“Crap.” She glanced again in the mirror, but this time, she took a critical look at her hair and makeup. At the same time, she chastised herself for such teenage behavior, for even caring about how she looked. He hadn’t noticed her the day they met in the Pampered Pooch and a chance encounter on a highway would mean nothing. He would pass her without a glance. Even if he did glance, he probably wouldn’t recognize her.
Sure enough, he did just that, his bigger engine growling like a mad cat. He never so much as glanced her way, “Why would he?” she muttered to the air. “I’m just another car on the road.”
Jake let out a squawk.
Coming out of a sharp blind curve, Sandi met a large Hereford cow and her calf standing in her lane and blocking her path. She slammed on the brakes, swerved to the shoulder and stopped. The cow looked at her with lazy eyes.
Luckily, she had slowed for the curve, but what if some driver behind her didn’t? He or she would plow into the pair, which could result in the death of the animals and possibly the driver. She looked in her side mirror at the two of them still standing in the middle of the road seemingly without a care in the world.
“What am I going to do, Jake? I can’t just let them get run over. And why in the hell didn’t Mr. GQ Cowboy stop and get them off the road? What an asshole.”
“Mr. GQ Cowboy,” Jake squawked. “What an asshole. What an asshole.”
She killed her SUV’s engine, stepped out and eased toward the cow and calf, making a palms up shooing gesture with her hands. She hadn’t taken a dozen steps before her feet began to burn. She was wearing thong sandals that weren’t the ideal footwear for hot asphalt, but she couldn’t let defenseless animals stand at risk in the middle of the highway. “Shoo, mama. Move now. Come on.”
The cow continued to look at her with blank brown eyes and stood perfectly still. Sandi stamped a hot foot against the pavement and clapped her hands. “Get off the road! Hurry! Hurry!”
The cow lifted its head and bawled, but didn’t move its feet. The calf bleated.
Why didn’t the damned things move? Exasperated, Sandi hung her head.
“What an asshole. What an asshole,” Jake piped from back in the SUV.
The engine’s loud growling sound split the air again. Sandi looked frantically at the cow and calf, then toward the sound. The pickup that had passed her moments before was barreling backward toward her at the same speed it had been traveling forward, the driver expertly handling the wheel. It stopped on the shoulder only feet away, the door opened and Nick Conway stepped down.
He strode back to the pickup bed, lifted out a lariat and walked toward her, forming a loop as he came. “We meet again. Best move back and let me do this.”
He continued past her, toward the cow and calf.
She should slip into a Scarlett O’Hara flirty mode and say something cute and charming, but instead of acting coquettish, she couldn’t keep from being hostile. After what alpha men had put her through, they had that effect on her.
She lifted a defiant chin and hollered behind him. “I’m not afraid of a cow. I’ve been around cattle my whole life.”
Giving her a look, he walked right up to the cow and slid the loop over her head. “Then you oughtta know that mamas can be ornery when it comes to strangers around their calves. I’ve seen many a man put on the fence because he got too close.”
He tugged and sweet-talked the cow, coaxed her toward the edge of the pavement. The calf followed.
“Well, at least I stopped,” Sandi called after him.
“I was checking to see if I could spot where she got out,” Nick yelled back. “I didn’t notice a break in the fence before that curve, so I figured it must be ahead of me.” He flashed a grin in her general direction.
Every female cell in her body swooned. She hated that her body reacted this way.
“Did you find the break?” she finally asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I did.”
Silence as he walked the two animals past her and up the side of the road.
“Are you going to fix the fence?”
Good Lord, why don’t I just shut up and be on my way?
“Yes, ma’am,” he called back over his shoulder. “That’s my plan.”
She couldn’t help admiring the excellent view of his backside. Tight Wranglers hugging his tight bottom. He was the stereotypical cowboy. She was the first to point out, having lived in West Texas all of her life, that there were cowboys and then there were damn fine cowboys. The one leading a cow in front of her definitely fell into the latter category.
“Always good to have a plan,” she yelled.
Nick stopped suddenly and turned to face her. He thumbed his hat back, hitched his hip and cocked his knee. Oh, my God. John Wayne. Seconds turned into an eternity. “Speaking of plans,” he drawled, “is it your plan to stand in the road and get run over? Do I need to get another rope?”
Sandi’s jaw dropped. Her cheeks flamed. The very nerve!
She flung back her hair, turned sharply and stomped back to her SUV. “What an asshole.” She jerked the door open and slid behind the wheel. “Did you hear him, Jake?”
“What the fuck?” Jake squawked.
“You’re exactly right, Jake. He talked to me like I didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.”
Jake fluffed his feathers. “Don’t let me get wet. Don’t let me get wet.”
She started the engine, jerked the SUV into gear and roared past Mr. Nick Conway as Jake squawked loud enough to wake the dead, “What an asshole! What an asshole!”
***
Nick watched the SUV growing smaller against the horizon. He could have sworn she had called him an asshole. Not the first time a woman had expressed
