The Cowboy's Texas Sky (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 2)

Travis’s eyes darted back to her truck and the long, green Stanley thermos lying sideways across the dash. Was it empty? His throbbing pulse kickstarted now. Sky wanted to see him, maybe as much as he wanted to see her, just wouldn’t admit it.

Fine, he’d break the ice. “You just gonna ignore me, gir—Sky—Skylar?” he choked. Awesome, man. How easily his pet names rolled right off the tongue.

But it worked. Her wide blue eyes landed upon him. He jutted his chin in further acknowledgment. Jammed his hands in his jeans pockets.

She gazed openly at him…gorgeous. That blue tank top made her eyes positively sparkle like drops of sky against her sun-bronzed skin. Hell, they’d been pretty in the ED but distressed and shadowed in the artificial lighting. Here, in the sunshine, they glittered with old familiarity and new freshness, both sentiments like a smack to the cheek—as if he needed another. How many times had he gazed into them adoringly on dates and joyrides? Or looked down his belly at them as she brought him to the peak of ecstasy or into them as he did the same for her?

How many times had he wiped a tear from those eyes, all shimmery and watery?

His gaze roved over her airbag bruise. Not as bad as it had looked yesterday when it had been swollen and reddened. No, it was fainter now, but it still revived that old anger, that the dad she should have been able to trust the most had been the one she couldn’t trust at all.

Her chest heaved up and down, her eyes trailed over his body with no shame, over his shoulders and arms and chest snug in his faded T-shirt and jeans and fly, where they lingered… Yeah, he knew how much she’d at one time loved to feather those fingertips over his sensitive shaft to tease him and watch him melt backward against the truck seat, limbs turning to jelly, unable to move beneath her entrancing caresses. Was she remembering, too, with her unabashed gaze? Everywhere her eyes touched left a trail of heat on him, stirring those painful spirals of lust within him.

She smiled. It didn’t meet her frosty eyes.

“Oh, hi, Travis.”

In spite of everything, he couldn’t help the amusement pulling his lips up. Oh, hi.

He watched her swallow and slouched his thumbs though his belt loops, waiting. The ball was in her court now. Uncertainty skittered across her face. Judging by the way his blood was rushing in his ears, he was nervous seeing her, too.

“I’ll grab your coffee, girl,” Lydia said, eyeing back and forth between them. “I need to check on my customers inside anyway.”

Lydia scurried through the door, leaving them alone.

Skylar, abandoned by her friend, worked her lips against each other, as if she was about to say something, rethinking it. She bit her succulent lower lip, then notched up her chin, pasting that insincere smile back on her face that had fallen.

“I didn’t realize you lived out here.”

“I don’t,” he replied. “I’m over the county line.”

“You drove all the way out here for breakfast?” She leveled a disbelieving look at him that only pulled those sexy lips into a pout.

“Nope, I drove all the way out here to see you.”

Again, she watched him as he let her sit on his reply, rocking on the heels of his boots. He had no shame, never had with her. May as well be honest.

She cleared her throat, but there was no mistaking the blush that captured her cheeks, belying her unyielding, hard-ass mannerisms which gave her an edge that he was loathe to admit was alluring. So he still did that to her, too. Maybe there was hope for them—

What the hell, man, you called her about your dog, not to get in her Levi’s.But he wasn’t the shell of a man in a wheelchair who’d made that decision anymore. Seeing her yesterday hadn’t been nearly so painful as he’d once thought it would be.

“I got your message this morning. About your dog,” she said, as if reading his mind. “How’d you know I had clinic today?”

He shrugged, thumbs still loops on his jeans. “I didn’t. Wishful thinking.”

He chewed his cheek. Yeah, he was that puppy following her around again whether he liked it or not.

She smiled as if the thought of it pleased her. Then exhaled, the frost thawing a degree. “Go ahead and bring him to the clinic. Just have to deal with a distended feline stomach first, but I’ll work him in right after.”

She turned and reached for the door.

“You’re gonna walk away?” he asked.

“Yup. I just need a coffee, not an ex-boyfriend. One is strong and satisfying, the other is, well…” She eyed him up and down again like she was judging a 4-H heifer.

Oh man. Being compared to coffee and coming up short. She was still angry about something. Or frustrated. Or both.

“Naw, baby, you used to cry out in my ears. I definitely satisfied.” He popped that dimple for good measure, but shit, what was he doing? Had he just said that out loud?