by Becky McGraw
CHAPTER TEN
“Good Lord, Brock,” Melanie said in a breathless whisper, when he stopped at the kitchen table with two more boxes in his arms. “We’ve emptied two boxes already—Brady has only been alive six years. I don’t think my mother has this many medical bills.”
“Try paying them,” he replied darkly, as he set them down and wiped his hands on his jeans. “I pay through the nose for good insurance, but it only covers seventy percent of those bills after the deductible.” The corner of his mouth kicked up tightening his face, but Brock wasn’t smiling inside. The hole he’d dug for himself, the hole Lucy had dug, should be just about deep enough to bury him soon.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, shaking her head.
“I’m thinking of going to give blood at the hospital twice a week or something. I heard there was an opening for a garbage truck driver down at public works. They finish before I have to be at the office, so maybe—”
“Maybe you need to just stop this circus!” she shouted, launching up to her feet to glare at him. “You look like you haven’t slept in weeks, your eyes have fifty pound bags under them. You’re a young man, but you’re working yourself to death instead of saying enough is enough!”
That was easy for her to say. She had a career that paid well, and probably plenty of money in the bank if that Mercedes she drove was any indication. If Brock slowed down, the bill collectors would throw him in that grave and Lucy would happily shovel dirt over him.
Right now he was holding off the reaper by sending small partial payments to all of them.
“It’s not that easy, and you’re right I haven’t slept well in weeks,” Brock replied. Months, if he counted the nights he’d spent at Lucy’s with Brady. “I know I look like ten miles of bad road, but I guess it’ll be twenty more before I get a break the way things are piling up.”
Brock shoved a hand through his hair. Unless he sold the ranch and moved to an apartment in town. That would probably pay about a third of the bills, and he wouldn’t have the mortgage note or feed bills. But he also wouldn’t have the meager income from the cattle he managed to sell. If he could afford seed and fertilizer he’d plant a crop, because he had a tractor and fifty damned acres, but he couldn’t. The most he’d managed was a small garden he’d tilled on the far side of the house which provided fresh produce for him and a few neighbors.
Maybe he should just sell the tractor…it was old, but dependable. Or maybe he could sell one of his horses, and he’d thought about it, but thirty-five hundred bucks would be a drop in the bucket. He was saving that drop for when he really got desperate.
Desperation would come when the people he owed money to refused to accept his token payments anymore and demanded payment in full.
“Tell Lucy to apply for that job on the trash truck!” Melanie shouted, her frustration evident, but certainly not more than his own. “What, is she too good to work like the rest of us?”
“No, our agreement was that she would stay home with Brady until he started school, and I’d pay enough support for her to do that. But then he got sick, and he needed her. He’s missed so much school, it’s likely he’ll fail first grade. He just skated by in Kindergarten because it was a half-day program.” That made Brock feel like a failure too. He was a failure.
“Agreements change, Brock—and you need some relief. You’re trying to do the right thing by your son, but his mother isn’t helping.”
Melanie began pacing with her fists balled at her sides, and watching her, Brock could almost imagine he saw steam rising from her dark hair.
“Does diabetes run in your family?” she asked suddenly, as she made a turn to start another circuit.
“No, and it doesn’t run in Lucy’s that I know of,” he answered, his mind spinning at her change of direction.
“Good, one thing down, but he should still be tested to rule it out. He might have been tested, but we’ll have to go through those other two boxes to make sure.” She stopped and spun to look at him. “Where are your damned parents and why aren’t they here helping you?” she demanded.
“I haven’t told them what’s going on with Brady. They knew about him being in the hospital with pneumonia and came up to see him, but I didn’t want to worry them. Daddy’s not been well…he had a heart attack right after they got back to Atlanta.”
“What about Mayor and Mrs. Morris? Why aren’t they helping?” she asked, her perfectly arched eyebrows knotting together.
“Well, let’s just say they were less than happy when Lucy told them she was pregnant and I wasn’t marrying her. Mr. Morris only gave me the sheriff’s job when Sheriff Jones retired because he said I needed to be able to support his grandson. They haven’t had much to do with Brady since he was born. He’s an embarrassment to them, and so is their daughter.” He huffed a breath. “They don’t come out and say that of course, and they do help some. But just when it suits them most of the time.”
Brock was surprised when Melanie left the track she’d been pacing to walk to him. He was shocked, but thrilled, when she slid her arms around his waist and hugged him. “I’ve never been much of a hugger, but you need one,” she mumbled into his chest, squeezing him. “No wonder you’re so damned tired.”
His insides melted, as his arms drifted around her back and he held her closer. “I can sleep when I’m dead,” Brock said with a laugh, and she squeezed him tighter. “Or when Brady turns eighteen.”
“That’s no life, Brock. By the time he turns eighteen, you’ll probably be dead,” Melanie said, leaning back to look up into his eyes. “You deserve better and I’m here to help you now, but you need to get some rest. You can’t help Brady if you’re sick too.”
He looked at the clock on the wall by the telephone and sighed as he released her and pushed her away.
“No, it’s four o’clock, so what I need to do is go out to the barn to feed before I have to take you home. When I get back here, I’m going to go through those other boxes and finish out our list so I can make calls tomorrow.”
At the thought, a wave of tiredness washed through him in a powerful surge that almost took out his knees.
“Well, I’m going to help you feed and do whatever else you need to do, then you are going to help me get my mother and aunt to bingo because that would be easier done in your SUV than my car. After we drop them off, we’re coming back here and you are going to take a nap while I go through those two boxes and finish that list,” she informed, pointing at the boxes.
“You sure are bossy these days. They teach you that in med school?” Brock asked with a tired laugh, but he was damned glad to have someone tell him what to do right now, because his brain was in neutral.
She lifted her chin a notch and put her hands on her jean-clad hips. “Don’t waste your breath arguing—I aced that class in school too.”
Brock didn’t want to argue, because it felt too damned good to finally have someone to talk to—to unload on was more like it, and he didn’t want her to go home either. It wasn’t fair to do that to Melanie, but she didn’t seem to mind, and it definitely made him feel better to have someone in his corner for a change. His eyes skimmed down her deliciously curvy body to her small feet, which were shod in gold sandals.
“You can’t go out to the barn in sandals unless you want to lose those cute little toes.”
She looked down at her feet and frowned. “My toes look like little stumps anyway—they are not cute.”
Brock tipped her chin up with his finger and their eyes met. “Every damned thing about you is cute, Melanie Fox, and kind and generous and caring,” he said, with affection and gratitude overwhelming him as he bent to press his mouth to hers. Heat zinged through his body at her breathy whimper, it flamed when she pushed up on those cute little toes for more, but Brock pulled away—because this wasn’t about sex. “Thank you for helping me. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”
“I don’t want your money, Brock.” I just want you, pop
ped into Melanie’s head, tried to attach itself to the end of her sentence and she froze.
“That’s a very good thing,” he replied with a deep, throaty laugh that rumbled through her. “Because I don’t have any, but I do have a few tomatoes I could barter if you’re interested.”
When Brock put his arm around her shoulders and turned her toward the door, Melanie sighed as warmth spread through her body.
“I also have a pair of muck boots I bought for Brady that are three sizes too big for him which should fit you. I grabbed them from a sale rack at the hardware store a few months ago because I knew he’d eventually grow into them. That must’ve been fate at work.”
Something was at work here between them, and if that was fate, scientist or not, she would be thanking the stars like her mother.
You’re back here for a purpose that has nothing to do with me and you won’t be going anywhere.
A shiver snaked down her spine, and Melanie stiffened it as she followed Brock to the kitchen door where he jerked his hat off the peg and tamped it down on his head.
“Wait here,” he said as he opened the door and they walked onto the porch.
He turned right and strode to the end of the porch where he opened a door, went inside and reemerged with a pair of black rubber boots in his hands. With a smile he grabbed her arm and led her to the swing on the other end and forced her to sit. Kneeling at her feet, he set the boots down and lifted her right foot to remove her sandal. Self-conscious, she curled her stumpy toes into the pad of her foot when he inspected it.
“I think Brady’s feet might be bigger than yours,” he said with a laugh, as he stroked the pad of her foot with his thumb until her toes unfurled. When her foot relaxed, he kept rubbing and electricity zipped up the inside seam of her jeans to zap the frenzied bundle of nerves at the top of her thighs and a tremor rocked her.
“Probably because he’s going to be tall like you,” she replied, her voice huskier than normal as his thumb swept lightly over her instep. Who knew her damned feet were so sensitive, that they were an erogenous zone?
He looked up at her with eyes filled with pride and what looked to be relief. “You think so?” he asked with a grin, and that stupid dimple appeared.
Melanie had to fight the urge to launch herself against him and have her way with him on the porch floor in broad daylight. Daylight which was swiftly fading, and he had chores to do.
“Let’s get the chores done, because if Mom is late to bingo, I know I won’t hear the end of it. I promised her,” she said.
Brock sighed as he dropped her foot, quickly removed her other sandal without the foot massage and shoved the bulky boots onto her feet. He was right, the boots were about a size too large, but she thought she could walk in them.
She pushed up to stand, and when he grabbed her hand, it was Melanie’s turn to sigh as he led her into the yard and toward the big barn in the distance. Peace settled into her bones as the fresh air swept through her. That was followed by giddy elation when he dropped her hand to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her into his side for a squeeze.
Why in the hell did this feel so right?
This isn’t what she’d worked her ass off for eight years to accomplish—no twelve now. She needed to remind herself of that before she let herself get lost in this fantasy with Brock Cooper, because that’s all it was. She was here temporarily, and if that included sex with him she was definitely on board with that—but she wasn’t on board with falling in love and staying here.
She had too many commitments in Texas to stay, and he had too many here to leave.
Melanie needed to remember that and protect herself, so she didn’t get attached to the only man on earth with the power to break her heart.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Melanie shut the back door of the SUV and turned to grab the handles of the wheelchair, but Brock was there first. He’d been first to help her mother into the backseat, and first to help her out too. She’d never dated or been around him much, so she had no idea if these gentlemanly tendencies of his were a new thing or if they’d been there all along. It wouldn’t surprise her if she’d just missed them because she’d been so blinded by his good looks back then.
The good looks were much more important to a horny sixteen-year-old than the good manners. Looks were important to a horny thirty-year old too, but now that she had more experience with men, she’d come to appreciate those rarer qualities too. They upped Brock Cooper’s already off-the-charts sex appeal in her eyes a hundred times, if that was possible.
He was also a hard worker, a kind and caring man, a good father—he had the body of an elite athlete and was a master with his lips. Add in those pretty manners, a cowboy hat, tight jeans and dusty boots and Brock Cooper was the perfectly imperfect hero in every romance novel she’d ever secretly read as a teenager while imagining his face.
Melanie could check off every box on her adult list of desired qualities in a man in black permanent marker. This man was the real deal, the whole package, and God did she want to see and get to know that package in an up close and personal kind of way.
Even though she knew there would be no happily-ever-after for them, there could be a happy-for-now. They had serious things to focus on, but they also needed to relax sometimes too—he needed to relax. Melanie had six weeks to drink her fill of her fantasy man and she wasn’t wasting a minute more, she thought, becoming mesmerized by the flex and release of his tight ass muscles as he pushed her mother’s chair across the lot toward the gym.
After working so closely with him in the barn this afternoon her body buzzed like a live wire right now, and she’d been more than ready to roll in the hay with Brock Cooper before they left the barn. But even with all the subtle signs she’d given him while they mucked out stalls, laid new bedding for the horses, filled water and feed buckets and then the not so subtle one she’d given him when he squeezed into the feed closet with her, he still hadn’t made a move.
The incredible erection he had this morning while kissing her told her he was interested. But maybe those gentlemanly manners she appreciated on one hand, she hated on the other. Perhaps they were holding him back from giving her what she’d more than telegraphed she wanted from him.
Melanie didn’t know a thing about ranching or ranch animals. When she offered to help him do chores, she thought maybe with two of them doing them they’d finish with enough time for a shower together—or something—before they left to pick up her mother.
That didn’t happen though. Once they were done, Brock pointed her toward the house, gave her directions to find the bathroom and told her he was taking a quick shower in the horse wash bay. He said he had a change of clothes in the tack room and he would meet her at the SUV in ten minutes.
As a result, they were thirty minutes early picking up Merry and June, which pleased them, but Melanie not so much. Those thirty minutes could’ve been spent getting hot and sweaty before they both took a shower in the wash bay, if Brock Cooper had been less of a gentleman.
When they got back to his ranch, she would make her point clearer. They would not be working on that box of receipts or his list tonight, because he was going to give her what she’d only fantasized about for fourteen damned years.
A horn blared, Melanie’s body jerked and adrenaline shot through her causing her heart to pound as she stared into the headlights of a truck. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized she’d stopped walking right in the middle of the main drive into the lot, or that it was getting very dark. The guy in the green pickup behind those headlights almost didn’t stop in time to avoid hitting her. She waved an apology, walked swiftly to the door of the gym and opened it.
Memories flooded back to her, and the sixteen-year-old nerd who’d been traumatized here took control of the thirty-year-old UCLA-trained physician as she stepped inside, and looked at all the red and black sports championship banners still hanging around the rafters of the gym. She knew Brock’s name was on at least
half of them. Football, basketball, baseball, he’d played it all.
She was good at math bowl, the science fair and hide and seek from the girls who were good at sports and making fun of her, but they didn’t issue banners for that. They did hand out honors diplomas and full-ride scholarships to UCLA to valedictorians for that, though, and considering how Lucy turned out and the hell Brock was going through at the moment, she was the winner.
On the red-curtained stage a huge wire mesh tumbler with ping pong balls in it took center stage beside a lectern with a microphone. Several putty-gray metal chairs were set up behind it and a man she recognized as her ninth-grade science teacher, Mr. Grover, sat in one, apparently taking a nap before he called bingo. He did that during tests in class too, but he had a lot more hair and carried a lot less weight then.
Melanie scanned the large room looking for her mother, aunt and Brock. Her eyes stopped several times when she saw people she knew, but she didn’t let her gaze linger. They wouldn’t recognize her any more than Lucy Morris had at the diner.
When she found Brock’s dark head on the other side of a group of women, she walked that way. Her feet stopped five yards from that group, in the center of which was her mother in her wheelchair, when she realized Brock was having a heated conversation with Mrs. Morris, Lucy’s mother. He seemed to sense her presence, because he stopped talking and his head turned toward her. When his eyes met hers, he gave her a tight smile, but didn’t wave her over.
Mrs. Morris’ eyes flew to Melanie, narrowed, and she frowned as she looked her over from head to toe. She obviously didn’t recognize her either but she didn’t look happy when she turned her attention back to Brock.
“Melanie Fox?” a deep voice asked, with a breathless whistle.
Mel spun on her heel and came nose to chest with former Sunny Glen Panthers quarterback Carson Ballard. His big hands gripped her shoulders and his lips spread into a blinding white smile that had charmed many a girl out of her panties.