One Texas Cowboy Too Many (Burnt Boot, Texas #3)(12)

“I’m usin’ grasshoppers. There’s plenty of them in the jar over there. If you run out of bait, help yourself,” he said. “I never pictured you for a fisherman or fisherwoman. Which one is it?”

“Fisher person, I suppose,” she said.

She had intended to ignore him completely, not carry on a conversation with him.

“You do much fishin’?” he asked.

“If I don’t have papers to grade on Sunday afternoon. There’s not many more weekends between now and the time school starts back, so I won’t get to fish much more this summer.” She bit the inside of her lip to keep from asking him how often he went fishing.

He tipped his hat over his eyes and leaned back against a rock. After several minutes, she wished he’d say something else, anything but sit there with his eyes closed and the fishing rod in his hands. She baited her hook and threw out the line, letting it land downstream from his bobber. Could he really be sleeping? If that were the case, she sure didn’t affect him like he did her, because there was no way she could sleep that close to him.

She glanced over at him, taking in his muscular calves and the fine, dark hair peeking out from the top of his shirt. If she were as brazen as Betsy Gallagher, she’d have reached across the distance and ran her hand up under his shirt to see if the hair was as soft as it looked.

And you’d bring back a wet hand from all the sweat. Take a look at his face, woman. That’s not ice water dripping down his cheeks.

She wiped away the droplets under her nose on the tail of her shirt and braced her back against the trunk of the big willow tree. Was fate trying to tell her to let go of her childish crush on Tanner Gallagher by putting Rhett in her path? She mulled that over as she watched the bobber float down the Red River until her line was taut.

*

Rhett was not asleep, and he could feel the moment her eyes settled on him and the very second that she shifted her gaze to the river. Evidently, she didn’t want to talk because she didn’t ask him any questions, so he’d made it easy for her by pretending to be asleep.

The fish were not biting that day. It was too damn hot. The catfish were down on the bottom of the river, where it was a little cooler, and the bass where most likely keeping them company. Finally, thirst got the best of him, so he sat up, pulled a longneck bottle of beer from his cooler, and twisted the lid off. He touched her on the arm with it and she jumped like she’d been shot.

“Want one?” he asked.

She reached for it. “Thank you. It’s too hot for them to bite, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” he said.

He took out another bottle, removed the lid, and turned it up, downing a third of it before he came up for air. A blur appeared to his right, and before he could turn his head, Dammit had licked him right up across the face. He chuckled and grabbed the dog by its big, floppy ears.

“How’d you find me, old boy? That was some fine tracking and you deserve a drink for it.” He held the beer bottle up and the dog gulped several times, then burped loudly.

“There’s a lady here,” Rhett whispered.

The dog fell down at Leah’s feet, rolled his big brown eyes up at her, and wagged his tail.

“He says he’s sorry and to please excuse him,” Rhett said.

She smiled and scratched his head. “Beer does that. You are forgiven. I guess this is Dammit?”

Leah was finally talking to him. The dog would get a beer of his own plus two treats when they got home that evening for making that happen.

“Yes, I’m sorry. I should have introduced y’all. Dammit, this is Leah. Leah, Dammit,” he said.

“What about when the preacher comes to dinner? What’s his name then?” Leah asked.

“Then his name is Holy Dammit.”

She laughed.

Maybe the dog would even earn a spot at the foot of Rhett’s bed that night.

Rhett stretched out his hand to pet the dog and deliberately let his knuckles make contact with hers. That little spark he’d felt in the store the first day and at the bar when he’d slid her drink to her was still there. It didn’t matter if she was Brennan, Gallagher, or Jones, Rhett was damn sure interested in any woman who caused that kind of reaction.

He pulled his hand back and let her get to know Dammit while he finished his beer. “It gets hot in Comfort, Texas, but I don’t think it gets this hot.”

“It’s the humidity coming off the river. So, did you and Sawyer grow up close together?” she asked.

“Not on the same ranch but in the same area. We went to school together, right along with Finn. You’ve met Finn, right? He bought a ranch here in Burnt Boot and wound up married to a lady he was in the service with.”

“Of course, I know him, and I know he’s Sawyer’s cousin. I really like his wife, Callie.” She hesitated. “And those kids of theirs are adorable.”

“And Verdie?”

Leah smiled. “Everyone loves Verdie. I’m glad that she moved back to Burnt Boot and is living on the ranch with Finn and Callie. They need her and she sure needs them. Things tend to work on the right way and they sure did in that instance.”

Dammit wiggled his way close enough that he could lay his head on Leah’s lap. He closed his eyes but his tail kept going, sweeping an arc in the sand that looked like half a set of angel wings. She jammed the handle of her fishing rod down into the sand and kept petting him while she fished around in her cooler for a sandwich.