by Vicki Tharp
He lazily trailed his fingers up and down the small of her back. “What’s that?”
“We’ll have to think of another grounds for divorce besides impotence.”
He grinned, feeling stupidly happy, even though getting it up had never been a worry. “You sure about that?”
She rose up on an elbow. “Fairly. I may require a larger sample size. I only have tonight and the other day as data points. They could have been one-offs.”
Giving her ass cheek a squeeze, he said, “Give me a few minutes and a shower, and we can work on increasing the sample size.”
13
The thing about running a ranch and having a three-year-old in the house was that sleeping in amounted to a luxury. One that, even the day after her wedding, Olivia couldn’t allow herself to indulge in. She had a young heifer due to give birth any minute that she needed to keep a close eye on as well as her other chores to attend to, and then there was Levi, who had Clementine to deal with.
That’s why she found herself in her robe in the kitchen making coffee before the sun came up, despite the fact Levi had added two more data points to her sample size. Who would have thought Olivia would have become such a fan of empirical data?
Between her legs sat a delicious rawness of which she could also become quite enamored. A gentle warm breeze blew through the window above the kitchen sink. It wouldn’t be long before the days grew too stifling and she’d have that same old argument with her grandfather about having central air conditioning installed in the house. He figured he’d survived the last seven decades without it, he could survive a couple more.
The chug of her grandfather’s diesel engine got louder as he came home after a long night out. The truck door slammed, but he caught the screen door as he entered the house before it whacked the jamb and woke Clementine.
Gramps shuffled into the kitchen as Olivia poured him a steaming cup of joe. She glanced at him over her shoulder. There were bags under his eyes, his hair lay slightly disheveled on his head, and a private smile deepened the laugh lines on his weather-worn face.
“You’re looking a little rough,” Olivia said. “I’m not sure a cat would have been brave enough to drag you in.”
With his sling long forgotten, her grandfather braced his hands on the counter with a clack as his cast hit the solid surface. He dropped his head between his shoulders as if it were taking every bit of his strength to stay vertical.
“What’s the matter? The widow Warren start taking her vitamins again?”
“Elenore.”
“What’s that?”
He glanced up at her, his smile gone. “The widow Warren has a name. It’s Elenore.”
“I know. I didn’t mean... I just...”
Gramps glanced up at her then, his once brilliant blue eyes had faded to near silver, but they were as sharp as they’d ever been. “Do you have a problem with me dating again? It’s been years since your grandmother passed...”
She tried hard to school her expression. Who was she to judge what her grandfather did or who he dated? He had as much right to full autonomy and his own personal life as she’d asked of him for herself.
“You disapprove.”
“It’s not that. I’m happy for you. For both of you. Grandma would be, too. She would never want you to be alone. But calling Elenore by her name makes the reality of grandma being gone seem much less abstract.”
“I get it.” Her grandfather’s his normally calm, steady voice chipped and cracked at the brittle edges. “I miss her, too.”
“I meant no disrespect.”
“It’s okay, baby girl.” Her grandfather pulled her into a hug so tight it made her ribs sore, her heart squeeze, and her eyes threaten to leak.
With a pat on the back, they finally parted. He rubbed the moisture from his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “You going to hand me that coffee or are you going to make an old man beg?”
He took the proffered mug from her hand and caught her wrist, looking pointedly her wedding band. “I think you have explaining to do, missy.”
“It’s not like that.”
“I’m old. I’m not blind.” Gramps took a sip of his coffee, leveling a be-straight-with-me stare over the top of his mug. “So, the sneaking around, the sleeping in his room, and the slipping out the next morning is nothing?”
“Exactly.”
At least to Levi, it was nothing. Their marriage was nothing but a piece of paper. A means to an end.
“But the two of you got married.”
Olivia broke free from his grasp and poured herself a cup of coffee. This wasn’t a conversation she’d looked forward to, and she refused to do it decaffeinated. “It’s not real.”
Sure as hell felt real last night when Levi had been balls deep, and you’d called out his name. Oh, and that damn ache between your legs? That’s certainly real.
Physically real and emotionally real were two entirely different things. Sure, they were attracted to each other and the sex was the best she’d ever had, but enchanting, exhilarating, intoxicating climactic sex didn’t make a marriage of convenience any less of a transaction just because their genitals had no complaints.
“You’re going to get yourself hurt.”
“I’m not.” At least she hoped not. “We both knew what this was going into it. I owe it to Mae.”
“You don’t owe her this. It’s too much. She never would have asked it of you.”
“Then I owe it to a little girl who’s already lost too much. This isn’t a forever kind of deal. When the custody hearing is over, we can quietly file for divorce and go our separate ways. Lord knows I don’t need to be saddled with more responsibility at this time in my life.”
If a part of you hadn’t craved the responsibility and, more importantly, the connection, why did you suggest the marriage to begin with?
Olivia ignored her inner voice. What did it know anyway?
If she’d placated her grandfather, she couldn’t tell from the frank disapproval on his face.
“You don’t have to like it,” she added. “But you do have to live with it. At least for the time being. You think you can do that?”
Gramps harrumphed. Hard to tell if that was a yes or a no, but Olivia didn’t push. He’d come around. He always did.
From behind her, Levi cleared his throat as he came into the kitchen and beelined it for the coffee pot. He was already dressed, ready for a full day of work.
“Morning,” Olivia said.
Levi cut his eyes at her false cheer as a deep groove formed between his brows, his answer little more than a grunt.
Not your typical morning-after-marriage-and-night-of-hot-sex kind of greeting. Oh, God. Levi was pissed. Or hurt, or... hell, she didn’t know how to read that sour expression. “So how much of that did you hear?”
“Enough.” He refused to look at her.
“I can explain. Gramps, can you give us a minute?”
Levi’s mug hit the counter with enough force to shatter, but her grandmother’s old mugs were made of sterner stuff. “No need for explanation. Everything you said was true.” He plucked his hat off the hat rack by the back door, leaving his coffee untouched. With her grandfather’s limited ability to work with his broken arm, her grandfather had taken to watching Clementine when he was home. To Gramps, Levi said, “If you could bring Clementine to me when she’s up, I’ll take her off your hands.”
Levi’s eyes raked both of them. “Now if you’ll both excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”
“Levi, wait.” But he didn’t. Shit.
“Give him a few minutes to cool off. Then go to him,” Gramps said. “I’ve got Clem.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Gramps.”
After a little searching, Olivia found Levi out by the tractors, wrestling with a tread-worn tire that couldn’t hold pressure for more than a few hours at a time, which made doing any kind of tractor work twelve times harder.
She would have done it herself, but
the enormous tire was too heavy for her to take it in for repairs. And she’d refused to ask her grandfather for help. He didn’t need to be trying to lift heavy things at his age.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
“I think you’ve said enough.”
What should have taken two strong men to lift, Levi manhandled into the pickup by what looked like sheer force of will from the energy he’d generated from the steam billowing out of his ears.
He turned toward the driver’s side of the truck, but she put her hand on his arm, stilling him. “Levi.”
He refused to look at her when he said, “I think it’s best that we don’t confuse what this marriage is with anything else that might be going on between us. We can continue the charade in town, but I’ll move myself and Clementine back into the guest room.”
“I can have sex with you without catching feelings, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re a big boy, Banks. I’m sure you can, too.”
“That’s all this was to you? Scratching that itch?”
“Is it not?” Why did her damn heart pause that beat waiting for his denial? The denial that never came.
* * *
It was late on a Thursday afternoon, a day shy of their two-week anniversary. And just as long since he’d had his hands on his wife. Was it any wonder he’d been grumpy and on edge the entire time?
Like most spring afternoons in Texas, the day had warmed up quickly. Levi pulled a bottle of beer out of Olivia’s fridge and popped the top. Though grateful Clementine was still down for her afternoon nap, he should wake her if he ever wanted her to get back to sleep before midnight. But with the court-ordered evaluation coming after dinner, he’d take these few quiet moments for himself.
He stepped out onto the porch and sat on the swing in the cool shade. The cardinals chirped and flitted around as an easy breeze kicked up. Across from him, Chunk grazed in his paddock, his normally tight and tucked up belly already starting to protrude with so much time off. Between taking care of Clementine and working on the ranch, Levi hadn’t even had a chance to saddle his horse and go for a ride.
But Chunk’s burgeoning hay belly was the least of his concerns with the evaluation on the horizon. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t feel like the beginning of the end. Not that he wouldn’t fight and keep on fighting until there was no question Clementine was where she belonged. With him. But good lawyers were expensive, and Clive and June had the means to keep fighting for custody long after he went bankrupt.
He took a long drag of his beer, quenching his thirst, but the alcohol did nothing to ease the tension knotting up the muscles between his shoulder blades. When Olivia returned after a quick run into town to get supplies, those muscles of his twisted tighter.
He should have gone with her, but he’d used Clementine’s need for a nap as his excuse even though that kid of his could have fallen asleep in the truck and never woken up until they’d gotten home. He knew that. What was worse was Olivia knew it, too.
To be honest, Levi had needed that physical and emotional space after two weeks of working side by side with Olivia and not being able to touch her or kiss or take her to his bed.
He hadn’t felt that alone or disconnected since... since, well, ever.
And he couldn’t stand the thought of driving into town one more time with his kid and Olivia and their fake-ass marriage and their manufactured public displays of affection trying to sell what they had together as real.
That first Saturday morning after the greatest night of his life, when Olivia had told him she was perfectly capable of having sex with him without catching feelings, had been a boot heel to his heart. The problem was, he’d already caught feelings for her—big, bad, scary, hairy feelings with long claws that had dug deep beneath his skin and refused to let go.
Even if he wanted to make a serious go of their marriage, he couldn’t unhear Olivia’s unguarded words in the kitchen with her grandfather. That the last thing she wanted or needed was more responsibility.
And she’d been right. Clementine was his responsibility, not hers.
Olivia climbed out of her truck looking like she needed the beer more than he did. When she reached into the bed of the truck, he said, “Leave it. I’ll get it in a minute.”
“I got groceries and—”
“It can wait a minute. Come sit. I’ll get you a beer.” He turned and walked back into the house, not giving her a chance to refuse.
She was sitting on the swing when he returned. She took the bottle from his hand and patted the seat beside her. His thigh brushed hers as he sat.
He scooted over, breaking the contact. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for touching me. Not after what we’ve done to and for each other.”
Her cheeks pinked as if she too were remembering the places he’d had his hands, his lips, his tongue. His jeans got uncomfortably tight, and it took everything he had not to reach for her and drag her across his lap.
Circling the lip of her bottle with her finger, she said, “I miss it.”
With his forearms draped across his thighs, his half-drunk beer dangling from his fingers between his legs, he gently pushed the swing back and forth. He was almost afraid to ask what she was referring to, but he was too tired for anything but honesty. “What’s that?”
“Your touch.”
Sitting back, he met her gaze, expecting that fun, flirtatious, turn of her lips, and that naughty glint in her eyes he’d come to miss much more than he probably should. This time, what met him was this striking openness and perhaps a touch of shock at admitting so much of the truth.
“I—” He took a long swallow of beer, trying to ease the stricture in his throat and loosen the words that had become a stacked-up jumble of letters that didn’t make sense anymore. But like her, he was tired of tip-toeing around the obvious. “I can’t touch you without wanting you. I can’t want you without wanting, not just the sex, but wanting it all—the sex, the touch, the intimacy, the emotion, the connection. I’m not wired for the casual, at least not with you I’m not.”
Olivia glanced away. “Shit.”
That boot heel she’d planted square in the middle of his heart left a bruise that twinged with every beat. “Forget I said anything, I don’t—”
“It’s not that,” Olivia said, pointing at the cloud of dust rising above the ranch’s long drive. “She’s here. The court evaluator. She’s early.”
14
“Why is she so early?” Sheer panic etched Levi’s face. “She was supposed to come after dinner.”
Olivia didn’t have an answer for him, though she considered it more of a rhetorical question.
He shoved his beer into her hand. “Take those inside. I’ll wait for her out here.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a beer.”
“I know,” he said, “but I don’t want to make a bad impression.”
She shifted the bottles to one hand and for reasons she wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge rose up on her toes and touched her lips to his. With a hand on his cheek, she said, “You can’t help but make a good impression. She’s gonna love you.”
The way you do?
Just because she missed his touch, missed their late-night talks, missed the man who had quickly become her best friend, didn’t mean she loved him.
Then what the hell does it mean?
He gave a quick toss of his head toward the screen door, the expression on his face begging her to make the alcohol disappear. She left the porch as the silver four-door sedan pulled up next to her truck.
In the kitchen, she poured the beer down the drain and listened as Levi introduced himself. The spring on the screen door squeaked, and then the frame bumped against the door jamb.
“Sweetheart.” Levi used his most sincere-sounding, loving-husband tone. “I want you to meet Betty Higgins.”
Olivia rinsed and dried her hands and met them in the entryway, offering her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Betty Higgins smiled, but it was one of those polite smiles screwed into place by someone who’d rather be doing anything but smiling. The woman was probably in her late fifties, with a dowdy wardrobe and a dour face.
Levi hitched a thumb over his shoulder toward the bedrooms. “I’ll get Clementine up from her nap—”
“Isn’t it a little late for her to be napping?” If Betty had been wearing pearls, she probably would have clutched them in horror. Maybe Betty was June’s long-lost twin sister. Betty glanced at her watch as if making a mental note about the time.
“One of the heifers gave birth last night, and Clementine wanted to see—” Levi cut himself off.
Betty’s lips went flat and grim as if Levi had just told the woman he’d taken his three-year-old out for a hedonistic night of drinking and drugs.
Good thing Olivia had dumped their beers like Levi had asked. Heaven forbid this lady find out they had dared to have a drink before five o’clock like uncivilized heathens.
“Let her sleep,” Betty finally said. “We have things to discuss first.”
Levi lead them to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair for Betty and one for Olivia. He took the seat in between the two.
“Can I get you something to drink? Water? Coffee? Sweet tea?” Olivia offered, only remembering then that she’d left the ingredients for the chocolate chip cookies she had planned to make in the bed of the truck. But she wasn’t going to leave Levi even for the short time it would take her to bring the groceries in.
“Sweet tea, please.”
While Olivia got their refreshments, Ms. Higgins went over Clive and June’s case for custody. When Olivia set the three sweet teas on the table, Levi thanked her, but by the dyspeptic expression on his face, if he tried to drink anything, there was a good likelihood it wouldn’t stay down.
“As you can see, most of the Jordans’ concerns are irrelevant at this point,” Levi said. Only someone as familiar with him as Olivia was would catch the tension in his voice. “I have a steady job. A wife. A stable home life for Clementine. A great elementary school in town for her to go to when the time comes. I assure you, my daughter is happy and well adjusted.”