Cowboy Take Me Away (Rough Riders 16)

Cal snorted and didn’t say a word, but he knew what was on his brother’s mind, probably because the same thing was on his. “The blonde tornado is givin’ me the stink eye so I’d better see what’s up.”

Carson’s gaze remained on Carolyn until she sensed him staring at her.

After passing the baby to Vi, she started toward him.

The background noise and the groups of people faded away and all he saw was her.

Carolyn moved slower now. She looked a little different. After her accident a decade ago, her hair follicles had sustained damage and her hair had never grown back the right way. He’d expected her vanity would force her into wearing a wig. But she refused and kept her hair in a military crew-cut style. Those once blonde tresses were completely silver. Now she was the very definition of a hot, sexy and hip grandma.

She stopped in front of him.

“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. How’s about we run off together?”

“Does that line usually work for you, cowboy?”

He traced the edge of her jaw. “It did once. Got me what I wanted and it lasted for six glorious decades. So I wanna make sure you’re onboard for the next six decades with me.”

“Hmm. Well, I might have to think about it… There are pros and cons.”

“Such as?”

“The cons? You are still too handsome for your own good. And you’d prefer to answer all challenges with your fists.You still sneak the occasional cigarette. You cuss like a sailor. You drive like an idiot.” Carolyn placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. “The pros? You’ve got a full head of hair and your own teeth. You make me laugh. You set my blood on fire. You are still the best man I’ve ever known. So, I’ll keep you around for a little while longer.”

“Whew. I was worried there for a second you might want to upgrade this model for a newer one.”

“The training period for a new model is far too long. Besides, they’ve replaced all your worn out parts.”

In the last decade he’d had his other hip replaced and both knees. Most days he felt pretty good. He missed riding. He probably always would.

Carson leaned forward and kissed her. “How’s my bride?”

“Been sixty years since I was a blushing bride.”

“I can still getcha to blush though.”

“That you can, wild man McKay.” Carolyn fussed with the buttons on his shirt.

“Something on your mind?”

She looked up at him, worry in her eyes. “Liesl baked the anniversary cake. She used my Aunt Hulda’s recipe for the traditional German chocolate butter cake we had at our wedding. She’s hounding me to taste it to see if it’s authentic. And I don’t know what to say.”

Another strange effect of Carolyn’s accident; she’d lost all sense of taste. She could tell the difference between hot and cold; differentiate textures, but nothing else. After the six-month recovery period, when she attempted to return to daily cooking for them, she’d realized she couldn’t cook at all. She had some sort of disconnect in her visual language skills which resulted in difficulty reading and she couldn’t follow the most basic recipe.

So at age seventy-five he’d finally learned to cook. The only good thing about that? Since she couldn’t taste, she couldn’t tell the meals he prepared tasted like shit.

They ate out a lot.

And because cooking had been such a big part of what’d defined her, they’d kept her loss of skills to themselves. Carson told anyone who asked that after fifty years of kitchen duty she’d officially hung up her oven mitts and retired.

He curled his hand around her face. “Liesl is not lookin’ for the truth, sugar. She’s lookin’ for validation from her Gran-gran because she respects the hell out of you. So tell her whatever she did surpassed the original recipe and you don’t remember it ever tastin’ that good.”

“You always know just what to say, silver-tongued devil that you are,” she murmured.

“How much longer do we have to stay?”

“Another hour or so. They’re doing the whole cake-cutting thing and first dance thing, which is weird because we didn’t have either of those things at our wedding. I doubt they’re expecting us to stick around after that.”

“Good. I have plans for us.” He brushed an openmouthed kiss at the base of her neck. “Nekkid plans that include you, me, our hot tub and a bottle of bubbly.”

She laughed. “You really believe that hot tub is the fountain of youth, don’t you?”

“Yep. Makes me feel twenty years younger.”

“Lord, crazy man, I love you. You really will be chasing me around when you’re a hundred and five, won’t you?”

Carson smiled. “Count on it.”