She ducked her head. “You keep sweet-talking me like that and you’ll never get rid of me.”
“That’s the plan,” he said, and closed the door.
LACE SAT THERE so excited she could hardly breathe as Pierce ran around to the driver’s side. Could she do it? Could she take the plunge and tell him she loved him? A rock drummer couldn’t beat any faster than her heart knocking against her ribs. It was so scary, this vulnerability. Was she going out on a limb only to saw herself off?
“Before we go to dinner,” he said, starting the engine. I need your expert opinion.”
“About what?”
“The pumpkins I planted and my father’s sweet potatoes too. The plants have a funny color to them and they’re not growing the way they should. I appreciate any advice you could give.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’d be happy to help.”
He drove one-handed to the Triple H, his right hand resting on Lace’s thigh. Twelve years ago she would have killed to be here with her big brother’s best friend, and now she was close to having her long-cherished dream come true. A dream she thought would never be possible. Scarcely able to believe this was really happening, she smiled a little smile.
“How’s your dad?” she asked.
“He’s doing a whole lot better, even though the specialists still haven’t been able to figure out what’s wrong with him. He’s being dismissed in the morning. Malcolm’s gone to San Antonio to pick him up. He took Dad a big pan of those candied sweet potatoes he loves. That man can eat sweet potatoes morning, noon, and night.”
“Tell me about the ground you’ve planted the pumpkins and sweet potatoes in. Is this a spot that’s been overplanted?”
“Actually, it’s a new rotation. We haven’t planted any crops in that patch of ground before.”
“Hmm,” she mused. “So much for depleted soil theory.”
Pierce put his arm around her shoulder and tugged her as close to him as he could with their seat belts on. Occasionally, he leaned over to steal quick kisses. By the time they pulled into the driveway, they were hot and wet and crazy for each other and she wasn’t sure they were even going to make it into the house. She took her glasses off and stuck them in her purse stuffed with condoms. She was prepared for some long-term lovemaking.
“You know,” Pierce said. “It’s the housekeeper’s day off. We have the house to ourselves.”
“Are you saying the sickly plants were all a ploy to get me over here?” Lace teased.
“No, but there’s plenty of time to look at plants later. It’s been days since I’ve been inside you and I don’t think I can last one second longer.” He was already unbuttoning her shirt.
Lace was equally blinded by lust. “What about your ranch hands?”
“The bunkhouse is half a mile from here.” He plucked her shirt from her jeans. “Besides, this time of day they’re out feeding the cattle. No one around but me and you, sweetheart.”
They kissed nonstop on the way over to the back door. Pierce got the door open and dragged her inside. He waltzed her through the kitchen. She went to work on his buttons. By the time they reached his bedroom, they were topless.
The head of his bed was positioned next to a window. At the foot of the bed lay a closet with a bifold door. The room was decidedly masculine—brown comforter, suede curtains, wagon wheel headboard—but she barely noticed. Her attention was on Pierce one hundred percent.
He held up a finger, broke away, and rushed to the dresser to light scented candles—lemon. And to turn on some music—“Sixty Minute Man.”
Grinning, he came back to kiss her.
“Cocky,” she whispered.
He pressed his lips to her ear. “It’s not cocky if you can back it up.”
She fell backward onto the mattress, pulling him down on top of her. Lace looked into his eyes and he stared down at her like she was the most bewitching thing he’d ever seen. He made her feel like a queen.
A rusty hinge creaked behind them.
Simultaneously, they lifted their heads and looked around.
The closet door burst open and a naked woman jumped out yelling, “Surprise!”
Lace let out a shriek and grabbed for a pillow to cover her naked breasts. Pierce bounced off the mattress, his jeans unbuttoned, and his hands instinctively doubling into fists, ready for a fight.
From down the hallway came the sound of running footsteps slapping against the hardwood floor. “What’s going on in there?” a male voice boomed.
Everyone shifted their gazes to the door.
Malcolm burst into the room at the same moment the naked woman tackled Pierce, wrapping her legs around his waist.
Shocked, Lace realized the naked female was Shasta Green.
“I love you!” Shasta exclaimed. “Lace told me to be brave and bold and declare my feelings for you. She only wants you for sex, but I want to have your babies!”
“What the hell!” Malcolm and Pierce yelled in unison.
Pierce was trying to pry a naked Shasta off him while Malcolm’s nostrils flared and his face flushed the color of sugar beets.
“Shasta, what are you doing?” Lace exclaimed.
Pierce whipped his head around to Lace. “You told her to ambush me?”
“No, no!” Lace blinked at Shasta. “You’re Hero Worshipper!”
“I thought you knew,” Shasta said.
This situation was so ludicrous it was almost funny. Almost. Lace gulped. “How would I know?”
Shasta raised her chin. “I told you I didn’t like your answer to Hero Worshipper.”
“I was supposed to piece that together? You could have mentioned who it was that you had a crush on.”
“The letter-writing rules say you can’t mention names.”
True enough.
“Dammit, Shasta,” Malcolm muttered. “All this time we’ve been dating you were only using me to get to Pierce?”
“Sorry.” Shasta shrugged.
“You.” Malcolm spat out the word at Pierce. “Being the king of the heap wasn’t enough for you. You had to go and steal the woman I’m crazy about.”
“I didn’t steal her. I don’t even know her.”
Shasta untwined her naked legs from around Pierce’s waist, moved toward Malcolm. “You’re crazy about me?”
“I was.” Malcolm snorted. “When I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you.”
“Then why are you naked in his bedroom?” Malcolm glowered. “I haven’t even seen you naked.”
Shasta looked confused and conflicted. “You have now.”
“Not quite the way I was imagining it.”
“I didn’t realize,” Shasta said.
“This is ridiculous.” Pierce yanked open a drawer, took out a T-shirt, and shoved it at Shasta. “Put some clothes on.”
“You’re what’s ridiculous.” Malcolm snorted. “You’re not satisfied with just one woman, you have to have them all.”
Pierce hardened his jaw. “I did not ask her to hide naked in my closet.”
“No, but you love strutting your stuff. I have to stay here and work the ranch while you go off and be a star. All my life I’ve had to live in your shadow. You’ve got the golden arm. Dad thinks the sun rises and sets out of your ass.”
“You think it was easy for me, always expected to win, win, win? I never got to be a regular guy. I always had to produce something in order to get Dad to love me.”
“Boo-hoo. Poor you.”
“I’m not asking for your sympathy, just understanding that my path has rocks in it too.”
“And how did you handle the biggest rock of all? Where were you when Mom died? Oh yes, right. Throwing a fucking football!” Malcolm growled.
“Mom told me to play. She asked me to win the game for her. I played that game for her. I did what I do best. I produced on command.” Pierce’s face turned the color of a ballistic blister. Indigo veins popped out on his temple and his jaw muscles twitched turbulen
tly.
“Yeah? Well, while you were throwing that ball, I was holding her hand while she stopped breathing.”
Shasta had slipped on the T-shirt and came to perch on the edge of the bed beside Lace, looking as fragile as a foolish olive warbler.
Pierce toed off with his brother, stuck out his chin. “Go ahead. I know you’ve been stewing for years. Get it all off your chest.”
Malcolm took off his Stetson, rolled up his sleeves, drew back his fist, popped Pierce squarely in the jaw, and the fight was on.
Chapter 18
Scar: mark left by the natural separation of two structures.
PIERCE and Malcolm punched and shoved, a lifetime’s worth of brotherly jealousy and resentment. They wrestled and grunted, bit and gouged. They knocked each other backward, crashed into walls. They cursed each other with every dirty word in the book. The brawl spilled from the bedroom, into the hallway, through the kitchen, and out the back door.
Shasta was screaming and jumping up and down. “You’re killing him! You’re killing him!”
Pierce didn’t know if she meant him or Malcolm.
“Stop it!” Lace hollered. “That’s enough!”
Her concerned voice finally soaked through his angry brain. He tried to shove Malcolm off, but his brother clung on, fingers and teeth digging in. Pierce remembered when they were kids and Malcolm would come at him. He would just put a firm palm on Malcolm’s forehead and the kid would windmill the air, his short arms unable to reach him. Hell, his brother was reaching him now. Making up for lost time.
“You’re brothers, you love each other! Stop this nonsense!” Lace demanded.
Pierce was ready to quit, but Malcolm just kept pounding. If being a punching bag allowed his brother to get rid of his hurt feelings and resentment, okay, he’d let him punch until he ran out of steam. Pierce stopped fighting.
“Malcolm, stop hitting Pierce or I swear to God I’ll kick you so hard you’ll never have children,” Lace threatened.
His brother smacked him a couple more times and then he quit too. They both lay on the ground, breathing hard, covered in dirt and grass burrs.
Pierce tasted blood, cough, spat. His left eye was quickly swelling shut. Who knew little brother could pack such a punch? He peered over at Lace with his one good eye. At some point during the melee, she’d managed to find her shirt and Shasta had located some pants. It suddenly occurred to him that Malcolm had come home early and alone.
“Where’s Dad?” Pierce asked, fear winnowing through him.
“Still in San Antonio.” Malcolm wheezed. “I think you broke my nose.”
“Why didn’t you bring him home?”
“Soon as he ate those sweet potatoes, he started throwing up again.”
“What the hell is going on? Why can’t the doctors find out what’s wrong with him? This is crazy. I’m taking him to Houston. New York if I have to. I’ll take him to the Mayo Clinic. There’s got to be someone somewhere who can find out what’s wrong with him.”
“Pierce?” Lace’s voice drifted over to them.
He sat up, squinted into the setting sun. She’d climbed over the fence and was crounched over the sweet potato and pumpkin patch. “Yeah?”
“I know what’s wrong with your father.”
SINCE PIERCE’S LEFT eye had swollen shut, he stayed behind while Malcolm drove Shasta home and took Lace by the botanical gardens to pick up her soil testing kit. None of them spoke for the entire trip. It was the most uncomfortable ride of Lace’s life.
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Lace said, after they dropped Shasta off at Lace’s house and then went on to the botanical gardens. “She’s just a kid with stars in her eyes.”
“I know,” Malcolm said. “It was my fault for thinking someone could like me for me when I’ve got Pierce for a brother. He’ll always be the star and I’ll always be chump change.”
“I’m sure he was just as shocked by Shasta’s little stunt as you and I were.”
Malcolm snorted. “You think that’s the first time something like that happened to him?”
“It’s happened before?”
“More times than you can count. I know you got your feelings pounded in high school when Mary Alice printed your letter in the school paper, but there were just as many other girls crushing on him as you. The ones who bullied you the most were the ones who were after him the hardest. You know Joleen from La Hacienda Grill?”
“Yes.”
“My mother found her hiding under Pierce’s bed one night.”
“Really?” Lace squirmed in her seat.
“And Kara—”
“Please,” she said miserably. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“I’m just warning you because I know you’re getting serious about him. Pierce is a player. Always has been, always will be.”
Shasta, she could forgive. The girl was young and naive, but herself? She should have known better than to go falling in love with Pierce Hollister. She’d known what he was all along but she’d allowed herself to believe that he’d changed. Now here was Malcolm confirming every fear she’d ever had about Pierce.
“I’m not serious about him,” she lied.
“Good,” Malcolm said. “Because I’d hate to see you get hurt. You deserve so much better.”
“I can take care of myself,” she replied. “Don’t worry about me.”
At the gardens, she collected her kit and her Corolla and followed Malcolm back to the ranch.
Pierce came out to greet them when they arrived at the Triple H. He had a bag of frozen green peas held over his left eye. “Hey,” he said to Malcolm.
“Hey,” Malcolm grunted back.
They gave each other an awkward hug and simultaneously winced. Pierce touched his jaw. “Where did you learn to pack such a punch, little brother?”
“Whaling on the punching bag I named Pierce.”
“We need to sit down and have a long talk,” Pierce said. “Clear the air. With words this time.”
“Yeah.” Malcolm nodded. “Your hard head split my knuckles open. We can’t keep doing this.”
They hugged again.
Lace wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there and leave them to their family issues, but she needed to collect a soil sample to confirm her suspicions that Abe was suffering from a mineral toxicity caused by eating sweet potatoes grown in tainted earth. She batted back her worries and her tendency to withdraw when things got heavy and went to collect samples of the suspect soil.
She thought about how she’d felt when Shasta popped out of the closet, initially terrified, then shocked, and finally disgusted when Malcolm confirmed that it wasn’t the first time a woman had shown up uninvited in Pierce’s bedroom. Nausea settled in the bottom of her stomach. It didn’t matter that Pierce was no longer playing professional ball. Women would always be throwing themselves at him and having crazy crushes on him. Could she handle that? Always wondering. He was a charming man with a reputation for loving the ladies. It was too much. How could she expect any man to be monogamous when naked women literally threw themselves at him?
“What do you think it is?” Pierce came over to the garden.
Lace studiously collected the soil samples. As long as they were talking about plants, and steering clear of what else had gone on here tonight, she was on solid ground. “From the looks of the plants, right off the bat I can tell there’s copper toxicity, but there could be other contaminants as well. For instance, lead. Lead in the soil is toxic to humans and produces a lot of the symptoms your father has, but it doesn’t affect the plants themselves like an overabundance of copper does.”
“I see.”
“You said this is the first time this ground has been used for planting?”
“Yes.”
“Why hasn’t it ever been used before?”
“We used to have an old shed here until the termites ate it up,” Malcolm said.
“What was stored in the shed?”
“That’s probably where the contaminants came from. Over the years chemicals can leach into the soil. It’s a wonder you all didn’t get sick.”
“Dad’s the only one who likes sweet potatoes,” Pierce said.
“Does this mean the pumpkin crop is worthless?” Malcolm asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. This whole area will need to be plowed up and measures taken to remove or mediate the contaminants in the soil.”
“Brother,” Malcolm crowed. “Looks like you owe me ten grand.”
“I’ll happily pay,” Pierce said, “if this gets us to the bottom of what’s making Dad sick.”
Lace stood up. “I’ll put a rush on it. Hopefully, we’ll have the results by tomorrow. Until then, you might want to go ahead and call Abe’s doctor and tell him what we suspect.”
“I’ll do it,” Malcolm said, and disappeared into the house.
A silence passed between them.
“I’m sorry about tonight,” Pierce said finally.
Lace tensed. “Me too.”
“I had a great dinner planned. Steaks and everything.”
“I’m sure it would have been lovely.”
“Rain check until my bruises heal a little?” Pierce asked.
She paused, the collection kit filled with soil samples clutched in her hand, and slowly shook her head. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Okay, we don’t wait, but you’ll have to put up with a lot of yelping.” He grinned, looking boyishly ragtag with his eye swollen shut.
She put steel in her spine, refused to let herself be charmed, and backed up. “That’s not what I mean.”
His smile disappeared. “Lace, is something wrong?”
“Look in the mirror and then you tell me.”
“This fight between me and Malcolm has been brewing a long time. I’m sorry you had to see that, but I think we sorted some things out. I’m not normally the kind to solve matters with my fists, but—”
“You’re a lover not a fighter,” she said dryly.
The cocky grin was back. “Exactly.”
She held up a palm. “I can’t do this, Pierce. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
Lori Wilde - [Cupid, Texas 02] Page 23