Cowboy Up (Coming Home #3)

“Or a sale at Target!” Lucy exclaims, clapping her hands and bouncing on the balls of her feet.

I drop my gaze, looking at my sandals as my face heats. It’d be pointless to continue denying what they just witnessed seeing, as I’m the worst liar in the whole state of Texas.

“You have to tell us everything,” Quinn whispers, leaning into my side to push her shoulder into mine.

“Well, maybe not everything,” Leigh snorts.

“Screw that, I want all the juicy details. He might be my brother, but he’s been livin’ like a monk since that stupid bitch he dated last and girlfriend, you’d think he was asexual the way those two didn’t carry on in public. No sparks close to what we just saw between y’all.” She waggles her perfectly sculpted brows.

“You might as well just tell her, Caroline.” Leigh snickers. “You can’t shock her easily. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

Quinn continues nodding, her brows still going up and down suggestively. “Just wait until this one”—she points to Leigh—“starts tellin’ you about the monster cock.”

“Q!” Leighton gasps, but she smiles a second later so she must not be offended. “Anyway, you gotta give us somethin’, honey. The way he’s always ridin’ those horse, I bet he can work those hips like no one’s business.”

Oh my God. This isn’t happening.

“Would you three shut up,” I hiss, already seeing a few people listening in on our huddle. Thankfully, someone up there is on my side, because the girls stop the instant I ask them to.

“This isn’t over,” Leighton promises. “And, Caroline, you’re goin’ to need to get over that shyness of yours now that you’re one of us.”

One of them? What does that mean? Just because . . . no. A one-night stand doesn’t mean I’m going to start coming to Sunday dinner. I haven’t seen him in months. If he’d wanted more after that night, he wouldn’t have disappeared before I woke up. I open my mouth to tell all three of the giddy women in front of me just that, but stop when a voice starts talking in a cheerful bellow.

“Who’s ready for some presents!” Jana screams. I vaguely remember her from Leighton’s bakery. Her question causes me to look up from the deep study I had been doing of the sandals Lucy made me wear today just in time to see her jump down from the chair she must have climbed up on to make her announcement. She pushes through the people between her and us in a rush before grabbing both pregnant women. I could kiss her for being the proverbial bell that is saving me.

“Those two aren’t going to be satisfied with your terrible lyin’, you know. Even if you really don’t know him—which I know you do, no matter what you say—a blind old bat could’ve seen the sparks flyin’ off the two of y’all,” Lucy stage-whispers, drawing a few more eyes our way.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

A group of older women push between us on their way to get a better view of the presents being opened. I excuse myself and get out of their way. Only in a town as small and nosy as Pine Oak would a baby shower be an event that could rank right up there with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Well, the fact that two of the town darlings are the guests of honor doesn’t hurt either. Oddly enough, I forgot how much I love the closeness the residents in Pine Oak appear to enjoy.

“Who was that anyway, Caro?” Luce says after we move to the back of the room.

I sigh, ignoring the fact that neither Hazel twin listens when I tell them how much I hate nicknames, and look around to make sure no one is listening. “That was the dark cowboy.”

Her blue eyes all but bug out of her head and she whips around to look in the opposite direction, blond curls fanning around her as she turns her gaze toward the doorway leading out of the barn. Well, at least I think this is a barn. On the outside that’s exactly what it looks like, but once you step foot in here, it looks like some kind of western-style grand ballroom—complete with chandeliers made out of antlers.

What are the odds that I would run into him here? The dark cowboy I shared a faceless night of passion with couldn’t have been a stranger passing through town? No. My dark cowboy—the very man that I’ve been using the memory of for two months now to keep me going whenever I start to get depressed about everything going wrong in my life; the man who showed me how powerful being with someone who cared about your pleasure was like; the one who ruined me for life—he was the same man I’d had a crush on for a whole year before I started dating John in high school and moved past the silly lust I thought I’d felt for the eldest Davis.

Davis.

Of course.

It makes sense, now that I’m not letting my hormones drive the show.

He never did correct me, nor did he confirm that actually was his name. I’d just taken what Luke said and assumed. Maybe I had subconsciously known it was him all along, using the illusion of anonymity to escape the unhappiness in my past that I had been overcoming since moving to Wire Creek. Nevertheless, I can’t deny that my dark cowboy is, in fact, Clayton Davis and not some stranger anymore.

“Well,” Lucy hisses, looking back at me and pulling me from my thoughts, “you should sneak out of here while they’re distracted with the presents and find him.”

I snort. “That is never going to happen.”

“Why not?” she whispers harshly, drawing the attention of a few people standing near the back of the barn. I look up, meeting the steady emerald gaze of Maverick Davis and quickly look away from the intense curiosity I see in his eyes.

I take a step back, farther away from the crowd, and grab Lucy before leaning closer toward her to whisper softly, “Even if I was the brave kind of woman who’d run after a man, you know I’d clam up the second I catch up with him.”

“What happened to the woman who went back to the motel with a man she didn’t even know a thing about? Hmm? She was brave. She didn’t clam up. She took the bull by the horns and enjoyed the hell outta that ride. That woman is you, Caroline. Don’t pass up a chance like the very one in front of your face.”

“What chance?” I sharply question. “I just happened to run into him here because this is his family, Luce, not because fate, the good Lord above, or Clayton Davis wanted me to find him again.”

“Yeah? You think so? And how, pray tell, do you argue that this isn’t one of your romance books comin’ to life?” she continues like a dog with a bone. “I see all those dog-eared pages of yours, honey, and I know you believe in serendipitous moments just like this one. This is your fantasy in black-and-white comin’ into full-color focus. Go get your hero.”