“Where you off to, missie?” Clarence asked, causing Raoul to break the mesmerizing eye contact between him and Charmaine.
“Yeah, where are you off to?” he inquired, too.
“I need to go into town and buy some supplies.”
“Uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he advised.
“Why not?”
“You’re trying to hide from the loan shark. Walking into some store, looking the way you do, is like announcing on a loudspeaker, ‘I am Charmaine. Here I am. Come get me.’ ”
Of course, Charmaine homed in on the most irrelevant part of what he’d said. “What’s wrong with how I look?”
Oh, sweetheart, how can you even ask? He exhaled loudly. “You look just great. That’s the problem.”
“Huh?”
“Look, I don’t have time for this, but if you insist on going into town, I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t need you to accompany me. I’m a big girl, and…”
Just then, her gazed fixed on something behind them.
Uh-oh.
“Why are those cows sleeping on that truck?”
Uh-oh.
As one, he and Clarence moved closer together to block her view.
She craned her neck to the left so she could see better. Stubborn wench!
“Are those dead cows back there on that truck?” she demanded to know. “Yeech!”
“Dead steers,” Clarence corrected her. “Shot through the eyes by some slimy varmints.”
Sometimes Clarence had a motor on his tongue. Varoom-varoom!
Charmaine looked immediately to him. “Rusty… ?”
He shrugged.
“Okay, you can come,” she said, obviously understanding the potential danger now that she’d seen the dead steers.
“Move over,” Raoul ordered.
“Get in the passenger seat,” she ordered back.
“Do we have to argue about everything?”
She just arched her eyebrows at him and tapped her long fingernails on the steering wheel.
As Raoul eased himself into the other side of the Jeep, he asked Clarence, “You can take care of the sheriff’s questions, right?”
Clarence nodded and called out to him, “Remember my advice. Bowlegged, boy. Bowlegged. Wouldn’t hurt to wear yer jeans tighter, either.”
Raoul just chuckled at the old guy’s perverted humor. Charmaine couldn’t possibly understand Clarence’s words. Or at least he didn’t think she could… until she gunned the gas pedal so hard he almost fell out of the Jeep. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! he thought inside in his head, and he was praying, not swearing.
He thought he heard her mutter, “I’ll give you bowlegged.” And took off like Mario Andretti at the Indy 500.
He just held on tight. What else could he do?
Shopping is the next best thing to sex… for a woman…
“So, what was that bowlegged business all about?”
Charmaine finally asked that question as she drove down the one-lane road, heading toward the nearest supermarket. She needed to break the silence, which was as thick and tantalizing as the most intimate sexual banter in the confines of the small Jeep.
If that wasn’t bad enough, she kept taking her eyes off the road to stare at Rusty, who was a sight to behold in his faded, everyday cowboy work clothes. He had his long legs stretched out as far as they would go, which wasn’t far enough in the passenger seat, even pushed all the way back. His left arm rested on the back of the driver’s seat, just touching her shoulders with white-hot heat.
“You don’t want to know,” he said lazily, giving her a lingering sideways glance… and a grin. Meanwhile, he twirled a strand of her hair around one finger, over and over, a habit that used to annoy her but now felt kind of nice.
Actually, she didn’t want to know, but stubborn had always been her middle name. “Yes, I do.”
“Clarence was giving me romance advice.” See where stubborn gets you, Ms. Smartie. Next time you’ll know to keep your mouth shut.
“I beg your pardon,” she choked out. “Clarence telling you what to do? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, which prompted her to notice his eyes.
Merciful heavens! What was God thinking to give a man such thick black lashes and such beautiful dark eyes? “Like what?” Did I really ask him to elaborate? My brain is in hormone overload. I just can’t think straight when I’m around him. Never could.