She’d had no choice.
“I appreciate it. I do.”
“And whatever you think about our husbands,” Emerson said, “they’re both cowboys, and they would be happy to help you with the ranch.”
“I know that. And when I’ve exhausted my free Cooper labor, I may take them up on it. But for now, I’ll solve my own problem.”
“Well done, Cricket,” Emerson said, sounding slightly defeated. “I can’t even see my toes.”
“You’re not supposed to,” Wren said.
Wren’s baby was three months old now, and of course, her slim figure had already gone right back into place. But even slightly built Wren had been distressed about the size of her stomach at this stage in her pregnancy.
It was weird to see her sisters so settled in domesticity. Having babies and all of that. They had never seemed particularly domesticated to Cricket, but they had fallen in love, and that had changed them both. Not in a bad way. In fact, they both seemed happier. Steadier and more sure of themselves. But that didn’t make any of that racket seem appealing to Cricket.
Who just wanted...to be free.
To not feel any of the overwhelming pressure to fit into anything other than the life she chose for herself.
Maybe she’d wanted something else when she’d been young and silly and hadn’t understood herself or her life.
She was the awkward sister. The ugly sister, really. She didn’t mind at all about her looks. She was tall, and she was thin, and her curves weren’t anything to write home about. But while that seemed elegant and refined on Wren, with her somewhat bony shoulders and knees, Cricket had always just thought her thinness seemed unfortunate on her. Her cheekbones were sharp, and she had freckles. Her top lip was just a little bit more full than the bottom one, and even though she’d had braces to solve the buck teeth situation, the gap between her two front teeth hadn’t closed entirely, and it remained.
Her features were... Well, they were strong. And like everything else about her, kind of a love or hate situation.
Cricket didn’t much care how she looked. She cared about what she could do. She was good at riding horses. She could run fast; she was strong. Her hair was a little bit wild, but she didn’t much mind. No, she didn’t mind at all. Because it made her look like she was moving. Made her look like she was busy. And that was what she liked.
That was the thing. As much as the Coopers were supposed to be rivals of her family, in some ways, she could identify a little bit more closely with them than she did with the Maxfields. They had country roots and sensibilities. That was what she understood.
It was what she connected with.
Country strong was hard to break. And that was what Cricket wanted to be.
It was what she was.
“I plan on making good use of Mr. Jackson Cooper,” Cricket said triumphantly, immediately picturing the man, his broad shoulders and large hands.
Good for work.
And a good place to start when it came to figuring out how to...how to broach the topic of what she thought might be true between them.
“Yes indeed,” she said to herself.
Her sisters exchanged a glance. “Just be careful.”
“Why?”
“The Coopers are a whole thing,” Wren said.
Cricket blinked. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You start talking about making full use of Cooper men, and I’ll tell you, it gives me ideas,” Wren said.
Cricket still didn’t get it.
“Sex, Cricket,” Wren said. “Some people might think you mean sex.”
Cricket was suddenly made of heat and horror. “No! No. Not at all. Never. How could you... Look, Wren, I’m not you. When I finally do decide to take on a man, and I’m going to need to get my actual life in order a whole hell of a lot better before I do, it is not going to be... He’s old.”
Among other things.
Wren laughed. “Right. So old. Like two whole years older than my husband.”
Cricket sniffed. “And I’m several years younger than you.”
Wren seem to take that as a square insult, her lips snapping shut.
Fine. Cricket wasn’t old enough to take age commentary as that deep of a wound yet.
“This is strictly a business arrangement,” she said. A fluttering grew and expanded in her chest. Evidence of her dishonesty. “He’s going to help me with my ranch. And that’s it.”
“If you say so.”
“I absolutely do.”
“The one thing I know about you, Cricket. When you set your mind to something, you do see it done.”
And what she had her mind set to, was finding out for sure if she wasn’t a Maxfield at all...
And hiring Jackson Cooper was the best way to do that.
Two
The place was a mess.
To call it a ranch was a stretch. The house was... It was damn near falling apart. The porch was sloping on one side. He didn’t want the place for its current assets, though.
He wanted it for the location.
This property was the best and only way for him to increase his spread, and that was what he needed to do. He wasn’t going to spend his life working on his father’s legacy.
He wasn’t his father.
And when that screen door opened, and Cricket came out, she looked like the feral pirate queen of a sinking ship.
She had a hat on over frizzy blond curls, and a tight white tank top and denim shorts. She also had on cowgirl boots. She was quite unintentionally the very image of a sexy, tousled cowgirl, and he knew that she hadn’t done that on purpose. Not at all.
Her legs were long, endless. Her curves were slight, but they were ripe. She had no makeup on her face, but she was damn pretty. Unique looking, that was for sure. But he liked her look, he found. At least, he had been liking it more and more lately, which he didn’t really care to dive into.
He wasn’t here to look. He was here to educate.
In such a way that she might realize the subject matter was not for her.
“Reporting for duty,” he said.
“Excellent,” she responded, grinning.
“So what is it you had in mind, because this is way more than a month’s worth of work, I can already tell.”
She looked immediately crestfallen and he had to wonder if she was going to make it easy for him. “Why? What do you see?”
“You’re liable to fall right through that porch if somebody doesn’t get in there and reinforce it. I have some concerns. Are you living in this heap?”