“Because,” Laura took a deep breath, “I am an enabler. Aunt Dotty told me that. My therapist told me that and Andy did too. As long as I keep bailing her out, she won’t ever learn to accept responsibility for her actions. So the only way Andy would loan me the money to keep the loan sharks from hurting her was if I promised not to see or talk to her for six months. And she has to go to Gambler’s Anon meetings twice a week, keep her job, and stay out of casinos for that long.”
“So why did you have to call Andy Joe? If you’ve taken care of it in the past, why didn’t you take care of it this time?”
Laura bit the inside of her lip. “I lost my job and I had just about used up all of my savings. I tried to keep a couple of thousand dollars in reserve all the time, but this time I didn’t have a job and it was ten thousand she owed. Andy paid it but, well, you know the rest.”
“He’s a good man but I got to admit I didn’t think he’d do what he did today. I’m sorry you got dragged into my problems,” Colton said.
He opened a rough, unpainted wooden door and stood to one side so she could enter before him. A blast of cool air raised goose bumps on her arms and neck. Two doors were right in front of her and she could swear she heard water running. More than likely Rusty was behind one of those doors filling up a galvanized trough for either cows or horses. Nobody put a gym inside an old weathered wood barn.
“Gym is the one on the left,” he said.
She swung it open and bright lights flooded a gorgeous fully decked out gym with every kind of equipment imaginable. The walls were pure white and everything was spotlessly clean. There were treadmills, gliders, and things she’d never seen before, not even in those fancy magazines beside the checkout counter in the grocery store.
She went right to the treadmill and ran a hand over the controls. She’d always wanted to buy one, but it would take up too much space in her tiny apartment and there were plenty of streets where she could jog. She could hardly wait to try it out and see if it gave her as good a workout as natural rolling hills.
Colton pointed to a button. “The television remote is built into the treadmill. Right here.” He pushed it and a forest complete with singing birds and gorgeous ferns, clematis, and wood violets appeared on the big screen right above the treadmill. “It’s hooked up to normal television, but this is what I like around me when I jog. It’s make-believe but it’s peaceful.”
“Wow!” she whispered in awe.
“Come on and I’ll show you the rest of it,” he said.
Holy-damn-smoke! There was more?
“My trainer comes in once a week on Thursday evening if you want him to work out a plan with you. This is the sauna.” He stopped at a door with a steamed-up window. “We keep it set at a good sweating temperature, and the showers are right next door to it so you can cool off once you’ve sweated the soreness out of your muscles.”
“What other surprises are there on the ranch?” she asked.
“A swimming pool. Do you like to swim?”
Until that moment she didn’t know that speechlessness affected the ability to nod.
“No? Yes?” he asked.
She managed to tilt her head forward.
“I love to swim but did not bring a swimsuit,” she said.
“No problem. We keep suits of every size and shape in the shower room. And the pool is heated to the same temperature, winter and summer, so we can swim whenever we want.” He grinned.
A picture of him in one of those skimpy Speedo bathing suits popped into her mind. Who needed a sauna? She could sweat the aches out of her muscles by just letting her imagination out of the chute. It came out romping and kicking just like a wild bronc at a rodeo and it was all she could do to stay in the saddle for eight seconds. And the images that it put into her mind of Colton were downright sinful.
She reminded herself emphatically that this was all make-believe and there was not one real thing about their crazy new relationship. She told herself to kick those sexy images of him to the curb and leave them there.
“Why would you have…” She stopped. It wasn’t a bit of her business how many women had been invited to swim in his pool or why there were bathing suits in the cabana room. She’d only met the man the day before and she’d probably never see him again, no matter how much he stirred her imagination by kissing her or holding her hand.
He smiled. “It’s easier to keep bathing suits at the pool in case someone forgets to bring theirs. What do you say we go work off some of that potluck dinner?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, I am, but if we want privacy we’ll have to get our laps in now because Dillon and Roxie will be out there pretty soon and they get real noisy when they play. Plus, some of the hired hands love to get in a workout and then a swim on Sunday afternoon.”
“So you let others play with your toys? And who is Dillon?” she asked.
“Roxie’s boyfriend. I worry about her sometimes. She clings to him like he’s her rock, and he’s the only real friend that she has. It hasn’t been easy for her with her mother being so wild,” Colton said.
“She’s in a good place now and maybe that will help her get through,” Laura said.
He nodded seriously. “I hope so, and to answer your question about my toys, it’s part of the package when I hire someone. They get a fair wage, room and board if they want to live in the bunkhouse, and access to my toys.”
“But you didn’t hire me,” she said.
“Andy has needed an assistant for a long time. He’s interviewed dozens of applicants. If he hired you, then you get the same privileges as anyone else on the ranch.”
A pretend girlfriend. A hired hand. An enabler. She’d have to remember to wear the right hat on the right day to avoid confusion.
She thought that she could not be surprised any more after the gym, but she was dead wrong! He threw open another door and there it was. Radiant glory wouldn’t come close to describing the pool room. She had seen pictures of waterfalls in remote areas of the world with ferns and flowers surrounding them, but not in her wildest imagination had she ever thought to see one in a barn in north Texas.
Crystal clear water tumbled over rocks into a pool surrounded with natural-colored stones. No wonder the flowers around the house went begging; a full-time crew would have to work twelve hours a day to keep the waterfall in such perfect order.
“Oh, my!” she gasped.
“I’m pretty low maintenance myself, but the gym and pool are my two luxuries. I never had much of a hankering to travel, but I always dreamed of swimming at the base of a tropical waterfall, so I made it happen. This old barn was sittin’ empty and it seemed like the perfect place. From the outside, no one would ever guess that it’s not housing hay and cattle feed. Restrooms and changing rooms are this way.”
The pool was surreal with its emerald-green tile sides and bottom. She half expected to see dolphins or at least flashes of minnows darting around. But there was nothing but cool, clear water reminding her of the ocean in Florida.
He walked behind the waterfall and she followed, not caring if her dress and hair got soaked, but a sheet of glass protected her from the splash as the water tumbled down to its final destination.
“Here’s the ladies’ room.” He swung a thick wooden door open. “See you in the pool when you get changed.”
“Holy shit!” She sat down on a white wrought-iron bench before her legs turned to jelly. “I could sure enough get used to this. No, no! I’m just the hired help. Barely a step up from a call girl. Now that’s a sobering thought, but it’s the truth. I’m getting paid to be his girlfriend. Maybe not in money for that job but in benefits, because if I don’t, I can’t see Janet before six months are up.”
She slipped the thin straps of her dress over her shoulders and shimmied out of it and her undergarments. Just like he’d promised, bathing suits of all kinds and sizes hung on a rack. She paid attention to the sizes as she flipped through them. Size twos came in bikinis of all colors, but the half a dozen size eights were all black one-piece suits.
There were four bathing suits in her size. She picked out a hot pink bikini with fringe around the bottom of the bra top but then remembered that he’d said the hired help and Roxie could possibly be there before long. She hung it back on the rack and chose a tankini printed with brilliant blue peacock feathers. The bottoms were bikini cut and the top had an apron-like front, leaving most of her back bare except for the tie string that kept the thing on.
He was in the pool when she came out of the cave-like dressing room and waved to her. “Like the old line says, ‘Come right in, the water is fine.’”
He had a beer in one hand and his chest was bare, water streaming down his ripped abs. He reached up and combed his brown hair with his fingertips and hopped up on the side of the pool.
He reached over to a table and settled his straw hat back on his head and she came close to swooning. Forget the damn Speedo. That skimpy piece of Spandex couldn’t compare to Colton Nelson, sitting on the edge of the pool in that getup.
***
What was it about a woman in a bathing suit that was far more appealing than a totally naked one? Could it be that just enough was covered up to let the imagination run wild? Colton didn’t have the answer to either question, but his imagination kicked right up into high gear when he saw Laura.
Her hair had been set free and she wasn’t wearing those thick glasses. Her waist nipped in above well-rounded hips and below a bustline that was slightly bigger than the bottom half. She was built like the sexy movie stars of the past rather than the skinny stars of the present. Her skin was so translucent that it shimmered when the sun rays filtered through the skylight and the dense greenery surrounding the waterfall.
She sat down on the edge of the pool and dangled her feet for a few seconds before she slithered down into the water like a cautious otter. She disappeared and swam down the length of the enormous pool before coming up for air. That only lasted a moment and she was back under the surface, turning when she reached the other end. Her body brushed against his bare leg and the water suddenly felt ten degrees hotter.
The next time he saw her she was sitting on the edge of the pool at the deepest end, the waterfall behind her, sunlight dancing on her wet blond hair. He sucked in a lungful of air, remembered to give his hat a toss, and did two laps before he popped up in front of her, braced his arms on the edge, and looked up.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Yes, it is.” He continued to stare without blinking.
Was she blushing? He didn’t know women did that anymore.
***
“I’m talking about the pool,” she said.
“Oh, well, that too.”
Laura’s lungs seized up and forgot to inhale when he used his massive biceps to haul himself out of the water to sit beside her. She coughed to cover the gasp. Unlike Janet, Laura did not talk when she was nervous. At least, she’d never had that problem before that minute when words started flowing out of her mouth so fast that she had no power over them.
“This is such a beautiful place. I feel like I’m in the middle of paradise. All it needs is birds and butterflies, not that this isn’t wonderful all by itself, but I was just thinking about the thing on the television above the treadmill and…” She stopped abruptly.
“Think about why I don’t have birds.” He chuckled.
They were alone in the pool house, so she couldn’t even pretend that kissing him was for show, but it didn’t keep her from wanting to see if a real kiss could be hotter than the fake one back in the house. She forced her thoughts away from kissing his wet lips.
“Oh!” She slapped a hand over her mouth. Maybe that would keep her from babbling on and on like a thunderstruck teenager. “I guess that might get messy.”
“And they’d eat the butterflies and that would make Roxie cry.”
“How long have you known Roxie?”
“Her whole life. Her mother was a couple of grades above me at the Bells school and Roxie has been Granny’s project since she was a little bitty girl. Granny was a cook at the Bells school until I won the lottery so she knew all the kids, but she had a soft spot for Roxie’s momma. Said she never got a break in life. She was always searching for love in the wrong places.”
“Project?” Laura asked.
“Roxie’s mother was a sophomore in high school when she got pregnant. Smart girl when it came to books but didn’t have a lick of sense when it came to boys. Granny says that she was like a butterfly that flitted around all the pretty roses and then landed on a fresh cow pile. Roxie’s father was a rascal and wound up in prison. Her mother had too many responsibilities too young and liked to party. Granny took care of Roxie a lot from the time she was a baby.”
“Then Maudie was her babysitter?”
“Something like that, only more. More like a surrogate grandmother, but since Roxie’s momma called Granny Aunt Maudie, Roxie grew up doing the same. Two weeks ago her mother ended up in the emergency room after too much liquor and too many pills. They were going to put Roxie into the foster care system but Granny went to battle for her. She’ll be living on the ranch until she graduates.”
“And the mother?”
“She’ll be in rehab for a long time. When she gets out she can visit Roxie, but she can’t take her away from the ranch.”
“Maudie is a good woman,” Laura whispered. “And what’s in this barn is your only luxury? No fancy cars or mansions or your own private island off in the tropics?”
Colton grinned. “I got a good truck and that big old farmhouse is mansion enough for me. That’s enough luxury for any rough old cowboy. If you won a million dollars, what would you want?”
“I’d have to think long and hard about that,” she said.
“What’s your favorite vacation?”
“Florida, but it wasn’t nearly this pretty.” She fell into the water and splashed it all over him.
He dove in right behind her and beat her to the other end by one lap. When she came up for air and grabbed for the side of the pool her hands came to rest on his arms. She was still treading water with her feet when she opened her eyes to see him staring down at her. His green eyes went all dreamy and soft.