Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch Read online

“And what have you done for a living?”

  “A lot of what my daddy did—cowboyin’ in one form or another wherever the wind blew me.”

  “Until now.”

  “Until now.”

  “What made you decide to change?”

  “Oh, I was gettin’ weary of it, thinkin’ more and more about settlin’ down. Then a year or so ago my sister and brothers and I were all in the same place, catchin’ up with each other. There happened to be a big lottery I’d heard about at the time—called the Lucky Seven Lottery—and I just had a hunch about it. So we pooled our money, bought a bunch of tickets—”

  “And won?” she guessed with a full measure of surprise in her voice.

  “And won. We split it up—there was plenty to go around—and all of a sudden my share gave me a lot of choices. I had the chance to use the money to dig some real roots of my own. Started thinkin’ about givin’ myself—and maybe my sister and brothers—a home base, as you put it. A place where I could stay put and so could they if I could convince ‘em to. Maybe it comes from bein’ the oldest, but somehow it seemed like I could make the home we all never had.”

  “So here you are.”

  “So here I am.”

  “Rumor around town was that you won the place in a poker game,” Abby informed him.

  He laughed at that. “Close, but not quite.”

  Abby was dying to know exactly how much he’d won, but it seemed rude to ask. So instead she went back to what they’d been talking about just before.

  “Have your brothers or sister come to see the place yet?”

  “Not yet. But they’re due. By the end of the week, last I heard from my brothers. I haven’t been able to get hold of Kate yet to find out when she’s comin’.”

  “Do you think they’ll stay when they do?”

  “That’s anybody’s guess. They know they can. That I’d like it if they do. Like their help fixin’ the house, startin’ up the ranch. But we’ll see.” He chuckled lightly, a deep rumble in the cooling night air. “If they do, we’ll be Cal, Cody, Kit, Cabe, Cole, Cray and Kate Ketchum of Clangton, Colorado—how’s that for alliteration?”

  Abby laughed, suddenly studying him with new eyes. She would never have guessed he had strong family ties, a strong sense of responsibility or any desire to establish a home base for a whole passel of siblings. Somehow that seemed much more domestic than she would have ever pictured him.

  He stood then and held out his hand to her once more. “Come on. Let’s walk this lake and you can tell me tales of woodsies.”

  Without thinking about it, she took the hand he offered, remembering only when that electrical current danced up her arm again that that was what happened when he touched her. And how good it felt.

  This time when she was on her feet he kept hold of her hand so she couldn’t pull it back.

  Then, too, she didn’t try very hard.

  She did tell him about woodsies as they headed off around the lake, though. Nothing she thought was terribly interesting about a bunch of kids building bonfires years and years ago. But he seemed interested nonetheless, listening raptly, laughing where she meant for him to, asking a question here and there that proved he was paying attention.

  All the while she was talking, Abby was very aware of Cal. Of the nearness of him. Of her hand in his. Of the warmth and kid-leather toughness of his palm. Of the pressure of each of his long, thick fingers holding her just firmly enough within his grip. Of his thumb rubbing softly back and forth against the tender flesh between her own thumb and forefinger. Of the things that were coming alive in her at being with this man, listening to his deep, quiet voice filling the emptiness around them and to his laugh, so rich it seemed to ripple through her.

  And somewhere along the way she started to think that there was more to Cal Ketchum than a gorgeous face and a body to die for. She began to like him. Much, much more than she wanted to.

  The lake was a little over five miles around, and slowly strolling it the way they were took a long time. Ten o’clock was a memory when they reached the blanket again.

  “I suppose you’re going to say you need to get home now because it’s already past your curfew,” he said as they neared it.

  Going home, ending the evening, was the last thing on Abby’s mind. But because he brought it up, she was afraid it was Cal who wanted this over with.

  She’d done what she set out to do, she thought—bored him to death.

  But there was no satisfaction in a job well done. Instead disappointment washed through her like water through a broken dam.

  “I do have an early morning tomorrow. It’s my turn to do the first shift baking,” she said by way of agreement for him to take her home.

  He didn’t argue. He just made quick work of packing up the picnic basket and blanket.

  And the whole time Abby’s spirits and confidence plummeted further and further.

  I must really be bad news if a man alone with me late at night, next to the lake, under a sky full of stars, with a blanket spread out and at the ready, doesn’t even so much as try to kiss me.

  But he didn’t try to kiss her.

  He just carried the gear back to the car, stashed it in the trunk and handed her into the passenger’s seat.

  Neither of them said much on the drive to her house. At least not aloud. Abby had plenty to say to herself, reminding herself that it was for the best that he knew the truth about her now. That this was a much better, smarter conclusion to the night than the last one had been. That it was good that she’d turned him off in whatever way she had. That now he’d forget she existed and she could go on with her quiet, reserved life.

  There were no lights on inside the house when he pulled up to the curb in front. Emily and Bree had left the porch light on for her, and she suspected they were lurking in a window or two somewhere watching.

  There won’t be anything to see, guys, she thought, wishing she weren’t awash in dejection over that fact.

  Still, Cal was gentleman enough to walk her up onto the porch.

  “I’ve been dyin’ to know somethin’ since pickin’ you up tonight,” he said as she unlocked the door, pushed it open and then let the screen close as she turned to face him.

  “What?” she responded, trying not to notice how good he looked with the pale gold glow of the porch light dusting his features.

  He pointed his chin at her clothes. “Are you always this buttoned up or did you just go to the opposite extreme from last night to make a statement?”

  “I’m usually this buttoned up.”

  “Seems to me there ought to be a happy medium.”

  “Like what?”

  He was smiling a small, amused smile that deepened the creases around his mouth and drew lines at the corners of aquamarine eyes that held hers mesmerized.

  She was so drawn to that gaze and the sight of his handsome face that she didn’t even realize he was raising his hands to her collar until she felt them under her chin.

  “How about like this,” he said softly, intimately, as he undid the three buttons there.

  Oh, my God, he’s undressing me on the front porch! she thought, taking stock of who might be witnessing it.

  But he stopped at the second button below the collar—leaving it open a perfectly respectable amount.

  “This way you might even be able to breathe,” he whispered, bending close to her ear so his own breath was a sweet warmth against her skin.

  “I’m breathing all right.” Well, except for the difficulty brought on by his being so nearby.

  “Not easily, you’re not. And I want you breathin’ easily.”

  “way?”

  He didn’t answer with words. Instead he slid his hands along the sides of her neck, plunging his fingers up into her hair to guide her head backward so that her face lifted up to his. He lowered his mouth to hers, his lips parting as he did to take hers in a kiss that was nothing like the one he’d given that morning. Nothing like any she’d ever ha
d standing on her front porch.

  It was a deep, deep, all-consuming kiss with only a hint of his tongue urging her own lips to relax, to open to him, to let their breaths mix and mingle, to give herself over to the kiss, to the moment, to the man.

  Abby’s head fell farther back into his cradling hands, feeling lighter than even the liquor had left it the previous evening. Her eyes were closed, and she felt as if she were floating on the pure, sexy intoxication of his mouth on hers, of the liquid movement of his head above her, of the heat and power that seemed to emanate from him, of the scent of that aftershave and the nail-buffer texture of his cheek brushing hers.

  So much for assuring her sisters there wouldn’t even be a peck on the cheek to say good-night, she thought as she felt her nipples pucker up, her back arch toward him all on its own, her breasts swell toward his chest in an intense longing to be pushed against it.

  She parted her lips farther, inviting more. She couldn’t quite believe she was actually doing anything that bold, but she was driven by a need she hadn’t even been aware of in herself before that moment.

  He’s a dyed-in-the-wool ladies’ man, a tiny voice of caution warned in the back of her mind.

  But all she could think about was that it didn’t matter, that nothing mattered but the kiss that made it seem as if she’d never really been kissed before....

  And then it was over. Leaving her hungering for it not to be. For it to start again and go on and on...

  “Night, Abby,” he said so softly she wasn’t sure she’d heard it.

  Or maybe she was just that dazed.

  Because it took a moment for her to realize he’d taken his hands away, turned around and was actually leaving, that that most perfect of derrieres was moving down the walkway on a stride that held only a faint swagger.

  Not until she saw him get into the Corvette and offer a final wave did it sink in with any clarity that he was gone. That their date was over.

  And that he hadn’t made any mention of ever getting together again.

  But no amount of reminders, no amount of reasoning, no amount of rationalizing or talking to herself could convince her at that moment that that was a good thing.

  Because no one could have just been kissed like she had just been kissed and not consider selling her soul for more.

  4

  “IF YOU AREN’T GOING TO TELL us anything about last night, you might as well take off for the day and go by the hardware store on your way home to see about that new faucet we need,” Emily said the next day around two in the afternoon.

  Abby, Emily and Bree were in the kitchen portion at the rear of the bakery they owned jointly. The Three Sisters Bakery was a fair-size shop in one of the old-fashioned buildings that lined First Street—named because that was what it had been, Clangton’s first street. Most of the buildings had been erected during the earliest years of the town and refurbished along the way. The bakery was a two-story structure, with the shop and kitchen on the ground floor and a small apartment on the upper level.

  Abby, Emily and Bree also owned the building. Originally it had been a perfect box shape, like a gigantic refrigerator. They’d livened it up by adding a steep Victorian roof to what had only been a flat top before, replacing all the windows with paned glass, painting the whole thing dove-gray and trimming it—including the shutters they’d added to the windows—in crisp white.

  Now, from the front at least, it looked more like a quaint turn-of-the-century town house.

  “There’s nothing to tell about last night,” Abby insisted in answer to her sister’s comment.

  Since Bree and Emily had arrived for work at eight and eleven o’clock respectively, they’d both been on a quest for Abby to talk about the previous evening with Cal. At least they had been every minute they hadn’t been putting together pies, cakes, brownies, breads and rolls or waiting on customers.

  But even though Abby had said a few things about her date with Cal—giving them a brief outline of watching the sunset, walking around the lake and coming straight home—they weren’t satisfied.

  “You’re holding out on us,” Bree declared. “Too much time passed between when we heard the car pull up in front of the house to bring you home, when he drove off again and then when you finally came in. Something went on, and you’re being too closemouthed for it not to have been juicy.”

  “We said good-night,” Abby answered simply enough as she measured out the ingredients that would get them started the next morning.

  They’d developed a pattern that kept the bakery running smoothly. One of the three of them came in at 5:00 a.m. to start bread dough rising, to make breakfast croissants they filled with jams and cream cheese and to set the wheels into motion for the rest of what they had planned to make for the day.

  Another of them came in at eight when they opened up so there would be two of them to attend to the baking and waiting on customers.

  The third sister didn’t have to be there until eleven when most of the baking was finished for the day. That person would stay to close up at seven, while the first one in left around two o‘clock and the second at five o’clock.

  They rotated the shifts daily and all shared in the baking, although each of them had a few specialties that the other two didn’t make.

  “You said good-night,” Emily repeated. “Did he kiss you?”

  Abby was glad to know they’d allowed her some privacy and not been peeking out of any windows. “Mm-hmm,” she said, hedging and trying to pretend that the kiss hadn’t been on her mind ever since it had happened.

  “And it must have been a pretty good kiss or else why would you have stayed moony eyed out on the porch watching him drive away?” Bree put in.

  “So you were spying. And here I was just thinking I was glad you hadn’t been.”

  Bree smiled victoriously. “Neither one of us was spying. I just guessed that was what you were doing out there for a full five minutes after he’d already driven off. Gotcha!”

  “Moony eyed?” Abby repeated in a last-ditch effort to regain some of the ground she’d just inadvertently lost.

  “Is that what you were doing?” Emily asked.

  “I don’t get moony eyed over anybody,” Abby said forcefully. Too forcefully. Her denial gave her away and she knew it. “Okay, so maybe it did take me a little while to come inside after he kissed me good-night and left. That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Except maybe that the man is some good kisser,” Bree mused.

  “Is he?” Emily prodded.

  “He knows what he’s doing, all right.”

  “Enough to make you go out with him again?” Emily continued.

  “He didn’t ask me out again,” Abby said as if she didn’t care. But she did. That kiss had left her caring a lot. In spite of the fact that she knew she should be hoping she never so much as saw the man again.

  “But would you go out with him if he asked?” Bree persisted.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Emily and Bree exchanged knowing looks.

  “Definitely a good kisser,” Bree said to Emily.

  To Abby, Emily said, “Which is why you asked us both if anyone had called at home before we came in today—you were hoping he had.”

  “Not hoping. Just curious.” Okay, so maybe she was hoping, too. It stung a little that a kiss that had done so much for her hadn’t even prompted him to ask to see her again. Or to call today.

  But Abby didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Actually she hadn’t wanted to talk about it at all. There was something about the pull she felt to Cal Ketchum that seemed almost indecent. Maybe because the heart of her response was so rawly sensual that it embarrassed her to know she was capable of feeling that way.

  For what must have been the fiftieth time today, she changed the subject, deciding that leaving her sisters to their own devices was the only way she was going to escape their interest. “Are we decided on the faucet over at the new hardware store or the old one?”r />
  Once more Bree looked at Emily and spoke to her as if Abby couldn’t hear. “That’s our cue to shut up about this.”

  “You guys are just making a bigger deal out of it than it is. There isn’t that much to talk about. And I’ve been here long enough today. I’d like to take off. So what about the faucet?”

  Her sisters exchanged another glance, but finally gave in.

  “Get the one at the new store,” Bree said. “Even though I feel disloyal not giving the business to Barry after all these years, he doesn’t have one with a high enough spout and we need that for the big pots.”

  “We’ll try to make it up to him later on,” Emily concurred.

  “Okay, then. I’m going to go,” Abby said, washing her hands in the big sink that needed a new faucet to replace what had been leaking for too long already.

  “And maybe,” Bree added with a sly tone to her voice, “after you finish at the hardware store you ought to take a drive. Like out toward the old Peterson place? Now known as the Lucky Seven ranch...”

  Abby sighed elaborately. “I thought we all agreed now was the worst time for me to be even thinking about another man.”

  “Too late. You’re already thinking about him,” Bree stated.

  “And if you can’t help thinking about him—”

  “Or getting moony eyed over a kiss from him—”

  “—you might as well give in to it all and enjoy your—self.”

  “Thanks for the blessing. But no thanks.”

  “Bill Snot-grass never left you moony eyed on the porch for five minutes after he kissed you good-night,” Bree reminded as Abby dried her hands and grabbed her purse.

  But she didn’t answer Bree’s remark. She just rolled her eyes, gave her sisters a parting wave and went out the bakery’s front door.

  There was no sense arguing with the truth.

  CLANGTON WAS MORE than a one-horse town. But not much more. The Three Sisters Bakery was midway down First Street. To the east of it were the bank, the post office and the small hospital that had been Clangton’s school before more than a half-dozen rooms had been needed and a new school had been built not far from there.