Page 16 of Playing Cowboy
He shakes his head.“Wait,” he hems, pausing in the doorway.“You guys must own these, right?”
“Who, me?”I snicker a bit proudly.“Of course we do.Bought in for the preconstruction price and, well ...now you’re free to stay as long as you like, Chet.”
Chapter Eight
Chet
“Iowe you an apology.”
Grady shuts the door behind him, bathed in the glow from a skylight just above him in the spacious foyer.I know I’m just some intern for the Publicity Department at Wild West Studios, but I can’t imagine anyone there could have lit him any better than he looks right now.
“Yeah,” he reminds me, nudging me with his hip to keep going.“We covered that over breakfast, remember?”
“No,” I insist as we drift deeper inside the cabin.“I mean, I thought you’d be just some dumb bumpkin in overalls and a ballcap, driving me around all week between stopping at every gas station in town to stock up on chewing tobacco, but ...this is some next-level style right here.”
He watches me as I admire the blond wood walls, rich and sumptuous and sparsely covered by black and white nature prints in thick wooden frames: abandoned barns, deserted water pumps, lonely fences, and dancing tumbleweeds.A sunken living room features rich leather furniture and brass-topped tables, all facing floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto a veritable forest of towering pines that make me feel like an honest-to-goodness pioneer.
“I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere,” he muses as we stand at the threshold of the stylish living room.
“Are all the cabins like this?”I marvel, ignoring him as I fiddle with the handle of a sliding glass door.
“Here,” he says gently, our hands brushing lightly as he takes over and undoes the latch with ease.The slightest touch makes me shiver in a way I haven’t in years, if ever.“Let me help you.”
He slides the door open, but neither of us ventures through just yet, standing in the doorway as fresh, cool air and nature sounds surround us in their primal soup.“You ...you already have,” I insist dopily.“In ...in more ways than one.”
He smiles, big and broad, no more artifice or bullshit.I marvel at his smooth, ruddy complexion, so flawless and tan, and making me wonder if he has tan lines or not.
“Yeah?”he asks, nodding at me to follow him onto the V-shaped deck that extends out into the forest beyond like the bow of a ship.“How’s that, City Boy?”
I blush at the nickname, so earnest and well-earned.Fresh wood stretches underfoot as he goes straight to the edge, the porch railing giving way to a long stretch of grass and, in the midst of a towering strand of ancient trees, a lake glistening in the afternoon sun just beyond.
He sees me admiring it, jaw agape at the natural splendor.“Lake Cottonwood,” he explains in that slow, southern twang of his.“Which reminds me—youdidpack swim trunks in that bag of rocks you carried onto the plane with you this morning, didn’t you?”
“Why the hell would I?”I sputter.“The last thing I thought I’d find when I got to Pistol Creek is ...water.”
His rich, rugged guffaw echoes across the small canyon beyond the deck railing, seeming to ripple across Lake Cottonwood itself.“Stay with me here, Chet ...Pistol Creek.Creek, yeah?As in ...a body of water?”
