The Rancher's Family Thanksgiving Read online

  Susie supposed she was living proof of that.

  Now, if someone could just convince Emmaline Clark the odds were on her side, too.

  “Do you talk to all your dates about this?” Susie lined up her shot, too. She swung as hard as she could. The ball went a measly twenty-five yards.

  “Oh. Definitely,” Gary said. A look of pure bliss crossed his features. “I love numbers.”

  Susie nodded. “I can see that you do.” She watched Gary make a perfect line drive.

  It looked as if he loved golf, too.

  Gary nodded in greeting as another customer made his way past them to take up a position on the other side of Susie.

  Susie started to nod, too, when she caught a whiff of man and cologne that was all too familiar. She took a good look at the cowboy ambling by, in a striped golf shirt she could swear she had never seen before, his usual denim jeans, and what looked like a pair of bowling shoes.

  He kept his eyes on the green.

  Gary frowned at the way Susie’s mouth was hanging open. “You know him?” Gary inclined his head at Tyler McCabe.

  “I know everyone around here.” Susie flashed Tyler a tight, officious smile.

  This hadn’t been their deal.

  Tyler had been supposed to show up at seven-thirty, at the end of her “date” with Bachelor Number Two. Instead, Tyler had showed up at the beginning and positioned himself in perfect eavesdropping position.

  How was she supposed to concentrate on giving Gary Hecht the attention he deserved with Tyler right beside her? It was like going on a date with her parents!

  Not to mention, Tyler’s golf shot was worse than hers and he kept getting his balls in her lane.

  Turning her back to Tyler, Susie looked at Gary. “Tell me more about your job,” she said.

  Another thing Gary loved to do was talk about his life.

  For the next forty minutes, she could hardly get a word in edgewise. Finally, both their buckets were empty. “Want to get more balls?” Gary asked.

  “Actually, I think I’m going to have to call it an evening,” Susie said. They gathered up their gear. “But there is something I’d like to talk to you about—in private.” She flashed her most persuasive smile at her companion—the kind she saved for very special and or important occasions—and walked off.

  TYLER COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. Susie’s date had been one of the most self-absorbed men he had ever had the chance to come across, yet Susie was acting as if Gary were heaven’s gift as she sauntered off with him, arm in arm.

  He quickly emptied his bucket, picked up the clubs he’d borrowed from one of his cousins, and headed back to the window.

  “Nice outfit, Doc.” The girl behind the counter winked.

  Tyler grinned. The shirt had cost him all of five bucks at the thrift shop. “You like it?”

  “It’s real eye-catching.” The teenage clerk popped her gum. “Real, uh, orange. And green. And white. And striped.” She looked down at his two-tone footwear, so different from the boots he usually wore. “I like the shoes, though.” She gave the brown-and-beige leather a thumbs-up.

  Funny, Tyler thought they were the ugliest things he had ever seen. They felt unsubstantial, too.

  With his bagful of borrowed clubs slung over his shoulder, he headed for the parking lot. Susie was standing next to Gary Hecht’s white sedan, writing what appeared to be her phone number on a piece of paper.

  “Call me,” he heard her say as he passed by. “And we’ll set something up as soon as possible.”

  “Okay. I will.” Gary smiled and leaned forward to brush his lips against her cheek in a standard Southern goodbye.

  It was the kind of casual kiss a neighbor gave a friend. But it burned him up.

  Almost as much as the sight of Susie hopping in the cab of her pickup truck and driving off without so much as a glance in his direction.

  What the…

  Tyler jumped in his pickup truck and drove after her. He’d expected her to laugh at his getup. Much as the teenage clerk had.

  Susie had a great sense of humor and right about now Tyler felt she needed a little extra laughter in her life.

  Unfortunately, his choice of clothing had apparently done little to amuse her because she did not stop until she reached the small shotgun-style house tucked away behind the landscape center she owned.

  Rectangular in shape, the one-story, century-old residence was located behind three large greenhouses and the rows of trees and saplings for sale, and was hence, well separated from Carrigan Landscape Center and Design.

  Her business closed at six o’clock on Saturdays. The parking lot was deserted. The two of them were very much alone, which suited Tyler just fine. He didn’t want anyone else overhearing what he had to say to Susie.

  Tyler got out of his truck and followed her up onto the porch.

  She whirled to face him. Twin spots of pink color emphasized the elegant bones of her cheeks.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  Susie snorted in contempt. Lifted a brow. “Gee. You think?”

  Tyler exhaled in exasperation. “Why?”

  Susie set her chin. “I asked you to give me an out if I needed one.” She stepped nearer. “Not chaperone the entire outing!”

  Her stormy attitude added fuel to the fire of resentment burning within him. Tyler looked her up and down in a manner meant to irritate her, lingering on the curves of her breasts beneath the white T-shirt, the wide leather belt cinched around her slender waist, and the trim fit of her bootleg jeans, before returning his gaze, ever so slowly, ever so deliberately, to her flashing amber eyes. “You act like I interrupted something.”

  Susie’s lids narrowed. She glared at him through a fringe of thick honey blond lashes. “As it happens, you were!”

  “You like that guy?” Tyler still couldn’t believe she was giving the self-absorbed statistician a second chance to call her or go out with her or whatever.

  “Of course I did.” A fresh wave of color came into her face. “He was nice!”

  “I mean as a boyfriend,” Tyler clarified.

  She lifted her shoulders in a stubborn little shrug. “What if I did?”

  Tyler stepped nearer. “Then I’d have to say I severely misjudged you because I never envisioned you spending time with the most anal, numbers-driven guy I’ve ever come across in my life.”

  He’d never really expected her to give any guy—except him—the time of day, given the solitary way she had been living her life.

  “Gary Hecht is an actuary. What did you expect?”

  “I don’t know,” Tyler said drily. He paused to look deep into Susie’s eyes. “At the very least, I figured there would have been some conversation about the great November weather.”

  “Well, now that would have been thrilling,” Susie sassed back, mocking Tyler’s sober tone.

  “Certainly,” Tyler continued critically, trying to impress upon Susie the need to raise her standards. “It would have been laudable if there had been a lot less talk about Gary Hecht and his interests and more focus on you.”

  Susie shook her head at Tyler as if she could not believe his stupidity. She stepped nearer, not stopping until they stood toe-to-toe and nose to nose. “Did it ever occur to you that I did not want Gary Hecht to focus on me?”

  That had certainly been his wish, Tyler thought. It should not have been Susie’s. “Exchanging information—one’s likes and dislikes—is part of dating, Suze.”

  Susie’s expression turned smug. “It wasn’t dating,” she informed him sweetly, batting her eyelashes Texas-belle style once again. “It was an introduction.”

  Tyler didn’t know whether to be relieved nothing of any import had happened between Susie and Gary Hecht after all, or ticked off that Susie was goading him deliberately, trying to get a rise out of him. Or that it was working.

  “Same thing, from the looks of it,” Tyler muttered back.

  “No,” Susie countered patiently. “It wasn’t.” She
paused a moment to let her words sink in. “I went tonight to pacify my parents. And because I wanted him to do a favor for me. Which, by the way, no thanks to you and your distracting presence, Gary readily agreed to do!”

  Tyler tried not to be too thrilled that he had disrupted her powers of concentration as much as she had disrupted his this evening. “What kind of favor?” he asked.

  Susie huffed, becoming difficult once again. “I’m not telling.”

  Tyler thought of all the ways he could force the information out of her. Kissing her, being the prime one.

  “Is that so?” he countered back, his temper inching ever higher.

  Amber eyes flashed. “You better believe it is.”

  Ignoring her sarcasm, he continued searching her face. “Don’t you think you are being a little bit childish?”

  She glared at him in resentment and splayed a hand across his chest. “You’re one to talk! This whole discussion is absolutely stupid and juvenile and pointless and—”

  Tyler had heard enough. Doing what he had wanted to do from the first moment he had laid eyes on her at the driving range this evening, he wrapped his arms around her, brought her close, lowered his head, and fastened his lips over hers. It had been an eternity since he had kissed her. Too long. All he knew was that in this moment she was everything he had ever wanted, everything he had never had. Not in any way that counted, since the two of them had made sure that every previous clinch they had shared in the last twenty-four hours had gone absolutely nowhere….

  Whereas this kiss…this kiss felt as if it was going somewhere. And it was more than just the softness of her lips, or the peppermint taste of her mouth, the softness of her breasts molding against his chest, or the feel of her hands clasping the back of his neck. It was the way she was kissing him back. As if there was no tomorrow. As if there had never been a yesterday. As if this moment was all that counted, or would ever matter.

  As Tyler brought Susie closer still, he knew she was right.

  Tonight was all that mattered.

  In so many ways, Susie was all that mattered.

  Which was why he knew he had to honor their previous promise to each other and stop now, before this went any further, and the two of them ended up in bed together, again.

  Calling upon every ounce of gentlemanly restraint he possessed, Tyler let the kiss come to a halt. Slowly, he lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

  And even more reluctantly, let her go.

  They drew apart, much more slowly than they had ever come together. Susie had that dazed look in her eyes that was at once both deeply satisfied and yearning for more. It destroyed him every time. Tonight was no exception. He wanted her more than ever, even as he knew full well all the reasons why they should never ever be more than crisis buddies.

  To do otherwise, to pretend he would always be there for her…in the way that she needed…to pretend they could ever be as emotionally close as she needed her potential soul mate to be…was pure fallacy.

  Tyler knew his shortcomings.

  He was not going to inflict them on Susie.

  He was not ever going to put her in a position where he would hurt her, the way she had once been hurt before.

  The kiss…well, the kiss had been a way to end the argument before it went too far, and either of them said or did anything they would later regret, Tyler reasoned, even as guilt washed over him, anew.

  Susie stepped back, and shoved her hands through her silky blond hair.

  Having recovered completely from the unexpected intimacy of the moment, she stomped her foot. “Now why did you go and do a darn fool thing like that?”

  Tyler shrugged.

  “Because I wanted to end the argument and that was the fastest way I knew how.”

  Susie’s eyes took on a turbulent sheen. Her lower lip slid out into a delicious pout. “I thought we agreed…”

  Tyler’s gut tightened. “We wouldn’t fall into bed again.”

  She nodded, her expression as solemn—and worried—as her mood. “It could ruin our whole crisis management system, Tyler.”

  A system, Tyler knew, Susie depended upon. The truth was, there had been times when Tyler really needed Susie, too. Times when she had come to his rescue.

  Been there. Done what needed to be done, said what needed to be said. And then left, as soon as he was on an even keel again. Had it not been for her…

  He doubted he would have survived those dark times as well as he had.

  “You know I’m right,” Susie persisted, her voice taking on a more normal sound.

  That was the hell of it. On some level, Tyler did know.

  On another…

  “We set those boundaries with each other for a reason,” Susie continued firmly.

  Boundaries Tyler now wished—as he did every time he ended up kissing Susie—that they could take down.

  “Well?” Susie prodded with a discreet lift of her brow.

  A discreet lift that said she was much more relaxed about what had just happened between the two of them than he was.

  She waited for his response.

  Before Tyler could reply the pager at his waist went off.

  He looked at the number flashing across the screen, frowned.

  Susie sighed and guessed, “Emergency?”

  “I hope not,” Tyler groused, shoving a hand through his hair. “I don’t want anything ruining our dinner plans.”

  He didn’t want their evening ending with Susie still in a mood to regret—or was it simply dismiss—their impetuous and forbidden kiss.

  Eyes locked with hers, he answered the call. Listened intently. “No problem,” Tyler said when the caller had finished. “I’ll be right there.”

  “So much for brisket, I guess,” Susie lamented as he shut off the phone and put it back on his belt.

  Tyler scoffed as he headed back to his truck. He reached into the compartment behind the seat, and pulled out a rumpled tan chambray shirt from the pile of clean laundry there.

  He stripped off the ugly green-white-and-orange-striped golf shirt, then stood there a minute, naked from the waist up, as he put the shirt that was inside out to rights.

  “I was really looking forward to treating us both to some fine Texas barbecue. Another time then, I guess.”

  Tyler grinned. “Are you kidding me?” Pulse racing, he shoved his arms through the sleeves of the shirt and buttoned the soft rumpled cotton cloth from the bottom up. “You’re not getting off the hook that easily, missy.” Now that he had her full attention, he let his gaze meet and hold hers. “You’re going on this vet call with me.”

  Chapter Three

  To get more out of life, give more of yourself.

  It wasn’t the first time Susie had seen Tyler without a shirt, she ruminated as she and Tyler drove to see Tyler’s equine patient. She and Tyler’d been swimming together, for heaven’s sake. But treading water wasn’t what she thought about when she saw his broad muscular shoulders, taut pecs and strong abs.

  She thought about what it would be like to be his woman. She thought about the last time they had made love. She thought about how quickly they undressed whenever they fell into each other’s arms and how swiftly they put their clothes back on when reality hit them over the heads and the passion was spent. She thought about the wistful yearning she always suffered afterward. How she wished she and he had the kind of relationship where they could cuddle and share pillow talk and make love whenever they pleased, however much they pleased. She wished they could have the kind of relationship where they saw each other and hung out together all the time, even when their lives were excessively dull.

  Unfortunately, that hadn’t been the case in the past, and for reasons far beyond their control, would not be so in the future.

  Susie exhaled in frustration.

  She needed to get a grip.

  Stop letting her parents’ constant talk of love and romance and finding the perfect man to settle down with fill her head with romanti
c notions. She needed to be practical. And a realistic assessment of her recent actions indicated that she had completely overreacted to Tyler’s showing up early at the driving range. True, he’d had no business hovering over her like a chaperone intent on breaking up the first sign of familiarity, but she knew he had meant well, even if he had been ridiculously overprotective.

  What really annoyed her was how traitorous and guilty his mere presence had made her feel.

  It wasn’t as if she had been cheating on him, or was being unfaithful to him in any way. Sure, the two of them had impetuously crossed the line from friends to lovers four times in the past decade. Each time, they had promised themselves and each other there wouldn’t be a next time.

  Each time, there had been a very good reason.

  The first time they had come together like that had been on her twenty-first birthday. She was feeling sorry for herself, thinking that because of her illness, and the possibility it may come back, she would never get close enough to anyone to make love. Tyler had told her she was wrong, and the next thing they knew they had ended up in her dorm room bed. She had pushed him away afterward, accepting that it never should have happened.

  The second time had been four years later, when he had passed his boards and gotten his license to practice veterinary medicine. He’d called her, wanting to celebrate. They’d had way too many margaritas. And somehow ended up in bed, again. That time they’d fallen asleep afterward. They’d awakened at dawn, hung over, happy—about his success—but mortified by their lapse in judgment.

  It had been awkward for them for a while. They were both embarrassed by the sheer physical abandon with which they’d given themselves to each other. But eventually they’d chalked it up to an alcoholic and joyful aberration and gone back to being crisis buddies once again.

  Which of course was how the third time had come about, several years after that.

  One of Tyler’s college friends had been killed in an accident, and he’d been devastated by his buddy’s death. Susie had gone to the funeral in Corpus Christi with Tyler and they’d ended up talking in their hotel room late into the night. Tyler had been so sad, so devastated, it had seemed only right that Susie reach out to him. One hug had turned into two. Before she had known it, they were kissing again, and once they started kissing, there was no reason either of them could think of to stop. Fueled by grief and sadness and the need to feel, in that instant, very much alive, they had tumbled right back into bed.