Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(36)

“So we were in the same boat. You had a bossy cousin and brothers. I had sisters,” she said. “Any chance you want to sell five acres of your ranch to me? The five over beside that old water well?”

“Hell, no! We’re going to need that well water for our cattle tanks. In a few weeks we’ll be beggin’ for rain to irrigate the fields.”

“What can I get you?” the teenager behind the counter asked when the elderly couple took a table number and moved on. “Tonight’s special is tacos or taco salad.”

They ordered and the lady set the disposable cups on the counter. Lizzy handed one to Toby and headed straight back to the fountain machine to fill hers with Diet Coke. He followed her and stuck his under the ice dispenser and then the spigot on the big metal sweet tea container.

“We could have gone somewhere else, but I thought you liked tacos,” he said.

“I’m in a pissy mood, Toby. When I get like this I eat too much and then feel guilty and it puts me in a worse mood. We could take our food to go and drive back home. Granny called this my Jesus mood and you shouldn’t have to put up with it,” she said honestly.

“Jesus mood?” One eyebrow shot up.

She slid into the nearest booth. “Even Jesus couldn’t live with me when I get like this.”

He sat across from her instead of beside her. “We might as well eat here because I’m in the same mood. Just never heard it called that before.” He removed his cowboy hat, laid it to the side, and combed his dark hair back with his fingertips.

“What’s your problem?” she asked.

“If I knew that, I could talk myself out of whatever it is.” He knew exactly what his problem was, and it was sitting across the table from him. “And yours?”

Lizzy shrugged. “Tornadoes, insurance adjustors, a sister who scares the hell out of me when she talks about roofing my whole shop, a mother who’s making friends and leaving me alone, and a granny who doesn’t know me most of the time. Take your choice.”

She was lying but she wasn’t going to admit that her problem was Toby Dawson and that when his knee touched hers every so often, it reminded her too damn clearly of how much she’d enjoyed those sizzling nights she’d spent with him.

The waitress brought their food on a tray. Lizzy removed the paper from a taco and added a healthy dose of Louisiana hot sauce from the bottle on the table.

Toby peeled the paper back from his burger and bit into it. “Like your tacos with a little fire, do you?”

Tacos weren’t the only thing Lizzy liked served hot. She hadn’t known it until she met Toby, and going back to anything less would be dull as…well, as dull as Mitch. There she’d said it, or rather thought it. Mitch was dull, both in the bedroom and outside of it. Naturally, he’d come out on the short end of the stick when compared to someone like Toby, so she wasn’t being fair. But then Mitch hadn’t been fair, either, when he broke up with her on the phone on the day of her sister’s wedding.

“So hot you can’t speak?” Toby asked.

“Not nearly that hot,” she answered.

The only thing that hot had been sex with Toby, and anything with that much heat couldn’t last longer than a few weeks. Like a flash in a pan it would burn itself out, and all that would remain would be two people that were totally unsuited to each other.

“Thoughts?” he asked.

“I’m glad Wanda isn’t here. This taco has flat out put me in a good mood and I’d hate to lose it because of her.” Maybe it wasn’t what she’d been thinking about but it was the truth. “And I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach, so I’ll be taking my burger home for a midnight snack.”

“I’d forgotten how big one of these things are, too. My tacos will go out of here in a take-out sack rather than my stomach.” He grinned. “I’ll have them for breakfast. And, Lizzy, don’t let that woman or all the gossip get under your skin. Be yourself and tell anyone who doesn’t like it to go to hell.”

“Practice what you preach,” she shot back at him.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what it says. You’ve had this reputation that you work hard to live up to, but down deep in your heart, you’re not happy with it. How old are you?” Lizzy asked.

“Twenty-seven,” he answered gruffly.

“Each year you’ll get older and the bar bunnies will get younger. Think about that. The ones you’ll be chasing when you are forty are playing with Barbie dolls today,” she said.

He took a long drink of his sweet tea. “That was mean.”

“That, darlin’, was the truth. You don’t fit into that mold any more than I fit into one with preacher’s wife engraved on the outside.”

He laid the burger down and his blue eyes locked with her brown ones, searching her soul. “Go on,” he whispered.

“Nothing to go on about. I would have been miserable.”

“And you think I’m not happy with my lifestyle? That I’m miserable?” he asked.

“Fake girlfriend’s opinions don’t amount to a damn.”

“Lizzy, you are my friend. So tell me why you think I’m miserable,” he pressed.

She carefully undid her second taco and was a lot less generous with the hot sauce that time. “First, you tell me why you think I don’t fit in the mold Mitch tried to put me in.”