The Cowboy's Texas Heart (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 3)

She flung her arms around his neck and planted a solid kiss to his lips. The air blew from his lungs, and he greedily grabbed her waist, curling his fingers over the rim of her jeans that hugged her hips to his, and swept his tongue within her mouth. Peppermint assaulted his taste buds, and he drank it in. He’d needed her to make the first move, to set the pace, because if it had been up to him, he would have stalked to her, whirled her against his tailgate, and hoisted her legs around his waist the moment he’d seen her dancing with the butterflies instead of standing like an awkward one-night stand, wondering where he stood.

He’d been thinking about her lips nonstop and what her hair felt like anchored in his grip, reliving for the second night in a row as he watched her sleeping, how responsive she’d been to him as they’d worked one out in that bar. He’d thought about her lean legs cradling his hips as he ground into her on a repeating loop in his brain. He’d shut himself in the bathroom to take himself in his fist just to jerk one out before he could even consider leaving the house this morning so he wouldn’t walk around with a semi all day chafing against his fly, intoxicated by her feminine footprint strewn about his house in the span of mere hours, so keyed up, wanting to wake her and work another round out of his system but held in check by the mere thread of himself that was still a gentleman.

Yet, he was still unprepared to feel her now.

It was so new. He’d sowed his wild oats in college until Isabella had shown up at his dorm room in angry tears, a positive pregnancy test in hand. He’d had the occasional hookups since she’d left him. But he’d never invited a woman into his home. Not when he had only one shot at raising his boys and setting a good example.

“What truck?” He kissed his way over to her ear as she mewed and sifted her fingers up and down his nape, making him shiver. He narrowly avoided stabbing his eye on one of her pencils, which knocked the brim of his hat instead.

She opened her mouth to answer, and greedy as he was, his lips roved back across her cheek to suckle that lower lip.

Her words seemed to die on her lips as her tongue flicked against his. Her chest arched into him as his fingers tightened on her. How hot would it be to take her, right here, out in the countryside like nature had intended?

“It’s out for delivery,” she breathed against his lips. “I need to get back to the house.”

“You bought a new truck?” Tyler pulled back an inch and dipped his head to get a read on her face, furrowing his brow.

She furrowed her own, still pressed against him, as if it was a foolish question. “Um, yeah.”

She slipped too soon from his grip and began gathering her backpack and clipboard. And those work gloves in her back pocket as she bent over? She was a country dude’s fantasy. Bold, charismatic, pretty, and not afraid to get her hands dirty. Amazing she’d gone to Ridgeport Prep, the boarding school she’d mentioned yesterday. All the kids in high school way out in little ole Alpine, Texas, had made fun of Ridgeport for being the snooty rich kid school for people out of touch with reality, his friends always forgetting that Tyler came from one of the wealthiest families in Texas. He’d been raised with a silver spoon, but his pops had made him earn the right to eat off it. People often forgot he came from money because he never looked or acted like it.

She shrugged. “There’s no way insurance won’t total out Buford, and it was completely paid off, so I’ll reimburse myself when they cut me a check.”

“Buford? What the hell are you talking about? I swear, you make my head spin.”

She laughed, powering down her survey equipment perched on her tripod to pack it in.

“When I bought it in grad school to get to research sites and haul my gear, the sales rep said GMCs were an old man’s truck and tried to sell me some souped-up Dodge Ram with hot pink camo shock absorbers. I don’t know.” She shrugged and screwed her lips and pert little nose sideways. “Buford sounded like an old dude’s name, so…Buford it was.”

“You named your truck. That’s something me and my brothers would do.”

“Just call me one of the guys.” She winked.

He eyed her hips from behind while she rummaged in her backpack to wedge her water jug in the toggled straps stretched across the shell. She flashed her eyes over her ass at him.

“You definitely ain’t one of the guys, Tie-Dye.” He jerked his head back and forth. “If they let you hang with them, they had other intentions I promise you.”

She stood up, cheeks flushing like a blushing virgin. She propped her gold-rimmed, wide-framed sunglasses, like something Paris Hilton would wear, onto her head, the nose support tangling in her hair, and stripped off her hiking shirt that was damp with sweat to reveal the whole of her worn-out tank top, toned, lean arms, soft and light compared to his darkened, sun-bronzed skin. And those amber eyes… They stunned like they were still brand new.

“You just bought a truck, like that?” He snapped his fingers.

She shrugged. “It’s not like I could get to a dealership.”

“I would have driven you into town if you needed to go.”

“That sounds an awful lot like an attachment.”

He grimaced at the easy way she brushed his offer off. “That’s just a guy being nice considering all your shit’s been destroyed.”

“You’ve got a thousand other things to do. I didn’t want to get in the way,” she said, softer now as she broke down her total station and packed it in a neoprene sleeve.

“Like, you bought it online?”

She laughed, a pretty sound he liked hearing, yet feeling confused, wanting to kiss her again, but still feeling an ounce of sting from that smarting remark about attachments. “Yeah, yesterday afternoon.”

“Without test-driving it?”

“OMG, I bet you’d put together a spreadsheet of choices, list pros and cons, test-drive them all, list prices, gas mileage, recall histories, and then brood over it for a month.”