Taming a Texas Rascal (Bad Boy Ranch Book 6) Page 16

  Like how surprised he’d been when he’d first seen Maisy in the pretty bridesmaid’s dress. Until that point, he’d only seen her in jeans and t-shirts. The sight of her hair swept up on her head and the dress hugging her breasts and trim waist had left him feeling speechless . . . and physically attracted. An attraction he had pushed from his mind when Lincoln had confronted him at the wedding. But it had been there when she’d placed her hand on his arm as they walked down the aisle. It had been there when they’d talked all through dinner. It had been there when he had led her to a secluded spot in the Dixon’s Boardinghouse’s garden and taught her some new bronc riding moves. But it had all been a pretense to get to touch her and lean in close enough to take a deep breath of the sweet fresh-air scent that was solely Maisy’s.

  Which meant on their tequila night, he’d only been doing what he wanted to do for a long time.

  But the epiphany made no difference. Maisy was leaving.

  “It looks like the boys are here,” Lincoln said.

  Sawyer watched as Logan and Cru pulled up to the porch in Logan’s truck. Only seconds later, Holden and Val drove in behind them. All four of the men got out with determined looks on their faces and Sawyer knew he was in for one helluva fight. But he was ready for it. At least, he thought he was ready until two more people got out of the back seat of Holden’s truck. One was a middle-aged woman he didn’t know. And the other . . . was his brother.

  Mattie smiled when he saw Sawyer standing on the porch and signed. Surprise.

  “Shit,” Sawyer said.

  Lincoln laughed. “Hey, you didn’t think we were going to make this easy, did you?”

  Since Chester and Lucas’s living room wasn’t big enough to hold everyone, the intervention took place in the barn. Lincoln and Logan set hay bales in a circle for everyone to sit on. Mattie sat next to Sawyer. He glanced around the barn and then signed.

  I see now why you love it here. You always did like the smell of horseshit.

  Sawyer would’ve laughed if he hadn’t felt so tense.

  Is that beautiful black stallion our horse? Mattie signed.

  Your horse. Sawyer signed back. I’m giving him to you. I’m heading back to the rodeo.

  Mattie grinned. We’ll see about that.

  As always when they had a group meeting, Logan took charge. “I guess you know why we’re here, Sawyer.”

  Sawyer signed for his brother so he would know what Logan had said—something he always did whenever he was with Mattie—then he signed as he spoke. “I do. And you might as well not waste your time.”

  Cru snorted. “I told you we should’ve just hogtied him and beaten some sense into him. It would be much quicker.”

  Lincoln glanced at the woman. “Cru is joking, Ms. Miller.” He looked back at Sawyer. “This is Darlene Miller. Tad Miller’s widow.”

  Sawyer stared at the woman. Tad Miller had been one of the best bull riders on the circuit until he retired. He’d passed away a few years ago. Sawyer had a bad feeling about this. The feeling grew when Darlene turned her gaze to him.

  “I believe you knew my late husband. He mentioned you more than a few times before his CTE got bad.” She paused. “Then he struggled to remember his own family.”

  Sawyer wanted to stop her right there, but he couldn’t do that to a widow of a fellow roughstock rider and he figured his friends had known that. His brother thumped on his arm, and not only did Sawyer have to listen to what the woman said, he also had to sign it for Mattie.

  “Now I’m not here to give you some sob story,” she said. “And I’m not here to talk you into choosing a different career. Tad loved bull riding and I don’t think anyone could’ve talked him out of doing it—I know I sure couldn’t. But I do think he would’ve quit much sooner if he had known the horrific outcome. It’s not just a few headaches, Mr. Dawson. Or a few lost memories. Or a little depression and mood swings. It’s whole lot of those things. The doctors couldn’t diagnose Tad when he was living, but after he died—at the age of forty-nine—they were able to look at his brain and see the damage he’d done to it over the years. Damage that might’ve been avoided by wearing safety equipment or just knowing when to quit. Since it sounds like you’re past the safety equipment stage, I guess you’re at the knowing when to quit stage.”

  He didn’t say anything and she continued. “The specialists I spent years talking to never could give me a number of how many concussions the brain can take before CTE sets in. So pretty much you’re just rolling the dice. And here’s the thing. You’re not just rolling dice for you. You’re rolling it for every single person who loves you.” She glanced around. “Which seems to be a lot of people. As a person who lost someone I didn’t just love, I adored, I’m asking you to consider your loved ones—to understand that when you straddle that horse and wait for the gate to swing open, it’s not just you riding. It’s everyone who cares about you. Including the young woman who called me and paid for my plane ticket here. If Maisy hadn’t pleaded so adamantly, I would be back in Cheyenne celebrating my best friend’s birthday.”

  Sawyer lowered his hands. “Maisy called you?”

  Darlene nodded. “She read Tad’s story in a rodeo magazine and thought it might save your life. A life that’s extremely important to her.” She paused. “I wish I had fought harder for the man I love.” She stood, and all the men stood with her. Sawyer was too stunned to do more than just sit there. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take a walk around this beautiful ranch and let you have a chance to talk with your friends.””

  “Me and Lucas would be honored to show you around, Ms. Miller,” Chester said. The two old cowboys led Darlene out of the barn.

  When they were gone, Mattie and the boys all sat back down. They didn’t say anything and Sawyer was happy about that. He was still trying to absorb what Tad’s widow had said. Not just about the disease, but about Maisy.

  Mattie must’ve been thinking the same thing because he tapped him on the arm and signed. I knew Maisy loved you.

  Sawyer signed back. She doesn’t love me. If she loved me, she wouldn’t have lied to me.

  Mattie looked at him with sad eyes as he signed. Maybe she lied to you because she does love you. I love you and I lied to you because I didn’t want the brother I loved so dearly to hate me.

  Sawyer stared at his brother. That’s exactly what Maisy had said when he’d asked her why she lied. She hadn’t wanted him to hate her for taking him away from rodeo.

  “Okay, if you’re gonna talk with your hands, you need to talk with your mouth too,” Cru said. “The only sign language I know is the letter d you taught us for the Double Diamond Boy’s oath. And I think we should take an oath right now to kick Sawyer’s ass if he doesn’t pull his head out and quit rodeoing. Talking doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “He doesn’t have to quit rodeo,” Logan said. “He just has to quit saddle bronc riding. He could go back to roping.”

  “Or he could just take up ranching,” Holden said. “He already has the land.”

  “There’s a lot of things you can do, Sawyer,” Val said.

  Mattie must have read their lips because he signed. You can become a veterinarian like we planned as kids. I need a good partner.

  They had planned to become vets as kids, but Sawyer had backed out in college. Partly because he hadn’t wanted to compete with Mattie, but also because he’d wanted to ride wild horses. He’d gotten to ride those horses and done quite a bit of damage to his brain in the process. Now maybe it was time to go back to school and strengthen it.

  “Well, don’t just sit there, Saw,” Cru said. “Are you going back to bronc riding like an idiot or are you going to listen to common sense and quit?”

  Sawyer stood. “I don’t know. All I know is that right now I need to go see about a cowgirl. But I need to use someone’s truck. Two stubborn old cowboys disabled mine.”

  Lincoln pulled a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Sawyer. “Don’t use
the siren.”

  Of course, Sawyer turned on the siren as soon as he got on the highway into town. He needed to find Maisy and get some answers. He kept the siren on all the way to the Lucky Lane Trailer Park. It was only when he pulled into the first lot that he turned it off and sat there in stunned silence.

  Maisy’s trailer was gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  It had to be the sappiest idea Maisy had ever come up with in her life. If she didn’t want to be completely humiliated, she needed to quickly take down the poster board sign she had taped to the back of her trailer before Sawyer got there.

  If he got there.

  He hadn’t answered her text message so there was a good possibility he wasn’t coming. Which made her feel like crying. But she refused to act like a weepy little girl. If he didn’t show up, she would deal with it like an adult woman. She’d cuss him out loudly and clearly as she packed up her trailer and left everything and everyone she’d come to love since arriving in Simple.

  She swallowed the huge lump in her throat and turned the bacon that was sizzling in the pan before she set down the tongs and headed to the back of the trailer. The sign looked even sappier then she’d thought. She wasn’t an artist. The lettering was crooked and the two horses’ heads looked more like dog heads. Totally annoyed with herself for thinking this had been a romantic idea, she stepped up on the hitch and pulled the poster board off the shiny metal of the Airstream and carried it into the trailer. After pulling off the tape on the back, she slid the sign between the refrigerator and the counter.

  The picture she’d taped on the refrigerator caught her eye and she smiled at the baby who stared back at her.

  The tracking dogs had found her father’s grave. While Lincoln couldn’t let her have Sam’s body for a proper burial, or the personal items found, until after Willaby’s trial, he had taken a picture of a photograph he found in Sam’s wallet and sent it to Maisy. She’d made a copy and taped it to her refrigerator as proof that her daddy had loved her enough to keep her baby picture.

  It seemed Miss Gertie was right. There was good in all people and bad in all people. Maisy wished her daddy had had more good. She also wished she had gotten to know him. But knowing he’d loved her in his own way made it much easier to let him go.

  Her daddy was her daddy. Bad or good. She had accepted that. Now she had her own life to live. She would make mistakes—she’d already made more than a few—and she would have to live with those mistakes. The biggest mistake was lying to Sawyer. But she had asked for his forgiveness, and if he couldn’t give it, there was nothing else she could do.

  Maybe it was time to pack up and move on.

  She winked at baby Maisy before she headed back outside to finish cooking the bacon. But once outside, she forgot all about the bacon when she saw the horse and rider on the horizon. She knew immediately by the way the man sat in the saddle on the black stallion who it was.

  The sight of Sawyer galloping toward her made her feel as nervous as a cat at a dog show. She smoothed her hair, straightened her dress, and stomped the dust off her Christie Evans boots. The closer he rode, the more nervous she got.

  She had gone over what she wanted to say in her mind the night before. In fact, she’d stayed up most of the night going over and over it. But when he reached her, all thoughts seemed to dissolve and all she could think of was how delicious he looked in his western shirt and jeans with his black Stetson tugged low on his forehead.

  He reined in the horse and swung down from the saddle before Angel had even stopped. He dropped the reins and strode toward Maisy. She tried to think of anything to say to let him know how sorry she was for lying and how much she loved him. But before she could get a word out, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  It was a hungry kiss. The kind of kiss that made a woman feel like she’d been badly missed. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back for all she was worth, trying to communicate with her body what her brain couldn’t. One kiss led to another and another. Maisy figured they probably would’ve gone on kissing forever if Angel hadn’t nosed his way in between them.

  She drew back with a laugh. “Hey there, Angel. Were you getting a little jealous?” She patted his neck before she took his reins and tied him to the trailer hitch. When she turned back to Sawyer, he was watching her with a look on his face that made her tummy tingle.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” she answered a little breathlessly.

  He smiled.

  She grinned.

  “Angel’s missed you,” he said. “I’ve missed you too. I thought you left.”

  She shook her head. “I like this spot better than I like my spot at the Lucky Lane Trailer Park.”

  He glanced around. “It is a nice spot.” He looked back at her and she saw that he was nervous too. It made her smile even more.

  “What happened to you leaving?” she asked.

  “It turns out that leaving Simple is hard to do.” He paused. “Or maybe what was hard to do is leave the woman I love.”

  Talk about being blindsided, Maisy felt like she’d just walked straight into a brick wall. Or not a brick wall as much as a wall of happy bubbles that burst and surrounded her with such joy she couldn’t believe she’d heard right.

  “You love me?”

  He moved closer and cradled her face in his hands, brushing away the tears on her cheek that she didn’t even know were there with his thumbs. “Yep, I love you, Maisy Sweeney.”

  She stared at him. “Why?”

  “Because you’re worth loving.” If Maisy had ever needed anything in her life, it was those words. And Sawyer had known them. As more tears fell, he leaned in to kiss them off one by one as he continued to speak in a soft voice that strummed her heartstrings. “You’re strong. You’re kind-hearted. You’re tenacious. You’re funny. You’re loving.” He drew back. “You’re uniquely you, Maze. And I love everything about you.”

  She sniffed. “But I lied to you and gave you a concussion that could end your career.””

  “You didn’t give me the concussion. Maytag did.”

  “But you thinking I was pregnant made you jump into the arena.”

  Sawyer shook his head. “Me jumping into the arena had nothing to do with a baby. It had to do with you being my friend. I liked you long before I loved you, Maze. We fit together. I didn’t realize how well we fit together until the last few weeks, but I knew from the first time we met that we were two peas in a pod.”

  “I knew we fit too, Sawyer. And I couldn’t understand why you pulled away after the wedding. But I understand now. I know Lincoln warned you away from me and that’s why you were so shocked to see me in your shower.”

  “I wasn’t just shocked about you being there. I was shocked by how my body reacted to yours. I thought you were just this cute cowgirl. I didn’t realize you were also a hot woman.”

  Maisy felt her cheeks blush. “I’m not hot.”

  “Hell yeah, you are. Damn hot.” He leaned in and kissed her. Suddenly, she felt hot. Hot for Sawyer. She could stay kissing him all day, but he drew back suddenly and sniffed the air. “Are you cooking bacon?”

  “My bacon!” She pushed out of his arms and hurried over to the grill. But the bacon was already charred black. “Shoot.” She took the pan off the grill and set it on table next to it. “There’s goes my plan to feed you bacon until you forgive me.”

  Sawyer wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. “I don’t mind a little char and I’ve already forgiven you. I realized that what you, Dixie, and the Double Diamond boys did was only because you cared.” He paused. “Tad Miller’s wife laid out a pretty good case for why I shouldn’t return to bronc riding.“

  Maisy turned in his arms. “So?”

  He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. “I think it’s time for this cowboy to hang up his spurs.” The relief she felt was overwhelming and she sagged against his chest.

 
“Thank God. Darlene Miller was my last hope.”

  Sawyer snorted. “I doubt that. If she hadn’t been able to talk me into quitting, you would’ve thought of something else. You are the most tenacious woman I know, Maisy Sweeney.”

  She lifted her head and grinned. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have given up. But I’m glad I don’t have to keep fighting you on it. So what are you going to do? Do you have a plan?”

  “Actually, I do. Would you like to hear it?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to take you into that trailer and make slow, passionate love to you.”

  Maisy’s body suddenly felt like the bacon grease still sizzling in the pan. “And then?”

  “And then, I’m going to get down on one knee and ask you to marry me.”

  Maisy didn’t need him to get down on one knee. She started to say “Hell, yeah, I will,” but he placed a finger over her lips and stopped her. “It will have to be a long engagement, Maze. I want to go to veterinary school and that will take at least four more years.”

  Maisy pulled his finger away. “Why do we have to wait?”

  “Because I’m not going to marry you unless I have a career and something to offer you.”

  “You have your heart to offer and that’s all I want. And I have a career. With Cord Evans’ sponsorship, I can keep us afloat until you graduate.”

  “I’m not going to let you support me.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. She poked him in the center of his chest. “Don’t you dare pull that macho gender crap with me, Sawyer Dawson. If I was going back to school and you were making money, you’d have no problem supporting me. Well, I have no problem supporting you. And if you think I’m going to wait four years to marry you, you’ve got another think coming. I love you and you love me and together we’ll do what it takes to survive. It doesn’t matter who is bringing home the burnt bacon!”