THE COWBOY FLING Page 3

"She has some theories, it sounds like," Max said.

  "Great. Now I've got to be the bad guy and tell her no. How exactly was she planning to fund this little project?"

  "She said she had some money."

  "Her trust fund. Damn. I can't let her throw that away. Does she even have a budget? Has she costed the project?"

  "I don't know about that."

  "Has she hired a crew?"

  "Don't know that, either."

  "Damn."

  Wade was right to be worried. Lacey had about as much chance of turning that dusty diner into a moneymaker as Max did of winning the rodeo, but he felt like a class-A jerk for squealing on her. He kept seeing the way her green eyes had shone as she'd told him her plan, all the while making him that cup of coffee-flavored water.

  "If I stop her, I'll never hear the end of it," Wade said.

  "Maybe she'll figure it out for herself," he said in her defense.

  "You don't know Lacey. She's stubborn as hell."

  He remembered how she'd grabbed that snake right out of his hands, even though it obviously scared the bejeezus out of her. The girl had spunk, that was certain. But she was nervous, too. He'd seen that in the way her eyes darted and in the uncertain set of her pretty mouth. She was whistling in the dark. Not quite as sure of herself as she wanted to sound. And now her brother was going to shut her down…

  "Maybe I can talk her out of it," Max said.

  "You think you can do that? Let her down gently?"

  "Sure," he lied. Him and his big mouth. He was a sucker for spunk … and green eyes.

  "If you talked her out of it, she wouldn't have to know I had anything to do with it," Wade continued, "so her pride wouldn't make her overreact."

  "I guess so."

  "Yeah. That would be great, Max. Help her see what a dumb idea it is, and how much happier she'll be in Phoenix, where she has a great job and a future and a fiancé."

  "A fiancé?" For some reason, that gave him a pang.

  "Yeah. Pierce Winslow. He works for me. And he's a good friend. He's perfect for Lacey."

  "That's nice." It was none of his business who Lacey Wellington married, but he hoped Mr. Perfect was good enough.

  "Just stay on top of her," Wade said. An unfortunate choice of words that filled Max's mind with inappropriate images. "Be a big brother to her," Wade continued. "My stand-in, since she won't listen to me."

  "A big brother. No problem." Except when he thought of Lacey, he didn't want to be her brother. He hung up from Wade and pondered his new, more complex assignment. Somehow he had to earn Lacey's trust and steer her away from her plan in a way that didn't hurt her pride. How in the hell was he going to do that?

  He'd have to get close to her, he guessed. His libido yippeed. Not that close. She was engaged to a corporate guy, so she wouldn't give a cowboy a second glance – though if he wasn't mistaken, she'd tossed him a couple of speculative looks while he was eating Jasper's pie. He sighed. He hoped the rest of the food was as good as the pie, because it looked like he'd be eating a lot of meals at the Wonder Café.

  * * *

  Midway through the next afternoon, Lacey dragged a six-foot-high foam ice-cream cone – another of Jasper's sculptures – into the yard and paused to wipe sweat and dust from her face. She was supposed to be supervising the cleanup, not doing it, but the budget was tight, so she had no choice but to put her shoulder to the wheel. Jasper and his helper Ramón were supposedly working, too, but they kept getting distracted by Jasper's art.

  Ramón, a graffiti artist, had been assigned to Jasper as the community service part of his sentence for vandalizing the statue the City of Tucson had commissioned from Jasper twenty years before. Ramón had already served his time – though his "crime" had been more homage to Jasper's work than vandalism – but he'd hung around, acting cool and pretending to be bored, but dogging Jasper's heels like the sorcerer's apprentice. He did some airbrush paintings and swept the café and Amazatorium. When he felt like it.

  "I forgot all about this one," Jasper called to Lacey, patting a pitchfork that represented a woman's hair and spine in a sculpture of an embracing couple made of rusted farm implements.

  "Fabulous!" she called back. "But we have to keep clearing stuff out, now, remember? Ramón, can you help?"

  But Ramón was busy applying a mist of green paint to the disk-harrow man's frame.

  Working mostly alone, Lacey'd barely cleared a quarter of the storage area that was to hold the theater and additional coffeehouse seating. The yard was littered with broken kitchen equipment, antique Amazatorium items and Jasper's old sculptures. The plan was to move the things they couldn't discard to a small storage unit that was scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

  Lacey sat down on a polka-dotted, plaster of paris mushroom. Exhausted, frustrated and aching all over, she surveyed the yard's debris. It looked like a tornado had blown through Oz. There was a totem pole built out of fifties appliances, a saguaro cactus made of toothpicks and an oil drum brimming with spray-painted tennis balls. She felt like the princess forced to empty a river with a sieve, and panic surged. Was she up to this? Could she do it in two months? Had she underestimated the cost?

  She watched her uncle march toward the farm-machinery lovers wielding an acetylene torch, a wrench and a ball-peen hammer, his steps bouncy, his gray ponytail flopping on his dusty overalls, his face bright with excitement. He'd lit up the minute they uncovered the first sculpture. That was good. He'd been concentrating on small pieces since his broken leg, but obviously his heart was in the big pieces. Jasper was too young to quit what he loved.

  It was clear she couldn't expect clean-up help from Jasper and his little vato buddy. She'd have to bring in a couple of helpers in addition to the handyman she'd hired to build the stage, redo the plumbing and install the new kitchen equipment.

  She looked across the highway where her gaze snagged on Max McLane working on a Jeep in the driveway of the ranch house. The sight of his strong legs sticking out from under the truck made her heart bump in her chest. He looked so competent, so in charge. A cowboy and a mechanic. Mmm…

  What was the matter with her? She was panting after a ranch hand, for heaven's sake, when she had a major mess on her hands. The cell phone trilled from her shorts pocket. She pulled it out and flipped it open. "Hello, Wade," she said, trying not to sound annoyed at her brother's second call that day.

  "It's Pierce."

  "Oh. Pierce. Hi."

  She'd planned to call him that evening with a carefully prepared speech. It was terrible to do this kind of thing over the phone, but she didn't feel right two-timing him even with a cowboy fantasy.

  "What's wrong? You sound out of breath."

  She frowned, feeling that familiar smothered sensation. Pierce babied her as much as her brother did. "Nothing's wrong, Pierce. And we need to talk…"

  "Uh-oh, sounds ominous," he said in exaggerated alarm.

  "I hate to do this over the phone, but—"

  "It's okay, Lacey." Pierce chuckled. "Wade said you were feeling out of the loop on the engagement. How about if I come down there this weekend, take you out for dinner and we seal the deal?"

  "Seal the deal? What is this, a merger?" She raised her hands heavenward in frustration.

  "You know what I mean," Pierce said. "It's awkward talking about feelings over the phone." He paused, then whispered, "I love you." He paused. "That's what you want to hear, right?"

  "No, it's not. This isn't love between us, Pierce. It's inertia."

  "Inertia? So this is about the other night. I told you I was sorry I fell asleep in the middle of … things, but I'd had a brutal day and—"

  "It's not about sex, Pierce."

  "Then what? We get along well. We're decent in bed together – when we're both awake – and we're a good match. What more is there?"

  Intense passion, deep intimacy and melding with a soul mate, but she didn't want him to argue her out of her dearest dream. She just knew their relationship di
dn't come close. "There's got to be more, that's all. For both of us."

  "You've been reading too many romance novels, Lacey. Be realistic."

  "I am being realistic. Don't you feel something missing? In your heart of hearts? I don't make you crazy with joy, do I?"

  "Crazy with joy? Come on. Marriage is a partnership, not hearts and flowers. And you and I would make great partners."

  Again with the business terms. "We both deserve something more. Being here has helped me see things more … clearly." Her gaze whipped to Max's perfect butt – he was bent over the engine.

  Pierce didn't speak for a long moment, then he said, "Don't be like this, Lacey. This isn't you."

  "Yes, it is. For the first time, it is me." She knew what she wanted and she was going to get it. She was still staring at Max McLane, she realized. He threw a wrench across the driveway in what looked like disgust.

  Pierce sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. "I'm going to give you some time to get over this."

  She didn't want to get over it. "Don't make this harder than it is, Pierce. If you'll just be honest with yourself, you'll realize I'm right."

  "Lacey." He tried to sound firm, but she heard a catch of uncertainty, too. He was wounded, she could tell.

  "You'll find the right woman, Pierce," she said softly, not wanting to hurt him. "It's just not me." She wiped sweat from her cheek and noticed Jasper, tall and so wiry he seemed made of springs himself, hopping around like one of the shoemaker's elves, banging at a dent in the feed-bucket buttocks of the pitchfork woman. Abruptly, he stopped, wobbled a step, then sat down hard in the dirt. Omigod! He might have heat stroke. "I've gotta help Jasper. Think about what I said. Bye."

  Shoving the phone into her pocket, she rushed to her uncle.

  "I got a little dizzy is all," Jasper said, waving her away as he got to his feet. Still, his leathery face was very red, sweat dripped from his small white goatee and his narrow chest rose unevenly.

  "We've got to get you in the shade," she said. She could kick herself for not watching him more closely. She knew he was absentminded enough not to notice when he was getting too much sun or working too hard. She led him by the elbow to the café porch. "This is too much strain for you."

  "Strain? Hell, no. I'm happier than a pig in sh—…um posies," he said.

  Ramón emerged from Jasper's workshop across the yard with two spray-paint cans, but when he saw them, he dropped the cans and abandoned his homeboy strut to gallop across the yard, his face full of alarm. "What happened?"

  "Jasper overdid it. Would you get some water and a damp towel?"

  Ramón nodded, then bounded past them into the café.

  "It feels so good to get at this big stuff again," Jasper said to her. He gestured at the whimsical junk in the yard, then sighed wistfully. "Maybe I'm getting too old for this, though."

  "Of course you're not too old. You should do more with your art, if that's what makes you happy."

  "You think so?" Was there a tinge of craftiness in his expression? "I did see some great material in a junkyard on the way home from Tucson. There was a great Gremlin chassis. Not to mention an old wringer-washer rusted to perfection. And the radiators … man, the radiators…" He sighed like Aladdin leaving behind the cave of treasures. "But there's no place to put them. My workshop is way too small and I'd really need some shade if I started working more. Too bad we just bought that one storage unit." Maneuvering. Definitely maneuvering.

  Before she could find out more, Ramón brought out the water and a sopping-wet cloth. Jasper drank and Lacey mopped his brow. Once he was certain Jasper was okay, Ramón ducked into the café to find something for them to eat.

  "Really, I am too old…" Jasper said to Lacey, his tone begging contradiction. "Even if we had more space…"

  She sighed and gave in. "I suppose we could get a bigger unit."

  Jasper's crystal blue eyes locked on hers. "You know, they did have some of those Quonset hut jobbers of corrugated metal. Prefab and all. A real steal, price-wise."

  "Oh, really?" She felt the gentle teeth of a Jasper trap close on her ankle.

  "Yeah. It's big enough that I could store these guys and still have room for a nice workshop."

  "Jasper, I don't have the budget for another structure."

  "It'd be cheap. Minimal amenities – electrical for my tools and lights, but with a good fan system, we could skip the AC altogether."

  "I see." She saw, all right. She saw her budget go down in the flames of Jasper's excitement. But she couldn't bring herself to object. And she certainly wouldn't let him work in a structure without a good cooling system. "Give me the number of the storage place," she said on a sigh, "and I'll call about the hut."

  "That's okay. I sorta had 'em put it on hold."

  "Oh, and I suppose it just might arrive tomorrow instead of the mini-storage unit?"

  "Pretty much." Jasper's lean, wrinkled face cracked into a smile. She'd been had, all right. "You coming out here is just the goose I needed, girl. I was sitting on my fanny making pie and knickknacks when I should have been making big art."

  Lacey's entrepreneurship instructor would give her a D for diverging from her goal, but "monitor and adjust" was part of every business plan, wasn't it? Besides, making Jasper happy was as important as proving herself. She'd just make it all work somehow.

  Ramón emerged from the café with a platter of cheeseburgers. "This is the best I could do," he said. "You got nothing to work with in there, Jasper," he said, shaking his head. "No peppers, no chili, no cilantro, no chorizo." He wore his baggy pants low on his hips and his ribbed undershirt revealed several tattoos on his arms – the Virgen de Guadalupe, the words mi barrio in a heart and the eagle with a snake in its beak from the Mexican flag.

  Lacey bit into the burger. "Mmm." She looked up at Ramón. "This is good. What did you do?" Jasper's burgers usually tasted like dried-out cardboard with a charbroiled crust. This one fairly melted on her tongue.

  "No mucho. I mixed in sausage, seared the meat, then slow-cooked. No big thing." He shrugged.

  Hmm. Lacey's business brain clicked into gear. "You like to cook, Ramón?"

  "’S okay. If I have something to work with." He spoke like a fashion designer forced to create with an inferior polyester.

  "Maybe you could help out in the kitchen a little."

  "I don't know." He looked skeptical, but interested.

  "If you're good, I'll pay you."

  He looked up at her. "I do the shopping?"

  She nodded. "If you're good."

  "Oh, I'm good." There was a flicker of pride in his eyes.

  "Okay then," she said, holding out her hand. "It's a deal."

  His expression sober, Ramón shook her hand. "Bueno."

  Satisfaction rushed through Lacey. Maybe she'd let Jasper talk her into buying a Quonset hut, and she'd have to hire extra workers to help with cleanup, ratcheting up her costs, but she'd just made a good management decision – reassigning a worker to a job that was a better skill match.

  She just shouldn't doubt herself. Whenever she got a hint that her brother didn't have faith in her she got shaky. Same with Pierce. Come to think of it, Pierce didn't even believe she was breaking up with him.

  It was definitely over with Pierce. Even if he was good for her, she didn't want him. What she wanted was … her gaze darted across the highway … Max McLane. Yeah. She wanted to sleep with Max McLane. Imagine that. She'd never had a fling before, with all it implied about freedom and excitement. She'd always been in relationships, and not many of those. Serious, predictable, dull relationships, with sex that matched. Didn't she deserve to have an affair? Something as exciting as it was fleeting? Men did it all the time.

  How could she know she was ready to settle down if she hadn't experienced wild, fabulous sex? A fling would give her a whole new perspective for when she really fell in love. At least she'd know what she wanted in bed. There was a range of possibilities she had yet to explore. At least
she hoped so. Otherwise, she didn't get what all the fuss was about. She was breaking away work-wise, why not sex-wise, too?

  And Max would be just the man to break away with. He was a cowboy – the last of the independent men. Having an affair with him would be the perfect way to throw off the shackles of her old life and make her new life real. She didn't want to sleep around or anything. Just one little fling to see what it was like. This would be her own romantic declaration of independence. With fireworks to match.

  She would do it. Assuming he was interested, of course. She was pretty sure he was, unless that once-over was just knee-jerk behavior.

  Well, there was no time like the present to act. She'd made some business decisions. And now she'd made a personal one. So, how could she make it happen? She could hardly march across the highway and say, "Take me. Take me now." Back home, she would probably just ask the guy to meet her for a drink at the Ritz Carlton hotel and things would go from there. So, transferring that into a cowboy setting, she'd suggest a beer at a cowboy bar of his choice, and leave the rest in Max McLane's manly hands. Before long, she'd be seeing that chest tattoo up close and very personal.

  She headed to her trailer for a quick shower, her heart racing at what she was about to attempt. This was the new Lacey, she reminded herself, who seized the bull – or the cowboy – by the horns.

  And hung on for dear life.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  «^»

  Just change the air filter and the oil, Buck had told him. That should have been easy enough. Max had worked on his beat-up Karmann Ghia coupe back in college, but the underside of this old Jeep looked entirely different and the manual was no help at all. He tightened the crescent wrench around the plug to what he thought was the oil pan and twisted. Nothing.

  He let go a string of expletives, then heard the crunch of gravel and turned his head to see a set of short, chubby toes, the nails painted impossibly pink, in a pair of fashionable high-heeled sandals.

  "Whacha doin'?" their owner asked. Lacey Wellington. She squatted and leaned down so he could see her face.