Page 20 of Rope Me, Cowboys

When I looked around me, I swallowed that little seed of pride. Hell, maybe I’d rather die than have them come to my rescue now, anyway. I’d never live this one down.

But when I faced the possibility that I might actually die, I knew that wasn’t the case. I started screaming at the top of my lungs again.

After a few minutes, lights washed over the tank. They were going to miss me! I was huddled too close to the tank. So I jumped towards the edge, spooking the cows back another few feet, and waved wildly for an entire minute, which wasn’t easy with my limbs seizing up from cold.

At last, the lights stopped moving on the path. I could hear the tractor idling, but I couldn’t tell if anyone had gotten out. A second later, though, Waylon came hurtling over the fence.

He waved his arm in a shooing motion at the cows and yelled, “Hya! Hya!” And they all scooted back.

He ran over to the water trough, grabbed me around the waist, and lifted me out. “What the hell are you doing in there?” he demanded, peeling off my jacket. “It’s twenty degrees out here.”

“I f-f-fell in,” I chattered through my teeth, trying to fight his hands. Was he seriously trying to undress me right now?

He brushed my hands away like they were nothing more than annoying flies, grabbed the bottom of my shirt, and wrenched it over my head. “Why didn’t you get out and run back to the house?” he barked. “Were you stuck?”

“N-no.”

“You’re going to get hypothermia.”

“Exactly,” I managed, falling back against the trough as he unzipped my pants. “So why are you taking off my clothes?”

“Stop fighting me,” he said. “Wet clothes suck the heat right out of you. You got only a couple minutes to get out of them before hypothermia sets in.”

It was probably too late for that, but I didn’t seem able to form the words. Waylon had peeled my jeans down, and my underwear had gone with them. He didn’t say a word about it or try to pull them up like a decent person. He just peeled them off over my feet, along with my shoes. Then he threw me over his shoulder like a sack of oats for his horses, with my bare ass sticking straight out for all the world to see, and ran for the fence. Even with me on his shoulder, he hopped it with seeming ease. Then he hopped up into the tractor and pulled me in with him.

I ended up on his lap. Naked. But it was not exactly the way it had been in the fantasies I’d been having since arriving at Coyote Ranch. I was too cold to be embarrassed though, and luckily, the tractor wasn’t one of those old ones with a metal seat and an exposed top. No, this was a huge one with lights, and closed-in cab with heat. Waylon turned the heat on full blast and looked at me. He swallowed so hard I could see his Adam’s apple move up and down.

Then he scooted me off his lap, peeled off his own jacket, and put it around me.

I pulled it tight. “Th-thank you,” I chattered.

Waylon looked at me another moment, then lifted up his hips, unbuttoned the shoulders of his tan, canvas coveralls, and began to undress.

It wasn’t the most romantic moment I could imagine for getting laid. But then, I was going to have to get properly laid eventually, and I’d never had a romantic moment. My only long-term boyfriend had been a frigid, misogynist pig who wanted to lock me in a chastity belt while he galivanted around Manhattan letting redheads ride his face for fun.

But when Waylon slipped out of his coveralls, he was wearing a pair of thin black pants under them. He leaned over and pooled the coveralls at my feet, slowly working them up over my legs. They were heavily lined, and warm inside from his body heat, but I didn’t think I’d ever get warm again. Waylon sat back, cranked the tractor into gear, and we hurtled along the bumpy path. Finally, we reached a spot where we could turn around, and Waylon turned the tractor back towards the house. I was starting to regain feeling in my limbs at last, but Waylon was still shooting me concerned looks every two seconds.

When I heard him curse under his breath, I looked up to see a flashlight beam in the path. Waylon honked the horn, then cursed louder, braking fast enough to make me almost slide off the seat.

“Yoo-hoo,” tootled a familiar voice.

Craptastic. Mrs. Grimes had stopped us for a chat.

Waylon rolled down his window and tried to wave her away.

“I heard a commotion, and I just had to come make sure everything was okay,” she said, coming around the side of the tractor. As soon as she was out of the path, Waylon shifted gears, and the tractor rolled forward.

“Now hold up,” Mrs. Grimes called, but Waylon paid her no mind. He drove straight up to the doors of the lodge, jumped out, and ran around to my side of the tractor. Opening the door, he scooped me into his arms and ran inside.

“What happened?” Sawyer asked, rushing to my side.

“I fell in the cow water,” I managed.

Waylon carried me to the fireplace and laid me on the bearskin rug. This was probably not the appropriate time to think about how sexy it was to have this rugged cowboy laying me down in front of the fire like he was about to ravish me. So I blamed the hypothermia for that thought. I was, after all, bedraggled as a wet rat, half-frozen, and wearing a pair of men’s coveralls. But damn if they weren’t the warmest thing I’d ever worn in my entire life. I was totally putting a pair on my Christmas list, and I was going to wear them all over Manhattan until it became a major fashion trend. Or at least until my mom’s strategists told her to make me stop.

Waylon took my hand and started rubbing up and down my arm. “We need to get her warmed up,” he said.

I could think of something he could rub that would get me warm a lot faster, but then, I probably wasn’t supposed to think something like that about my stepbrothers, let alone say it aloud.