There was a sweet, nutty scent in the air, sourced in her thick tumble of blond hair.

Somehow she still managed to smell like a shower stall, even though she’d been around horses all day. They were both watching Chet right now, Tegan’s long, lean, barrel-racer body as lazy as Jamie’s, leaning on the rodeo arena rail. She couldn’t stand him, and she was marrying his best friend. “You don’t know how to talk to women,” she’d said. She was the same age he was, and they were like grade school kids with each other, sometimes – immature in a way he didn’t think he was with other people. He liked getting a rise out of her, truth to tell. “Well…Do I have one?” He’d stayed calm and mild, knowing it would annoy her. In fact, she was the one who’d first pointed it out, several months ago, in her cute, blunt Australian accent. She left him in no doubt about his shortcomings in this area. They carried the dialogue forward on their own, and accepted a lazy smile or a sideways glance as his part of the conversational bargain. He just didn’t see the point of a whole lot of talking.įortunately, a lot of women seemed not to mind. Rest of the time, no, and to be honest it wasn’t a fault, as far as he was concerned. When he was riding the adrenalin rush of a rodeo win, he thought he managed it pretty well. He had a mother, three sisters, and an aunt he was close to, as well as a father and a brother, but apparently he still didn’t have a clue. Jamie MacCreadie didn’t know how to talk to women.

Marry Me, Cowboy by Lilian Darcy