Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(17)

“I’m capable of cooking, but I don’t enjoy it. I do like to clean because I’m the world’s biggest neat freak. We might make a good pair, Miz Lizzy Logan,” he said.

Wanda choked on her sip of coffee. It looked like she might need some CPR, and Lizzy was glad that she had no idea how to do it. Wanda finally got control of her breathing and took a sip of water before she and her cronies put their heads together and whispered like little girls on the playground.

“So a ranch house then? That’s what Allie and I have been designing. Long, low, and with a big front porch with a swing where two people could sit and talk about their day. You could tell me how things went at the feed store and I could fill you in on all that went on at the Lucky Penny every evening,” he said.

“Why, Toby Dawson, are you proposing to me?” she said in her best sweet Southern voice.

“No, ma’am. I am not! When and if I ever do that it will be in a romantic setting like out in a field of wild daisies with the sun setting over the horizon on the Lucky Penny.” He kept eating ice cream as if they were discussing a herd of deer instead of proposals. “Tell me what else you’d do in a house? What kind of kitchen would you want?”

“Nothing big, but I would like a stove with six burners on the top and a double oven. And a window above the sink so I could see the baby calves playing out there beyond the yard fence.” Lizzy knew their conversation was only pretend, but that was exactly what she really did want—when she found the right cowboy to trust with her heart.

She’d skipped supper, so she was hungry and she ate faster than she would normally, but Toby still beat her by two spoons full.

“Let’s go home the longest way possible. We can get two cups of coffee to go and drive slow,” he said.

“Sounds good to me.” She nodded.

“And Saturday night I thought we might hit that little bar up near Wichita Falls and have a beer. Maybe dance a little leather off a pair of your pretty cowboy boots,” he said on the way to the counter.

“I’ll look forward to that the rest of the week. I haven’t been dancing in months,” she said.

With coffee in one hand, Lizzy waved at Wanda as Toby ushered her out the door and to his truck. Wanda’s evil looks sliced through the air like a hot knife through butter. Lizzy wasn’t certain if she really would be drinking beer and dancing on Saturday night, but knowing that Wanda would rush home and call Mitch to tell him put a smile on her face. Maybe this idea that had been hatched over the kitchen table at the Lucky Penny wasn’t such a bad one after all.

“That was so much fun,” Toby said.

“And if it had been real?” she asked.

“I don’t usually build houses for my women on first dates.” He grinned.

“What’s your highest number?” She sipped her coffee.

“For what?”

“Dates? What’s the cutoff number before you consider it getting too serious? Two, ten, twenty?”

His eyebrows drew down into a solid line. Didn’t he know if he frowned longer than two minutes his face would freeze like that? If he didn’t believe her, then Lizzy’s granny would tell him. Irene might have forgotten most everything these days but she would remember that for sure.

“I dated a girl in high school for two weeks. Took her to my senior prom,” he finally answered.

“So three or four real dates?”

“Two.” He grimaced. “We went to the movies and to the prom.”

“And since?”

“No more than three, tops. After that they start to get ideas about diamond rings and big white dresses. It’s the dresses that give me the hives,” he said. “And all that planning shit. My older brothers almost threw in the towel when it came to those wedding books. I wouldn’t ever want to do that.”

Lizzy filed that bit of information into the back of her mind. She’d had the wedding book and kept everything in it, from swatches of the ribbons she might or might not use for the bouquets, to pictures of boutonnières made with roses, gardenias, and even magnolia petals. She’d burned the thing in the fire pit in the backyard the night Mitch had broken up with her. She’d lost the deposit on her dress but nothing else had been ordered, thank goodness.

“I heard you had a wedding book,” he said.

“I did but I will never have another one. It takes too much energy and time for all that,” she said.

He drove up into the front yard and parked the truck. “I’ll walk you to the door. I thought I saw a glint of binoculars over there to the east.”

Her mother’s car was parked beside his truck and the porch light burned brightly. He slung an arm around her shoulders and kept in step with her all the way to the door where he caged her with a hand on each side. She wanted nothing more than to curl up beside him in a cocoon of delicious foreplay followed by a round of that mind-numbing sex, but this wasn’t real even if the kiss did leave her panting.

“I had a good time tonight, Lizzy. This fake dating is more fun than I thought it would be,” he drawled.

His eyelids fluttered shut and she barely had time to moisten her lips before his lips claimed hers. Instinctively her hands went up to loop around his neck and she rolled up on her toes. There probably wasn’t anyone over there in the trees, but she couldn’t prove it because when he ended the kiss, there were glittery sparks everywhere.