Page 4 of Hometown Cowboy

Ryan’s laugh sent goosebumps racing over her exposed arms.

Oh for pity’s sake! Stop it.

“Pipe down, Darb. Go home, you’re drunk.”

Her laughter joined his. He hated it when she called him pretty, so she did it as often as possible to annoy him. “I’ll have you know I didn’t have anything barring the toast bubbles.”

Darby glanced at the first house they passed. Julie’s place, Ryan’s mother. The lovely new Queenslander-style home was only a few years old, and pitch dark. She continued slowly past so as not to make any unnecessary noise. She rounded a bend in the driveway and noticed a light through the tree branches, a few hundred metres ahead.

Darby pulled up the car on the gravel drive in the bright area thrown by his porch light. She glanced his way.

He nodded at this house. “You don’t look all that tired. Wanna come in for a coffee?”

“Sure. Why not?”

She almost laughed out loud. That line coming from anyone else at this time of night would make her wonder if it were an invitation to bed.

Coming from Ryan?

No way in hell.

She shoved the disappointment deep and plastered a bright smile on her face. Why couldn’t she have a crush on someone who might actually return the favour?

“You said the magic word—coffee!”

He hurried around to her door while she turned off the engine and unclicked her belt, opening it in a flourish and holding out a hand to help her up.

She followed him into the house and dropped her keys and phone on the hall table, just like she’d done since the day she’d first got her licence. Bill, Ryan’s kelpie, looked up from his bed near the table, thumped his tail a couple of times in welcome, then laid his head back on his paws, eyes closing. She scruffed his neck and entered the kitchen.

Ryan sent her a strange smile from where he stood in front of his fancy coffee machine.

“So, how would you like it?”

Chapter Three

Ryan cringed onthe inside. Had he really said that?

Jerk!

Darby didn’t bat an eye and picked up a junk mail leaflet, flicking it over in her hands. “However it comes. I’m easy.”

Ryan closed his eyes and counted to five. Easy was something Darby Jameson was definitely not. Extremely picky, and with every right to be, she didn’t let just anyone into her life, and certainly not into her bed. He almost grinned at that. The guy would have to get past Gabe first, then himself.

He focused on the coffee machine and forced the errant images her words presented out of his head. Images that had no right being there. Images that could—no, would—lose him his best friend.

He ground down on the attraction that simmered just below the surface. Attraction he’d fought for more years than he cared to remember. Most of the time he was successful. She was out of reach, untouchable. Far too important to mess around with, or, worse yet, hurt.

That was assuming she’d let him within a country mile of her. He could just imagine Darby laughing as she told Gabe that he’d come on to her. The whole,what on earth was he thinkingscenario.

No. Best to let that particular sleeping dog lie. Better yet—keep it on tranquillisers so that it never woke up.

Darby slipped up onto the huge dining table that took up a good part of his kitchen. He preferred to eat in here rather than at the formal table in the actual dining room. There was something quite depressing about sitting at a large, formal table by yourself, surrounded by silence. It was a feeling he hated.

He handed her the coffee and propped a hip up beside her. Whatever her perfume was, it teased him mercilessly.

“It’s good seeing Gabe so happy, don’t you think?” Darby asked around a sip.

Ryan nodded. “She’s good for him. I haven’t seen him this relaxed in more years than I can count.”