The Cowboy's Texas Rose (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 1)

“It might result in another baby, that’s for damn sure,” she muttered cynically as she punched the stapler again, when a dip to the trailer made her jump.

She whirled around and ripped her earbuds out, knocking a whole stack of papers onto the floor. And saw Toby Dixon staring at her like the proverbial deer in headlights with his hand frozen on the screen door. Twilight filled the sky behind him with a spectrum of orange hues, shadows on the yucca and sotol, casting them into flat, gray shapes. Redness crept up her neck, stained her cheeks, and she gripped the counter behind her.

Had he seen her dancing? Oh God, just end me now. Mortified, she wiped her brow.

“What would result in another baby?” he croaked.

She shook her head. No way was she admitting to what had been going through her head. “You scared me,” she breathed, forcing a smile. But she’d been thinking about him, and poof, here he was.

His head moved side to side, his eyes caressing her bare legs up and down, lingering on the cutoffs covering her cheeks, roving up her stomach, over her ample chest. Ah yes. Even if she’d never turn heads like Kelsey did, men always spared a glance at her chest. She’d lucked out in the rack department. Yay, bra shopping. Not.

“Hot damn, baby,” he murmured, unable to peel his eyes off her body and place them on her face where they belonged. “Don’t stop shimmying around on my account.”

She cleared her throat. “What are you doing here?” Her stomach turned flips of excitement as he welcomed himself inside without asking.

He sidled up to her, a lazy approach, and she dropped down to gather up her scattered packets, shoving them into a haphazard pile, his scuffed cowboy boots next to her in her periphery.

“You didn’t show up with your crew tonight. They told me you were working, and I thought, now ain’t that some crap. You work all day, every day; raise a kid by yourself; nearly pounce all over me at the mention of a movie marathon; and then you skip out on it to work some more?”

“Not because I wanted to. I have to get these done.”

“What, if you don’t finish by midnight you turn into a pumpkin, or somethin’?”

Laughter burst from her throat at his joke.

“See, now you’re speaking my language…” She looked up from where she was kneeling as she tapped the stack on the linoleum to straighten the pile, her laughter fading. Straight up his front. Straight up his legs, his thumbs hooked through his belt loops, up his chest encased in a tight tee now soiled from his manual toils today and a plaid pearl snap hanging loose, his old Stetson crowning his sandy hair like a Texas halo, and those eyes, staring right back down his front at her.

Her mouth went dry. Her eyes settled on the obvious bulge behind his zipper, showcased by that belt buckle, right in front of her, not more than a couple feet away. A flurry of butterflies burst inside her, fluttering so madly in her belly, she wasn’t sure if lust was dousing her veins with heat or if she was growing ill, and she pushed to standing. Turning away from him, she swallowed hard, her throat parched like the land around them, but felt his body heat come up behind her, felt the dipping of the cheap old floor, felt his arm come around her as the waft of that faint pine smell drifted to her nose cut with the scent of a man who had labored all day.

He took the stack of papers and slipped them from her hand, his broad shoulder in her periphery, and set them aside on the counter; then she watched his fingers brace her phone and pluck loose the headphones.

“…I’m on the hunt, I’m after you. Smell like I sound, I’m lost in a crowd, and I’m hungry like the wolf…”

Duran Duran blared into the camper, and she dared a glance at his face behind her.

He was grinning. “Come on, girl, show me what to do, and we’ll staple the shit out of this twice as fast so you can relax.”

She shook her head, lifting her eyes heavenward. “You do not have to help me do my job.”

“Funny, I don’t recall asking you.” He tapped his chin. “I’m just gonna screw it all up if you don’t tell me what to do.”

He snagged a packet and took up the stapler to make a haphazard punch.

She swiped them both back. “Fine. Before you ruin it,” she teased.

“Yeah, they didn’t teach us these archaic paper methods at A&M. They taught us how to merge PDFs and hit Send. But you like old stuff, so… Does UT also make you ride the dinosaurs you excavate to work?”

“Such a comedian, but archaeologists don’t dig dinosaurs,” she said with mock sweetness, but okay, perhaps there was some truth to Hunter’s suggestion to digitize some of these. “I’ve already labeled these two stacks. I’ll staple these ones and pass them to you. Then you take this flora guide, stack it on top, then this article on the bottom, then paperclip it all, then put it in the file box.”

He stepped up beside her, his arm touching her shoulder sporadically as he began helping, and he began bobbing his chin and leg ever so slightly to the music. She glanced up at him.

“What? Ain’t nothing I like better than dancing up a pretty girl.”

She snorted preposterously. “I figured you were the type.”

“Come on, you were dancing all cute a minute ago,” he continued.

“I thought I was alone.” She focused her gaze on her work and not his long, lean leg shifting to the rhythm.