Page 30 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late
Angel rolled her eyes, blinked, and looked away. “Yeah, well then who needs to start talking first? Me or you?”
“You do,” he said. “You’ve got an idea.”
“Yeah.” She drew in a long breath, trying to get her tangled thoughts to line up. She didn’t want to fight with Henry. She liked holding his hand. She didn’t need to talk to her father about the rule. Or did she?
She was in charge. Why did there need to be a no-dating rule at all?
“Do you think any other cowboys would want to ask me out if there was no rule?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” Henry said. “But if they do, I will seriously rearrange their faces.”
Angel burst out laughing, because she was not expecting him to say that. He did not join her. He growled. “I’m not kidding, Angel. I don’t want you going out with anyone but me.”
Angel heard the dark, possessive tone of his voice, and it didn’t bother her. She felt wanted and needed, desirable and seen. “What if,” she said. “We leave the rule in place? That way no one else thinks they can ask me out.”
“I’m following,” he said.
“What if we don’t say anything to Daddy quite yet, and when we do, we do it together? Because I don’t really want to talk to him by myself. He really likes you, and I think if we get to know each other more and start dating, there might come a point where, when he looks at us, he can tell that we really care about each other.”
“I really care about you right now,” Henry said quietly.
“I know,” she said. “I care about you too. But I don’t know you. I feel like we need more time to get toknoweach other.”
“That’s what dating is, right?” he asked.
“That’s what dating is. So I’m thinking maybe we just keep it a secret.”
“A secret,” he repeated.
“For now,” she qualified. “Nothing has to change, and we’ll find ways that we can be together that aren’t obvious. I mean, you go to town with Levi. Why can’t we just go to town together?”
“Angel,” he said. “If we are seen going to town every weekend together, everyone on that ranch is going to know what’s going on by the second weekend. They’re not stupid.”
“I know,” Angel said. “I just meant like, you’re going to town for groceries, and I drive myself.”
“No, we’re not driving ourselves to Amarillo and meeting there for some clandestine date. That’s not happening.”
Angel huffed out a breath. “Fine. It’s a stupid idea.”
“It’s not a stupid idea,” he said. “It’s a fine idea, but we need to…finesse it a little bit.”
“Finesse it a little bit,” she said.
“Yeah,” he shot back. “Just like trying different pairs of shoes on horses. This is like that. We’ll try one thing, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”
“Yeah, but in the meantime, people could figure out that we’re dating.”
“Dates can happen in a lot of different ways,” Henry finally said. “We don’t even have to leave the ranch.”
“You think so?”
“Number one, I know you’ll want to leave the ranch. Youneedto leave the ranch every week, Angel—but it’s not for me, and it’s not with me.” He glanced at her. “It’s just something you need to do to take care of you.”
She couldn’t look at him, but that had never stopped Henry from talking. “No one expects you to work seven days a week without a break.”
Angel scrunched up her face and pressed her teeth together. She wanted to say, “I know,” in a bratty voice, but the truth was, she didn’t know. She did feel like Lone Star would fall apart without her, and the past couple of days had proven to her how replaceable she was.
“I don’t like feeling unneeded,” she said.
