“Most of us go down to McDools, it's the only bar around really.”
“Perhaps I can get a ride down, next time you go.”
Seriously? Aren't chaperones supposed to be plump motherly types? Why did we have to get a cougar in blue jeans?
I cough lightly but Nissa is either unaware of anything other than the sensual hotness that is Shea Butler's fingers stroking a brush over his horse's mane, or she's blatantly ignoring my presence. If he offers to take her out, even to drive her to the end of the street, there's going to be a battle that'll make that bull steering look like a kindergarten bricks fight.
“I usually ride down there. It's close enough to walk, if you like a good hike. But one of the other guys might take you.”
I'm so relieved he's not taken in by her obvious moves, I want to do a hoedown then wrap my arms and legs around his solid torso while I cover his face with kisses.
“Oh. Okay great,” she says, deflating a bit now that she can see he's not a man that you rope in like a lost calf.
Shea clearly needs to call all the shots. If Nissa had bothered to find out anything about him, she'd have known not to come on so strong. She turns to head back to the house and I'm about to get some alone time with Shea. I could just hang out in here watching him work, his big hands stroking the horse's glossy coat all afternoon.
“Are you coming, Dallyce?” Nissa stops at the entrance and commands me rather than asks.
Shea looks up from beneath his dark hat's brim and I detect the ghost of his enticing grin. It takes everything not to go for that hoedown right now. I shoot him a wry secret smile and go up to the ranch house with Nissa this time. But I'm determined to get to know more about Shea sooner rather than later.
Chapter SEVEN
Shea
I've decided to swear off being around Dallyce as much as possible for the duration of her stay. She's a dangerous proposition that I don't trust myself to be up close with. We've only got the long weekend of the rodeo and then she'll be off on the rest of her tour. Out of my hair. And my head. Funny enough I don't like the idea of not seeing her again. It sets off some kind of surge in my blood that I never felt before with any woman. And that's the way I like it.
Zero complications. Zero expectations.
“You going up to the house for dinner?” Abel emerges from his house, in his usual outfit of jeans and boots but well-scrubbed and shaved.
I grin to myself. I know what he's about, though he doesn’t know it himself.
“Nah. I don't need to be at the fancy table now that the family are back and have delicate guests.”
“Mighty pretty ones though,” Rafe says from his position fireside, where he's monitoring the rattlesnake he's got roasting in the flame.
Abe shoots him a look. But it's pointless where Rafe's concerned. He's a lawless one and lucky the old days of being hounded by the Sheriff are over or he'd have been lynched before now.
I drag a lawn chair from my porch across the yard to where we have the stone cookout pit and grab a beer from the cooler before settling in. The aroma of roasting flesh mixes with the chilli heating up in the pot that Jessop hauled on down from the main kitchen. We settle in with that and some boiled potatoes, along with the hooch and that's all any of us need.
“Is Shea Butler here? I need his assistance?” A female voice jerks me out of my doze.
It's pretty late I guess and I must have dropped off with my belly full and some hot imaginings involving Dallyce's sweet thighs. Nissa, the chaperone is the last one I was expecting to see.
“The girls are gone,” she announces and my heart start to thound under my ribs.
“Gone where?” If anything's happened to Dallyce there's gonna be hell to pay.
“Well, I don't know,” she says. “They aren't in their beds and they haven't been unmade, so I don't know what they're up to.”
“Okay I'll ride out and see if they're takin' a walk.”
It crosses my mind that Abel went up to the house so she could have enlisted his assistance, but maybe she did. Or more like she grabbed the excuse to bat her eyelashes at me once more. I get it's the latter when she insists on coming along.
“No. I need you to stay at the house in case they come back. I move faster alone.”
She juts out her lower lip but I've got no time for that shit. My main and only concern is Dallyce.
“Anyone seen Rafe?” I yell as I stride across to the stables.
“He'all went up to the house after dinner. Said he was gonna let the princesses taste his rattlesnake.”
“I'm sure,” I snarl. “Jessop, you let me know if anyone hears from them.”
The truck's gone from out front so it doesn’t take me two and two to make four. But I don't have to let Nissa in on the calculation. I don't want her bugging me to bring her to the bar again. And I don't have time for any woman, with Dallyce filling my head and my prick with her decadent curves.