Rebel Cowboy (8 page)

“I know if it’s Montana beef, it’s superior. And if it’s set in front of me, I’m going to eat it however I want.” She pointed her fork at him, leaning in, though she stopped abruptly—perhaps realizing how close their faces were.

How similar this was to this morning.

She moderately leaned back, back rigid and chin in the air. “So, what the hell is on my list of things to teach you?”

“This control thing you’ve got going on. The unbreakable shit. I want to know how to do that.” How she had made herself her own escape. He desperately needed to learn that.

She shook her head. “That’s not a…teachable thing. That’s just me. It’s in my bones. You have to struggle and…learn how to survive. You’ve never had to survive a day in your life.”

He bristled at her assessment, but he certainly couldn’t
argue
with her. So he leaned back and attacked his steak, much like she’d attacked hers.

“You just have to…decide. That it won’t break you,” she said after minutes of silent chewing. “I don’t know how to teach that. It’s a decision I make.”

When he glanced up at her, she was staring at her plate. She wasn’t frowning, exactly, though her lips were downturned. It was more sad than angry.

“I make it every day,” she said in a quiet voice. “If hockey means that much to you, you decide to find a way to get back to it. Considering the fact that you’re famous or whatever, I doubt it’ll be that much of a struggle.”

“Don’t go feeling too sorry for me,” he said dryly.

“Sorry, I don’t feel sorry for millionaires. I feel sorry only for people with actual problems.”

“You think people with money can’t have problems?”

“I think people with money can solve a lot of problems that crop up. I think money smooths a lot of problems away. I also think
you
personally don’t have too many problems, aside from sucking when it counts.”

Sucking when it counts.
Not a pleasant way of putting it, but accurate. Dan Sharpe sucked when it counted. Mel might not see that as much of a problem, but Dan certainly did. It was the kind of problem you didn’t just decide to endure, to survive. It was an inherent piece of himself.

Like Mel’s hard-assness or Dad’s quiet calm, Mom’s intense focus.

Only, sucking when it counted wasn’t a positive. Not even close.

“You’ll land on your feet,” she said sharply, like she was irritated with herself. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Which was part of the problem—he’d worried about very little in his life before this had happened. He didn’t like worrying, didn’t like being uncertain or lost. He was in over his head with this ranch stuff, and it didn’t bother him too much because it was supposed to be a distraction.

But what if come fall it was more than that? What if it was all he had? He had considered that, but not in a real way. In the fairy-tale way where ranching would be easy and fun. It didn’t even take a full week here to realize rebuilding his grandfather’s place wasn’t just throwing some money around and pounding a few posts.

It was hard. It would endure.

Would he?
Could
he?

He cleared his throat. “Hockey is the only thing I’ve ever been any good at.” It was oddly uncomfortable to admit that weakness to Mel. Usually he had no problems admitting weakness in everything that wasn’t hockey. Call him foolish or stupid or selfish—he’d agree with it all easy enough.

But something about admitting the whole of what he was worth to Mel seemed a stupid thing to do. He wished the words back into his mouth as he pushed the green beans around on his plate. “How can I not worry about that?” he grumbled, irritated with himself, with Scott, with her, with fucking Montana and its damn mountains everywhere.

“I doubt hockey is the
only
thing you’re good at.”

The weak compliment was enough to smooth some of the edges of his frustration. If Mel was complimenting him, surely all wasn’t lost. “Well, sure.” He took a bite of his steak, chewed thoughtfully. Remembering the way she’d kissed him this morning, remembering the fact that
he’d
said no.
He
had been in charge there. “You know, I’m pretty good at sex too.”

She choked on her water, then glared at him. “That’s an off-limits topic.”

“Off-limits, huh? I don’t know. I was thinking maybe we should revisit the…uh…what did you call it? Some kind of moratorium.” Yeah, maybe they should revisit that after all.

“Too late.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. It is.” She pulled the napkin out of her lap and wiped her mouth. “Now, if you’d hurry up? We’ve wasted an entire morning on nothing, and you have a limited use of my services. You want to be good at something, Dan? You’re going to have to try. You’re going to have to care. And you’re going to have to not get on my bad side.”

Try. Care. Two things he stayed away from outside of an ice rink. Hell, even inside a rink sometimes.

“I can’t promise the last one,” he said. She made an exasperated sound. “But let’s try the first two. I’m going to need a book store.”

“You need to
work
, not read.”

“Knowledge is power, Mel.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ll be lucky to get a fence in come August at this rate.”

He didn’t say anything, instead focusing on finishing his steak. When he’d decided he wanted to go pro like Dad, he’d followed his father’s footsteps inch by inch, so he hadn’t had to come up with a plan of his own—there had been a route already laid out to follow.

Wouldn’t Mel be surprised when he came up with his own road map? Okay, he’d probably be a little surprised too, and he might even fuck it up.

But if he was going to
care
, why not try?

“I’m going to start a llama ranch.”

Mel blinked. She had barely gotten out of her truck when Dan blasted her with…
what?
“It’s a little early to be drinking.” The past three days had been relatively normal after their little blip a few mornings ago.

Dan had been quiet, a good worker, doing whatever she told him to do. No flirting, no sex talk. He had been the perfect gentleman.

It had been weird, actually, but she figured he’d just set his mind to trying to be good at this ranching thing. She’d been thankful that he was over being all…purposefully charming and crap.

But apparently he hadn’t been focusing on getting the more dilapidated parts of his ranch in working order. Instead, he’d been thinking about llamas.

Possibly he’d been abducted by aliens, or hippies.

“I’m not drinking. I’ve been researching.”

“Researching llamas?” She squinted at him in the early morning light, confused that he was carrying a book. Even more confused that he was wearing glasses. “Researching llamas and wearing glasses. Are you okay? There’s this thing called the mountain crazies around here—I think you’ve come down with it.”

“I do not have the mountain crazies.” When she kept staring at his glasses, he yanked them off his face. “So, I don’t see well close up. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Oh my God, you’re so old you need cheaters.” It was such a hilariously un-super-hot Dan thing, she all but giggled. “You have old-guy eyes.”

“I do
not
have old-guy eyes. I have astigmatism. Kind of.”

This time she couldn’t help herself—she did giggle. Not the sound of an in-control, take-charge kind of woman, but he was so flustered by his “kind-of” astigmatism. “Sure you do,
Dad
.”

The baffled indignation on his face morphed into one of those sharp, sexy looks that made her completely forget the glasses in his hands. He smirked. “Look, I’m all for pet names, but let’s not get weird.”

She rolled her eyes. “So, we’re back to that.”

“Back to what?”

“All your lame sexual innuendo.”

“Hey, my sexual innuendo is not lame.”

“Can we get back to the point?” When he only looked bewildered, she pointed at the book he was carrying. “Your llama ranch.”

“Right. So I was researching the mystery-llama problem—which would make an excellent band name by the way—and I found some websites for llama ranches. One in Oregon. One in Idaho. There’s a bunch more, but these places raise llamas to sell, or to use as pack animals. Some people even shear them for yarn. I mean, the possibilities are endless.”

She closed her eyes tight, counted to ten. Honestly, she had to be dreaming. One of the biggest hockey players in the NHL was not standing here telling her he wanted to start a llama ranch. It just wasn’t possible.

But when she opened her eyes, he was still there, glasses in one hand,
Llamas for Dummies
in the other. As serious as could be.

Llama ranching.

She blew out a breath and tried to figure out how to handle this bizarre turn of events. Even when she thought she had Dan pegged or beaten or something, he found a way to be…completely unpredictable.

Like she needed another complex, unpredictable relationship in her life. Even if it was only a working relationship, it still meant some give and take. Per usual, she was in the all-give position. Though she had to admit that Dan took much less than the rest of the people in her life.

Oh, she was so sick of feeling sorry for herself.

“You know, normal ranch herds include cattle, horses. The end.”

“Well, exactly. It’s been done a million times. Why not do something different?”

“So, are you looking for the consultant who tells you you’re an idiot or the consultant who helps you despite being an idiot?”

He seemed to consider, looking over at the barn/llama stable on the hill. “Let’s go with the latter.”

“I don’t know anything about llamas.”

He grinned, all dazzle and spark. “Then we can learn together.”

She supposed it was that dazzle, that
smile
and the way it radiated fun and ease and just a touch of “why the hell not” kind of attitude that got under her skin so much. That made her lips curve upward in a return smile. That could all but see his ridiculous plan working out.

It was a dangerous dazzle, because it made her want. She could see this different life, this different path, where things weren’t so hard, where she wasn’t tied to this land she loved with balls and chains.

And as always, that want, that brief flash of different, was like being punched in the gut. A light she’d never be able to enjoy. So her smile died, and she frowned at his book. “You’ll need more than that to get started.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve got more inside. This isn’t a whim.”

“Isn’t it?”

He shook his head and started marching for his dilapidated old house, marching with a kind of purpose she’d never seen from him. She would not be swayed by that purpose, or drowned in it. She had her own purpose.

Twenty grand.

So she walked after him, determined to be as helpful as she could for the duration she had to put up with his crazy scheme to start a llama ranch.
Llamas.

She had to admit, she was still surprised that he hadn’t brought in a bunch of people to make this place more habitable yet. It was still old, dusty, and creaky, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

He had papers and books all over the old, filmy kitchen table. A laptop sat in the middle of it, all shiny and expensive and way nicer than her and Caleb’s shared desktop that whirred and offered the blue screen of death more often than actually booting up.

“Where did you get all this?”

“Library.”

“The library closes at four. We work until after five every day. How did you—”

“I emailed, um, what’s her name, Jenny? She had someone drop off a bunch of stuff for me last night. I got my Internet set up too, though it’s so damn slow I want to throw my laptop out of the window half the time.”

“And you…”

He picked up a stack of stapled-together papers, and waved them at her. “Examples. Of other llama ranches.”

She took the outstretched papers and began to flip through them. Printouts of llama ranch websites. She knew next to nothing about it, but other than the type of care the animals got, the setup couldn’t be all that different from her cattle.

What was left of their herd anyway.

“This guy has a mullet,” she said, knowing it was unkind and beside the point.

“So?”

She flipped to another stapled-together packet. “
This
site says llamas are addictive.”

“Okay, it’s a little strange, but still. It’s not dependent on cattle prices, or a “horse having the right kind of baby” thing. Llama yarn is llama yarn. Pack animals are pack animals. It’s a low-risk investment.”

Oh, God, he was making
sense
? That was cruel and unusual. How could she argue with him when he was making sense, making his own plans, thinking things through? The fact was, no matter how crazy the idea, she couldn’t. She could not argue with sense and someone else making a decision on their own.

“It also gives me room to do a lot of things if these tryouts my agent is working on come through. There are a couple of resorts around here—I can rent the llamas out for pack animals for hikes in the mountains. Which gives me the income that could offset needing to hire someone to handle ranch stuff when I’m not here.”

When I’m not here.
So much for wanting the ranch to be his heart and crap like that. He was already planning on not being here, already planning on going back to hockey.

It was not a shock—she’d known that all along—but something deeply uncomfortable lodged itself in her chest at the thought of him not being around.

Which wouldn’t do. Not at all. “All right. Then, let’s make a plan of what we need to do to get you ready for a llama invasion.”

He grinned, and she looked away. She would not get sucked into that grin.

“Llama invasion. Also an excellent band name.”

“Unless you’re ready to move on to making emo punk music, let’s focus on what kind of buildings you’ll need. Any of your books tell you that?”

He pawed around on the desk. “Here we go, captain. Lead the way.”

She sighed. Leading was getting damn exhausting.

* * *

Dan loaded the last bundle of lumber into the back of Mel’s truck. After drawing up plans and to-do lists all day yesterday, he’d finally convinced her they could actually start on a project—repairing and expanding the fence around the enclosure his current llama was already in.

He grinned. Couldn’t help it. This
doing
something—like an actual something with a goal in place, and a plan in mind—was…almost as good as being on the ice again. He felt invigorated, ready to take on the world.

Or maybe just one of Georgia’s bacon cheeseburgers. “Lunch at Georgia’s?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Thought you were determined to do your protein-shake crap this week.”

Right. Staying in shape for possible tryouts. But he glanced down the street toward Georgia’s little diner. “I’ll get a salad.”

“I’m pretty sure their salad dressing has as many calories as a burger.”

“Okay, then I’ll get a burger. I’ve been hauling lumber all morning. I can cheat a little.” Because he knew it would irritate her, he curled his arm up, flexing his bicep. “Muscles still in fine shape.”

She rolled her eyes so far up in her head it was a wonder they didn’t get stuck there. “Work on your humility muscle.”

He lifted shut the truck-bed door and hooked his arm with hers. “Come on, Cowgirl, I’m hungry.”

“You know, if anything, you should be calling me cow woman. Though I prefer Mel. Or rancher. Ms. Shaw if you’re feeling particularly proper.”

He grinned down at her, not letting her pull her arm away. “
Ms. Shaw
,” he drawled. “That does have an interesting ring to it.”

“It’s my name,” she grumbled, struggling to get out of his grip as they crossed the street.

“Right, but Ms. Shaw…well, it brings to mind a teacher. Hair in a bun. Glasses.”

“Sorry, I don’t have old-guy eyes like you.”

“I’m not old. You need to get over my reading glasses.”

“
You
brought up glasses. And you’re seven years older than me. That means, when you were graduating high school, I was still in elementary school.”

He scowled. Having reading glasses did not make him
old
. And if he was a little touchy about being seen as old, it was only because his whole livelihood was a young man’s game, and even he had to admit he wasn’t
young
anymore.

But he
wasn’t
old, and if she was going to try and irritate him, he was going to return the favor. “Well, you’re not in elementary school anymore, Ms. Shaw, are you?”

She glared at him, but in that under-the-eyelashes way that tended to remind him of the morning he’d kissed her. That hard-assed gaze she’d leveled him with before initiating that kiss.
Kiss.
What a lame word for the ass-kicking it had been.

He might have ended that possibility, but it didn’t mean he didn’t regret it. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t mind repeating—

“He bothering you, Mel?”

Dan scowled at one of the cops who’d been in the diner with them the other day. The one who’d made the asshole comment.

Fucker.

“Nothing I can’t handle, Al.”

Before Dan could get a word in edgewise, he felt a sharp rap to the back of his knee, so he buckled mid-step and stumbled. Mel pulled her arm out of his and sauntered ahead of him, that low, husky laugh enveloping the air.

“See?” she said, patting Al on the back as she stepped inside the diner.

“Watching you, buddy. Mess with her, you mess with me.”

“You’re not my type,” Dan muttered, following Mel in the diner, half expecting the asshole to follow and start a fight.

But he didn’t, and Mel waved him over to a booth while she talked to Georgia at the counter. There were a few customers, mostly older men wearing overalls or coveralls. All covered in dirt and grease, even on the ones who looked too old to do much of anything with either.

Mel slid into the booth, a glass of water in each hand. “Did you order for me, Ms. Shaw?”

“Yup. A spinach salad with a super-healthy balsamic dressing. On the side. No cheese.”

That sounded about as appealing as eating cardboard, especially when Georgia hurried by carrying two greasy-looking hamburgers.

“Stop lusting after the beef, Sharpe. I got you a damn hamburger.”

“Thank God.” He might have cried if he’d actually had to eat a spinach salad. Or sneak-ordered a hamburger and somehow snuck it back to his place in his pocket or something.

Before he could say more, a tall guy stopped in front of their table. “Mel,” he said, sounding surprised.

Her whole body stiffened, and her face went completely blank, like a switch had been flipped. The only sign of any kind of emotional reaction was that she swallowed before she looked up, and put her hands very carefully in her lap. “Tyler.”

Her lips curved, but Dan wouldn’t call it a smile. It lacked any of the warmth or even sarcastic edge her smiles always had.

“Hey. How are you?”

Dan looked from Mel and then to the guy. He couldn’t get a read on the relationship here. The guy seemed both pleased and…weirded out to see her. Mel just seemed to shut down.

“I’m good,” she said, her eyes never once glancing Dan’s way, as if he weren’t even there. She looked at the guy, but if she felt anything for
Tyler
, she didn’t show it. “You’re back in town for a bit?” she asked, sounding as bland as Dan had ever heard her.

Tyler glanced at Dan before smiling down at Mel again. “Possibly more than a bit. Dad’s…up to something. We’ll see.” Another look back at him. Dan affected his best famous-athlete smile.

Mel’s whole blank expression tightened, but he couldn’t read whatever emotion was behind it. “Tyler, this is my consulting client, Dan Sharpe. Dan, this is Tyler Parker.”