The Trouble with Texas Cowboys (Burnt Boot, Texas #2)(50)

The blanket was like warm clouds on a hot summer day when she tucked her toes under it. She eyed the pillows. One still had the imprint of his head, so the right side was his. She was a left-side person. She promised herself that she would lie down on the spare pillow for a few seconds. It looked so inviting, and she was so tired. She’d be long gone before Sawyer finished in the shower. The water stopped running and she could hear his electric shaver going.

*

Sawyer could hardly keep his eyes open long enough to shave, but if he let his heavy dark beard go any longer, the electric razor would bog down trying to get the job done. The room should be semiwarm by now, and the golf channel was already on television. He’d bet dollars to pig shit that Jill had the sofa bed out and was already snoring.

He hurried across the cold floor, only to find the sofa empty. Evidently, she’d given up on him and gone to her room for a nap. Disappointed, he did a quick tiptoe back to his room and stopped in his tracks when he found her sleeping on his bed.

“Got to admit, it’s bigger and more comfortable than the sofa, and, darlin’, I might share my blanket, but you ain’t gettin’ all of it,” he murmured.

She rolled toward him and threw a leg over his body when he pulled the throw up over them. He slipped an arm under her and buried his face in her still slightly damp hair. It smelled like coconut and ocean breezes. It would be easy to get involved with Jill. They were together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, but if it didn’t work out in the end, they could wind up enemies. And he liked her too well to ruin their friendship.

And yet, his inner voice piped up, do just-friends sleep all tangled up like a bunch of baby granddaddy long-legged spiders?

“When they’ve been through what we have, they do.” He inhaled deeply one more time to take the scent of her shampoo with him into his dreams.





Chapter 16


Jill and Sawyer walked hand in hand toward the setting sun. The sand was warm on their bare feet. Sea oats waved in the gentle night breezes on one side, and the ocean’s waves gently slapped the sandbar on the other. Sandpipers darted back and forth with the surf, searching for supper, and gulls circled lazily above them. Everything was in its place, doing what it was supposed to do at the end of the day, and Jill’s heart was at peace.

She didn’t want to wake up, so she refused to open her eyes. It didn’t work. The beach was gone, and the only sounds she could pick up were Sawyer’s soft snores and the crackle of the stove wood as it burned. He was sleeping on his back with one hand up under his neck and the other arm around her shoulders.

Easing out of his embrace slowly so he wouldn’t wake, she propped up on an elbow and studied him without fear of getting caught: dark hair, those thick lashes spread out on his cheekbones, that full mouth that could kiss so damn well, and a broad, muscular chest. But there was more to Sawyer than his quick wit and his outer good looks; he was a hardworking, protective cowboy and had a kind heart.

His eyes fluttered open, and he smiled. “I thought I felt someone or something looking at me. I’m glad it wasn’t a man in a ski mask.”

“Think Tilly made it home okay?” she asked.

“I’m sure he and Bessie were home a while ago. It’s dusk out there,” he said.

“Are you my friend?” she asked, bluntly.

“I hope I’m not sleeping with the enemy.” He smiled. “What is this all about, Jill?”

“I was involved with a man for two years,” she said.

“And it ended badly and you need to talk about it? Why now?”

She sat up and crossed her legs. Indian style, her grandmother called it. “I don’t know. It seems like I should, so that the things that are supposed to end will and the sun will finally go down on it all, and…”

Sawyer pulled himself up to a sitting position, adjusted the blanket over their feet, and laid his hand over hers. “Okay, let’s talk. You go first, and then I’ll tell you about my heartbreak.”

She paused. “This is a bad idea.”

“How long since you broke up?” he asked.

“More than a year ago.”

“Have you talked it out of your system with a girlfriend, your mama, or your aunt Gladys?” he asked. “Don’t look at me like that. I have a sister, and I know how females need to talk everything to death.”

She giggled like a little girl. “That’s why we talk about it so long. We want it to be dead and done with when we finish talking.”

“Then talk, and let’s get it in the grave. I’m a damn fine listener,” he said.

“In the beginning, I thought he was perfect. He was thoughtful and kind, and his daddy had a ranch, so we had lots in common. We’d been dating about three months when he wanted us to move in together, but I didn’t want to commit to that. Looking back, I must’ve realized something wasn’t right with the relationship even then.”

She kept talking, and Sawyer listened. He didn’t nod at the right times and pat her hand, but his eyes said that he was really paying attention. If he’d picked up a little notepad and started to write, she would have sworn he’d been a therapist in another life.

“Evidently, he figured if I was close enough, he could wear me down to do what he wanted. That was probably why his father offered me a job on his ranch. I’d been living with my grandparents and helping out on the ranch, but then they died and we found out that the bank owned the ranch, or at least ninety percent of it. Grandpa had been putting extra mortgages on it for years to keep it running, and it had to be sold at auction to pay the bank. I was out of a job.”