Must Love Cowboys: This steamy and heart-warming cowboy rom-com is a must-read! (Once Upon A Time In by Carly Bloom (ereader for textbooks .txt) 📗

“Of what?” Beau asked.

Dolly narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you a Montgomery boy?”

Beau tilted his hat. “Yes ma’am. I’m Beau.”

Dolly looked at the snacks on the table. Then she looked through the doorway into the living room where the candle was lit.

Uh-oh. Conclusions were being drawn. Incorrect conclusions.

“I guess three’s a crowd, isn’t it?” Dolly said with a huge smile, eyes darting back and forth between Alice and Beau. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

Yep. Definitely the incorrect conclusion. “No, Dolly. Beau and I are just—”

Beau drew in a sudden breath, big blue eyes wide and frantic.

This was his deep, dark secret.

Alice desperately tried to come up with a reason Beau Montgomery would be at her house . . . Think. Think. Think.

Suddenly, she felt the weight of Beau’s arm around her shoulder. He gave her a little squeeze, pulling her against him. And boy, oh boy. It sparked something weird. Something fizzy and electric and not entirely unpleasant that started at her toes and raced to her throat, where it tingled and prevented her from saying what she wanted to say, which was that Beau had come to work on the plumbing. Even though he wasn’t a plumber and they all knew it.

Dolly put Sultana down and went to the back door. “You kids have fun,” she said with a wink. “I’ve got to head to my Catholic Daughters meeting anyway.”

Oh no. Not the Catholic Daughters. The only bigger gossip mill in town was the Lutheran Quilting Club.

Chapter

Nine

This was awful! Dolly thought she and Beau were dating. In approximately ten minutes, the Catholic Daughters would think so, too. Alice would have to work overtime to prevent an engagement announcement from making its way to the front page of the Big Verde News.

She frowned and chewed on her lip. This was a complication she hadn’t foreseen.

Beau looked at his right leg, which was covered in white dog hair. “At least somebody was happy to see me. I think your mom’s dog found me quite charming.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Gaston was just trying to assert his dominance over you. Dogs do that.”

Beau laughed. “Maybe he just found me attractive. Because I’m definitely not submissive.” He leaned against the counter, crossing one boot over the other, tilting his chin, and hooking a thumb in his belt loop.

It was like watching a male peacock pop his tail feathers out at the sight of another male peacock. Alice didn’t know how a male peacock would react to the show, but she was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. “Can I take your hat?”

Beau removed his hat and ran his hand through his dark blond hair. He and Bryce had been nearly white-headed when they were little. Their mom had said the Texas sun kept their skin tanned and their heads bleached. “Do you have a hat rack?”

“No. I don’t even have a hat. But you can put it on the table by the front door.”

Beau went to the table and put his hat down, eyes sweeping the room. They paused on Alice’s Buddha statue, yoga mat, and candles. He picked up a small bronze bowl.

Alice snatched it out of his hand. “That’s a Tibetan singing bowl.”

“It sings?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“You strike it with the mallet.”

“Why?”

“It’s relaxing.”

“To you maybe. It doesn’t sound so relaxing for the bowl. Maybe that’s why it screams.”

“It sings. And it is very relaxing.”

“You don’t look very relaxed, Allie Cat.”

She didn’t feel very relaxed. For one thing, Beau was standing so close she could smell his aftershave.

He’d worn aftershave.

“Maybe you should beat your bowl,” Beau said with a smirk.

Alice set the bowl and its mallet down exactly where it belonged. Had Beau meant that to sound dirty? Because it had. She looked at him closely—she wasn’t great at reading people.

He shrugged. “What?”

“Aren’t you bothered that Dolly thinks we’re dating?”

“Dating?”

“What else could she think?”

“Maybe she thinks we’re just hooking up.”

Alice gasped. And then she noticed that her fingers had somehow worked their way to her throat, where she would no doubt be clutching her pearls if she had any. She dropped her hands to her sides.

Beau laughed. “Relax, Allie Cat. Folks are going to think what they’re going to think. There’s not much we can do about it. And in a way, this will make it easier for the wedding, right? It won’t come totally out of left field when we show up together.”

Oh, dear God. She’d been so focused on avoiding Brittany’s uncle—and on seeing Brittany’s face when she showed up with Beau in tow—that she hadn’t even considered what literally everyone else would think. She suddenly had a sinking feeling. “Are you friends with Brittany?”

“Not really,” Beau said with his ridiculous blue eyes twinkling. “But I guess you could say we’ve met.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“What?”

“Have you gone out with Brittany? Because I swear to God, Beau. I am not showing up to the wedding on your arm if you’ve gone out with the bride.”

“Settle down.”

“Don’t ever tell a woman to settle down.”

Beau opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. “Can I tell a woman to calm down?”

“That’s even worse.”

“But women are often prone to hy—”

“Don’t say it.”

“—steria”

Alice clenched her jaw. “Did you know that hysterectomies were the cure at one time for so-called hysteria? Women were punished for showing emotion by having their uteruses removed.”

“We went to a dark place pretty quickly there, Allie Cat. I was just kidding.”

“Did you date Brittany?”

“Nope. Just her cousin.”

Alice sighed in relief.

“And her aunt. But not the aunt who is the mother of the cousin. That would be weird.”

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. What had she been thinking? She’d asked the town’s biggest playboy cowboy, possibly a gigolo in chaps, to be her plus-one!

They should definitely hash out some details. The wedding was out of town. Surely, Beau wouldn’t expect them to share a hotel room. But what, exactly, did he consider the obligations of a plus-one to entail?

“Before we get started,” she said. “We need to establish some ground rules