by Vicki Tharp
“What are you reading so intently?” He already had his sweatpants on, and he was turning his T-shirt right-side out.
“New technologies in livestock breeding.”
“Yeah, fascinating,” he said, managing a straight face.
She chucked the magazine at his head, but he was too quick. “It could be really cool,” she said, rolling onto her side to face him. “The technology is coming where we could collect semen from bulls and other livestock and ship it cost-effectively around the country or potentially around the world.” The possibilities were endless.
He walked over to her, his gaze had gone dark. Leaning over, he planted his hand on her belly where his seed had been and kissed her. Hot and heavy and horny. He broke the kiss before things got out of hand. “You’re the only one who can talk about animal breeding and make it sound sexy.”
“Get your head out of the gutter.”
“I like it there.” He sat down on the bed next to her, his hand going to her flank, his thumb tracing tight circles on her hip bone.
“You don’t have to leave.” His smile faded, and she couldn’t read his expression. Had that proclamation come out as pathetic as it sounded? “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“You don’t want me to stay?”
“No. I do. I —” She cut herself off. Refusing to finish that sentence. The one that ended with ‘I didn’t want you to feel obligated.’ Because she wasn’t that kind of girl. If she wanted something, she needed to speak up for herself. She looked him in the eye and said. “I want you to stay.”
The worry lines on his forehead softened, and he might have had a bit of a smile. He pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. “Me, too.”
Levi got up and turned off the overhead light, pitching them into near darkness until her eyes adjusted to the outside light seeping around the edges of the curtains. She heard his clothes hit the floor and she shifted over, making room for him.
He laid out behind her, drawing an arm around her waist and snuggling her up against him.
“This is crazy,” she said. “You know that, right? Neither one of us is getting any sleep this way.”
He grunted and pulled her in tighter, his arousal settling comfortably against the cleft of her ass. It took everything she had not to wiggle and squirm.
“I should send you home.”
His hand moved up, cupping one breast, not as if he were trying to turn her on, but as if he needed the extra contact.
“You should.”
But she didn’t. And from the way his breathing slowed, he wasn’t going anywhere unless she kicked him out of her bed.
She laid there in the dark for an hour, maybe two, too turned on to sleep. Finally, she fell into fitful, erotic dreams that left her waking up in the morning with her hand sliding across his abdomen, headed for what she’d been dreaming about all night.
He sucked in a breath, and his hand clamped down on her wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Olivia bumped kisses over his ribs. “I never got to taste you last night.” Which technically wasn’t true, but...
“What time is it?”
“I set the alarm for six. It hasn’t even gone off yet.” The second the words were out of her mouth she knew something was wrong. Her room was too light for it to be that early in the morning.
She reached over and snagged her alarm off the bedside table. The clock had stopped a little before three. She whacked it twice and the ticking second hand started again. “Shit,” she said. “My alarm messed up.”
He rolled out of bed and picked his watch up off the dresser. “It’s six forty-five.”
Olivia scrambled up and searched through her bag for a pair of panties. “I was supposed to meet Rusty at the barn at six-thirty.”
“And I’ve got fifteen minutes to get to Clive and June’s hotel to pick up Clementine.”
They were both dressed and out of the motel in minutes. He caught up with her as she pulled open the door of her truck. “Hang on a minute.”
“What is it?”
He leaned in, his hair still mussed from sleep, and kissed her. Long and deep until her breathing got ragged and she almost forgot there were places she needed to be. “Have a good day.”
* * *
Levi stewed impatiently outside Clive and June’s motel room. It was seven thirty, and they still hadn’t brought Clementine outside. It didn’t take thirty minutes to toss clothes on a three-year-old and gather the tiny bag of belongings Olivia had sent with her.
Finally, finally, the door to room one-oh-six opened, and Clive, June, and Clementine walked out.
“Lebi!” Clementine called out.
When she attempted to go to him, June caught her hand. “Wait a minute, Clementine. We talked about this.”
Clive looked a little pale and refused to acknowledge Levi.
Levi stiffened. “You talked about what?”
“We,” June said, though, by the pinched expression on Clive’s face, June really meant she, “think it would be best if Clementine stayed with us.”
“I don’t understand. I thought you two needed to get back home this morning. Has something changed?”
Clive still wouldn’t meet Levi’s gaze.
“Clive? What’s going on?”
“I didn’t mean we think she should stay with us for the day,” June said, “We think she should stay with us... permanently.”
Permanently?
June might as well have swung a bat and hit him in the head because the word made his head sting and his knees want to buckle. He held onto the bull bars on the front of his truck. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Be reasonable, son.” Clive must have found his tongue. Or his backbone.
Levi ignored him. To Clementine, he said as calmly as he could, “Come on, Pix, we’ve got to go feed Chunk.”
June kept her hand on Clementine’s shoulder, restraining her.
“Let her go.” He didn’t yell or shout or even raise his voice, but his tone conveyed the you-don’t-want-to-fuck-with-me message.
“June,” Clive said, “Do what the man says.”
June released Clementine. Only about ten feet separated them, but Levi met her half-way, not taking any chances Clive or June would change their minds.
“This isn’t right,” June said, “she belongs with us.”
Levi picked up his daughter and held on tight. “She stays with me. I’m her father. I have sole custody.”
June harrumphed, that lemon-sucking, pissy-pucker screwing up her face. “We’ll see about that.”
* * *
“Really. We don’t mind taking her.” Ian leaned out of his camper and took Clementine’s pink backpack out of Levi’s hand as Clementine scurried up the steps.
It was Sunday night and between the rodeo and his responsibilities to Clementine, and Olivia with her responsibilities with her stock and her men preparing for her leaving, they’d hardly had a chance to talk since they’d crawled out of bed together the morning before.
He planned on changing that tonight.
“I wouldn’t ask, except this is Olivia’s last night.” Levi didn’t elaborate. No explanation needed. “I won’t stay too late.”
Cora popped her head out. “Late is fine.”
“It’s not like that.” Expect that it was. It was exactly like that.
Ian busted out laughing. “Sure, man.”
Levi tagged Ian’s shoulder with his fist, not hard enough to really hurt. “Don’t be a di—dork. “
Levi squatted down. “Give me a hug, Pix.”
She skip-a-loped over to the camper door. A three-year-old’s version of a loping horse, because if Chunk did it, she needed to do it too. At least Levi had managed to nip her hay munching proclivities in the bud. Her arms wrapped around his neck and he kissed her cheek.
“Be good for Ian and Cora, okay?”
“Lebi.” She laid a hand on her hip, having perfected the don’t-be-a-dummy tone. Yup, he d
efinitely needed to find babysitters out of their teens.
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Ian. “Here’s the phone and room number of Olivia’s motel in case you need anything.”
Ian handed the paper over to Cora for safekeeping. She shooed Levi away. “Now, go. We’ve got this covered. “
“Okay.” Levi took a step back. “Thanks again.”
Cora had already disappeared into the camper to help Clementine with something, but Ian said, “Sure thing.”
He’d almost made it back to his truck when Cora called out to him. “Hey, Levi.”
Turning, he watched as she ran down out of the camper. Ian went inside and closed the door behind her. “Yeah?”
She caught up with him. “I wanted to say that I’m happy for you. I’m glad that you’ve found what Ian and I have.”
“Don’t be getting ahead of yourself now.”
“Come on.” She took a step closer and used her you-can-tell-me-the-truth voice. “It’s me you’re talking to.”
He ducked his head not wanting her to see how much he wanted her words to be true. He couldn’t admit what was in his heart, because it seemed too new, too fragile, too fleeting to say out loud and tempt fate, he said, “Ian’s good for you.”
“Yes, he is.” Cora had that little smile on her face saying she would let him get away with his not-so-subtle change of subject. “It’s better this way, yeah?”
“Yeah.” It had taken him meeting Olivia to see that as terrific as Cora was, she wasn’t the right person for him.
Unlike Olivia?
Honestly, he couldn’t say. Not for sure. It was way too early for that. But he’d sure as hell like the chance to find out.
She gave him a hug and a peck on the cheek. “Don’t come back until morning.”
He chuckled as he opened the driver’s side door. “Yes, ma’am.”
When Levi pulled up in front of Olivia’s motel room, her truck was nowhere to be found. He glanced at the single red rose and the large box of condoms with the bow on it. Did Olivia even like flowers? Was the box of condoms presumptuous?
She did say next time.
Palming both items, he climbed out of the truck and knocked on her door. He hadn’t seen her truck in the rodeo parking lot either, but he hadn’t really been looking and could have easily missed it. Had Rusty or one of the other guys dropped her off at the motel?
A woman who must have been in her late forties opened the door in nothing but a loosely-belted robe and teased-up hair that she’d lacquered so heavily with hairspray she’d probably burst into flames if the tip of her cigarette got too close.
She took a long, lung-filling drag, her gaze going to the items in his hand. Eyes squinting, she blew the smoke off to one side. “I like a man who comes prepared. You my ten o’clock?”
“No.”
“Shame.” She sounded more like Clint Eastwood than Lauren Bacall. “A young stud like you? Hell, handsome, I’d almost pay you.”
“I’m just looking for a friend. Olivia Marsh.”
“Never heard of her.”
“Thank you, anyway.” Levi tipped his hat.
“I’m here until morning, love. If you change your mind.”
“Good to know,” he said as he headed to see the desk clerk. His stomach had a queasy, uneasy feeling. Where had Olivia gone?
He stepped into the motel lobby and banged his palm down on the little bell at the counter. An old man toddled out of the backroom.
“Trish is in room one-oh-six,” he said when he saw the box of condoms Levi still had in his hand. The guy may have been old, but his eyes were still sharp.
“I’m looking for the woman who had the room before her. Olivia Marsh.”
“Ain’t here.”
“I’m starting to get that. Did she check out this morning?”
The old man coughed up a ball of phlegm and swallowed it down. “Nah. She was paid through the morning but left late this afternoon.”
“What time?”
“Hell, boy. I don’t remember. Early enough that Trish still hadn’t found a motel for the night. She’s a good one, that woman. She don’t care if the room ain’t exactly clean as long as it’s cheap. She does me favors sometimes, if you know what I mean.” The old man winked. “I like to return the favor when I can.”
“You know prostitution is illegal, right?” Not that Levi really cared, but it wasn’t like the old man or Trish were exactly trying to keep what was going in that room quiet.
“Aw hell, boy. A girl’s gotta make herself a livin’, right? She ain’t doing nothing but putting a smile on a man’s face. Nothing wrong with that.”
Considering he was looking for a particular woman to put a smile on his face, and for him to put one on hers, he couldn’t exactly argue the point. “Thanks for the help.”
“I hope you find her, son.”
“Me too.”
* * *
In the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, Olivia stripped her dirty coveralls to her waist and rinsed blood and amniotic fluid off her arms with soap and a bucket of hot water. She glanced over at the mare and foal. The new mother nudged her baby as it tried to stand for the first time.
This was why she needed to be home. This wasn’t the kind of physical work her grandfather could do anymore but try telling him that.
Earlier that day, she’d received a call at the rodeo office telling her that her grandfather had fallen off the tractor and broken his arm. It hadn’t been good news but being there to bring him home from the doctor and being home to help her favorite mare with a difficult, possibly deadly delivery, had been fortuitous.
The fact that she’d been able to completely avoid an awkward goodbye with Levi where she could have screwed it up and not said enough, or worse, said too much, was a plus as well. Levi had enough distractions in his life, he wouldn’t want a needy girlfriend added to the mix.
Girlfriend? Aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself there? You kissed and...
She’d done a hell of a lot more than kiss. And a lot less than what she wanted to do. So maybe girlfriend was a stretch, but friend was no longer a sufficient label either.
The foal tried to stand on shaky, wobbly legs and crashed to his knees. Olivia watched and waited until the foal stood and stumbled over to his mamma’s udder and started suckling.
She heard the scuff of her grandfather’s boot on the barn porch and glanced up. He had his newly casted arm in a sling, his leathery cheeks looked more hollow than usual, and the pain meds had stripped the shine from his eyes.
“What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”
Her grandfather was pushing eighty, but if she even tried to hint that maybe, possibly, rightly, he should slow down a bit and let others take up a bit of the slack, he got offended. Then he got downright mad.
But apparently, the painkillers had taken a bit of the edge off his temper because he didn’t get mad, he just said, “Stop trying to mother me. I didn’t take too kindly to it the first go around. Not likely I’m gonna take to it a second time.”
“You broke your arm, for Pete’s sake. It’s okay to sit still for five minutes. The world’s not going to stop turning, old man.”
He chuckled. “You get to be my age, and one day soon it’s gonna.”
Olivia barked out a laugh. “You’re too ornery to die.”
“That’s the plan.” Then he hitched a thumb toward the house. “Phone call for ya.”
“This early in the morning?” She stripped out of the coveralls the rest of the way, wiping at a smudge of blood that had soaked through to her T-shirt. “Is Rusty having problems with Toot Sweet again? I swear that bull—”
“Ain’t Rusty. It’s that man of yours, Levi.”
Over the past few weeks when she’d called to check on her grandfather, she’d given him the condensed version of Levi and Clementine’s situation, though she hadn’t said anything about she and Levi getting toget
her.
“He’s not mine.”
Her grandfather merely grunted.
They started walking back to the house, then she picked up speed because she didn’t know how much money Levi would have to feed into the pay phone for the long-distance call.
“Something wrong with Clementine?”
“He don’t sound like a man wanting to talk about his kid. Look, I know you’re a grown woman. And I know you don’t need an old man digging around in your personal business—”
“When have you ever let that stop you?”
“All I’m saying is this is messy, and with Clive and June as Clementine’s grandparents, it’s only going to get messier. You don’t need anyone dragging you through that. There’s a reason your mother cut off contact with June.”
“What do you expect me to do? Clementine’s kin.”
“From the sound of that man’s voice, the call has nothing to do with Clementine. Whatever you two got going on, you need to end it now before you break his heart, or he breaks yours.”
“It’s not like that,” she said for the fifth or sixth or twentieth time that night. Mostly to herself.
Despite his age, the painkillers, and the broken arm, her grandfather beat her up the steps to the old house and held open the door for her. “Two days after I said that same thing to my old man, I got down on one knee and proposed to your grandmother.”
“You don’t have to worry. There are no proposals in my near future.” Or in the far future either. Not when she had the ranch to run.
She boosted herself onto the kitchen counter and picked up the receiver her grandfather had laid to the side. If her grandmother had been alive to see her jump on the counter, she would have given Olivia a swat to the butt with a rolled-up dishtowel. Her grandfather had always let Olivia get away with it, even though over the years she’d left scuff marks and dings on the side of the cabinets from her spurs and her boot heels.