The wicked twinkle in his eye said he wasn’t teasing and he’d really do it so she dropped her foot and grinned at him. “You were evil with those text messages.”
“So were you.”
“We should’ve eaten oyster stew and gone to bed in your king-sized bed,” she teased.
“Too late now. We’ve already ordered but I’m game for forgetting about the movie and going home,” he said.
“Me too,” she whispered and blew him a kiss across the table.
Stars twinkled like diamonds on a bed of black velvet when they left the steak house. A red rose bush in the flower bed in front of the restaurant put off a fresh intoxicating smell. Parking lot birds hopped around chirping to one another about their latest find, whether it was a dropped French fry or a chunk of dinner roll.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Austin said.
Rye pulled her close to his side. “Not as beautiful as you and it’s about to get even better.”
“Thank you. Let’s go home and have a glass of wine. I’m too damn full to make love right now and the night is young. Think we could put a movie into the DVD player and fool around until our food settles. You got anything interesting?”
He laughed out loud. Austin was so damn blunt that it was refreshing. After a meal like they’d just eaten it would take at least an hour of fooling around before either of them would want weight put on their stomachs. And as hot as it made him to think about her cute little naked fanny sitting on him, he rather liked the idea of fooling around. “How about Eight Seconds?”
“What’s it about?” She slid into the passenger’s seat and he shut the door.
“Bull riding. You’ve never seen it?” He put both arms around her and kissed her hard before he pulled his seat belt around his broad chest.
She shook her head.
“Then you have to see it. I’ve still got a bottle of Granny’s watermelon wine.”
“Is it a guy movie with blood, guts, and gore?”
“It’s based on a true story about Lane Frost, a real bull rider and all the trials he went through on his way to fame.”
“Now you’ve got my interest if it’s a true story. Is he pretty?”
“Well, I wouldn’t think so but he was a damn fine rider.”
“Was? As in he doesn’t ride anymore?”
“I’m not saying another word. You can decide if he’s any good or not.”
“But I don’t know a thing about bull riding. Will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Of course I will, darlin’.”
When they reached the house, she kicked off her boots, poured a glass of wine for each of them while he started the movie, and curled up on the sofa. His boots joined hers and he sat down beside her, a glass of wine in his right hand, his left arm thrown across the back of the sofa with his fingertips barely touching her shoulder.
He kissed her once but when the show started she got so involved in it, that her facial expressions mesmerized him. Halfway through the movie she looked up at him and asked, “Do all rodeo men commit adultery?”
“Not all of them.”
“Right now I don’t like Lane Frost so well.”
He picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips, nibbling on each one a few extra seconds. “It’s life, Austin. Bad things happen. You either get over them or let them take you into the gutter.”
By the end of the movie she’d forgiven Lane and cried when he rode his last ride. She buried her face in Rye’s shoulder when the credits started to roll. “He didn’t really die, did he? Please tell me he’s still alive and he and his wife have a dozen kids on a ranch like this one.”
“Can’t,” Rye said with a lump in his throat. No matter how many times he watched the movie, he was always stunned at the end.
“How can you ride bulls after that?” She sniffled.
“Just get on the old boy and hope I can make it eight seconds.”
She was going to sell the watermelon farm and never look back. She might not even come back to Terral when she left that week. She could make arrangements for payroll through the bank over the phone. Her heart would break if what happened to Lane ever happened to Rye. She might as well nip the whole thing in the bud right then as watch it blossom only to have him die before her eyes.
He picked her up and carried her back to his bedroom, laid her on the king-sized bed, and stretched out beside her, just holding her hand and looking deep into her eyes. He shifted until they were face to face, pressed against each other. He teased her mouth open with his tongue and tasted the sweetness. His kisses sent surges of desire through her body but she was determined to take it slow and enjoy every single minute of making love with him in a king-sized bed instead of the floor. She unfastened his shirt a button at a time and peeled it from his body. Running her hands over his back as he tasted her neck, her breasts, and started down toward her belly button as he undressed her. With the touch of his lips on her skin she forgot all about Lane Frost and her determination to never see Rye again.
“You taste like honey and warm butter all mixed together,” he mumbled.
“Mmmm,” was all she got out.
She couldn’t have spoken intelligent understandable words any more than she could have suddenly become fluent in an obscure dialect from a remote mountain tribe of Russian people.
“Your skin is so, so soft,” he said as he ran his tongue back up her midsection toward her neck.
“Oh, my God!” she yelled.
He rose up on his elbows and looked at her, writhing beneath him, rocking from one side to the other. “What?”
“Get off me. I’ve got to stand up,” she yelped.
“Why?”
She pushed him and he rolled off the bed, hitting his head on the nightstand on the way down. Her foot hit the floor and she tried to stand but stumbled over his leg and landed halfway out in the hall, still yelling and screaming like a half dead coyote.
He rubbed his head and brought back a hand streaked with blood. “What in the hell?”
“Charlie horse!” She panted as she pulled herself up by the doorframe.
“Well, thank God.”
“Thank God! My leg feels like it’s in labor and about to deliver an elephant? That’s real sympathetic of you.”
He looked up at her standing on one leg, naked as the day she was born and sexy as hell even with a cramp in her leg. “No! Thank God it’s not something horrible that I did to turn you off.”
“Darlin’, you could never turn me off! What is that on your head? My God, you are hurt, Rye.”
She limped over to the bedside table and turned on the lamp. The light showed the lump on the side of his forehead and a puncture wound that was oozing blood down across his cheek.
“We need to take you to the hospital right now. Is the nearest one at Nocona or do we go to Duncan? Ouch, ouch! Dammit! It’s not gone yet.” She hopped around on one leg while trying to pull on her underpants.
He felt the lump as he stood up. “I’m not going to a hospital over a bump on the head, Austin. See, I’m not even dizzy. It’s bumped out which means it’s not a concussion.”
He headed toward the bathroom with her right behind him, her underpants dragging along on one ankle. He flipped on the light and leaned in close to the mirror. A quick swipe with a washcloth showed that it was a hole put there by the corner of the nightstand. He’d had a tetanus shot last year when he got tangled up in some rusty barbed wire so he was good there.
With a little hop, she was sitting on the vanity with his head between her palms. “I’m telling you that could be dangerous.”
“And I’m telling you I’m caught up on shots and look, it’s almost stopped bleeding. It’s not dangerous but it damn sure spoiled that mood, didn’t it?”
She bit the inside of her lip to keep from giggling. Greta and Molly would love that story but she couldn’t tell it. They’d set the phone lines on fire telling Oma Fay and she’d tell Kent and Rye would never speak to her again
.
“Proved to me that there was more ways for a bull rider to get killed than eight seconds on the back of a bucking bull,” she said.
It started as a chuckle and built up into a roar that had them both wiping tears. She held her ribs. He sat down on the edge of the tub and held the washcloth against his wound. When it settled into soft laughter, she got the hiccups and blushed.
“Mother says I can’t hiccup, sneeze, or burp like a lady.”
He patted her leg with his free hand. “Shall we try again?”
“Hell, no! My leg still hurts.”
“Then get dressed and I’ll take you home.”
“Not until I see that head better and bandage the wound. You can’t go to bed like that. What if you bumped it in the night? What have you got in the medicine cabinet?” She didn’t wait for him to tell her but opened the doors and checked for herself. “Besides six boxes of condoms?”
“Man has to be ready.”
“Iodine. Spray antiseptic. Triple antibiotic ointment.” she said as she lined the bottles and tubes up on the cabinet. “Band-Aids.”
“Just slap a Band-Aid on it.”
“I’m the nurse tonight. You are the patient. Put your hands over your eyes and close them as tight as you can.”
“The nurse at my doctor’s office isn’t naked while she treats me,” he said.
“I’m fixin’ to spray this stuff so you’d better close your eyes.”
He did.
She sprayed.
He yelped.
She blew on the burn.
Her warm breath created a fire in the rest of his body that made his wound feel like a warm candle compared to an out-of-control Texas wildfire.
“Okay, now the ointment and then the Band-Aid. What are you going to tell Kent when he asked what happened to your head?”
“I don’t know. What are you going to tell your momma on Sunday when she asks about that big old hickey on your neck?”
She spun around to look in the mirror and sure enough there was a bite mark the size of Rye’s sexy mouth right there below her ear. She’d have to wear high-necked blouses all next week to cover the thing up or else Barbara would demand details.
“That I was in bed with a sexy cowboy and he was making wild passionate love to me when I got a Charlie horse in my leg. And that if that hadn’t happened, I’d have a matching one on the other side and when she starts breathing again, I’ll ask her if she’d like to see the one on my inner thigh.”
“Okay, then I’m telling Kent the truth.”
“You wouldn’t!”
He smiled. “Kiss me and I’ll be good.”
She leaned forward and he wrapped his arms around her naked body. His lips met hers in a searing passion that almost, but not quite, made them forget the bedroom fiasco.
“Promise you won’t tell Kent. I don’t think I could face him,” she said.
“And you think I could face your mother if you told her that story about the hickey?” He teased her mouth open for another fiery kiss.
“I’d better take my sore leg home and you’d better get some sleep. We’ve both got hard work tomorrow and it’s past midnight. Walk me to the door. I can find my own way across the road.”
“I’ll walk you home. Granny Lanier would resurrect and tack me to the cellar door if I wasn’t a gentleman.”
He pulled his boots on after they were dressed and she carried hers as they walked across the dew-kissed grass in his yard, the rough dirt road, and then the sweet wet grass in her yard. He kissed her at the door so hard that she forgot all about the cramp in her leg and pulled him inside the house. He backed her up against the bar separating the living room and kitchen and continued to erase all memories of a failed attempt in his bed. Finally, she broke away and using her forearm brushed every knickknack off the bar. Ceramic animals met their death when they landed on the floor in a clatter. She peeled his shirt over his head and he removed her dress and set her up on the countertop. She laid back and motioned toward him.
They’d had the foreplay and the teasing so he shed his clothes, peeled off her panties, and stretched out on top of her. She was more than ready so he slipped inside and she groaned. The cabinet top was hard as a rock but she couldn’t say a word, not until that deep aching need was satisfied and she was wallowing in the afterglow again, pressed up to his side with his arm thrown around her.
They’d had a king-sized bed, big enough for sumo wrestlers to roll around on and it was a disaster. They’d had a room full of knickknacks and barely enough floor room to have sex without bumping into something and it worked fine. Now tonight they’d had a cabinet top not even as wide as a twin-sized bed and managed not only to have sex but to get comfortable in each other’s arms afterwards.
Austin would bet her under britches on the fact that her grandmother was meddling from the other side of eternity to fix things the way she wanted them to be.
Chapter 15
Rye finished work on Saturday afternoon and rushed home with intentions of having a quick shower and calling Austin. His sister’s little red pickup sitting in the driveway was the last thing he wanted to see, but there it was, bigger than Dallas. He slapped the steering wheel but it didn’t make the truck disappear.
Grumbling, he opened the front door to the smell of homemade bread permeating through his house and Blake Shelton singing “Austin” on a CD. Colleen had an apron tied around her waist, her black hair pulled off to one side in a ponytail, and she was grating cheese.
“Hello, brother. I had a weekend off and thought you might like a home cooked meal tonight. We’re having chicken parmigiana with my made-from-scratch spaghetti sauce, which is simmering on the back of the stove, hot Italian bread, and warm apple pie with ice cream for dessert. I’ve got a salad chilling and wine in the bucket so go get a shower and get ready for a big supper. The rest of the family will be here in a few minutes. Momma is bringing the dominoes so we can set up two tables on the deck but you and Raylen don’t get to be on the same team. You cheat.” Colleen prattled on while she placed chicken cutlets in a pan and covered them with grated cheese.
“I’ll call Austin and we can make it two tables of four.”
She pointed the knife at him. “Family only tonight, darlin’. No dates for any of us.”
Rye ignored her, took his phone from his shirt pocket, and hit speed dial for Austin’s number. He got the answering machine in his ear, a chill in the room, and a hateful look from his sister. “Hi, Austin. Guess you’re still out on a tractor. Call me when you get this message, please.”
“What happened to your head? Have you gone plumb crazy or what?” Colleen asked.
“You want the real story or the funny one?”
“Well, I damn sure don’t want to be entertained. You’ve been runnin’ around like a chicken with its head cut off ever since that woman came to town. What are you going to do when the new wears off and she’s left this area for good? Tell me that instead of a funny story.”
His face was flushed. She’d never seen him act like he’d been doing the past few weeks. He couldn’t keep his head on straight and Raylen even did a better job at breaking horses the weekend before. That city chick had sure messed him up. Later he’d thank his sister for interfering and saving his sorry neck. When he found a suitable girlfriend, one that would be happy on a ranch and wouldn’t throw a hissy fit every time he walked in with cow shit on his boots, he’d look back and tell her that he’d been wrong.
“This is my life and my business.”
“Evidently it is but I damn sure don’t have to like it. How is Oma Fay doing? Is her MS getting any worse?” Colleen changed the subject.
“You’ll have to ask Kent. She’s still able to take care of the boys after school until Malee and Kent get home from work so I guess she’s doing all right. I’m going to take a shower. If Austin calls, tell her that I’ll talk to her in a little while.”
Colleen didn’t answer so he left the door open and set his p
hone on the bathroom vanity so he could hear it. He towel dried his hair, wrapped a towel around his waist, and padded barefoot down the hallway to his bedroom. He chose a pair of faded jeans and a worn T-shirt from his closet. The phone still hadn’t rung when he went back to the kitchen.
“She didn’t call. Maybe she’s gone back to Tulsa. I don’t see her little red car over there,” Colleen said.
“She parks it in the backyard.”
Colleen shrugged. “I hear trucks pulling into the driveway. Momma and the rest of the family must be here. Go on out on the porch and play nice. I’ll make the iced tea and get the bread from the oven,” Colleen said.
He walked out on the porch and saw Austin parking one of the tractors beside the house. She shaded her eyes with her hand and waved back when he held up a hand.
Gemma grabbed him in a fierce hug. “Isn’t it exciting, Rye? I’m moving to Ringgold! You are never going to look like this again when I get here with my scissors. We’re having a family fest tonight to see what I’m going to name my very own shop, so put your thinking cap on. Hey, did you invite Austin? She should be here because she was the one who came up with the idea in the first place.”
“Haven’t yet.”
“It’s family only,” Colleen said from the doorway.
“Bullshit! I’ll call her myself,” Gemma said.
“I won’t play nice. I didn’t plan for dates or friends,” Colleen said.
“Stop your bickering and let’s eat,” Maddie said. “I’ve been craving Colleen’s chicken all day.”
Rye shot his sister a mean look. She’d planned this all day and hadn’t called him because she knew he’d invite Austin.
Colleen bounced the look right back at him.
“You can’t baby-sit me twenty-four-seven,” he muttered as he led the family inside.
“But I can this night,” she whispered.
Gemma dropped her purse on the sofa, fished her phone from it, stepped out onto the deck, and called Austin. “Hey, girl, what are you doin’?”
“Just got off a tractor. I smell horrid and there’s enough dirt in my socks to plant a hill of watermelons. Everything all right? No one died, did they? Is Rye sick?”
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