was concentrating on his knees and ankles now, and the mud beneath his boots was getting squishier and squishier.
"Give up, Sheriff?" she called out gaily.
His hose was still operating at watering-can force. "Never!" He gave the fitting a vicious twist, and water suddenly gushed.
It caught Kitty full in the chest, instantly soaking the front of her dress.
She gasped. He might have felt satisfaction, except that between the soaking and the gasping, the neckline was gaping dangerously. Within seconds, she was an eyelash away from exposing to all her pretty, for-his-eyes-only breasts.
"Kitty!" He threw the stupid hose down and rushed toward her.
To immediately lose his footing and fall flat on his ass in the reddish, sticky mud.
The onlookers went wild.
So did his temper.
He was still lying there, staring up into the mocking blue sky while the wet dirt worked its way into every pore of his body, when Kitty walked up to him. Gingerly. He thought it was because she feared his reaction, but then he saw the gleeful grin on her face and realized she was merely trying not to slip in the mud.
"Are you okay?" she asked. In one fist she held the sagging material at the front of her dress. She tried biting back her grin, but it broke out once again.
"You owe me," he said as laughter - laughter at his expense - rolled through the street. She owed him big, damn it. When he'd meant to heat her up, she'd succeeded in cooling him down. Dylan Matthews, a cool fool.
Her mouth turned serious, as serious as her puckery, kiss-me mouth could look. "I know," she said, her eyes wide. He could tell that, inside, she was laughing too.
He sat up. There was mud in his hair, under his fingernails, and somehow, some way, between his toes. "I'm warning you," he told Kitty. "You're going to regret that." Then he flopped back in the mud, unable to face the uproarious tourists.
Sinking down beside him, Kitty giggled.
He shot her a venomous look, then finally surrendered. No one liked a sore loser. He laughed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sitting in the bar Sunday night, D. B. admitted to himself he was a coward. It was a hell of a thing for a fifty-year-old man to know about himself, but it was the truth.
He'd dragged his one and only son to Bum Luck for a drink because he wasn't brave enough to face Samantha alone. Not after virtually ignoring her in The China Chef last week once his friends arrived.
There was also Dylan and the Odd Fellows' plan. He should warn his son that they aimed to name the park after him on Heritage Day. But D. B. knew he was going to be yellow-bellied about that too. He suspected that telling Dylan would drive him away, and D. B. already had enough trouble getting people he cared about to stay close by.
Hell, Samantha wouldn't even come to the table to take their order.
"Well, Judge, should I go to the bar to get our drinks?" Dylan asked after another few minutes without service.
"No!" Damn it, D. B. wasn't going to let the woman ignore him the entire night. Then he narrowed his eyes at his son, his frustration spilling over. "Didn't you used to call me Dad?"
Dylan's eyebrows rose. "What's eating you?"
Over his son's shoulder, D. B. could see Samantha leaning close to George Gilbert, who owned a real estate office in the next county. The old coot had arrived after D. B. and Dylan, and she'd already brought him his drink. Now she was personally delivering a basket of pretzels, when most customers retrieved their own from the stack on the bar. D. B. glowered.
Dylan turned his head and looked in the same direction as his father. "You forget to pay your bar tab or something, Judge?"
D. B. didn't take his eyes off Samantha. Christ. How could he begin to make it up to her if she wouldn't come near him, if she instead chose to fawn over some paunchy fool who looked ready to swallow his dentures because of her attention? "Women," he said with a disgust he really felt toward himself.
Dylan's eyebrows shot upward again. He turned his head once more, turned back to look at D. B. "Women?" he asked.
"Women," D. B. confirmed. "And some are a hell of a lot more trouble than others."
Dylan leaned back in his chair, an odd smile curving his mouth. "Wilder women."
"The worst."
Dylan rubbed his chin. "I'm running into my own lack of cooperation,"