Winning the Cowboy Billionaire - Emmy Eugene Page 0,9

sure you’ll meet someone there who’ll ask you out.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to the garden social. I’m forty-five, not dead.”

Olli laughed just as the doorbell rang. That peal cut off her laughter, and she met Ginny’s eyes with plenty of fear running through her veins. She couldn’t believe she’d been bold enough to ask Spur to be her fake boyfriend. She’d been even more surprised when he’d agreed. When he’d called to ask her out, Olli had sat at her perfumery desk for a solid twenty minutes afterward, wondering what in the world had just happened.

“Go on,” Ginny hissed. “I’ll stay back here and find some perfume to spritz in my hair.” She gave Olli a little nudge, and that got Olli moving down the hall toward the front door.

She opened it a few seconds later to find Spur Chappell standing there, looking absolutely scrumptious in a pair of black slacks, polished and shined cowboy boots, a pale yellow shirt, open at the throat with a tie in brown, yellow, and blue knotted loosely around his neck. He wore a dark brown cowboy hat, and every single piece of him went together like magic.

“Heya, Olli,” he said, his voice made of deep, dark waters, sweetened with honey. He looked down to her heels and back to her eyes. “You look amazing.”

“Thanks,” she managed to say. How had she never acknowledged how handsome he was? His dark hair held plenty of silver in it, on both his head and his face. He smiled, his lips parting to reveal straight, white teeth. Everything about him screamed wealth and power, and Olli remembered how much he intimidated her.

“Do I pass?” he asked, turning in a slow circle. The man had no idea what he did to her pulse, and Olli contained it behind a smile of her own.

When their eyes met again, she shrugged one shoulder. “I suppose so. The hat is at least the one you wear to church.”

“These boots are brand-new,” he said. “Never worn on a ranch.” He lifted one foot as if she couldn’t see them herself.

“I like the half-tied necktie look too,” she said, reaching up and flipping the bottom of his necktie. “Very cowboy casual.”

“I can be buttoned up, if you’d like,” he said, his fingers following hers and touching the tie, then his collar.

“No,” she practically yelled. He looked at her again, something catching between them. She couldn’t look away from him, and he couldn’t seem to look away from her either. “I like it,” she said, much quieter. “It’s sexy.”

“Sexy,” Spur repeated, his eyes now dropping to her mouth. They rebounded so fast, Olli thought sure she’d hallucinated his eye movement. He wasn’t thinking about kissing her. That would be an impossibility.

This was just dinner to get to know each other better, so they could trick the investor. Nothing more.

“Should we get going?” Spur asked, backing up a couple of steps.

She hadn’t invited him in, and she said, “Yes, just a sec,” and quickly retraced her steps to the kitchen counter to grab her phone-wallet. “I’m ready.” She stepped outside and closed the door behind her, telling herself nothing more, nothing more, nothing more over and over again as she walked with him down the sidewalk to his truck.

4

Spur decided Olli had called one of his brothers and asked them all of his favorite things. A face mostly without makeup. Check. Subdued colors. Check. The scent of crisp linen and something citrusy. Check. Heck, the woman even had horses on her blouse.

Every single thing about her called to Spur, and he had no idea what to do about it. He’d spent most of the day wondering why he’d never done anything about his feelings in the past, and he cursed—and praised—those silly sheep for bringing this date to fruition.

He opened Olli’s door for her and held it while she used the runners on his truck to get to her seat. She even did that with a delicate femininity that had Spur wanting to put his hand on the small of her back or her waist to steady her.

He managed to keep his hands to himself, because that touch-barrier hadn’t been broken yet. She’d flipped his tie slightly, but there’d been no skin-to-skin contact. Spur closed the door and swallowed, his mind racing ahead through that night. He’d hold her hand. Laugh with her. Put his arm around her…

Maybe, he sternly told himself as he went around to the driver’s seat. So much