Cowboy Crazy by Joanne Kennedy

you can stop watching me like you’re going to break me or something.”
    “I don’t want to break you.” He put his hand on hers. “I was trying to figure out how I could gentle you a little bit.”
    She felt the hard shell around her heart crack like the candy coating on an M&M. Lane moved his thumb over the soft spot on her wrist and she felt suddenly vulnerable. Melts in his hand, not in his mouth , she thought. No, melts in his mouth, too. His mouth…
    “What are you thinking, Sarah?”
    She tossed her hair and looked away. “Thoughts.”
    “What kind of thoughts?”
    Crazy thoughts. Sexy thoughts. Leaning into him, she caught that masculine scent cologne companies could never quite manage to cram into a bottle. The light bounced off the sun-bleached streaks in his hair and sculpted his face, highlighting a scar that ran from his temple to the top of his right cheekbone. Without thinking, she reached up and traced a finger down the length of it. The band stopped playing just then and everything in the room seemed to freeze, as if time had been temporarily suspended. Lane’s gaze was expectant, his breathing slow. The moment was hushed, like something that mattered was about to happen.
    “Let’s dance,” he said.
    “Okay.” She flashed him a smile. “Let’s.”
    ***
    The woman saying yes to a dance seemed like a completely different being from the woman Lane had been talking to a moment ago. He’d watched a riot of emotions play across her face as she went through some complicated process that evidently ended with a decision to trust him. Now she was smiling and bright-eyed as she cocked a hip and held out her hand.
    “Can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” he said. Actually, he could think of a lot of things he’d rather do with Sarah, but he couldn’t do any of them in public. Dancing would have to do—for now. It was an excuse to touch her, and touching would help him figure her out. Sometimes before a ride, he’d lay a hand on a bull, feel the tension in its muscles and the blood pulsing through its veins. A skipping heart and twitching muscles told him the bull was nervous, maybe even scared. A steady heart told him it was ready for the ride. A scared animal bucked to shake you off, while a relaxed animal bucked for the joy of winning—and joy bucked better than fear.
    He needed to get Sarah to trust him. Then they could get back to their game, and maybe there’d even be some… bucking.
    The fiddler stepped down to cheers and backslaps, and the band swung into their next song, a limping but serviceable rendition of a George Strait ballad. Lane led Sarah to a dim corner of the dance floor and took her hand, pulling her toward him while he wrapped his good arm around her waist. He’d expected her to tense, but she melted into him like a stick of sweet butter, her curves conforming to his muscles, her head resting on his chest. He could feel her tension ebbing away as he held her and swayed, and when he looked down her eyes were closed.
    A wave of tenderness swamped him and he wondered what was happening. He was an old-fashioned guy, and it was a natural impulse to want to protect women. But this was more than your standard manly protective urge. There was no threat here, no ex-boyfriend, no predatory Lothario or evil ex-husband. There was just this woman, this soft tender woman, who thought she had to be tough to survive. Who thought she had to cover up her true, generous, sweet nature in order to succeed.
    He wanted to protect her from herself.
    And the only way to do that was to make her feel safe. What was it she’d said about poverty? When you don’t have money, you don’t have options. He wondered when she’d learned that lesson and held her a little closer, lowering his head so his lips rested gently on her glossy hair. She smelled like peaches and flowers. He rested his cheek against her head and swayed with the music, closing his eyes as she relaxed into him.
    When you