Kim Mckade - That Kind Of Girl

Colt shrugged. “A few weeks. I plan on selling the place, so I have a few things to fix before I can put it on the market.” He looked around the kitchen, at the torn linoleum, the cabinet door hanging on one hinge, the bare lightbulb sagging from the stained ceiling. “A few weeks. Maybe a month.”

“Great. The longer it takes, the longer you’ll be around. Right now, I have to get back to the station. Corinne made a coffee cake this morning, and Tanner is liable to eat the whole thing before I get back.”

“Yeah, if you don’t have your afternoon snack, you might dry up and blow away.” Colt eyed Toby’s belly as he walked by.

“Say what you like. Corinne thinks I’m sexy. And she’s a hell of a lot prettier than you are.”

“And more diplomatic. Tell her I said hi.” He followed Toby back to the Jeep.

“Tell her yourself. Come by the house and have dinner with us.”

“Sure,” Colt said, looking down the road.

“If I have to hog-tie you to get you there, I will,” Toby promised, pulling on his hat.

“I’ll be there. Just give me a few days to get things going around here.”

“Tanner and I are already planning our first poker game.”

Colt grinned. “Good. I can pick up a few extra bucks.”

“We don’t play for money anymore, being the responsible pillars of the community that we are now.”

“Corinne put a stop to it, huh?”

Toby shrugged. “She said it was ‘morally reprehensible’ of me to be engaging in illegal acts while I was the elected sheriff. Corruption of power and all that. So now we play for Tootsie Rolls.”

Colt laughed and shook his head. For the first time he was actually a little glad he was back in Aloma. Friendship…he’d forgotten what it tasted like. “Okay, whatever. I’ll still win.”

Toby opened the door to his Jeep and shrugged. “Probably. Of the three of us, you’re the only one with a poker face. Listen, go over and see Becca while you’re here, okay?”

“She already asked me over for dinner tonight. I told her no.”

“Then, change your mind.”

“Why?”

Toby turned the key. “No reason, except she looked after your old man and you owe her. She cared about Doff, even though he was an ass to her.”

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be around Doff for more than five minutes.”

“Becca likes to take care of people.”

“Sounds like someone else I know,” Colt said, looking pointedly at Toby.

Toby grinned. “So let her take care of you a little. It’ll make her happy.”

“I wasn’t planning on doing a lot of socializing while I was here.”

“You never planned on socializing, Hoss. If you ever went to a party, it was because I dragged you. And I’ll do it again if I have to. Go have dinner with Becca.” He put the Jeep into reverse and tugged his hat low. “It’s your duty. A home-cooked meal with a pretty woman. Not a bad deal, as duties go.”

In the end, it wasn’t duty or Toby’s request that made Colt decide to go to Becca’s house. He was simply sick of his own company. He’d been angry with Doff for two months—actually, it was more like two decades—and coming back to see the mess the old man had left him just angered him more. His nerves hummed like live wires all day, and work had done nothing to take the edge off.

Anger had always been his tool, something he pulled out of his pocket and swallowed down before he climbed onto the back of a bull. Thinking about Doff before a ride could get his blood pumping and his nerve sharp. The determined adrenaline stayed with him through the ride.

But out here, there was nothing to climb on and ride the anger out. He’d been practically vibrating with it, until the moment he looked over his shoulder to see a pretty woman standing in his front yard. And in that moment, a thought had popped into his head.

Now, I could ride that.

He almost laughed to think what prim and proper Becca Danvers would think about that. She’d actually invited him to do so, a lifetime ago. Of course, she wouldn’t have offered if she hadn’t been stone drunk, and she obviously didn’t remember the incident.

But it wasn’t that memory that had him knocking off work earlier than he’d planned. What Toby had said, about Doff being an ass to Becca, kept running through his mind. Of course, Doff was an ass to everyone. But Becca, being Becca, had turned the other cheek and kept coming back. She had come today, and he had been barely a notch or two above jerk-level to her.

He’d spent his whole life—or at least his adulthood—proving to himself he was better than that washed-up drunk. But times like these, he cursed Doff because he knew he carried some of dear old Dad’s quality traits. Like picking on those weaker than himself.

So it was a guilty conscience and determination to prove he wasn’t the jackass Doff had been that had him searching for a bar of soap in a filthy house. He took one look at the bathtub and decided he’d have better luck with the water hose in the backyard.

Half an hour later, his blood cooled to the point of civility by his makeshift cold shower, he pulled on clean jeans and a shirt and headed across the field to fulfill his “duty.”

Becca flipped the stick of graphite between her fingers and used the wide edge to shade the bell of the wedding dress on her sketch pad. Her brow furrowed as much in consternation as concentration, she tried to ignore the voice that echoed spitefully through her head.

Haven’t changed a bit to me.

She closed her eyes and blew a gust of breath at her bangs. Of course, he was right. Oh, she’d worked hard to change her outward appearance. And at the risk of sounding vain, she’d made some major improvements. But then, there had been a lot to improve upon.

Trust Colt to see right through the new hairstyle, the hours spent at the makeup counter at the department store learning how to make the most of her “natural attributes,” the constant inner reminder to hold her chin up, to look people in the eye, to speak clearly.

Trust Colt to see immediately what she had forgotten. That she was really, underneath it all, still the same old Becca Danvers.

Who had she thought she was kidding? Certainly not herself, though she’d tried hard enough. She’d tried this morning, when she pulled her special-occasion-only suit out of the closet, telling herself there was no sense in owning a power suit if it never saw the light of day. And again this afternoon, when she stopped by Dottie’s Nails & More for the second manicure of her life. And even this afternoon when she’d actually looked herself in the eye in the rearview mirror and said, “I believe I’ll just stop by and see if Colt Bonner needs anything.” As if she hadn’t been planning it from the moment she saw him pull up in front of his house.

She’d deserved what she got, too, she decided as she dropped the graphite stick on the tray in disgust. She tucked her feet up on the stool and examined the red scrape on her shin. Her power suit was back in the closet where it would be until the next open house at school. Her demolished Silky Sheer Precious Ivories were wadded in the wastebasket. She’d come home, humiliated, and changed into flannel boxers and a white tank top.

She gathered her hair into a ponytail and wound it on top of her head, jabbing a pencil into the mass to hold it in place. It had been a long time since she’d felt like such a fool. But then, it had been a long time since she’d tried to be something she wasn’t.

She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge, the cold air chilling her bare toes. At least she no longer had to waste hours of her life, imagining ridiculous scenes of how Colt would react when he saw her again. At least she no longer had to wake up at night visualizing something out of a movie—Colt taking one look at her, being instantly bedazzled and setting out in pursuit of her like a man possessed.

He’d seen her—and been terrifically underwhelmed. And in her power suit and manicure, no less!

She pulled a pitcher of iced tea from the fridge and told herself again that it served her right. What was she expecting? That when Colt realized it was she standing there, he would confess that he’d traveled the world in an attempt to get her out of his mind, that he couldn’t forget the taste of her, the feel of her? And that now that he’d come to her again, he would never let her go?

Come on.

She frowned and poured a big glass of tea. Okay, so maybe that was a little over the top, even for her. But would it have killed him to say she looked nice?

But she had learned the lesson years ago and, except for this one crucial day when, apparently, she was hell-bent on humiliating herself, she’d lived by the wisdom of it.

She bent and made a face at her reflection in the chrome toaster. “Accept who you are,” she said firmly. “Accept what you are.”

“What was it trying to be? A can opener?”

Becca shrieked, jerked and spun. She splashed frigid iced tea all over herself at the same moment she saw Colt standing at her open kitchen window.

She tried to draw breath to speak, but all she could manage was a series of shallow gasps and then a noise that came out sounding like “Uhhuhhh.”

“Sorry. Did I scare you?”

She nodded, openmouthed.

“I only meant to surprise you.”

“Yes, well…you did that, too.” She finally got some air into her lungs and stepped up to the screen.

“Cold, huh?”

To his credit, Colt did make an attempt to hide the grin that crept up his cheeks.

She nodded again. “What are you doing here?”

“You invited me, remember?”

“Yes, and I—I also remember you declined.”

“I reconsidered. Is the offer still open?”

“Of course it is.”

“Um, Becca?”

She cocked a brow.

“That was really cold tea, wasn’t it.”

“Yes.” Hadn’t he already asked that? She looked down and wished this time for the floor to open up and swallow her whole. Her white tank top—now virtually transparent—tented out under the hard buds of her nipples.

She grabbed at the shirt with both hands and pulled it away far enough that he could probably see down the neck as well. “I’ll just—I’ll just go change.” She backed away, picturing how she must look with her pencil-eraser nipples, scraped shin and gaping mouth. Quite lovely, to be sure. She kept backing, and bumped into the doorjamb.

“That’d probably be a good idea,” he said.

“The front door’s unlocked. Make yourself at home. I’ll just be a second.”

In her bedroom she stripped down to her underwear, wondering what had changed his mind. Certainly it hadn’t been her cool, sophisticated poise. And he’d told her to her face that her looks hadn’t made an impression. That left the power suit and the Precious Ivories. Or maybe it was the ingenious way she had of falling through his porch that won him over.

One day back in town and the man already had her mind twisted in knots. She didn’t know what to think about that kiss. In fact, every time her mind even barely brushed up against the thought of it, she got even more confused. So she told herself she just wouldn’t think about it. Which, of course, she recognized as a lie as soon as she thought it. She hadn’t forgotten their last kiss, and that had been twelve years ago. She could still feel his hands and lips on hers, without even trying. The kiss today hadn’t shared that same unharnessed passion, but it did share the same barrier-shaking intimacy.

She walked into the adjoining bath and wiped off her midriff with a warm washcloth. She caught her reflection in the mirror, and her hand slowed, then stopped. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes as bright as if she had a raging fever.