him around, too. She would have expected it to annoy her — she would have thought it would feel like being supervised or micromanaged — but it wasn’t like that at all. She was glad to have his company.

And as she went about her work, she allowed herself to fantasize about what it would be like to be with him again — because she knew now that it would happen again. It was the kind of thing that, once it had started, wasn’t going to end until it had to. The two of them had established a habit, and it would go on as long as it possibly could.

Eventually, of course, it would have to come to an end. Her time on his ranch would be finished, and she would go back to Oklahoma and start the next phase of her life. Maybe she’d move back to Seattle — although every time she thought about doing that, she found herself pushing the thought away. It was hard to remember, these days, what had drawn her to Seattle in the first place, and even when she left Texas behind, she knew she wasn’t going to be done with the ranch life. She would have to find another job like this one — even though that job would be missing the one thing that made this job so intensely appealing to her.

But this was temporary. This had always been temporary. That had always been the plan.

* * *

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” El asked Mac two nights later as he made his way around the kitchen.

“I told you,” he said, laughing. “Meat loaf is the one thing Idoknow how to make.”

“I’m not trying to doubt you here,” she said. “It’s just that you didn’t know how to boil noodles without letting them clump together.”

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