Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(60)

“One wish that we have to agree on or one each?” He let go of her hand and rolled up on an elbow.

“There was one star so we have to agree.” She gazed up into his eyes.

“Then my wish is that this is not a flash in the pan and that it is genuine.” He bent enough that his lips met hers in a sweet gentle kiss.

Even that set her hormones into a loud whine begging for more, crying out to her to strip out of all her clothing and be damned to any mosquitoes that braved the citronella to get at her bare-assed skin.

“I think.” She rolled to the side so that she was facing him. Now their faces were so close that if she squinted his eyes were out of focus. “That we can agree on that wish.”

“Good. Now let me hold you and let’s enjoy being together.”

No sex? Sleep?

“I loved that night in the back of the truck when you slept in my arms. I’ve dreamed about you being there all week, and when I wake up and find I’m holding a pillow, I want to kick something.” He pulled her close to his side.

With his arm around her and her head resting on his chest, suddenly wild sex didn’t seem as important as listening to him talk about his dreams of her. If nothing more came of their relationship, tonight was a fairy tale that she’d tell her granddaughters about someday.





Chapter Sixteen



Lizzy’s nose twitched and she brushed at it without opening her eyes. She didn’t want to wake up. Just a few more minutes to enjoy Toby’s arms around her, to be curled up inside the curve of his strong body, and to feel the warmth of his breath on her neck as he slept.

She must have been dreaming about something that smelled horrible because her nose felt as if it were frozen into a snarl. She inhaled, expecting to get nothing but a lungful of fresh night air, but the scent left no doubt that there was a skunk in the area. Both eyes flew open and there he was, not three feet from her face, butt toward her as he dug around in the picnic basket.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Toby whispered.

Her nod was slight but the skunk’s head popped up out of the basket and whipped around to glare at her. She stared back, afraid to blink for fear even that movement would scare him and he’d flip that tail up and spray her right in the face. Finally, he went back to enjoying what was left of the apple pie.

Lizzy had never been able to sneeze like a lady. She could give a four-hundred-pound trucker a run for his money when it came to sneezing, and no matter how hard she tried, she’d never been able to hold one inside. With the skunk aiming something worse than a machine gun at her, she did her best for as long as she could.

Then suddenly, she was moving, strong arms around her as Toby rolled her to his other side, picked her up, and ran toward the well. He dropped down behind it and covered as much of her as he could with his body.

And then the smell hit their noses. The skunk had let go and the stink was everywhere. In the grass. On the quilt. All around them in the air. Lizzy grabbed her nose and tried breathing through her nose, but that made her gag.

Toby pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “Put it over your nose and hold my hand. We’ll leave everything and come back to clean it up later.”

Toby buried his nose in the crook of his shirt and led her toward home. “Holy shit, Lizzy, that’s the sun coming up. How long did we sleep? You’ve got to get that smell off you and get to work in a couple of hours. I’d planned on making breakfast for you, but it won’t happen now.”

“My morning-after getting-lucky breakfast?” she asked.

“No, your morning-after-our-first-date breakfast,” he answered. “It was going to be very different than those others. I make a mean crunchy French toast served up with blueberries soaked in wine overnight.”

“Can we have it on our morning after our second date?”

“If we don’t sleep late and get awakened by a skunk.”

When they were halfway back to the house she stopped. “We should go back and throw out all that uneaten food. It will draw all kinds of wild animals.”

“I’ll take care of all that after I do chores this morning. You’ve got to get the stink out of your hair and go to work, darlin’,” he told her.

“Bet you never said that to a woman before,” she said with a smile.

“You are one of a kind.” He chuckled.



Lizzy lathered up her whole body with soap three times and washed her hair twice. After two cups of coffee she could still taste the smell of the skunk in her mouth. She’d squirted saline mist up her nose every fifteen minutes, but it wasn’t doing much to clear out the eau de skunk from her nostrils.

It didn’t matter how she and Toby approached a relationship, something always happened. First it was the bar scene and she’d gotten so drunk that he had to carry her into the house. Then the tornado hit and they were trapped in the cellar until a rescue team arrived. Third was the wreck. And now they had a perfect date right up until the skunk woke them from a dead sleep. Would Mama Fate ever stop punishing them for those three weeks of hot sex?

“If I’m going to have the correction, then I should have the game, right?” she said as she rinsed the soap from her body and the shampoo from her hair one more time. It didn’t do a bit of good to sniff anything, not when her nose wouldn’t let go of the smell.