Crystal Green – The Hard-to-Get Cowboy (страница 2)
“See?” she said. “Here’s proof that life really doesn’t end after your twenties, girls. Everything improves with age, including the amount of attention.”
As cheers erupted, she waited for silence before continuing.
“But you all know that my heart belongs to Thunder Canyon. And, for all you fellas out there who’d planned to offer more proposals, you know I adore every last one of you, but I must tell you once and for all that I. Am. Never. Getting. Married. Life’s too short!”
As the place went nuts, she winked at the crowd, then smiled at the Pritchett brothers, telling them that there were no hard feelings about their ill-timed shenanigans.
Dean was glancing at his brother, as if to gauge Cade’s reaction.
And what Laila saw in Cade almost chipped away at her heart.
It seemed as if he’d just been kicked in the gut, his face ruddy, his hands fisted at his sides.
Oh, God.
No way—not when she’d been very clear over the years how she felt about settling down. Not Cade Pritchett—a man who never impulsively shouted out things like proposals in front of a hundred other people.
Without a word, he turned to leave, his shoulders stiff, and Dean followed him, leaving the third suitor behind.
As Laila met the amused gaze of Jackson Traub, the last man standing, he put his hat back on, then touched the brim. The gesture might’ve been a touché from someone who clearly appreciated her firm stance on singlehood. Word had it that he’d even caused that scene at his brother’s reception because he was the ultimate bachelor, and he was intent on swearing off matrimony himself. It was just that he hadn’t exactly been speaking to a sympathetic audience at a
Before he turned around and disappeared into the crowd, he sent Laila one last wicked grin.
Then he was gone, leaving her with a burning yen to see him again, for better…
Or for worse.
Nearly a week later, Laila sat at a corner table in the bar section at the Hitching Post, keeping her eye on the entrance as she traced the sweat off the mug of a lemonade she hadn’t touched.
She’d been playing phone tag with Cade, and they’d finally agreed to meet here tonight, among the after-work crowd enjoying Happy Hour in this rumored former house of ill repute that’d been turned into a bar and grill.
She tried to ignore the line of ranch hands at the bar—the men who kept glancing over and peering at her from beneath the shade of their hats. One in particular, Duncan Brooks, who worked on Mayor Bo Clifton’s spread, was trying to catch Laila’s attention.
Then again, he always was, and she wished he wouldn’t do that. The mustached, stocky cowboy was forever looking at her with that moony gaze men sometimes got when they were around Laila—that struck-by-a-beauty-queen gander that made her wish she had set out to clear up everyone’s perceptions of her from the very first time she’d been old enough to date.
With a polite nod to Duncan—nothing more, nothing to encourage him—she took a sip of her lemonade and shifted her attention to the painting over the bar. It featured the Shady Lady herself, Lily Divine, draped in diaphanous material, wearing a mysterious smile. Long before Thunder Canyon had experienced its recent gold rush and the place had moved from a sleepy spot on the map to a boomtown with a resort that attracted the rich and adventurous alike, and long before the town had undergone an economic fall that they were still recovering from, Lily had been a woman of questionable morals. A supposed heartbreaker.
Was that what Cade thought about Laila now, after she’d shot him down at the pageant?
Was that why he hadn’t been returning her calls?
She would soon see, because he was just now walking through the entrance, pausing to glance around for Laila.
She waved a tentative hello, and his hands fisted by his sides, just as they had the night of the pageant. He walked toward her in his sheepskin jacket—a necessity now that the weather had finally turned from Indian summer to October cool.
Laila held back a frown. It was tough to see Cade Pritchett in such a state. He was a hardy man, a local hero who’d played down his part in rescuing a young girl from drowning in Silver Stallion Lake about a year ago. Naturally, he’d refused any accolades.
He was the best of guys. The best of friends—until recently.
She’d already ordered a soda for him, and as he doffed his jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair, then sat, she pushed the beverage toward him as if it were a peace offering.
“I wasn’t so sure you’d come here tonight,” she said.
Cade didn’t utter a word. After years of dating him—never serious enough to have gotten totally intimate with him, though—Laila nevertheless knew enough about Cade to realize that he was weighing whatever he was thinking carefully before saying it.
She also knew that when he spoke, it would be in a low voice that would give most any girl delicious shivers and, not for the first time, Laila wondered just why it didn’t affect
What was wrong with her that she didn’t feel
A flash of roguish brown eyes and an equally devastating grin flew across her mind’s eye, but she quashed all thoughts of Jackson Traub.
Cade met her gaze head-on. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and what I have to say to you now isn’t impulsive or ill-considered. I’ve even been thinking about what I came here to tell you long
She didn’t like how this was starting. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”
“The future, Laila.”
His direct manner made her wary.
“You’re not the only one who’s entered a new phase of life,” he said. “When a person gets older, he starts to reassess where he’s been. Where he’s going.”
His blue gaze was so intense that Laila prayed he wasn’t about to say what she thought he was going to say…
But he went and said it, anyway.
“I wasn’t fooling around when I asked you to marry me.”
She tried not to react, even though it felt as if a shadow had steamrolled her. “Cade, I didn’t mean to embarrass you by turning you down so publicly, but you know how I feel about marriage.”
“I know how you always
Now Laila was really confused. Had she been sending Cade mixed signals or something? But that couldn’t be the case. She’d always been
“Cade…” she said softly just before he interrupted her.
“Just listen…I know full well that you’re not in love with me. But we have a lot to offer each other in spite of that.”
He paused, and she searched his gaze, seeing that there was something deep going on in this man. Sadly, she even wondered if this had anything to do with how Cade had lost the woman he’d wanted to marry to an early death years ago.
Maybe that was why Laila had been drawn to him, as a companion more than anything else. He had shut down emotionally after his lover’s passing, and he’d probably seen in Laila a person who didn’t get involved much with heavy emotions herself.
Did he think that she would never expect more out of him than he was capable of giving after having his heart broken?
The realization left her a bit hollow. It wasn’t that she couldn’t love anyone, it was just that she’d always thought of herself as a career woman—one who’d worked her tail off to become branch manager of the bank. One who, admittedly, loved to flirt and play the field to a certain point.
At her silence, he had straightened up in his chair, as if thinking that she was actually considering his point. He seemed so confident now that a scratch of pain scored her.
“Right before the pageant,” he said, “I had a good long talk with my brothers.”
“And with your other friend, Jack Daniels?”
Cade’s skin went ruddy. “All right. A little whiskey was involved, and the more I had, the more I decided I wanted to get an answer from you once and for all about where we were headed. And I don’t regret bringing this up, Laila, not even in such a spectacular fashion. Not even if I made a donkey of myself at the pageant and my own brother took enough pity on me to propose, too, turning my folly into a joke everyone could laugh off.”
What she needed was for a hole to open up in the ceiling that would suck her right into it and out of this discussion. “I—”
“I need to finish what I came here to say.”
He’d raised his voice and, from the corner of her gaze, she saw Duncan Brooks stand away from the bar, obviously hearing Cade and not liking his tone one bit. Laila sent a reassuring smile at the ranch hand, letting him know everything was okay.
Appeased, Duncan went back to drinking his beer, hunched over it as he leaned on the bar.
“I’m tired of being alone,” Cade said. “Aren’t you?”
She sighed, hating that she would have to be terribly blunt. “No.”