“Yeah, kids. With me,” he said, in a breezy tone that made the idea even more outrageous.
She called him a few choice words in Spanish, shaking her head hard enough to send her hair twitching around her head.
“I’m not crazy, I’m just crazy about you,” he said, proving he understood enough Spanish to know she’d called him a crazy person. “I think kids would be fun. We could teach ’em to sing, send ’em out to sing for their supper while we get it on in the shower. And after, we’ll reminisce about the first time we made love on my parents’ property, all those years ago, back before I started to go bald and you started wearing penny loafers, instead of high heels.”
“I’m never going to wear penny loafers,” she said with a hard look. “You can get that fantasy out of your mind right now.”
He smiled pleasantly, obviously not deterred by her glare. “How about the rest of it?”
“The rest of it…” She shrugged as she turned to watch the dogs skid down a steep section of the trail up ahead, fighting to keep her expression neutral as anticipation for the future began to bubble inside her like champagne on New Year’s Eve. “The rest I’ll…take under consideration.”
“Yeah?” He sounded so delighted she couldn’t help but smile.
“Why not?” She laughed at the wonderful insanity of it all. “I like kids, and I like you. I guess we could give it a shot someday many years from now. But no more than three.”
“No more than three,” he repeated with a grin, squinting into the distance as the dogs began to bark at something up ahead. “That sounds about right.”
“And only if we have more than one bathroom,” she amended. “I spent too many years trying not to wet my pants while someone else was hogging the toilet to want to—”
“Well, shit,” Robert interrupted with a laugh. “Guess we won’t get to be heroes after all.”
“What?” Marisol followed his gaze, but didn’t understand what he was talking about until he pointed a finger at a dust cloud moving across the valley below.
“Cole must have gone out last night, and found the cows sometime this morning.”
Marisol’s smile dropped from her face.Cole.He hadn’t decided to leave her alone, after all, he’d simply been out of cell range.
She recovered from her shock quickly, but Robert had obviously already seen her distress.
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting her thigh through her jeans. “He’ll still need our help bringing ’em back in. We’ll still get to play, and we’ll be back at the ranch, ready to head to Austin, by lunchtime.”
“Great.” She forced a smile, even as all the happy bubbles inside her transformed into bowling balls that thudded down in her stomach.
She nudged Darcy into a trot, following Robert down the steep section of trail where only one horse could pass at time. She trained her gaze on his broad shoulders and silently promised to keep him in her line of sight until they got into the truck to head back home. If she could make sure Robert and Cole were never alone, Cole wouldn’t be able to spill her secret. She didn’t think he’d have the guts to bring it up in front of her.
At least she hoped he wouldn’t. He’d looked ashamed of himself at the bar. Hopefully, a long night alone had solidified that shame into a decision to keep his nose out of other people’s relationships.
But as she sent half a dozen desperate thoughts out into the universe, she had a bad feeling she wasn’t going to make it out of Lonesome Point without having every skeleton in her closet yanked out by the ankles and hurled on the ground at her feet.
CHAPTERSEVENTEEN
Cole looked moresurprised than pleased to see reinforcements arrive, but within a few minutes, Sadie and Mally Alice were making Cole’s life easier—heading up the small herd, and keeping stragglers from wandering off the path—and Bubba’s big brother sat easier in his saddle.
Still, Cole didn’t have much to say. After a few minutes, Bubba assumed he was tired from a night spent camping on the hard ground, and gave up trying to make conversation. Personally, he was happy to sit back and listen to Marisol chatter as they made their way back to the ranch. Now that she’d finally opened up, he was loving learning more about what she’d been like as a kid.
She told stories about her childhood, including her first singing competition at the Strawberry Festival when she was six years old. She said she’d been tiny at the time—no bigger than your average three year old—and the emcee had tried to pick her up so the crowd could get a better look at the second place winner. But her parents had driven it into her head that she should never let a stranger touch her, so she’d hit him over the head with her trophy and ran offstage.
“The poor man had to announce first place with blood running down his face,” she finished.
Bubba laughed, but Cole only grunted. He was definitely exhausted, or in a foul mood, or both, making Bubba glad he only had to spend half a day with his brother. The other half would be spent driving through pretty country with an even prettier woman in the passenger seat next to him, and this time he wouldn’t have to keep from touching her.
He planned to keep Marisol as close as he could all the way back to Austin, where he would check them into a hotel so that they wouldn’t have to worry about waking her roommates when they went to bed. He did his best not to think about all the things he wanted to do with her tonight, but it wasn’t easy with her riding next to him looking unreasonably sexy in faded jeans and a white tee shirt that clung tight enough to her curves to make pure thoughts practically impossible.
The only thing that saved him from having a hard on all the way back to the ranch was the two cups of coffee he’d pounded down at breakfast. By the time they reached the final stretch, he had to force himself to think of sick puppies long enough to get off his horse and find some relief.
“Heading to the boys’ room,” Bubba said as they neared the split in the trail that led up to the pool to the left, and down to the ranch to the right.
“Seriously?” Cole shot him a look over his shoulder. “We’re only fifteen minutes from home.”