One Texas Cowboy Too Many (Burnt Boot, Texas #3)(10)

Honey grabbed her purse from the floor beside her chair, found a small compact, and checked her reflection. Even in the dim light and the smoke-filled bar, she could easily see the bit of green stuck there. She flicked it out with a fingernail and ran her tongue over perfectly even teeth.

“All gone,” Leah said. “Look who walked in the door. Isn’t that the lawyer that you’ve been seeing, Kinsey? And who is that with him?”

“That would be my date for tonight.” Honey blew her a kiss as she and Kinsey hurried across the floor, and Leah watched the four of them head on out of the bar.

Leah left the rest of her food on the table and claimed a bar stool as far away from the door as possible. Since Rhett had roared into town on that big cycle, she’d felt like a big storm was approaching. She’d even dreamed of a tornado the night before. It had come up from the southeast and the funnel cloud had set down right in Burnt Boot. When it moved across the river, it had taken the school where she taught with it, leaving nothing but the foundation of the frame building. Burnt Boot had seen some ice storms that broke down trees and power lines. It had lived though some ferocious wind, lightning, and thunderstorms, but in its history, not one tornado had touched down there.

Rhett moved from one end of the bar to the other and waited for the jukebox to go quiet before he spoke. His drawl created a stirring deep inside her that she’d never even felt when Tanner was around. She was almost thirty, had taught for six years, and had had two serious relationships in her life.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

“Double shot of whiskey,” she answered.

He picked up the square Jack Daniel’s bottle. “So you ready for a ride on my cycle?”

“I’m not so sure that’s a smart thing for me to do,” she answered.

“When you figure out whether it is or not, you give me a call.” He reached across the bar and wrote his cell phone number on the palm of her hand. “Night or day, I’ll take you for a ride.”

The first guitar notes of Luke Bryan’s “Drunk on You” rattled out of the jukebox and people filled the dance floor. Leah shut her eyes and imagined riding that motorcycle, her arms around Rhett, her blond hair blowing behind her, and that song playing in her ears. The ache to do it rather than dream about it was so real that it brought tears to her eyes. She didn’t want to be the good child, but the mold had been set and she didn’t have a clue how to break free from it.

*

Luke’s song was stuck in his head until the bar closed that night. On the way home, he slipped the CD into the player in his truck and listened to the song twice more. Dammit met him at the door, but the two cats weren’t anywhere in sight. Jill and Sawyer’s bedroom door was shut. The cats had most likely deserted poor old Dammit to sleep on the foot of their bed.

“Come on, boy. I’m going to have a bath and soak this cigarette smoke off my hide. You can sit beside the tub and talk to me,” Rhett said.

Other than the fact that he didn’t have a shower in his bathroom, the setup in the house was perfect for privacy. A big center room with a kitchen toward the back took up more than half of the space. At one time, bunk beds had lined the walls and the place had probably been home to twenty men or more. Now, there was a big living area that was a perfect division between his part of the house and the newlyweds’ room.

“They’re not very good friends to desert you like this. But then they have to stay in the house all day and you get to go out and run around with me all day on the ranch.” He grinned. “You’re going to like Leah when you meet her. What’s that? What if she doesn’t like you?”

Dammit’s tail set up a thumping noise on the bare bathroom floor.

“No such chance. She’s going to fall in love with you before she ever even gives in and goes for a ride on my cycle. You are a real chick magnet.” Rhett laughed.





Chapter 3


Leah sat beside Quaid and Honey in church the next morning, but she didn’t hear a thing that the preacher said until he wound down his sermon and reminded them that the Sadie Hawkins Festival was on the calendar, like always, for the fourth Saturday in August.

“The festival will start with breakfast in the school cafeteria—all-you-can-eat pancakes and sausage for only four dollars each for adults and two dollars for the kids. The money goes to the public school library this year to buy books. We’ll rope off two blocks of Main Street for the vendors and the carnival, and at three o’clock sharp, we’ll have the Sadie Hawkins race. Y’all should be learning to walk around in your bare feet the next couple of weeks, because there are no shoes or boots allowed in this race. And the committee is working on a new rule to add to the race, so be sure to read the fine print when you sign up for it,” he said.

Someone was staring at her, producing a crazy itchy feeling on her neck. The hair on her arms stood up, and she shivered so hard that Honey turned to look at her.

“Air-conditioning kicked on,” Leah said.

She let her eyes slide over to the Gallagher side of the church. Tanner’s eyes locked with hers, and she could feel the attraction drawing their souls together. It had been like that for years, but neither of them would ever take a step toward doing anything about it. He was a Gallagher. She was a Brennan. Case closed. Besides, he had quite the reputation for being a womanizer, and even if they could date, she wasn’t sure she would. And yet there was that thing that kept her wondering what it would be like.