Teaching Foster's Cowboy - Izaia Winter Page 0,1

it would take to smother myself.

“Then the next time he comes in, don’t take no for an answer.” Snatching the pillow away from my face, she pressed it to her lap. “Talk to him. If he refuses to talk back, I’d give up on him. No man playing that hard to get is worth it.”

I snorted. “No man is worth your time, period.”

With a giggle, Billie rocked her shoulders as she danced in place. “And ain’t that the truth. I thank Tammy Lynn Moore every day for showing me her boobs in middle school and letting me touch them behind the cafeteria after lunch.”

“You really need to stop telling that story,” I said as I got up off her bed. “Mom overheard you the last time we were home, and I think she almost had a coronary.”

“But it’s a good story,” she protested as she followed me out of her room and into mine. “Speaking of mom, she called me this morning.”

“What did she want?”

“The usual. Checking up on us and spreading the local gossip. She said she’d call you later.”

Nodding, I grabbed my wallet from my dresser and scooped up my work boots from the floor.

“And where are you going?” Billie asked as she followed me back into the living room.

“Work,” I replied abruptly as I sat on the couch and laced up my boots.

“But you don’t have work today. It’s Thursday.”

“I’m covering for Rea. She had some kind of doctor’s appointment and couldn’t make it in,” I explained as I stood and made to leave, snagging my keys from the little key rack by the door. “She’s taking my Friday shift in return.”

“Are you going to be seeing him tonight?” she asked, a sly smile on her face as she twisted back and forth.

“I don’t know.”

“If you do, are you going to talk to him?” she pressed.

“I don’t know,” I repeated.

“Elias!”

I huffed at the pointed look she threw me. “I’ll try.”

“You better do more than try!” she yelled as I shut the door on her. “And I want details!”

Running out before she could follow and start in on me again, I managed not to think about him on my way into work and the first few hours of my shift. It wasn’t easy. I kept waiting for him to walk through the door.

I felt a little like a trained puppy waiting for my Master to come home, looking toward the door every time the little bell that rested above it chimed. It didn’t matter if we had just opened or last call had arrived; if I heard the bell, I looked, hoping to see him. I felt a kernel of guilt in my stomach at downplaying my infatuation with my handsome stranger to Billie, but I hadn’t wanted her to worry. And she would worry.

It wasn’t right that he had so much power over me that it almost felt like I couldn’t breathe properly without him there. I knew next to nothing about him, but I wanted him. My body came alive when he was near. I knew he was attracted to me, but the idea he came solely to see me was nothing more than a fantasy I nurtured, just wishful thinking. He was so far out of my league we weren’t even playing the same sport.

He had an air of worldly sophistication about him while I’d never been more than a few hundred miles from home. He was fashionable in a way I’d never be. I was still stuck in the same button-up shirts, jeans, and steel-toed boots that were perfect for working around large animals. The only reason I was working at the bar in the first place was to pay for the vet tech program I was enrolled in at the nearby community college. I preferred the company of animals to that of other people, and I couldn’t imagine him in the livestock barns with me in the mud and the muck. My hands had more calluses and scars than not, while his were smooth and elegant. I was bigger than him and solid, too, partly from genetics, but mostly from growing up on my parent’s horse ranch. I’d spent whole summers hauling hay and cleaning out stalls. I had the physique all the twinks liked, and I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I liked the way it felt to cuddle someone smaller in my arms, and I knew my stranger would be a perfect fit.

Ding.

A man walked in