Marry Me, Cowboy (Copper Mountain Rodeo) (12 page)

Just a nice, responsibility-free fling.

True, though, Jamie could have accused Tegan of exactly the same thing.
You didn’t want me. You’ve never even liked me. You just wanted my body, with no risk of a future.

Okay, so they were even, on that front. They were equals. Using each other. Mutual about it. Fine. No problem. No reason to feel angry or disappointed or lost.

So Tegan decided she just wouldn’t.

She wouldn’t feel any of that bad stuff, simple as that. She’d make love with him again, instead, since that was what this whole thing was about. Even when they had a serious talk, it was foreplay as much as anything else. Right now, she was going with foreplay of a more traditional kind.

Almost angrily, she began to rouse him from sleep, sliding her palm down his chest, cupping that package of man-junk that she liked so much. He stirred and groaned, but didn’t make a definite move. Maybe he thought this was just a dream. She raised the game, pressing her mouth into his shoulder and neck, then sliding on top of him, deliberately rubbing her breasts across his chest until her nipples went hard.
That
took a whole nine seconds. “Hey, Jamie…”

“Wha - ?”

“Not going to wake up?” She made her breath hot in his ear and reached down to cup him again. “What do I have to do?”

“Okay, I’m awake now.” His voice creaked.

“Good.” She kissed him.

“You pretty much rang a bell in my ear.”

“Oh, I did?”

“Different kind of bell, but loud and clear.” After a moment, he broke away. “But I’m feeling pretty lazy.”

“You want me to do all the work?”

“If you’re offering.”

Yeah, she was offering, if he liked it a little rough. Her mood was rough. Angry and confused and hurting, wanting to hurt back. She didn’t like the idea that they’d been using each other. What did that say? About her? It made her angry that Jamie could confront her with the things she wasn’t sure about, in herself.

Shoot, what kind of power was that in a man? Bloody Jamie! Bloody, yummy, beautiful Jamie.

She pressed her hands hard on his hips to center them both in the right place. She bit him a little when she kissed him, the way he’d done this morning in the dark on the trailer step, then gave him a hickey on his shoulder, right where it curved into his neck. No one would miss
that
in the morning, and she was glad. She’d branded him as hers, even though it was temporary.

“Hey… wild woman,” he said, still creaking.

“That’s me.” She rubbed herself against him, until she had what she wanted – that hot, hard throbbing part of him, ready for her, and his hands as rough on her breasts and her butt as she’d been when she’d bitten him.

He shuddered as she guided him into her. And even though she was angry and didn’t really know why she was doing this, that moment felt so liquid and silky and big and good. She shuddered right along with him, and couldn’t help groaning.

She rode him, wild as he’d said, and there was no subtlety about it, no finesse, and maybe he enjoyed his climax, but hers, in the end, was tight and tense and unsatisfying, and she had to press her lips together to stop from whimpering at the end of it.

“Thank you,” he breathed. “You’re amazing.”

“So are you.”

She lay back down beside him, eyes pricking with tight little tears. Throat tight, too. Waiting for him to say something, but she had no idea what. He was almost asleep again, already, and it wasn’t fair to blame him for that, since he’d said he wanted to be lazy, if she was offering, and she
had
offered, she hadn’t argued.

She lay here with her leg across his thighs, her arm wrapped around his chest, and her nose buried in his neck, inhaling the clean male smell of his skin and hair, feeling her heart like a lump of lead in her stomach. Why?

Because I don’t want to let go. Now that I don’t hate him, I -

Love him?

Don’t be ridiculous, Tegan.

Like
him, though. That felt safe enough to say.

Like him
a lot
.

Like him too much, way too much, just when I have to say goodbye.

She felt as if she’d wasted almost two years on not really knowing him, making assumptions based on his worst moments and ignoring all the good things that had been there all along. The way he was such a loyal friend. The way his horses responded to him, trusted him. She could think of times when he’d been annoying – maddening, actually - but she couldn’t think of anything he’d ever done that was shady or sly or mean-spirited.

She couldn’t find a safe name for this feeling welling up inside her, all she knew was that it felt too powerful and too painful and she didn’t know what to do with it. Was she really and honestly in love with
Jamie MacCreadie
?

How stupid. How dumb.

She lay miserably awake most of the rest of the night, with her feelings so powerful and mixed up it was like having an unwanted third person right here in the bed. She didn’t doze until almost dawn.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In the morning, Chet came back.

Tegan and Kara were taking care of the horses, while Jamie had gone in search of something to bring back for their breakfast. Dean had already left town, but had texted Kara about twenty times, and Keeley had gone, and Lisa, and more pickups and trailers were peeling carefully out of the rodeo ground gates, hitting the road.

Tegan didn’t register Chet’s pickup until it began reversing up to the trailer, so they could hitch the gooseneck later on. He was an expert at judging the distance, and stopped in precisely the right spot before jumping out.

His eyes were still bloodshot. Tegan had almost forgotten what they looked like when they weren’t. This time, though, it was from the eye-strain of driving twenty-two hours in less than two days.

“I’m back,” he announced.

“Yeah, I worked that out.” She grinned, nervous for him. Nervous for herself, too. She thought about Jamie, and had a massive need to blurt out a warning.

You can’t have him back, Chet, not the way you did before, best buddies. He’s mine now.

Managing to bite back the words – which might not even be true - she asked instead, “How’d it go with your family? Tell me. I want to hear it all.”

“Mom was great. And my sister, too.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe some of the things they said.” He wiped away some tears. “Shoot, I’ve cried more in the past two days than my whole life before. I’ve talked till I was blue.”

“Can I ask you something, Chet?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“When did you last have a drink?”

He gave an upside-down smile. “Friday night. And don’t think you’re the only one who’s worked out the connection.”

“Well...”

“Drowning my sorrows. Drowning my identity. Jamie trying to do the right thing by playing the drinking game right along with me.”

“Is that what was happening.”

“Yeah, don’t you think?” He tipped his head to one side.

“I do. I’m glad it stopped. Can I hug you?”

“I would love you to hug me.”

They had a close, warm embrace and Tegan thought it felt different, too. Softer, now that Chet wasn’t fighting so much.

“Jamie’s gone to get breakfast,” she said. “Should be back soon.” It was just after seven. “Did you drive all night?”

“Pulled over to sleep for a few hours just before Billings.”

“You didn’t have to rush back so fast, did you?”

“I came back for you,” Chet announced.

“For me?”

“Didn’t want to miss you before you left.” He took her hands in his and began chafing them against those rodeo rider calluses. She had similar ones on her own palms. “Tegan, I’ve been thinking. I want to go through with the wedding, after all.”

Her mind went blank. The
wedding?
It seemed like half a life-time ago that they’d been planning it. A million heartbeats ago. She still needed it, on paper, just as much as ever, but...

I can’t. Not when I’m in love with someone else.

And she was in love with Jamie. There was no point in lying to herself about it.

“Now that everything’s out in the open, can’t I do that for you?” Chet was saying. “Don’t you think? No strings. Nothing going on underneath. We’re friends, Tegan. I want to marry you, so you can stay.”

Jamie had heard. He came striding up to them faster than he needed to, eyes narrowed, chin very square, one arm holding a white paper bag filled with - from the spicy smell - breakfast burritos, and the other hand balancing a cardboard tray of plastic-lidded coffee cups. “No, Chet,” he said. His blue eyes were blazing and he looked determined and electric and ready for action. “You can’t marry her. You’re not going to.”

“It’s different now,” Chet said. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried, buddy.” He put the cardboard tray and the white paper bag down on the hood of the pickup. “Worried is not the word.”

“So what is it?”

“I’m just telling you the situation’s changed. I’m telling you how it is, and you’re listening, so here it is. The only person marrying Tegan for her green card – the only person marrying Tegan for
any
reason,
ever
- is going to be me.”

“What?” Tegan said. She pivoted to face him, while Chet took a step back. “Jamie, we haven’t - ”

“I know we haven’t agreed on it,” he cut in, voice thick with intent, eyes like blue diamond. “I’m not talking about Friday night’s offer. That was - Yeah, long time ago.”

“It was,” she agreed, voice small, a little awed about the determination and the blaze in his eyes. Jamie meant business.

He stepped closer. “This is a completely new offer, okay? We’ve known each other long enough. This is a new and very serious, important offer.”

“Mine is a new offer,” Chet said.

“Shut up, bud,” Jamie told him gently, but threw him a stern look. “This is between me and Tegan now. You’re not the only one who’s had stuff going on this weekend. Tegan and I - ” He stopped and tried again. “Tegan and I…” But he just didn’t seem to have the words for it.

Maybe those
were
the words.

The only words they needed.

Tegan and I.

Jamie and me.

“Oh. Wow. Okay.” Chet looked intrigued, and ready for the fascinating dirt.

There wasn’t any dirt, though. There was just Jamie, eyes still blazing, pulling Tegan into his arms in a way that told her not to argue. As if she would... “So?”

“So?” she echoed shakily.

“How about it?” His arms grew tighter. And his groin. Their bodies had come together in their usual length-to-length, heat-to-heat way, and it felt so good and right she had to bite back a sound of need. Her knees went weak.

Jamie and me.

“I’ll marry you for your green card if you’ll promise me one thing,” he said.

“Not saying I’m going to say yes,” she answered him, in a voice she still couldn’t seem to make any more commanding, let alone full of her usual sass. “But… just out of interest… what’s the one thing?”

“Two things.”

“You just said one thing. Four seconds ago.”

“Changed my mind.” He had his gaze locked on hers, very close. She could see the patterns of darker color in his blue eyes. They’d both forgotten all about Chet. “It’s actually two,” Jamie said. “First is that you go back to Australia anyhow, before the wedding or after it, I don’t care. Maybe we’ll get married over there. We’ll go together. Visa or no visa. Green card or anything. You need to see your folks and spend some time with them, talk to them about the way they sold their farm, see if you can get to somewhere better with them, the way I’m starting to with my folks.”

“Why, Jamie?”

He went much more gentle, all of a sudden – gentle the same way he’d been on Saturday night, lying in bed telling her she was beautiful. “Don’t you remember we’ve talked about this? First real conversation we had, Saturday morning over pancakes, two days ago. Or six months. Not quite sure which.”

“Oh, me, too,” she said, still shaky. “Feels like forever.”

“You have to go home, so that when you come back here, it’s because you
want
to, with your whole heart, for
me
. Because we’re together. Not because you think you have no place else to go. Sometimes people have to leave, didn’t we agree on that? So that when they come back, it’s for the right reasons. Your farm. My ranch. Us.”

“Us?”

“If this is going to work, it’s going to work because it’s
right
, and we’re both sure. Not because you think your step-mom doesn’t care about you. And not because of any damn green card.”

“Definitely not for the green card.”

“You’re talking some sense, finally.”

“And if it doesn’t work? If we can’t stay married beyond two years, and end up in a divorce court?”

“We’ll make sure we both know why. We’ll do our best not to have that happen. We’ve known each other nearly two years. It’s long enough. We’ve probably seen a lot of the worst, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, just maybe.”

He almost glared at her. “I love you, Tegan Ash.”

“Oh. You do?”

“Yeah, I do.” It sounded almost like a dare. “I’m not letting that go without a fight.”

“You’re in
love
with each other?” Chet said, in an awed voice, a little slow to catch on.

They looked at each other. Very seriously. Very close up. Maybe an inch from nose tip to nose tip. Arms wrapped tight. Body heat shared. “Yeah, we are,” Jamie growled. “Or are you going to argue, Tegan, as usual?”

“Not going to argue... about anything.”

“I might... leave,” Chet said.

“Yeah,” Jamie answered him vaguely, not even looking.

Chet tactfully wandered off to look at the horses.

“But maybe I need to know the second thing,” Tegan said softly to Jamie, when there was no one else to hear, and after he’d kissed her, long and slow and sweet. “Because we didn’t get to that yet, and I’m a little concerned about what it might be.”