He interrupted me before I could even tell him I was teasing.
“No,” he said. “Even thinking about anything ever happening to you is completely unbearable to me.”
I softened against his hold, then pressed a kiss to his chin, just to the right of his mouth.
“I squeeze you, Banks,” I told him. “If it’s my choice, I’m going to always choose you.”
His eyes went soft and his hands came up to cup my face.
“Let’s shower.” He paused. “And I squeeze you, too.”
I snickered at his words and followed him into the shower.
Chapter 17
I’m old enough to remember what it’s like to poop without a smartphone.
-Banks to Candy
Candy
In the wee hours of the morning, I felt my perfectly warm bed shift, and Banks pull his bicep pillow out from under my face.
My open mouth drug all along his forearm, likely leaving a trail of drool in its wake.
“Where are you going?” I mumbled, feeling like my eyelids were lined with sandpaper.
“Have to help Ace and Callum at the ranch today,” he said, sounding wide awake.
I reluctantly peeled myself out of the bed beside him, feeling like cement was filling my limbs.
Warm hands gathered me up, then Banks’ scratchy jaw was rubbing along the cords of my neck.
“Baby, you don’t have to come,” he rumbled, voice so beautiful that it almost hurt.
“I know,” I turned into his arms, pressing a kiss to the spot right above his nipple. “But I have a few things that I want to go over with y’all on the job site. I need to collect a check. I need to pay the boys—or at least get those checks ready to be cut—and then go visit all the other job sites all by ten this morning. So, getting up now, with you, works.”
I had no idea what time it was, but I knew that it was early.
Way earlier than I’d intended on getting up, but oh well.
He let me go, and I walked to the bathroom, closing the door almost all the way behind me.
After doing my business in the dark, I flipped the light on, opened the door, and smiled tiredly at the man that was almost all the way dressed except for his t-shirt.
He leaned his broad shoulders against the door and watched me brush my teeth.
“Got an extra one of those?” he asked.
I tapped my foot against the drawer next to my feet and said, “In here.”
He moved around me, making sure to grab my ass on his way, and bent down to grab an unused toothbrush from the drawer.
“Why do you have thirty-five toothbrushes?” he asked curiously.
I spit, rinsed, and then washed my face before answering.
I then walked out of the room as I explained.
“There was a really good coupon for it in the paper,” I explained. “I’m not really a couponer. But mom was. I still follow all the blogs that tell you when a super good deal is going on. I made sure to buy like eight papers that day. Ended up getting over fifty toothbrushes.” I paused. “I’ll never have to buy them again.”
He chuckled around a mouthful of toothpaste as I got dressed.
By the time he was finished, I was dressed.
His eyes took me in and grinned.
“What?” I asked.
“Boots or heels, you always look so fuckin’ good,” he rumbled, his eyes eating me up.
I felt my nipples tighten and things below my belt start to tingle.
But he shook his head. “As much as I’d like to take advantage of that look on your face, I can’t. I have to help my brothers today. They need to pull some fence on the new property we just bought. They’ve been waiting for me to get home.”
I stood up and stretched my arms up high over my head.
“Let me grab my laptop and…” Banks kissed me, bringing his arms around my body and pulling me flush against him.
I wrapped my upraised arms around his neck and squeezed him tight, returning the kiss with vigor.
When he pulled away, his eyes were bright.
“What was that for?” I asked curiously.
“How attached are you to this house?” he asked.
I shrugged, wondering why he was asking.
“Not really,” I admitted. “I’m more attached to my chickens. And since my donkey seems to like your place better, I really have no problem staying at yours… if that’s what you’re asking.”
His eyes were bright as he said, “Good. Tomorrow you can stay at mine. I’ll come back with you to feed the chickens when I’m done working. Then we get to sleep in… or use the extra thirty minutes to do other, more enjoyable things.”
I understood exactly what he was talking about then and my girly parts nearly shouted with agreement.
“Ready?” he asked when he finally pulled away.
I held up a finger and went to find my purse, keys, and laptop.
He took my keys from me and tossed them on the counter.
“I’ll need those to—”
“You can take mine,” he interrupted me. “I don’t want you driving this early by yourself.”
I would’ve argued, but before I could, he bent down and practically tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Umm,” I said as I stared at his beautiful ass. “That’s not the way to win an argument.”
He chuckled. “No, but I like the outcome of where you ended up.”
To punctuate that statement, he rubbed my ass with the palm of his hand, then promptly smacked it.
I squeaked, and would’ve reciprocated, unfortunately I had my hands full.
“If we feed the chickens before we go,” I said breathlessly. “I won’t have to come back tonight.”
“What about feeding your dad?” he asked.
I cursed. “Shit. I forgot about that. And there’s chicken in there that I have to use, or it’ll go bad.”
“Then you can spend the day with me. Go home. Cook. And I’ll be by after I’m done doing what I’m doing and join you,” he rumbled, dropping me to my feet right outside my front door.
I smiled at him and headed with him to his truck once he’d locked it all up.
“What do you want me to do today?” I asked. “When I’m done?”
He held my hand all the way to the truck, then opened the door for me.
Watching me hop in, he waited until I swung my feet around into the floorboard of the truck before slamming the door closed.
I grinned when he came back around the front.
“You do know, right, that this is a newer vehicle? You don’t have to slam the door like you did your old one,” I said.
He looked over at me curiously.
“How do you know that I used to slam the door of my old one?” he asked curiously.
I felt my face flush as I remembered how many times I’d watched him from the back of some store, or the corner of some building.
Then I decided, fuck it. He needed to know that I was halfway psycho.
“I used to watch you,” I said as he reversed out of my drive. “You’d pull up at the grocery store, and I’d run behind my truck. Or you’d come down an aisle in the store, and I’d rush to the next one. But I used to watch you in those little mirrors at the top of the aisles.”
Banks’ lips tipped up. “Why do they even have those mirrors?”
That, I didn’t know.
But the grocery store all the Kilgore natives frequented had them at the end of each row. I assume so we didn’t get into any major collisions in the produce aisle.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I used to watch you, too,” he admitted. “You’d be at the feed store, and I’d have one of the boys distract you while I loaded up your truck.”
I gasped.
“They told me that they made special accommodations for me since I was such a long-time customer!” I cried out.
“All this time and it was you?”
He grinned unrepentantly. “How do you think you would’ve reacted if you’d heard it was me loading your bags of feed and not one of the boys?”
I snapped my mouth shut.
I wouldn’t have handled it very well.
“How did you always manage to get there on the days that I was?” I asked curiously.
He grinned. “Your stalking skills weren’t quite up to par with mine.”
With that cryptic statement, he turned onto the main highway that would lead us to his ranch.
“You know, I sent them Christmas cards telling them thank you,” I said. “I always wondered why in the hell I always got the special treatment when even old Mrs. Coot didn’t get it.”
When the store had changed owners, gone were the times of the past when they would load your truck for you. Now it was all up to you, and that meant that I was stuck lugging out eight fifty-pound bags of chicken feed every three weeks.
Banks started to chuckle as he pulled down the long drive that would lead up to the house.
I blinked as we topped the hill and the house came into view.
“It’s lit up like Fort Knox,” I found myself saying.
“Feeding time,” Banks answered. “All the animals get taken care of up here before we get to work doing everything else. Darby has probably been up for half an hour now mucking out stalls.”
Banks was right.
When we pulled up to the big barn, Darby was indeed mucking out stalls.
In his underwear.
“Umm,” I found myself saying. “Do you realize you forgot to put pants on?”
Darby grunted out a ‘yeah’ and kept working.
I tried not to admire his body, but the kid had done a lot of growing up over the last year.
And filling out.
No longer was he a lanky baby adult. Now he was well on his way to being exactly like his older brothers.
Only with a whole lot less regard for his dress.
“Do you want some water or anything?” I paused. “Help?”
He looked at me dressed in my nice clothes—semi-nice, really. They were my work clothes. I just didn’t do not-nice clothes, thank you very much.
“You’re wearing what I assume are a hundred-dollar jeans,” he said. “And your boots look like they came right off of a runway.”
I placed my hands on my hips.
“Hey,” I said. “I’ll have you know, I stomp through chicken shit in these with no problem, and still manage to wear them out to dinner later in the evening.” I paused. “And these jeans are a hundred dollars. New. I got them for twenty-two dollars at the consignment shop on Alpine.”
Darby’s lips twitched.
“I’m gonna go change, baby,” Banks said. “Come inside and eat when you’re done.”
Banks knew me well.
Darby had thrown down the gauntlet, and there was no way in hell I was allowing him to think I couldn’t muck out the stalls right next to his half-naked ass.
“Give me a shovel, bitch,” I ordered.
Darby’s lips twitched, and I could hear Banks’ laughter follow him into the house.
We worked in companionable silence for a while.
At least until I remembered the girl that I’d sat next to at the rodeo this weekend.
“So, do you know a bullfighter’s daughter that hates you?” I asked curiously.
Darby didn’t even pause in his work.
“I know a lot of girls that hate me,” he said. “But only one comes to mind.” He looked up at me then. “Waylynn.”
I nodded. “That’s the one.”
“Why do you ask?” He bent forward and a bead of sweat dropped down from his chin and planted itself onto my shovel.
“She sat next to me,” I shrugged and kept working, tossing piles of shit and hay and feed and everything that collected on the bottom of a horse’s stall into the bucket between us. “And she didn’t like you. I just wondered why.”
“I turned her down for sex,” he answered. “She thought that since I was free with my loving that I would do her, and I didn’t want to do her.”
That surprised me.
“Why?” I asked, coming to a stop. “She’s gorgeous.”
He snorted. “She is. But she’s also not my type.”
“What do you mean not your type?” I asked curiously.
“She’s got ‘relationship’ stamped all over her. I’m sure the moment I sank my cock inside of her, she’d be asking for marriage and babies and all that fun stuff, and I’m just not at the point in my life where I’m willing to give that. I’m graduating next month with my masters, and I’m going to finish if it kills me,” he muttered darkly.
I found myself smiling as I shoveled shit with him.
“I’m sure,” I said softly, “that if she actually cared, she wouldn’t want you to put your career or your education on hold for her.” I paused. “But, saying that, it didn’t sound like she’d even give you the time of day so…all of it is moot, isn’t it?”
His shovel scraped loudly on the floor, and I looked at him, pausing mid poop dump to stare at his incredulous face.
“You don’t think she’d give me the time of day?” he asked.
I felt my lips twitch into a small smile.
“Umm,” I hesitated. “No. I don’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “You think so?”
I had a feeling that I’d just jerked his chain. Poked the bear. Grabbed the tiger by the tail.
“I think that she’d give you a run for your money,” I finally decided on.
He scooped up another scoop of poop, and once again I was hit with the thought that he wasn’t a little kid anymore.
No.
Definitely not a little kid anymore.
He had rippling ab muscles, a strong, hard jaw.
And he was so much like his brothers now that it physically hurt.
“When did you grow up?” I blurted.
He looked up at me with a twinkle in his eye as he sat the shovel next to the trash can, then lifted the damn thing like it was a feather instead of filled to the brim with shit and other stuff.
“I grew up when I was too young,” he admitted. “I just grew into my body, though.”
With that he left, taking the trash can to wherever they went to dump it.
I moved on to the next stall just as he was back with the trash can.
And so, it went, for five stalls.
Until finally it was all done, I was sweaty as hell, and Banks was standing there looking at me like he loved me.
“What?” I panted, wiping the sweat off my face.
His gaze went to my hands.
“You’re going to have a blister tomorrow,” he surmised.
“I’m going to have a blister right now,” I amended, showing him my hand. “And I’m fairly sure I’m having a heat stroke. I’m going to have to go home and change before I go to any other job sites.”
“Why do you think I’m in my underwear?” Darby drawled.
Banks looked at him, then looked back to me.
“Breakfast is ready,” he said finally. “Are y’all almost done?”
“Fuck yeah,” Darby said. “This is the last stall. Ol’ Petunia here is a little scrapper. I think she mucks stalls out better than Ace does.”
“I highly doubt that,” Ace said, coming to stand in the stall’s doorway next to his brother. “She’s got puny arms.”
He showed us his guns, and I had to admit, I did have puny arms compared to Ace’s mammoth ones.
Then again, Banks’ guns were just as big as his big brother’s.
Banks, seeing where my thoughts had drifted, winked at me and gestured for me to follow.
“Uh, I’ll finish,” I said. “Be there in a few.”
With that, Banks and Ace left, leaving me alone with Darby.
“You’re good for him, you
know?” Darby said softly so that Banks wouldn’t overhear.
I flicked my eyes up to meet his, and a small smile graced my face.
“I feel like he’s good for me,” I said. “Sometimes, I have to pinch myself to tell myself that I’m not dreaming.”
His eyes went back to his scooping.
“If he’s what you want, you shouldn’t let him do anything stupid,” he finally settled on. “Banks, for all his good-natured ribbing, is a good guy. He loves us, would do anything for us, but doesn’t expect the same for himself.” He paused. “He’s riding bulls, making bank, then funneling it all right back into the ranch. I don’t think Ace or Callum really know why we got into the black as fast as we did after we moved back home, but it’s because of Banks. Every single penny he makes gets sunk back into this place.” He paused. “We ended up getting our mother and father’s life insurance policy payout. But what really kept us afloat was Banks.”
That didn’t surprise me one bit, to be honest.
“That sounds like your brother,” I replied softly, scooping the very last of the dirt and muck out of the stall.
Darby repeated his towing of shit, and met me around the back of the horse stalls and said, “I gotta get them feed and hay and…”
“I’ll get the feed,” I said. “You get the hay.”
“Why not you get the hay?” he teased.
I gave him a droll look.
“Mostly because it takes everything I have to pick up a fifty-pound bag of chicken feed. A bale of hay is likely not ever going to happen. At least if you want to do breakfast while it’s still hot.”
He started laughing, and we split up once again, finishing out his morning chores before walking shoulder to shoulder into the house.
I walked to the kitchen sink and washed my hands, unsurprised to find everyone still waiting for us to eat.
I grinned at Banks, who had a plate loaded next to him with all of my favorites.
“Wow,” I said, wiping my brow with a paper towel. “Looks wonderful.”
Darby arrived back, freshly washed and still in his boxer shorts.
“Let’s eat,” he said.
I reached for the best thing on my plate.
I bit down on a thick piece of bacon and nearly died.
I didn’t even get a good chew in before I was spitting the bacon out.
Chute Yeah Page 13