“Is there something I can do to help with the meal?” she asked, clearly switching them to a more comfortable subject. One that wouldn’t cause an uncomfortable fit in the crotch of his jeans.
“No, thanks.” He motioned for her to follow him into the kitchen. “I got it under control.”
McCall followed him. “So, are Howie and Edith giving you grief about seeing me, or are they in favor of it?”
Austin hadn’t expected to have such a frank conversation with McCall. Especially not coming on the heels of two kisses.
“Howie’s in favor. I’m not sure about Edith. What about Em and Boo? Are they in favor or against you being here right now?”
“In favor,” she answered without pausing a beat. “However, Cody Joe’s mother wants me to remain pure and in-wait for her son. I didn’t accept your dinner invitation because I was pissed off at her for saying that,” McCall added. Then she shrugged. “All right, maybe that played into it just a little.”
Austin smiled. “Maybe Howie’s pushing played into me asking you out. He thinks I should get on with my life.”
She made a sound of understanding. “So, does Howie only want you to date in general, or did he decide I was a good enough candidate for something more?”
“I think it’s more of the second than the first.”
“Ah. Got it.” She nodded. “In his mind, it wouldn’t be good for Avery and Gracie for you to date a string of women. Howie would prefer you to focus on only one, and he’s willing to overlook my unconventional upbringing.”
The woman had a way of boiling everything down to the gist. “That sounds about right. And while we’re getting everything out in the open, you should know that I invited you here to keep the gossipers at bay. If we’d gone to the diner or any other place in public, everyone around would have watched our every move.”
McCall nodded. “I understand. If you hadn’t suggested we come here, then I would have invited you to Em’s.”
Mercy, it felt good to be honest with her, and it made him realize just how much he’d missed conversations like this. How much he missed just sharing a meal with another adult who wasn’t in his gene pool.
Austin reached on top of the fridge to get a bottle of red wine from the rack he kept there, but when he pulled out the bottle, something fell to the floor. He instantly knew what it was, but since it fell right at McCall’s feet, he couldn’t get to it before she did. She picked it up, handing it to him. However, there was no doubt that she saw the caption on the front of the greeting card.
Life is all about asses.
Below the caption was the image of two guys with their backs to the camera. They were jumping to emphasize both their seriously out-of-shape asses and the bareness of them. McCall didn’t open the card, but if she had, she would have seen the punch lines of You’re always covering it, saving it, etc.
McCall smiled, but it quickly faded when she saw what had to be a way too serious expression on his face.
“It’s from Zoey,” he explained, taking the card.
“Oh.” Her expression went in a serious direction, too, and she backed away as if to put some distance between the card and her. Or maybe the distance was from Austin. “I remember she had a sense of humor.”
“Yeah. She did,” Austin managed to say.
It took him a couple of seconds to tamp down the sudden lump in his throat. The sizzle of the boiling-over pot helped with that, and Austin laid the card back on top of the fridge, set the wine aside and took care of the bubbling water that was spreading over the cooktop.
“Uh, when Zoey found out the treatments weren’t going to work, she left some cards with Edith and Shaw so they could give them to me and the girls,” he said. It was easier to tell McCall this when he wasn’t looking at her. “At first, we got them once a month, but they’ve tapered off. Zoey dated the envelopes so that Edith and Shaw would know when to deliver them. I’ll be getting another one soon.”
McCall’s silence felt a little like a shrink’s kind of silence. As if she was analyzing everything he’d just told her.
“Shaw doesn’t think the cards are a good idea,” he went on. “He thinks it draws out my grief.”
“Does it?” she asked, but she waved off the question when he turned back toward her. “My guess is the grief is there no matter what.”
Bingo. It was there when he woke up, when he drew breath, when he was falling asleep at night in a bed he’d once shared with his wife.
“It’s getting better,” he insisted. Austin kept his gaze on her while he turned back to open the wine.
“You’re waiting for me to ask a counselor question, aren’t you?” McCall concluded.
“Well, you are a counselor,” Austin reminded her. He poured her a glass of wine and handed it to her. “But maybe I was waiting for you to ask something, well, more personal. For instance, wine or beer? Cats or dogs? Boxers or briefs?”
McCall grinned. “Boxers. Well, unless you’ve switched preferences in the past eighteen years. I accidentally got a glimpse of you changing clothes for a scene when they were filming Little Cowgirls.”
It took him a moment to pick through his memories and figure it out, but he did recall a time when he’d come over to deliver something his mom had asked him to bring to Em. The cameraman had asked Austin if he’d change into a pair of jeans that hadn’t been torn at the knees. “Date jeans,” the guy had called them, and he’d even had Austin’s right size. What Austin hadn’t known was that McCall had gotten a glimpse of that.
“Accidentally?” he questioned when he saw her dodge his gaze.
She huffed, made a show of rolling her eyes. “Okay, I peeked. Good Girl McCall wasn’t always good.”
For some stupid reason, that made him hope that she wasn’t always good in other areas, too.
Like sex.
But even if it didn’t mean that, even if things never went past this dinner date, Austin liked flirting with her. Liked getting to know the woman his pretend girlfriend had become.
“Tell me about this foundation you help run.” Austin put the pot with the water for the pasta back on the burner.
“Saddle Up for Tots.” McCall sipped her wine. “Cody Joe and I started it about two years ago. His mother actually pressed for him to be part of it,” she quickly added. “And Alisha Lozano put a lot of money into getting it off the ground.”
“Enough money to offset Cody Joe acting like an ass?” Austin took the salad he’d already put together from the fridge and set it on the table.
“Sometimes it’s enough,” she admitted, then paused. “The foundation’s important, and what he did could cause us to lose donations that could save kids.”
He heard the edge of anger in her voice but didn’t ask her about it. Austin just kept working on finishing the meal while she continued.
“I had a client.” McCall stared into her wine as she spoke. “She was the mother of two young children and in an abusive relationship. I tried to help her, but the truth is, I was way out of my depth. Six years of college doesn’t necessarily prep you for something like that.”
His chest tightened, and he hoped like hell this didn’t have the bad ending that it felt like it would have. “They’re alive?” he had to ask.
She nodded, swallowed hard. “But all three of them got hurt when her husband and the children’s father decided to show them how much he loved them by beating them. Both the mother and the kids had to be hospitalized, and that’s when I decided to do more than just try to use my counseling degrees to get her head on straight. Saddle Up for Tots funds shelters and services for families with young children trying to get back on their feet after being in abusive or bad situations.”
Oh, there was that damn lump in his throat again. “Good Girl McCall,” he managed to say.
She shrugged. “That’s me.” McCall lifted her chin, mayb
e trying to lift the dark mood that’d settled over the kitchen. “I fought it for a long time, you know,” she went on. “Because Good Girl McCall was the label the producers of Little Cowgirls gave me.”
“Badly Hadley and Funny Sunny,” he said. “Guess they couldn’t think up one for you that rhymed.”
“No, and Hadley and Sunny didn’t fight theirs. They more or less slid right into the roles. I, on the other hand, secretly pigged out on junk food and looked at porn.”
Well, that got his attention. “Porn?”
She nodded. “Hayes had a stash of magazines in his room. Let me tell you, it was a real surprise to my first lover when I tried to put some of those moves on him.”
Austin laughed and was extremely happy when McCall grinned. Mercy, she was a picture sitting there in her pink tutu and with her mouth stretched in a wide smile. And Austin knew then exactly what he had to do. He went to McCall, sliding his hand around the back of her neck.
Complicating the hell out of things, he kissed her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
UH-OH.
That was McCall’s first thought. For just the flash of a second, she knew this wasn’t a smart thing for Austin and her to be doing. But the flash became a wonderful scorching heat that zinged through her.
His mouth was incredible. So much more than when they’d been kids. Of course, her woman’s body could feel a whole lot more, too, and Austin was making sure she got a full dose of those feelings.
McCall felt herself moving and realized she was getting off the seat and going straight into Austin’s arms. That gave them some chest-to-chest contact, but the tutu became sort of a chastity belt. Probably a good thing. Because McCall figured she was going to need all the chastity help she could get to stop this from going further than a making-out session.
Austin made the most of the kiss, deepening it so that she got the jolt of his taste. There was the hint of the wine, but the rest was all man. A reminder that she didn’t need because McCall could feel the muscles stirring in his well-toned chest. Of course, her breasts were doing some stirring, too, and she knew it wouldn’t be long before both her breasts and she wanted a whole lot more.
She eased back to give herself a moment to catch her breath, but she kept her mouth hovering next to his.
“Too fast?” he asked. “Too slow?”
“Too right,” she answered honestly. And that was McCall’s cue to step back even more.
She immediately saw those sizzler blue eyes. A color so wild and rich that it seemed as if she could dive right into them.
“Too right sounds...promising,” he drawled.
“Yes,” she admitted, and she was about to tell him that, for both their sakes, they had to go slower, but she was saved by the bell. Or rather by the ding to indicate she had a text. She’d intended to turn off her phone, but maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t.
McCall had to reach under the tutu to pull out her phone from her pocket, and she bit back a groan when she saw the name on the screen. Willard Bolton.
“Sorry, it’s a client,” she muttered to Austin. “I can answer it later.”
“No. Go ahead if you need to. I’ll finish the pasta.”
McCall hesitated but read the message when Austin went back to the stove. Then she wasn’t able to bite back the groan.
The lady I’m with has bazookas that drop darn near to her waist, Mr. Bolton had texted. What the heck am I supposed to do with them?
It was times like this that McCall wished she’d become a data cruncher. Or limited her clients to those with real emotional problems. Of course, in Mr. Bolton’s mind, this was a problem, and it was real. He probably didn’t realize that many men over eighty would love to get a chance to ogle bare breasts, no matter their current location on the body.
Most women lose firmness in their breasts as they get older, McCall texted back. Don’t bring it up because it might embarrass her. Just touch or kiss them as you normally would.
She stopped, then remembered this was the man who had trouble with foreplay. His “normally” probably wasn’t anything to write home to Mom about. So, McCall added, For at least five minutes.
Five??!! was the response she got back from Mr. Bolton a few seconds later.
Five, she verified. And I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to answer any other texts or calls from you tonight. Contact me tomorrow for a phone consult if you need it.
McCall was certain Mr. Bolton would feel as if he needed it; though, at times, like now, she thought that maybe the man just enjoyed having someone else know that he was still sexually active. It was something she’d need to address with him if these foreplay questions continued.
She started to put her phone away, but it dinged again with another text. Thankfully, not from Mr. Bolton this time but rather from Boo.
Sorry to bug you while you’re with the hot cowboy, but there was a grabby-feely at Peekaboo tonight, Boo’s message said. Delia grabbed and felt right back in her usual way. Someone called the cops, and Arnette is dealing.
McCall sighed. Delia’s usual way was to kick a guy’s balls if he got too grabby-feely with her. The woman was good at the job, but she stood her ground. McCall admired that. Well, she did when cops didn’t get involved. But Arnette Middleton was the club manager, and she would handle this.
Hopefully, anyway.
Keep me posted, McCall texted back, and she hoped she wasn’t going to have to go to Dallas tonight. The press was still on her heels, and she didn’t want one of them seeing her go into the club.
When she finally managed to put her phone away, McCall saw that Austin was smiling. “I’m thinking you lead a very interesting life,” he said.
She scrounged up a smile. “You have no idea.”
He didn’t. Austin had gotten an inkling of her clients from her other conversation with Mr. Bolton, but he didn’t have a clue about Peekaboo. And that’s why those kisses had been a horrible idea. She might not be able to stop her physical reaction to Austin, but she could protect him by backing off.
“I’m so sorry, but I’ll have to eat and run,” she said. “Something really important came up.”
He managed to keep his smile in place, but she saw the disappointment in his eyes. Disappointment was a lot better than suspicion, though. A lot better, too, than his realizing that just being with her might give Edith some extra firepower.
Austin nodded and drained the pasta he’d just finished cooking. “If you like, I can fix you a plate to go.”
McCall jumped right on that. “Yes, thank you. That’d be great. Everything looks so good, and I know you went to a lot of trouble. Not just with the meal but with arranging for Shaw to take the girls.”
He dismissed that with a shrug. “I like to cook. And as for Avery and Gracie, they’ve been wanting to stay overnight there for months. Plus, this’ll give Shaw and Sunny some parent creds.” Austin was saying all the right things, but the disappointment made it to his voice, too.
She watched as he put some pasta and sauce in a plastic container. Austin did the same to some salad and the breadsticks. When he had that all bagged up, he held it out to her.
Then he kissed her.
Good grief. McCall melted again. No way could she just tamp down her response, and she even heard herself make a soft moan of pleasure.
“Just checking,” Austin said when he pulled back from her.
She didn’t ask what that meant, but maybe he’d thought her “eat and run” was bogus. Which it wasn’t. Something had indeed come up—her remembering why this wasn’t a good idea.
He walked her to the door, kissing her again. This time, though, it was only a peck on the cheek. A friendly goodbye, but McCall’s body was already zinging with the overwhelming desire to get his mouth back on hers again. Still, she forced herself to walk away, got in her car and started the drive back to Granny
Em’s.
Obviously, it was time to leave Lone Star Ridge.
The thought of that washed over her like a kind of filmy grief and disappointment. She’d been anxious to leave after high school, but it felt, well, right to be here now. In part that was because of Austin. Because of Granny Em, too. But feeling right could blow up in her face.
Since she no longer felt festive enough to wear the tutu, McCall yanked it off before she got out of her car at Granny Em’s. She’d have to explain the canceled dinner, but she wouldn’t sulk. Well, maybe not. She could dive right into solving the possible problem at Peekaboo to help take her mind off Austin’s kisses and the look on his face when she’d walked out.
McCall went around the house and in through the kitchen door, but she immediately came to a stop. There, at the breakfast table, sat Boo and Granny Em. Boo was only in her underwear—a hot-pink bra and matching panties—and Em was wearing a full outfit. Jeans, shirt, boots and even a sweater. Judging from the cards they were holding and the stash of pennies on the table, they were playing some sort of game.
“Reverse strip poker,” Boo quickly supplied.
Em made a sound of agreement but kept her attention on the cards in her hand. “It’s something I used to play with a fella I was seeing way back when. Everybody starts in their undies, and you get to add an item of clothing when you win a hand.”
“Em was telling me about it,” Boo said, picking up the explanation. “And I thought it’d be fun to learn how. I’m clearly not very good at it.” She motioned toward her skimpy attire. Then Boo frowned, got to her feet and started putting on her clothes. “What went wrong with the dinner?”
Granny Em looked up at McCall, too, and after she eyed the bag of food, she also stood.
Obviously, Boo wouldn’t have mentioned anything to Granny Em about Peekaboo so McCall went with Mr. Bolton as an excuse. “A client needs my help. I didn’t want to discuss things with him in front of Austin so he made me a to-go bag.”
A bag that McCall put in the fridge. Her appetite was nil right now, and she hated that Austin had gone to all the trouble to make her a delicious-looking meal.
Chasing Trouble in Texas Page 8