laughed and feigned ignorance of what Hunter might be talking about. Of course Drake knew. Nathan’s woman had been on his mind, too, ever since they had met up with her two months before outside the rodeo.
“I know you remember her, man,” Hunter reminded him. “She’s attractive. Long dark hair down past her shoulders, light complexion, slender figure, early to midtwenties. She was dressed in those tight jeans. Don’t tell me you didn’t want to rip them off her, too.”
“I know who you’re talking about,” Drake acknowledged. “But she’s taken. I don’t think old Nathan’s into sharing his woman. If you remember, Nathan McLaughlin almost tore both our heads off because you were trying to touch her hair.”
“I could have taken McLaughlin in a fight,” Hunter said with overconfident bravado.
“McLaughlin’s older, taller, and heavier than you. He also played football for some fancy college team up in Chicago. He could eat you and me for lunch,” Drake warned his friend.
“Could be,” Hunter reluctantly admitted. “But then why isn’t he taking better care of his lady? If I had a lady that fine, I wouldn’t make her come into town and do my shopping for me.”
“You’ve got a good point there,” Drake agreed and took a swig from his beer. “Especially not with all the rough-and-tumble shifters around here. A pretty woman like that in town by herself is going to find all sorts of unwelcome trouble.”
“So do you think McLaughlin has abandoned his woman?”
Drake shook his head. He just couldn’t believe it. “Not likely,” he answered. “You saw how protective he was of her that night.”
“If she was my woman, I’d be that protective of her all the time,” Hunter put in. “I say we go out there to the McLaughlin place and pay our respects to Miss Morgan. We’ll take our chances and see what develops.”
Drake put a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Easy, cowboy,” he told him. “We don’t want to go doing something like that and risk McLaughlin coming home and finding us. He’d tear us apart.”
“Then what do you want to do, Drake?” Drake could tell when his young friend was getting impatient for a woman. This was definitely one of those times.
“Normally I’d say if McLaughlin doesn’t want to share her that the better man had won, and I’d wish him luck,” Drake explained. “However, there does appear to be extenuating circumstances here.”
“So you’re saying the two of us still have a shot with her?”
“Perhaps.” Drake felt like a fool for pursuing another man’s woman. But this seemed like a woman worth pursuing. “We’re going to have to play it real cautious and smart.”
“I’m not good at cautious or smart when it comes to women,” Hunter said and laughed. “But I am pretty good at seducing them when I want to be, and once I do get to know a woman, I’m excellent at seeing all her needs are met.”
Drake smiled. He’d shared a number of women in the past with Hunter. They complemented each other well in the chase for a woman and in the bedroom when they had finally forced the woman’s surrender. Drake was slow and sensual with women, and Hunter was rough and fun.
Drake was twenty-nine, about to turn thirty, and had lived long enough to have learned a modicum of wisdom, whereas Hunter had only just turned twenty-four and was all hard-ons and testosterone when it came to a woman.
Hunter had rugged good looks, and the ladies seemed to think he filled out his jeans nicely. He liked to fuck a woman and fuck her hard on the first date. Drake, on the other hand, liked to take his time and get to know the woman he was after and then worship her once he had gotten in her bed.
“Let’s start by learning everything we can about McLaughlin for the past couple of months when all the trouble seemed to start.”
“In a small town the size of Wolf Creek, that won’t be hard,” Hunter said.
“Can you afford to take a few