Dark Horse: Bad Boy Cowboy Romance Read online

  He pulled open one of the drawers of my kitchen and fished out a couple of forks, passing one over to me. "Here, try it."

  Feeling a bit like I was experimenting with some new cuisine, I took the offered fork and, tilting it sideways, pushed it down gingerly into the soft egg on top of the still-steaming cubes of potato. Sure enough, the fork sank smoothly through the egg white and, as soon as it pierced the yolk, the golden liquid of the egg yolk flowed out and over the scrambled hash beneath. I let out a little cry of surprise.

  Lance was still watching me and smiling. "Go on, taste it," he encouraged, lifting up his own plate and piercing the yolk of his egg.

  I felt a little unsure as I took a bite, but it smelled delicious, so why doubt the taste? And sure enough, despite the heat, it did taste amazing! The egg was thick and buttery, the potatoes were steaming and salty, and that vegetable - zucchini? - added a little bit of crunch. When I swallowed, I felt a little bit of heat in the aftertaste. That must have been that pepper stuff that Lance had mentioned.

  "So? How is it?" he asked as I swallowed that bite.

  I already had my fork down reaching for another bite. "It's great!" I exclaimed, not caring about the rudeness of talking with a full mouth. "You should make this all the time!"

  I blushed a little after a second, as I realized what I'd just suggested. Lance didn't say anything, at least, but the man busied himself with his own food, and for a few seconds the only sound in the kitchen was the clinking of our forks.

  "Listen, I'll be heading out after I finish cleaning up from cooking," the man spoke up after another minute. "I don't want to be any trouble."

  "No, that's okay! No rush!" I burst out, forcing myself to put down my fork for a moment before I shoveled the rest of the food into my mouth like a pig. Where were my manners? "In fact, you don't have to leave until you're ready." I racked my brain for some reason for him to stick around. "Did you, um, take a shower yet?"

  "What, do I smell?" Lance grinned after a moment, trying to show that this was a joke. The smile looked a little strange on his otherwise stern face. "No, I showered already. I had to leave my shirt out to let it dry off a bit, so that's why I'm not fully dressed." He gestured down at himself.

  "Well, where are you going to go?" I pressed. A little part of me wondered why I was pushing so hard, but I did have to admit that I wouldn't mind having a little company around my house, at least for a little longer.

  Lance set down his plate, frowning slightly. "Honestly, I don't really have any destination in mind," he admitted. "I'm just sort of making my way, seeing where I end up. Shadow and I don't need much, just some open country to explore."

  "Well, then, why don't you stick around a bit here?" I burst out. "You could certainly help me with some stuff around the house and the rest of the property! And in exchange, you could stick around and keep putting that spare bedroom to use."

  The man wiggled his fork at me. "You just want someone to cook you more breakfast, don't you?" he teased.

  "Well, maybe," I admitted. A little part of me was shrieking at the offer I'd just made, but I forced myself not to listen to that part of my brain for the moment. "Come on - you can take off whenever you want, but I could use the help. And my letting you stay here would be a way for me to say thank you for helping me out the other night."

  He hesitated a little longer, but then crossed his arms. "What exactly do you need help with around here?" he asked.

  I quickly racked my mind for some excuse. "Well, the faucet leaks," I started, pointing over at the kitchen sink. "And there's always more work to be done with the property's exterior fence. And I've been meaning to clear out some of the brush around here, but I just can't do it all on my own, and I can't afford right now to hire laborers to come in and do it. If you stick around, though, I'll make sure that Shadow gets fed, just like Merlot."

  "So you want me to take care of your odd jobs for you."

  "In exchange for free room and board!" I added quickly. "Or, at least, free room. I'll pay for the food, but you might need to cook it."

  Lance leaned back against the counter for a minute, his arms still crossed across his bare chest, just below his nipples. I tried not to notice how a little trail of hair led down the middle of his chest, down to his belly button, running over the textured surface of his abdominal muscles.

  "I suppose that I could stick around for a few days, at least," he finally allowed. "But your fiancé isn't going to have a problem with this?"

  "Who, Marsden?" To be honest, I hadn't even considered the question. "Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine with it. It's not as if you're sleeping in my bed, after all!" I gave a little chuckle to show that this was a joke.

  Actually, Marsden would probably raise a fuss over the whole thing. He wasn't a fan of me living out here on my own in the first place. Even though I could say that I was letting Lance stay around so that he could keep an eye out and protect me, I couldn't see my fiancé feeling any better about the situation.

  But then again, Marsden didn't own me, and I could make my own decisions. And right now, my decision was to let Lance stick around and help me out with fixing some of the problems around my house. Decision made.

  Lance was speaking again. I quickly pulled my attention back front and center.

  "Well, if I'm staying, you'll need to pick up some stuff," he was saying. "I'll make you a shopping list, but you're going to need some food, for one thing."

  "What do you mean? I've got plenty of peanut butter and jelly," I pointed out.

  I saw the man roll his eyes at me! "Peanut butter and jelly isn't a meal," he groaned. "Listen, I'll handle the cooking. Obviously it's not your strong suit. But if I'm going to stay, we're going to eat some real food."

  I thought about arguing that peanut butter and jelly was most definitely real food - it certainly kept me going just fine! - but decided not to press the issue. "I'll grab you the spare set of my keys, so that if you need to go into town to get any supplies, you can," I replied to him. "And I'll see about making a list of some of the things around here that could use some work, to keep you busy."

  Lance nodded, but as I started to stand up, he held out his hand to me. "To living together, Miss Monteclaire," he suggested.

  I didn't let myself hesitate as I shook the proffered hand. "To a partnership, Mr. Lance."

  Chapter ten

  The next few days went better than I expected.

  Somehow, I'd expected that things would feel, well, different, with a man around the house. I expected to be running into Lance all the time, to always feel like I was out in public and couldn't relax, knowing that someone else was around and might intrude on my private time at any moment.

  But in truth, things didn't feel that way at all.

  Sure, they did feel different. But I quickly became used to walking into the living room and seeing Lance sitting on my couch, reading one of the books from my bookshelf. Strangely enough, for a man who spent most of his time out in the wild and working with his hands, Lance had a voracious appetite for books, and I watched in amazement as he steadily chewed his way through my bookshelf.

  But unlike with most of the other people I knew, I never felt any pressure to keep some sort of conversation going with Lance if I didn't have something to say. When I wanted to talk, I could just open my mouth and start talking, and I knew that he'd listen to whatever I had to say. If I didn't want to talk, I could come into my living room, drop into a chair, and turn into a blob of exhausted pudding without eliciting any comment from the man.

  And the food, oh, the food! I nearly had a heart attack the first time that the man provided me with a grocery list. "You really need all of this stuff?" I exclaimed, staring in dismay at the length of carefully written items. There had to be at least forty or fifty different things on this list!

  He just shrugged back at me. "You're the one with the horribly under-stocked kitchen," he replied, no accusation or anger in his voice. "If you want me to be able to cook anythin
g that tastes decent, I'll need what's on the list. At least you've got good pots and pans."

  I did have to agree there. The pots and pans in the house were one of the Monteclaire family heirlooms, passed down faithfully from mother to daughter for as long as I could remember. Sure, I didn't know how to use most of them, but I still kept them carefully preserved, lying to myself each year when I promised myself I'd sign up for a cooking class at some point.

  I thought about arguing some more, but eventually decided that this wasn't going to become a fight that I'd win. Besides, I did want to see what other skills the man possessed in the kitchen. I winced at the eventual bill, but Lance looked quite pleased when I returned from shopping laden down with bags of groceries.

  Very quickly, he proved that he wasn't just bragging about his skills in the kitchen. That very night, he whipped up some sort of delicious baked chicken dish, with the meat pounded thin and wrapped around a core of thinly shaved vegetables and sauce. He didn't say a word as I wolfed down the incredibly tasty food, but I caught him grinning a couple of times when he didn't think that I was looking.

  But fine, I thought to myself. Let the man feel good about showing off his cooking skills. I'm sure that it couldn't actually be that hard to properly cook a chunk of chicken. It's just meat, right? Apply some heat, wait for it to be cooked, and then cover it in sauce. How difficult could that really be?

  Even better than the food, however, were the conversations. I'd always told myself that I was quite happy living on my own, that I didn't need anyone to keep a conversation going with, but it wasn't until Lance's arrival that I realized how much I missed being able to share some of the thoughts in my head.

  "Lance, do you ever think about destiny?" I asked one evening, idly swirling the liquid in my wine glass as I gazed up at the wooden ceiling of the farmhouse's dining room.

  He was clearing the dishes, but glanced over at my question. "In what way?" he asked back, sounding a little guarded.

  I shrugged, taking a sip. "I don't know, really. But sometimes, especially late at night, I'll just stay awake and wonder whether I'm really making the most of my life, if I'm actually making the right choices. Sometimes, I just sit and think about other choices I might have made. Could they have put my life in a better place than it is now?"

  He didn't reply, but I heard the running water in the kitchen as Lance washed off the plates from the night's meal. Instead of ascribing to my time-tested method of dumping all of the dishes into the sink and letting them soak until I had a full stack to clean, he insisted on cleaning up right away. I waited patiently, sipping at my wine and listening to the sound of the running water in the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, Lance returned, dropping back into his chair and setting his beer bottle down on the table with a clink. "Destiny, huh?" he repeated. With his drawl, he stretched out the word a little.

  "Yeah. Like, other choices that you could make in your life. Other paths that you could have taken."

  "I think we all have lots of paths not taken," he mused, not really agreeing to anything. "But who's to say if those would turn out any better than what we have now? Or if we'd just end up in the same place, no matter what we choose to do?"

  I turned to face him, putting down my glass. "Well, I'm sure that my life could have ended up differently, if I made some different choices!" I insisted.

  He looked at me. "Like what?"

  "Well..." I sat back, my eyes looking off to one side as I thought back. "I went to college, but I never really pursued anything with my degree. Maybe, if I'd actually gone to work instead of coming back to watch over the family property, I might have made something of myself."

  "What was your degree in?" he asked, taking a sip of beer.

  "Um... entrepreneurship." I narrowed my eyes at Lance, waiting to see if he was going to laugh at me, but the man kept his face still and composed. "I always wanted to start my own company, and the Monteclaires used to own several businesses."

  "So why didn't you?" he asked, after I fell quiet for a minute.

  I shrugged. "I planned to. But just after I graduated, I came back here to look after my dad before he passed away. And once he died, I inherited the house and the land, and I've got enough savings to live off of the returns as long as I don't spend too much. I couldn't really bring myself to leave all of it behind to jump into something new."

  After a second, I shook off the cobwebs of memory clinging to me. "So yeah, maybe I'd be a billionaire business owner if I'd kept going," I joked briskly. "But what about you? What's a path that you left behind?"

  Lance frowned with introspection, and I leaned forward, trying to not make my interest too obvious. Despite that we got into long conversations most evenings, I still felt like I knew very little about his past. Lance kept his lips tightly zipped, most of the time.

  "I could have put down roots," he finally said, still frowning a little. "I sometimes do think about what would have happened if I did that."

  "Roots? Like, staying in one place?" I didn't even know where he was originally from.

  He nodded. "My dad owned a welding shop - fixing cars, mostly, but he worked on anything that folks brought in. My older brother inherited the shop, but I could have stayed, could have worked there, probably been a partner. Would've been enough to pay for a house, probably."

  "Is that where you learned to fix things?" I asked.

  Another nod. "Yeah, I liked the mechanical aspect, building and fixing things with my hands. Liked that, but didn't like dealing with the customers. And I always kept an eye on the horizon, too. Think that's why I left."

  "What if you had stayed?" I inquired gently. "Where do you think you'd be?"

  It took a few seconds before Lance answered. "Maybe have a family," he mused quietly. "Get a house, get hitched, settle down. Get a kid, a boat, maybe, just take it easy. Be a part of the community."

  After he fell silent, we both sat there quietly for a few minutes, finishing our drinks.

  Finally, I set down my wine glass with a clink on the table. "Well, glad we know what we gave up," I announced brightly. "You could have been a dull, boring dad, and I could have been a mean, cutthroat billionaire businesswoman. Glad we both dodged those bullets!"

  I had to look hard to see it, but I caught a smile dance briefly across his features. "Close call," he agreed.

  I stood up. "And now, I think another glass of wine is in order."

  Chapter eleven

  That wasn't our last conversation about destiny, although most nights we kept the topic less serious. Bit by bit, just from proximity, we opened up to each other.

  By a month later, I was used to emerging from my bedroom each morning to find Lance shirtless in the kitchen, cooking up breakfast. "Just something thrown together," he'd always defend the food, as if he needed to make some sort of excuse.

  I never complained, of course. Most of the time, my mouth was too full of delicious food and hot coffee to even think of voicing any objections. Besides, this was better than I'd eaten in ages!

  After breakfast, we'd often part ways. Lance would head out into town to get supplies for whatever project he was working on that day, or else he'd just go straight out into the fields if he was instead finishing up a task he'd started on a previous day.

  And me? I had a wedding to plan!

  After my outburst at Marsden at the Derby, I'd sulked for a week, but eventually I came around. It didn't hurt that Marsden kept on sending bouquets of flowers out to my house, until I started running low on vases to store the big blooms of roses and wildflowers. Somehow, the man apparently managed to forget the dozen times I'd told him that sunflowers were my favorite, but I still appreciated the gesture - and forgetting my favorite flower just seemed exactly like the sort of thing Marsden would do entirely on accident, without meaning any offense.

  Finally, after the tenth or so bouquet, I picked up my phone and called him. "Okay, okay!" I begged him, laughing a little at how I sounded. "I forgive you! You
can stop sending flowers!"

  "Oh, great," Marsden replied promptly, also chuckling. "All of the florists around here are starting to recognize me by name and ask if I just want to pick up the usual order!"

  We both fell silent for a minute.

  "So, um, does that mean that you're going to keep planning the wedding?" he asked after the silence had dragged on a bit. "I mean, I'd help, but I've got a lot going on with the cattle right now. I don't have a lot of free time."

  Guiltily, I remembered that I hadn't yet told Marsden about the lodger staying at my house - or even about my fall and near-death experience at all. "Of course, that's all right," I replied, feeling like I had to make it up to my fiancé for making the decision to invite Lance to stay. "I'll start getting things in order."

  "Great, great!" he replied. "And maybe I can take you out to dinner one of these nights? I haven't gotten to see you in a while."

  I smiled. That was really kind of touching, how he missed me! "Sure, dinner sounds nice," I replied.

  "And then, maybe after dinner, I'll come stay out at the farmhouse? Wouldn't want to just drop you off and leave you there all alone, you know!"

  I knew that Marsden was angling at the fact that we hadn't slept together in a while, but his mention of staying over made another little spasm of guilt rush through me. After all, if he stayed over, he'd definitely meet Lance.

  "Yeah, I'd like that," I agreed. I wouldn't tell him now, I decided, but he could meet Lance when he came to pick me up. And then, I'd make sure to let him have his fun with my body that evening, to prove that Lance didn't throw anything off.

  We agreed on a date that Friday, with Marsden stopping by the house around six to pick me up. I hung up the phone, smiled dreamily for a minute or so, and then reached for my computer to figure out how in the world to go about planning a wedding.