Cowboy Trouble (The McCord Brothers 1.5) by Delores Fossen Page A

take me even longer to get back.”
    His response was to kiss her, the very thing that had started this afternoon marathon of sex. Natalie gave in to it for a moment longer, but as usual, oxygen became an issue. So did the burning attraction that just wouldn’t cool down. She would have thought that three orgasms would have done the trick, but she still felt that “edge.” Of course, that probably had something to do with having a butt-naked Rico next to her. Hard not to be edgy with a hot body like that around.
    All those muscles.
    Not from exercise in a gym, either. Rico had a cowboy’s body chiseled from years of hard work. Work that he hadn’t been doing since he’d been in bed with her.
    “Won’t Logan be wondering where you are?” she asked.
    “No. I texted him a couple of hours ago when I went to the bathroom. Lucky handled the livestock delivery.” But then she felt his muscles tense. The very muscles she’d just been admiring. He sat up, flicked on the lamp. “But what about you? Shouldn’t you be...somewhere?”
    He meant home, where her father had demanded she be for dinner. Which she’d obviously missed. Even if she left at this very minute, it’d be after ten o’clock by the time she got back to Austin.
    “I need to text my dad just so he won’t worry.” It wouldn’t stop him from being pissed, though. That ship had already sailed.
    She started to get up again, but like the other time, Rico kissed her. This one wasn’t long and lingering. In fact, he cut it short, pulled back and looked at her.
    Uh-oh.
    Now that the lamp was on, she could see more than heat in his eyes. Natalie could see the questions. Well, one question anyway.
    What now?
    Natalie didn’t have a clue. The sex had been great. Better than great. But she already knew from past experience that she couldn’t build a marriage on that alone.
    Especially not with Rico.
    To build a marriage with him, she’d have to do the impossible and rewrite the past. Talk about a depressing thought. It really killed the mood. Well, until Rico kissed her again. Apparently, that was the way he was going to deal with those questions in his eyes. Temporarily anyway. He pulled back, gave her that look again. So, Natalie just threw something out that would help them with this gorilla in the room.
    “You’ve got your wedding ring in the nightstand drawer,” she said. “I was surprised that you’d kept it all these years.”
    It was as if his expression stuttered. “You looked in my drawers?”
    She lifted her shoulder. “Let’s call it what it is. I snooped. I felt the sheets, too, just to see if I was allergic to the detergent like the kindergarten teacher.”
    He groaned and was probably making a mental note to hire a hit man for Wilhelmina. Bernie’s secretary just didn’t have any boundaries. But then, neither did she because she’d gone through his nightstand—mainly to make sure he had some condoms. He had, but just one. Natalie had then gone through his medicine cabinet to see if there were backups.
    There had been.
    Good thing, too, because they’d needed them.
    “I’m betting you got rid of your wedding and engagement rings,” he said.
    That was a bet he’d lose. Well, sort of.
    She felt around on the floor beside the bed and came up with her top so she could show him the heart pin. It looked silver, but it was actually white gold.
    “My wedding band went missing, but I had a jeweler make the engagement ring into this,” she explained.
    Judging from the way Rico stared at her, he wanted more information. Like why the heck had she done that? And what did it mean?
    Natalie was still trying to figure that out all these years later.
    “I couldn’t just give the ring away,” she said. “Or toss it the way some people do. But it didn’t seem right to wear it, either. If the wedding band had ever turned up, I would have had earrings or something made from it. But I looked everywhere and couldn’t find it.”
    He kept