Daisies in the Canyon(17)

Of course a picture of Cooper popped into her head. He wore that leather jacket and his cowboy hat and snow fell on his sexy facial hair. If only there was a button she could push to delete the damn scene, but it was burned into her brain as surely as if it had been branded there.

“Branded,” she groaned. According to Rusty, they’d have to help with that job, too. Her nose snarled at the imagined scent of burning hair.

A knock on the door brought her to a sitting position. The second one took her to her feet. There was no peephole, so she eased it open to find Cooper’s smiling face on the other side of the old-fashioned screen door. He held up two butcher-paper-wrapped packages.

“Thought I’d best knock, since I didn’t know if all y’all went to church. I figured the chicken was gone, so I brought steaks for dinner. Thought I’d have them all done and on the table when y’all came home, to repay Rusty for inviting me to dinner yesterday. Mind if I come on in and get busy?”

She threw the door open wide. “You cook?”

“Of course, don’t you?” His hip brushed against hers on the way through the door, creating a brand-new batch of sparks.

She refused to blink for fear she’d drag up another sexy picture of him. What was standing before her was enough to give her hot flashes. She didn’t need any help from her mind.

“Sure, I can make doughnuts that will melt in your mouth and biscuits and gravy, pancakes, and anything that has to do with breakfast. Past that, I do soup from cans and a mean Frito chili pie.”

“Well, I’ll just make myself at home and get busy.”

She followed him into the kitchen, where he laid the packages on the cabinet and went to work. “Can I help in any way?”

He slowly scanned her from toes to eyes. “Are we talkin’ about cooking?”

“What else would we be discussing?” She was flirting, but dammit, he’d started it.

“I just wanted to be sure we were on the same page.” He moved toward the pantry door with her right behind him.

He picked out five potatoes from a basket and turned around. “Help me. I can’t carry them all.”

She reached out to take them, and he laid one in each hand, fingertips touching her palms when he did. Desire flushed through her veins like she was hooked up to a moonshine IV. Granted, it had been a hell of a dry spell since the last relationship, but no man had ever made her go weak in the knees just handing off potatoes.

She backed out of pantry and carried the potatoes to the sink, where she washed them. Then he deftly wrapped each potato in foil and put them inside the oven. After that he seasoned the steaks and lined them in a row in a pan he’d gone back to the pantry to get. He wasted no movements, proving that he was as much at home in the kitchen as he was on the jogging trail or probably in the sheriff’s chair.

She braced herself on the cabinet and hoped to hell he didn’t realize it was out of necessity to keep from sliding right on the floor. Damn! Damn! Damn! Flirting was a bad idea. Anything else could and would be catastrophic. But she wanted him to kiss her, to hold her close. Hell, she wouldn’t even say no to a round of sex right there on the cabinet just to put out the fires in her body.

“We’ll get out yesterday’s leftovers, but steak needs a big old stuffed baked potato to make it good,” he said as he worked. “It’s still thirty minutes before the preacher winds down. Rusty and I are real partial to medium-rare steaks. You got any idea how your sisters like theirs?”

Hell’s bells, she didn’t give a shit how they wanted their steak. She wanted Cooper undressed and in her bed, or on the sofa, or the floor. The kitchen table even looked good.

“I like mine seared and hot in the middle,” she said.

“Kind of like sex?”

She blushed. Crap! Had she really said those words out loud?

Hell, yes, that smart-ass inner voice in her head yelled. You’ve been thinking of sex ever since you first laid eyes on him, but it’s a bad idea. Back away, Abigail Joyce. Back away right now or you’ll be sorry.

She turned away and looked out the window, focusing on Martha coming back from out near the barn. “Yes, I do like my steak just like sex.” She ignored that niggling voice and whipped back around to see what Cooper had to say next.

But he didn’t say a word.

He took a step forward and suddenly he was so close that she could count his eyelashes as his eyelids lowered and his lips came closer and closer. He pulled her closer with one arm while the other hand found its way to the back of her head, where he tangled his fingers in her hair and the kiss deepened. It was a kiss, for God’s sake, not an earth-changing experience, but the air around them became so thin that she was slightly dizzy. Her arms snaked up around his neck and she rolled up on her toes. Then his tongue found hers and it turned into something a hell of a lot more than a simple kiss. She had a split second to make the decision to step back or not. She chose to press even closer to his muscular body, feeling the evidence behind his zipper that said he was as turned on as she was.

One of his hands was suddenly under her shirt and against the bare skin on her back. Common sense screamed at her to end the kiss and talk dinner. He cupped her bottom with his hands and with a short hop, her legs went around his waist. Without stopping the string of scorching kisses, he carried her to the sofa and sat down with her in his lap.