Overprotective Cowboy: A Mulbury Boys Novel (Hope Eternal Ranch Romance Book 2) Page 11

  Her heart expanded a couple of sizes, and all she could do was smile widely and nod. If she tried to speak, she was afraid her voice would break, and everything inside would spill out. She turned away from the group and took a bite of her cookie, hoping that would give her a moment to collect herself.

  A warm hand slid along her waist, and Emma turned toward Ted. “Thank you for the cookies, Em.” He grinned at her, and he looked so darn happy. Beyond happy. Full of joy.

  “Sure,” she said, painting on a smile she hoped was even half as happy as his.

  He leaned closer to her, and Emma’s pulse jumped around in her chest. What was he doing? Was he going to kiss her right there? Right now?

  She hadn’t kissed anyone in so long, and she did not want their first kiss to happen in this kitchen, with everyone watching.

  She couldn’t even believe she’d thought about their first kiss. But, oh, she wanted to kiss him. Just not right now.

  “Dinner tonight?” he whispered, his lips practically touching her ear. “Just me and you. I can leave the ranch with you.”

  All of Emma’s cells vibrated, but she managed to say, “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “Great,” he said, backing up. “Ma.” He turned toward her. “You have to try these cookies. I think they have your secret ingredient in them.”

  Later that night, after Emma had taken a nap and finished the schedule for the full two weeks of monarch butterfly activities, after everyone had been emailed, she stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, twisting and turning to make sure the sandals she’d chosen looked okay with her outfit.

  She’d chosen a pair of black shorts that went all the way to her knee, and they slimmed her legs. She’d always been a little thicker in the leg, and she’d liked it during the couple of years her mother had paid for gymnastics. Now, as she thought about Ted showing up to take her to dinner, she didn’t as much.

  But the black shorts helped. She’d paired a pink shirt with them, with buttons up the chest and sleeves that went all the way to her elbow. She’d learned that if she covered up a little more than the other women on the ranch, she looked better.

  “These sandals are not it,” she said, kicking them off. She turned back to her closet and picked up the silver pair. They would work, and she decided not to spend another moment on her footwear.

  The doorbell rang, and Emma ran her fingers through her hair, that sound a trigger now. She thought of that blue truck and that man walking across the lawn with a clipboard. She hadn’t had any phone calls. No texts. The truck and the man hadn’t returned to the ranch.

  Ted had seen him on the service road, and he hadn’t seen him again, though he went out to the river every day after the horseback riding lessons started. Then he came to the homestead to enjoy the air conditioning and to see Emma.

  A sense of warmth filled her, and she left her bedroom.

  “There you are,” Jess said, meeting her in the hall. “Ted is here, and he has flowers.” Her brown eyes glinted with surprise and pleasure.

  Emma smiled. “How romantic.”

  “You two are going out?”

  “Yes,” Emma said.

  “Wow,” Jess said. “I haven’t seen you date anyone in the whole time I’ve known you.”

  Emma reached out and touched Jess’s arm. “That’s because all the men look right past me to you.” She grinned at Jess, who was beautiful, inside and out. Emma had wished many times over the past six years since Jess had come to the ranch that she could be the type of person Jess was.

  But she was slowly starting to realize that she couldn’t be anyone else. She was Emma Clemson, and she had to figure out what that meant.

  “Please,” Jess said, scoffing. “Look at you. You look so amazing. He’s going to lose his mind.”

  “You think so?” Emma looked down at her shoes again, still unsure about them.

  “Yes, now come on. I left him in the front room.” Jess linked her arm through Emma’s, and they walked into the front room together.

  Ted had sat down on the couch, and he sprang to his feet, the bouquet of flowers in his hand obviously picked from somewhere out on the ranch, and his smile just as brilliant as before. “Hey.”

  “Here she is,” Jess said. “You two have fun.” She made a hasty exit, and Emma had never been more grateful for Jess.

  “Hey,” she said, accepting the flowers from him. “Thank you, Teddy. These are beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice catching on the last syllable. He cleared his throat. “And I guess I’m going to have three people who call me Teddy, because I kinda like it when you say it.”

  Emma leaned down and inhaled the flowers. “If it’s okay with you,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “Do you want to wait while I put these in water, or should we go?”

  “Oh, I just picked them from along the river,” he said. “You don’t need to put them in water.”

  “You looked like you had a great time with your mom.” Emma looked at him, a new level of vulnerability entering her system. She was sure he’d be able to see it in her eyes, and sure enough, he paused.

  “It was a great day,” he said, letting his hand come close to hers. His fingers trailed over hers. “Do you see your family a lot?”

  “Hardly ever,” Emma said. “I’m going to put these in some water.” She turned to go into the kitchen, but Jess appeared in the doorway, and she held a vase. Emma handed her the flowers with a murmured, “Thank you,” and turned back to Ted. She reached for his hand, and he secured hers in his.

  She enjoyed the warmth of his skin, the strength in his fingers, and the thrilling zing that went up her arm and across her shoulders. “Ready?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He reached up with his free hand and slid it along the side of her face and around the back of her neck. “Well, almost.” He leaned down, hesitating.

  She met his eyes, and she found fear in his. It pounded in her veins too. “I haven’t dated anyone in a decade,” she blurted.

  “Neither have I,” he whispered. “But I really want to kiss you.”

  Emma let her gaze drop to his mouth, and oh, she wondered what that beard would feel like against her face. What his lips would feel like against hers. She let go of his hand and slid it up his arm.

  “Kiss me, then,” she said, and she smiled at him.

  His lips curved up too, and he pulled in a long breath. Then he kissed her, matching his mouth to hers perfectly, as if he’d done it countless times before.

  Emma had never been kissed with the level of care and tenderness with which Ted kissed her, and she felt herself being reborn.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ted could literally not remember the last woman he’d kissed. And it didn’t matter who she was, because as he kissed Emma, he never wanted to kiss anyone else. He seemed to know what he was doing, because she broke the kiss for a moment, took a breath, and kissed him again.

  He threaded his fingers through her hair, and then cradled her face in his hands. He simply couldn’t get enough of her, and he knew it wasn’t because he craved the human touch. He’d spent the day with his family, and he’d hugged his mother at least a dozen times. He’d strolled around the ranch hand-in-hand with his nieces. His sister had linked arms with him while he took them out to the river in the trees.

  He’d gotten his fill of the human touch he’d been deprived of for so long.

  This was something else. Ted wasn’t sure what, but it felt like something good.

  He finally had the good sense to pull away, and he struggled to breathe as his pulse bounced in his chest. Emma sighed and fell back a step, finally opening her eyes. He looked at her, unsure of what to say to a woman after he’d kissed her.

  “Is she still here?” Ginger asked, and not a moment later, she entered the front room. “Oh, good, Emma. I need to talk to you for just a second.”

  Emma held Ted’s gaze for another moment and then she turned back to G
inger. “Yeah?”

  Ginger glanced over her shoulder to Ted. “Sorry, Ted, it’ll just be a moment, I swear.”

  “Take your time,” he said, moving over to the couch he’d sat on before. It was comfortable enough, but this whole room smelled like dust. The women obviously didn’t use it much, and a vein of stupidity moved through him for coming to the front door to pick up Emma as if their relationship was traditional.

  It wasn’t, and he knew that.

  He’d wanted to ask her about her time in college, and if that was when she’d met Robert Knight, but he’d been enjoying their morning and evening strolls so much, and he didn’t want to put tension between them or add to her stress level.

  So he hadn’t brought it up. You can tonight, he told himself as the moment stretched into a minute.

  Emma returned a couple of minutes later, an apology on her lips.

  “No problem,” he said, taking her hand and leading her out the front door. She’d drive them to town, because Ted didn’t actually have a driver’s license or a vehicle.

  “So,” he said as he buckled his seat belt. “Where did you go to college?”

  She whipped her head toward him, and Ted saw the nerves in her expression. “Oh, uh, Texas A&M.”

  The warmth in him turned icy. “Emma,” he said as she started to back up. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to dinner.”

  “What?” She pressed on the brake and stopped the car. “Why not?”

  “Because you just lied to me,” he said, swinging his attention out his window. “Five minutes after I kissed you.”

  A few seconds passed, and she asked, “If I tell you the truth, can we go to dinner?”

  “I didn’t realize we needed to negotiate to tell the truth.” He looked at her, lifting his eyebrows. “I’m not going to judge you.”

  “Oh, yes, you will.” She put the car in drive and started down the lane toward the bridge.

  “I just don’t want to be lied to.”

  “Fine,” she said, as if he’d asked her to do something really hard. “I won’t lie to you.”

  Ted wasn’t sure why she wanted to go to dinner if he upset her so much. He told himself that he hadn’t upset her—she was upset with herself.

  “I went to UT Austin,” he said. “I studied economics and business before I went to law school.” And it all felt like it had happened to someone else. Someone Ted no longer was and who he no longer knew.

  Emma gripped the wheel and looked both ways before turning onto the highway. Ted couldn’t help sweeping his gaze left and right, right and left, trying to take everything in. The trees, the curves in the road, just all of it.

  “Could we go to the beach sometime?” he asked. “You know what? Never mind. I want to go to the beach on the first day I’m really free.”

  “You’re free.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m in the reentry program. I’m still a prisoner. In fact, I got a message from my parole officer today. He wants to come in a couple of weeks.” Ted didn’t want to dwell on things that made his heart sink and his eyebrows draw down. So he’d put it out of his mind. If he set the beach as a goal, he’d be able to use it to help himself stay on track should he be tempted to sway.

  Emma drove for a few more miles, the town of Sweet Water Falls coming into view in that time. “I went to Texas A&M International,” she said.

  “That’s in Laredo,” he said. “You said you didn’t live there.”

  “No,” she said, glancing at him. “You asked me if I’d grown up there. I said no, and that wasn’t a lie. I didn’t grow up there.”

  “Is that where you met Robert Knight?”

  Her jaw tightened, and she focused out the windshield as she shook her head.

  “The Knights did a ton of business out of Laredo,” Ted pressed.

  “I met him here,” she said, her voice stiff and flat, with an undercurrent of anger in it. “He was the father of one of my students.” She delivered the line evenly, and Ted sensed there was so much more to this story. He wanted to know it all. He wanted to share the deepest, most secretive parts of himself with this woman, and he wanted to have many more kisses like the one they’d just shared, and more dinners like the one they were about to have.

  Ted hadn’t known the Knights had ever been in Sweet Water Falls, and the lawyer in him wanted to fact-check what she’d said. He’d find other witnesses and people who knew Robert from that time, maybe even track down his kid.

  At the same time, he didn’t want to do any of that. He wanted to trust Emma and trust in the fact that she’d tell him the truth—and all of her secrets, when she was ready.

  “Did you always want to be a teacher?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, her fingers relaxing on the wheel. “What about you? Was there ever anything but being a lawyer for you?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “I was totally going to be in the NBA. Then an astronaut. Then an inventor. It wasn’t until my sophomore or junior year that I gave up the NBA permanently.” He chuckled at the memories that still ran through his mind. “When I didn’t make the basketball team.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said with a smile.

  “Yeah, it was a rough reality,” he said. “After that, I realized I wasn’t going to be an astronaut or an inventor, as I’ve never really had any great ideas.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “Oh, it’s true,” he said. “So I started thinking about what I’d really like to do, and well, I became a lawyer.”

  Emma flashed him a smile, and Ted wanted everything to be lighter. “Sorry I asked about Laredo,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” she said.

  “It’s never fine when a woman uses that word,” he said. “My grandmother taught me that.”

  Emma gave him another smile, and this one was definitely more relaxed. “It really is. I should’ve just told you I went to college there. You’d just seemed interested in the place, and I don’t know. I got nervous.”

  “You don’t need to be nervous around me.” The idea was unfathomable to him. He was the one who should be nervous around her, not the other way around.

  “I’m usually not.”

  “I got too close to your secret, didn’t I?”

  “A little.”

  “You know, if you just told me, then we wouldn’t have to dance around it.”

  “I…need a little more time.”

  “Sure,” Ted said easily, because a man who’d spent almost six years in prison knew there was always more time. Another day. Another week. Another month. “So something light for the rest of the night. If you could have any pet, what would it be and why?”

  She looked at him like he’d lost his mind, and maybe he had. Maybe he should press her on the tough topics and force her to talk to him. But his logical side told him that a woman like Emma would just run—in fact, he’d seen her do that once already. He didn’t want her to do it again.

  “I want a teacup piglet,” she said. “Because they’re so cute, and I’d name her Petunia, and she’d sleep in a little bed in my office while I work, and she’d trot along beside me when I went to feed the baby horses.”

  Ted simply gaped at her, the words teacup piglet not quite making sense in his mind. He started laughing, which definitely lightened the mood, and when she joined in, the moment turned into perfection.

  Minutes and hours combined together into days. Ted sat beside Emma in church, and he liked hanging out with her in her office in the heat of the afternoon. He kissed her every chance he got, because he still wasn’t sure he hadn’t been dreaming when it had happened the first time.

  They didn’t go out again, because the next Friday night found him packing an extra set of clothes in a backpack for his trip to River Bay with Nate.

  His lungs vibrated a little strangely as he folded his gym shorts and tucked them in the bag too. He couldn’t believe he was going back. He’d told himself for the years and years he’d lived in the dormitory that he would not g
o back once he left. He’d turn his back on the place and find a new path in the world.

  “Hey,” Nate said, coming into Ted’s room. He glanced up from the items he’d laid on his bed. Nate hardly looked like the man Ted had bonded with in prison. With the cowboy hat and the facial hair, he definitely looked more rugged. More weathered. More western.

  Ted knew that storm in Nate’s eyes, though. “What’s up?”

  “Ginger says we can’t leave until the horses are fed in the morning.” Nate kept the frown on his face and looked over his shoulder. “And Connor’s downstairs crying his eyes out that he can’t come.”

  “Then let him come,” Ted said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “It is to me,” Nate said quietly, and Ted heard the phantoms in his voice.

  “He’ll have more fun here,” Ted said. “Spence is taking him to the beach, right?”

  “Yes,” Nate said with a sigh. He sank into the armchair in the corner of Ted’s room. “He’ll be fine once we go. I just feel guilty.”

  “Well, don’t,” Ted said, but he knew that was easy for him to say. He didn’t have a five-year-old crying about wanting to go to a prison. When Ted actually thought about it, the idea was ludicrous, but he’d met Connor long before Nate had been released to take care of him. Ward, Nate’s brother, had brought him to River Bay several times.

  “And feeding the horses is fast,” Ted said. “We’ll go out early and together, we’ll get it done. Jess will finish whatever we don’t.”

  “I want to leave by six-thirty,” Nate said. “I don’t want Dallas to think no one is coming. I want to be there before it even starts.”

  “And we will be,” Ted said, sitting down on the bed and facing Nate. “What’s the real problem?”

  “No real problem.” Nate’s gaze skated away from Ted.

  “Sure,” Ted said sarcastically. “Because I’ve never seen you do that before.” He scoffed and shook his head. “You can’t keep a secret from me for long.”

  “No, I can’t,” Nate said, but he still didn’t confess to what was bothering him. Ted had told him about his date with Emma last weekend, and he hadn’t needed to give all the details for Nate to know he’d kissed her, or that he was still worried about her, or that he wanted to help her.