Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(37)

“I know you, Lizzy. I know you like burgers and tacos and that you are a no-fuss type of woman. That’s why I brought you here instead of some fancy restaurant where we’d have a five-course meal and it would take three hours to get through it. I know you like your work and that you love Dry Creek and you’d be miserable outside of it. Mitch was trying to change you into a different Lizzy Logan, one that he wanted. Now you tell me why I don’t like my fancy-free lifestyle. You didn’t stay in your mold long enough to get it warm. I’ve been in mine more than a decade.” He picked up her cup and carried them to the fountain machine for a refill. “It was Diet Coke, right?”

She nodded. “Yes, but this time I want sweet tea, please.”

He set both cups of tea on the table and slid back into the booth. “I’ve been in my mold so long that I’m real warm and comfortable in it. No matter what people think or say, I’m not sure I want to move over to something else. It would be like changing beds. The old one has lumps and dips and maybe the springs even poke me once in a while. But a new one would take weeks, maybe years, to get used to.”

“That’s your decision. I like my new bed, and the more time goes by the better I like it. But remember that you can stop this anytime you want and crawl right back into your comfortable rut that is so warm and cozy. We don’t have to keep up this charade a day longer than you want to,” Lizzy said.

She’d never seen a man chew as slowly as Toby did on that last bite of burger. Evidently he needed a long time to think about her suggestion. It would free him to chase his bar bimbos on the weekends instead of eating burgers and tacos with her, a plain old Dairy Queen.

His phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket, checked the message, and put it back.

“Another woman trying to chase down a morning-after breakfast?” she asked.

He nodded and picked up his tea. It buzzed again before he could even take a drink. Pulling it out again, he rolled his sexy blue eyes toward the ceiling and sighed. “Sharlene, this time! I thought she’d quit when she found out that we are seeing each other. If you’re game we might need to stretch this out past July Fourth. That woman is relentless. And she’s supposed to be your friend?”

“She usually gets what she wants.” Lizzy smiled for the first time.

“Then we are still a couple. Church tomorrow morning on the Logan pew?”

“You got it!” Lizzy nodded.





Chapter Eleven



Could we turn off the air conditioner and roll down the windows?” Lizzy asked when they’d left town and were on their way home.

“Are you cold?” Toby asked.

“No, I just love the smell of the night air after a rain.”

He flipped a switch on the dashboard and hit the buttons to roll down both their windows. “There’s something about the scent of damp earth that words can’t describe,” he said.

“I’ve always loved it.” Lizzy put a hand out the window as if she was trying to catch the aroma to take home with her.

“If a tornado would be a little more selective and take out only cactus and mesquite, folks might start petitioning God to send a tornado more often,” he said.

Lizzy pointed to a twisted piece of metal bent around like a big oversized pretzel. “That is a cell tower. I wonder...” She fished around in her purse until she found her phone. “Nope, no service. I bet we don’t have any from here to home.”

Toby was looking right at the moon when he heard what sounded like the crack of a shotgun nearby. Then the steering wheel took on a mind of its own and no matter which way he turned it, nothing happened. Lizzy squealed when the truck veered off the road and started a vertical decline right down into a ditch, coming to a stop only when it hit a good sturdy fence post. Two airbags filled the cab of the truck, and the hiss of the radiator blowing steam, plus an angry old Angus bull’s bawling, drowned out the crickets and tree frogs.

Lizzy pushed at the airbag and unfastened her seat belt. “Are you alive?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t put your feet on the ground. Unless I was seeing things, we’re sitting in about a foot of water, nose down into a creek with a high muddy bank on both sides of us.”

He fought with the bag, opened his door, and stepped out onto the running board, which was a mere two inches above the stagnant water. “We aren’t getting out of here until someone comes along and sees us, Lizzy. We’ve gone through a guardrail and it’s at least fifteen or twenty feet up to the road, and the rain has turned it into nothing but a slippery mess of red clay. I don’t think we can get out without a rope or someone’s help.”

She crawled over the front seat into the back, away from the air bag.

He followed her example. “Are you sure you aren’t hurt? You didn’t hit your head or get whiplash?”

“I’m fine, Toby, but who shot at us?” she asked.

“It was a blowout. If we hadn’t slowed down to look at that twisted cell phone tower, we would have rolled and probably been upside down with water up to our noses or higher.”

“So there is a silver lining in this dark cloud? Looks like we slid right into Miller’s Creek.”

“Much traffic going through here at this time of night?” he asked.