“I might be a lot of things, Lace Bettingfield, but I am not a liar.”
“Who is meddling in my love life?”
Carol Ann held up both palms. “Truly, I don’t know anything about this. Do you think …”
“What?”
“Well, that Pierce could have written it?”
She had not considered that, but the minute she did, her heart pounded all the harder and she just knew that it had been he. On trembling legs, she went back to the gardens, got into her Corolla, and headed for the Triple H, all the while absentmindedly fingering the chaparral earrings.
Ten minutes later, she pulled into the driveway and got out, her knees no sturdier than water. She climbed the back porch steps, knocked on the screen door, and held her breath.
Pierce answered, opened the inner door, and peered at her through the screen.
The sight of him made her head swirl and she realized she wasn’t breathing. Take a deep breath. “May I come in?”
He held open the screen, stepped aside for her to enter.
She walked past him, stopped, turned. Her throat was dry. How did she start? How to admit she had overreacted about Shasta—it wasn’t his fault the girl had a crush on him—and the other groupies? If she wanted to be with him, she’d have to learn how to take his fame in stride.
“You have every right to be mad,” he said.
She met his gaze. He was apologizing?
“I was cocky. Even after life took me down a peg or two.” He rubbed his left leg. “I still put up that cock-of-the-walk strut pretending that’s who I really am. It wasn’t until I was back in Cupid, until I met you again that I started to realize how much the persona I’d perfected had hobbled me. But you …” He shook his head. “You saw past all the bullshit. You saw me for who I really was.”
“Humble and lovable?”
“I don’t blame you for being upset over the incident with Shasta. If a naked man jumped out of your closet, I’d be pretty damn steamed.”
That made her giggle. “There will never be a naked man jumping out of my closet.”
He wriggled his eyebrows. “You never know. But it’s because of you, and the change I’ve made because of you, that’s allowed me to walk away from football.”
“What do you mean? The Cowboys dropped you.”
“Yes, but the Detroit Lions picked me up.”
“And you’re not taking their offer?”
“No.”
That stunned her. “Why not?”
“Because there are other things that are more important to me now. Dad, Malcolm, the ranch … you.”
“Pierce,” she whispered.
“What did you come here to tell me?” He stepped closer to her, his eyes latched on to hers.
“I surrender,” she said.
“Surrender?”
“Wave the white flag.”
He canted his head. “Okay.”
“I give up. You win. You made me fall in love with you all over again—Lulu, the endowment to the gardens, the earrings, the note, the Cupid letter in the greensheet. Who can resist an onslaught like that? I fought it. I resisted. I lost. So here I am, bare and raw and aching for you. Just as crazy in love as when I was fourteen. What do you have to say about that?”
“I say it’s about damn time you realized it.” Pierce pulled her into his arms and said the words she’d waited twelve long years to hear. “Because I love you too, Lace Bettingfield. I love you too.”
Following is a tasty morsel of
New York Times bestselling author
Lori Wilde’s
next book in the Cupid, Texas, series
SOMEBODY TO LOVE
Coming in Early 2014
only from Avon Books
And don’t miss The Christmas Cookie Collection
On sale November 2013!
Prologue
Archaeology: The scientific study of material evidence to find out about human cultures of the past.
Dear Cupid,
I’ve gone and ruined everything by falling in love with my best friend. Now, not only have I lost my lover, I’ve lost the one person in the world that I could tell anything to. But that’s not the half of it. I’ve also alienated my family, friends, and turned the entire community against me. I thought I was doing a good thing by searching for something meaningful. People accused me of being frivolous and shallow, so I was determined to earn a little respect, prove I could commit, dig deep, find my roots, and discover who and what I am. Guess what? I did and that’s what started all the trouble. The things I have uncovered could destroy people I love. I’ve become a target and I’m condemnably alone. I’m scared, damn scared and at my wit’s end. I don’t know how much longer I can hang on. Help!
—Spontaneous to a Fault
Zoey McCleary quivered atop Widow’s Peak on private land, directly across from Mount Livermore, the very spot where her parents had died over twenty years earlier in an airplane crash that had also severely wounded her older sister, Natalie. Zoey had come out of the accident without a scrape.
Not so lucky now, huh, McCleary. Looks like you’ve used up the last of your nine lives.
In her hand she crushed the crumpled letter she’d written to Cupid the previous evening. Last night, she thought she’d smacked rock bottom, now she fully understood how much farther she had to fall.
She stared down the sixty-five-hundred feet to the town of Cupid, Texas, nestled in the valley of the Davis Mountains. It was the only home she’d ever known. The town had been named after an impressive seven-foot stalagmite found in the local caverns that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Roman god of love. Local legend had it that if you wrote a letter, begging for divine intervention, Cupid would grant your wish. Her family on the Greenwood-Fant side was steeped neck deep in the lore, the lot of them avid beseechers of Cupid’s goodwill.
It was total romantic bullshit and Zoey knew it. Writing that letter spoke to precisely how desperate she was. Forgone conclusion—when a girl turned to a mythological cherub for Hail Mary help, she was seriously screwed.
However, it was the other side of the family that had driven her up the mountain, McClearys and their dark, ancestral secret.
Her pulse beat a hot stampede across her eardrums; she was exposed and vulnerable, stiff with fear, tension-strained muscles, sweat-slicked skin; nicks and scratches oozed blood, lungs flapped with the excruciating pain of trying to draw in air after a dead run up the mountain.
Heat from the setting August sun warmed her cheeks. Desert wind whipped through the Davis Mountains blowing sandy topsoil over her face. She licked her dry lips, tasted grit. On three sides of her yawned sheer drop-off. Overhead, a dozen buzzards circled.
Waiting.
Something tickled her cheek, feather soft and startling as the sweet sensation of an unexpected midnight kiss. She gasped and brushed at her face, her work-roughened fingertips scratching her skin and for one crazy moment she thought, Jericho.
But of course it wasn’t Jericho—she’d already chased him away by daring to declare her love—it was merely the caress of a passing cloud. She couldn’t regret telling him though, could she? Considering the very real possibility that she was about to die. He might not love her the way she loved him, but at least now he knew how she felt.
She put her palm to her lips, kissed it, whispered “Jericho” and blew the kiss into the gathering mist.
From behind her, she heard her pursuers crashing through the aspen and madrone trees, cursing black ugly threats. They were coming for her. This was it, the end of the trail, the end of the world, the end of her, and nowhere left to go but down.
The thundering footsteps were nearer now, closing in. Soon, her trackers would immerge from the forest and join her on the skinned, igneous peak.
Her heart took flight, faster than a hummingbird and thudding with jumpy brutality. Panic shuddered her bones. She could not stop trembling no matter how hard she willed it.
Teeth chattered. Knees wobbled.
Nostrils flared.
Don’t just stand there. Do something! Do something!
But what?
There was only one solution, only one clear way out.
Zoey gathered her courage, took her last deep breath and jumped.
Chapter 1
Flake: to remove a stone fragment from a core or tool.
Six weeks earlier …
THE mewling was so soft that Zoey almost didn’t hear it. She had just slung her backpack onto the passenger seat of the Cupid’s Rest Bed and Breakfast van parked in the student lot at Sul Ross University, anthropology and archaeology textbooks spilling out, and stuck the keys into the ignition when something caused her to stop, cock her head and listen.
“Mew.”
Faint. Helpless.
Freaked out that she had almost started the van with a cat hiding inside the engine, Zoey popped the hood latch, unbuckled her seatbelt and got out. She raised the hood, peered into the engine. No cat. That was good, right?
“Mew.”
She muscled closer, angling her neck to get a good look at nooks and crannies hidden amidst hoses and gears and whatnot. “C’mon little sucker, where are you?’
“Mew.”
Hmm. Sounded like it could be coming from underneath the van. Zoey bent over to take a look, her brown-sugar colored ponytail flopping down over her head and brushing the ground. She spied a tiny kitten with bluish-white body fur and a slate-gray face, curled up tight against the back tire. A blue-point Siamese. “Ooh, look at you pretty baby. Where did you come from little guy? Or gal, whatev.”
The kitten narrowed its eyes as if to say, “I’ll never tell you my secrets.”
“Kitty, kitty, kitty.” She moved to the rear of the van, crouched down and rubbed her fingertips together as if she had a tasty treat she was willing to share. “You gotta come out from under there so I can go home.”
The trembling Siamese boldly met her stare. It might be scared, but it was scrappy. Gently, she moved to close her hand around the kitten, but it sprinted to the back tire on the opposite side of the van.
She tracked around to the other side and got down on her knees. “Hey there. Still me. I didn’t go anywhere. Here’s the deal, I can’t go anywhere and risk squashing you, so it would really benefit us both if you’d let me help you.”
The kitten darted back to the other tire.
“Not buying it, huh?” She sighed, got up, and returned to the other side. This time, she lay on her belly against the warm asphalt and walked two fingers toward the woebegone creature. Maybe talking would soothe the poor thing. “Look, I get that you’re all stealth ninja kitty and everything, kudos on the mad sprinting skills by the way, but I gotta go.”
“Rrrowww.” Fur bristling, the kitten arched its back, sent her a get-the-hell-away-from-me-beeotch-or-you’ll-be-sorry-you-didn’t-make-out-your-will hiss and swatted a warning paw.
“Seriously, I can’t be late again for the luncheon meeting of volunteers who answer the lonely hearts letters written to Cupid. I’m already skating the razor’s edge with that bunch over my habitual tardiness and yes, while it is sorta hypocritical of me to give advice to the brokenhearted when I myself have never actually been in love, somebody’s got to answer those letters and you don’t look as if you’ve got a mind to do it for me. And even if you were willing, there’s the whole no opposable thumbs issue. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, just stating the facts.”
The kitten’s fur settled back into place and he or she canted its head as if trying to figure what she was yammering about. It was so darned cute and the talking did seem to help.
“If I’m not really qualified to answer the letters and I can’t seem to show up on time, why don’t I just quit? Good question, Egbert. You don’t mind if I call you Egbert, do you? Unless is Egbertlina. Is it Egbertlina? I can’t really tell from here if you’re a boy or a girl, but to answer your question, it’s this whole family obligation thing. We—just to clarify, that’s me and my sister, Natalie—are descended from Millie Greenwood, the woman who started this whole letter writing mess when she wrote a letter to Cupid asking him to help her snare her true love, John Fant and it worked stupendously. He dumped Elizabeth Nielson at the altar for Millie, who was just a poor housemaid. It’s terribly romantic.”
Her sister, Natalie was enamored of that legend, but to Zoey, it was all a bunch of blah, blah about long dead people, then again, if she were being honest, jealousy could have something to do her lack of interest in it. She wasn’t the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter of Millie Greenwood like her sister. She had no real stake in keeping the parable alive.
As she spoke, Zoey was slowly inching her hand closer to the Siamese.
The kitten’s hair flared again.
Zoey backed off.
She fumbled in the pocket of her blue jean shorts for her cell phone, and flicked it on to check the time. Twenty minutes to twelve. No way was she going to make it to the meeting on time, especially since she still had to drive the thirty miles from Alpine to Cupid.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from noon to one-thirty, the volunteers met to answer letters from the lovelorn written to Cupid. The letter-writing tradition had started in the 1930s after the Depression hit and the town had a desperate need of extra income and they did anything they could to encourage tourism. Grandmother Rose had spearheaded the campaign, gathering some of the local women to answer the overwhelming number of letters that people left at the base of the Cupid stalagmite inside the Cupid Caverns. At first, the replies to the letters were left on a bulletin board posted outside the caverns, but that became unwieldy and in the 1940s someone had the idea of doing away with the bulletin board and instead printing the letters and “Cupid’s” reply in a free weekly newspaper that was paid for, and distributed by, local businesses. Great marketing ploy, but somebody had to answer all those freaking letters.
Should she call her sister and say she was going to be late? Or roll the dice and see if she could get there in the nick of time if she drove hell bent of leather.
If you get another speeding ticket, they’ll cancel your insurance.
Dammit. She ducked her head under the van again. “I don’t mean to scare you, kiddo, but this standoff isn’t working for me. Something’s gotta give, so if you want to spit and hiss, have at it.”
The kitten arched its spine, flattened its ears, took her suggestion, hissed long and loud and then darted back across to the other tire once more.
Blowing out her breath, she played ring-a-round the van a third time, went down on her knees, rump in the air and got serious with the kitty. “No more pussyfooting around. You cannot stay under the van. This is nonnegotiable.”
The Siamese slapped her hand with amazingly sharp little claws, managed to make contact with her index finger and draw blood.
“Ouch.” She popped her finger into her mouth. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a vicious little cuss?”
“Hey there Zoe-Eyes,” oozed a deep masculine voice.
Only one person called her that. She jumped to her feet, spun around, and came face to face with six-foot-two inches of lean, raven-hair cowboy.
Zoey grinned from ear-to-ear at the sight of her very best friend in the whole wide world. “It’s flipping Jericho Hezekiah Chance!”
He held out his arms and she flew across the asphalt to throw herself into them, his familiar scent of crisp cotton, leather, sunshine and desert sand enveloped her in his hearty hug. He smiled down at her.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked.
“I’d recognize that cute fanny anywhere.”
Her skin tingled electrically. Whenever he said things like that, her naughty thoughts went to … well … places where they had no business going. Their relationship was strictly platonic, always had been, always would be, but sometimes she couldn’t help wondering if he wanted more from her and that made her want more from him and wanting more was perilous territory.
Zoey pulled back. “It was the Cupid’s Rest van. That’s how you knew it was me, not my fanny.” Ugh, why had she repeated the word fanny? She put a hand to her backside. Stop calling attention to it! She dropped her arm, forced a laugh.
His smile turned wicked. “Uh-huh. That’s it. The van.”
What did that smile mean? Was he flirting with her? Once upon a time, she thought so, but then she’d pulled a bonehead move and kissed him and he’d been horrified and things had been weird between them for months afterward. She was not going to make that mistake again.
Put away the second-guessing. He’s your friend. That’s it.
Too bad, since Jericho was endlessly hot. If he wasn’t her best friend …
But he was. Forget it. With her palm, she shaded her eyes from the sun.
He possessed skin the color of a walnut hull and no matter how often he shaved, he sported a five o’clock shadow. His cheekbones were razor-sharp and his nose had a slight bump at the bridge that along with his dark eyebrows gave him a hawkish appearance. At first glance, no one pegged him for a science nerd, but he spent as much time indoors analyzing, cataloguing and teaching as he did outdoors digging up artifacts. He was a real life Indiana Jones.
“You should wear sunglasses,” he said. “Protect your eyes.”
“You’re not wearing them.”
He patted the front pocket of his red plaid western shirt. “Took them off when I spied you. Had to get an unobstructed view. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Is something wrong?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“You can’t hide anything from me. I know you too well. Something’s up.”
He paused. “Mallory and I broke up.”
Oh goodie. Okay, that was tacky. “I’m so sorry to hear that. You guys were two peas in a pod.”
“That was part of the problem. We were too much alike.”
“What happened?” She held up a stop-sign palm. “No wait, save that story. We’ll go out drinking tonight. Wednesday is half-price draft night at Chantilly’s. You can tell me all about it then.”
“That’s okay. I don’t need a shoulder to cry on. It was a long time coming. Besides, I also have some very good news.” His big smile was back.
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