Billionaire Mountain Man

She looked up at me, her wide eyes needy in a way I hadn’t seen before. “I’d like to go sometime.” Her shy smile widened just a little. “If you still want to.”

I did a ten count in my head to keep from leaping from my chair and whooping with joy. I played it cool. Well, mostly cool. I couldn’t stop the grin that spread over my face, so wide it hurt my cheeks.

“Of course, I still want to.” I stood, shifting the dynamic between us so she was looking up to see my face and I was looking down to see hers. “Do you have a place you like? Or do you want me to pick? We can go right now.”

She giggled at that, and I smiled wider, loving the sound of her laughter. “I’m gross from working with the horses all day.”

“We’ll be gross together,” I told her. I’d been out in the field all day. I probably stank to high heaven, but I didn’t want to give her an excuse to wiggle out of the date. Because this was definitely a date. I didn’t wait for her to come up with another reason why we couldn’t go out tonight. She followed as I walked out to my truck. I started it up, turned around in the driveway, and drove out to the main road.

“I have just the place for us to go,” I said.

She relaxed into the seat, smoothing her ponytail over her shoulder. “I’ve never done this before.”

I looked over at her, grinning, and had to keep from reaching to make sure she was really sitting here next to me after a long week of thinking she might never meet my eyes again. “What? Gone on a date?”

She laughed, and I felt that tingling in my gut. Goddamn, I could sit and listen to her laugh all day and never get tired of it.

“I’ve been on a date before, Pete. But never spur of the moment like this.” She wrinkled her long nose again, still grinning. “And never without taking a shower first.”

I had to laugh. “Yeah, this is a first for me, too. I normally don’t stink quite so much.” And, I did stink. But if she didn’t care, I didn’t either. The tension of the week was gone. Whatever I’d done wrong on Monday had been forgiven, and she didn’t seem so careful around me anymore.

The restaurant was the best Italian place in Round Rock. Okay, it was also the only Italian place in Round Rock, if you didn’t count Pizza Hut and Dominos. I’d never taken a girl here before, so I hoped we weren’t underdressed in our jeans, boots, and dirt-smeared t-shirts.

We sat in a booth near the rear of the restaurant, grinning like teenagers at how the hostess had looked us up and down for a solid minute before begrudgingly showing us to our seats. We ordered a few drinks before cracking open our menus.

“Have you ever been here before?” Emma asked, peeking over her menu at me.

“Nope, but it looked fancy from o

utside, didn’t it?” I grinned. “Dressed the way we are, we probably should’ve just rolled past a drive-thru and ate in the truck.”

“Probably,” she agreed, smiling down at her menu. “But they don’t have chicken parmesan at the drive thru.”

When the waiter came back with a basket of bread and our drinks — a beer for me and a glass of red wine for Emma — we both ordered the chicken parmesan.

Emma fished a piece of bread out of the basket and started nibbling on the crust, drawing my attention right to her perfect mouth. “Is this what you wanted to do when you were young?” she asked. “Work on the ranch?”

I took a piece of bread, too, tearing it in half while I thought of how to answer. “I never really thought about it. I’m happy on the ranch. But I don’t think I ever considered the possibility of doing anything else. I hated school. I just didn’t like sitting still all day. Now that I’m an adult and no one can make me, I don’t plan to sit still again for the rest of my life.”

Emma smiled at that, her straight white teeth flashing in the candlelight flickering in the middle of the table. Her green eyes drank up that light and looked much darker than they usually did, like precious emeralds hidden in some ancient tomb I’d been lucky enough to discover.

“I liked school,” she said. “But I like being outside in the sunshine, too. I wouldn’t be happy doing anything that kept me penned up inside. I need to be around animals. I need to feel like I worked hard at the end of the day.”

We had that much in common, I thought. “What part of growing up on a farm did you like most?” I asked, speaking gently, both of us leaning into each other as we tore through the bread. We’d put in a long day. I for one was starved half to death.

“Spending so much time with my daddy,” she said. “He’s a quiet man, but we never had to talk to feel close to one another.”

The way she handled herself made a lot more sense now. The quiet gene had to run in the family. Someone like me must’ve thrown her completely off balance. I’d been a talker since the cradle. But she was here. It had to mean she was interested, even if I couldn’t keep from joking and laughing the day away in between working hard. I reminded myself not to get my hopes up. This girl was still a locked safe.

Our meals came next, and we refreshed our drinks and kept talking. Every time Emma smiled, a warm tingling filled up my insides, and my heart beat a little faster. I’d been with girls before, but this was different.

“Do you want dessert?” I asked after we’d finished. She looked stuffed. I touched my neck just below my Adam’s apple. “I’m full to about here, but if you want something, I’ll try to help you eat it.”

She laughed, and that warmth spread from my full belly to between my legs. I couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. I’d never wanted to kiss someone so much in my life. I’d go crazy if I didn’t put my attention somewhere else.

“I don’t think I could eat another bite at gunpoint,” she said. She wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were sparkling in that way I was getting to know meant she was happy.

I paid the check in cash as soon as it came and we left the restaurant together, still chattering companionably. The drive back to the ranch passed by too quickly. I wanted to find some excuse to spend more time with her, but I just pulled into the driveway a little ways behind her sporty blue sedan. We got out of my truck, slamming the doors at the same time.