by Tina Leonard
“Sure.” He bit into the cake. “Eat your un-wedding cake.”
“What is un-wedding cake, anyway?”
“Well, if you learned today that you’re no longer married, I suppose that’s what this should be. We can be sad if you want to be, though,” he offered hastily.
“Oh, no. Please. I wouldn’t think of it.” She tasted her cake, too. “I’m just glad to know that he was finally found. I wouldn’t have felt right remarrying if I’d never learned what happened to him. I have no idea what the marital expiration date is on husbands who disappear. It could be a decade, for all I know.”
“Hey, this is un-wedding cake. Do not sleep with this under your pillow and try to dream of your future husband. Old wives’ tales don’t really work,” he said sternly.
“I’ll probably never get married again, anyway,” she said, finishing off her cake. “I’ve got too many kids to care for.”
“And that’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said, cutting another piece for himself. “How many children do you have? Because I found a picture of you in Hannah’s room, and I think I counted nine. Nine!” He looked at her, his heart in his throat. “Those weren’t your responsibilities, were they?”
She looked at him for a long time, and he didn’t like the depth of her gaze. It told him all he needed to know, and he didn’t need the lie of a sugar boost to ease the strain in his jeans. His pants started fitting better instantly.
“They’re all mine—nephews and nieces,” she said. “There are ten of us. If one doesn’t count Gran. And then there are my missing three siblings, which, if and when they ever come back into the picture, will make fourteen.”
“You support fourteen people.”
“Well, my brother and sisters are missionaries. They’re gone a lot, and they don’t make much. Gran used to be able to work, but now that she’s older, she gets tired more easily.”
“Taking care of nine kids would tire me out.”
“Yes, but we didn’t expect my family to be gone so long. They left for a weekend to take coats and blankets to a sister church in South America.”
To his dismay, her eyes filled with the first tears he’d ever seen her cry. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Don’t do that. They’ll be back, I’m sure.”
“I’m not so certain anymore.” She got up to wash her hands and dry her eyes at the washstand sink in her room. “We haven’t heard from them in almost three years. The government won’t tell us anything. And needless to say, Gran and I do not have enough money to hire an investigator.”
And then he saw her shoulders shaking. Oh, boy. Putting the cake back into the box, he moved it back to the dresser. “Cissy,” he murmured, going to stand behind her. “You’ve got a great ass.”
“What?”
She turned to stare at him, and he prepared to dodge a slap. “It was all I could think of to make you stop crying,” he admitted. “I don’t have much experience with women’s tears.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t crying.”
Now who was fibbing? And yet, he understood covering up. “My brothers say I have an intimacy problem,” he offered.
Her eyes widened. “No man admits to something like that.”
“I didn’t say I had one. That’s what they like to accuse me of. It’s not true.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
He frowned at her. There was a real reason he was there—to deliver the cake as Hannah had requested. And then there was the real-real, albeit inadmissible, reason he was there—to see Cissy. But neither of those reasons could be what Cissy had in mind. “What?”
“Because of your intimacy problem.”
“Why would I come here for that? Just saying I had one, which I don’t.”
“Because this salon is the place men like to come to lose their intimacy problems. And a whole host of other problems.”
His jaw sagged. “You’re suggesting that I—”
“Not suggesting. Asking, cowboy. Asking.”
No. The answer was no.
And yet, he had to admit he was pulled to Cissy in a sort of strange, like-what-I-see-but-can’t-touch it way. It was a sexual paradox of sorts.
Which would play into his brothers’ theory.
“I’ve always espoused the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy of life,” he said.
“And yet you’ve asked plenty of questions about my life. My family.”
“Yeah. That’s when I thought you were my kind of girl.”
She stared at him. “And now you think I’m…?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I guess you’re a good girl. A good girl with issues, but I definitely see why Hannah likes you.”
“And so that crosses me off your short list.”
“I don’t have a list,” he replied.
“But if I were a wild woman, I’d be on it.”
“Well, that, and if you wore interesting lingerie.
I’m going to develop a fetish for interesting lingerie.”
She sighed. “Tex, I think you have an intimacy problem.”
He sighed, too, and laid back across the bed horizontally. She lay next to him, and they both stared lackadaisically at the ceiling, their legs hanging off the bed. “Not if I have a fetish.”
“You don’t, cowboy. You said you’re going to develop one. Like, maybe when you’re forty? Not that any of this matters, since I’m not your kind of girl or anything.”
“And thank heavens for that,” he said. “I do not want to end up like my brothers. Even though they’re happy,” he said expansively, “that is no reason to emulate them.”
“Back to the raffle,” she reminded him. “I think you should do it.”
“Why?”
“It would prove to your brothers that you don’t have any issues,” she pointed out. “You would also prove it to yourself, because on a subconscious level, you could be in denial.” She beamed at her attempt at psychoanalysis. “And it’s for a good cause.”
They turned their heads to look at each other. It was, Tex realized at that moment, too close for comfort. “You may not be a trashy girl,” he said, “but you didn’t slap me when I said you had a great ass.”
“That’s because I felt sorry for you,” she said softly, staring into his eyes. “I knew there had to be a reason you were trying so hard to be something you weren’t.”
He could practically feel his eyes bug from their sockets. “Now comes the enlightenment. What am I not?”
“A badass cowboy.”
“So you’re figuring I’m a pansy.”
“You’re neither. Just right down the middle. A nice guy.”
Just what he’d always wanted. “Maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
She shrugged, a little icily for his taste, especially since she was lying on her back and shouldn’t have been able to get that much movement into a shrug.
“Okay. Let me ask you something. If I was a trashy girl—your favorite kind—would you have tried to hit on me by now? I mean, you’re holding back for some reason. In fact, you’re almost a hypocrite. You tease about kissing me and having sex and say I’ve got a great behind, and it’s clear you like what you see, but then you treat me like a sister.”
“I don’t have sex on the first date,” he said gruffly.
“You did,” she reminded him. “If meeting me in a barn can be called a date.”
“It can’t,” he argued. “That was a first meeting, and I’d definitely never done that before.” He moved his head back to stare at the ceiling. “There are moral imperatives involved.”
She rolled up on her elbow and looked at him quizzically. “Are you quoting someone?”
“No,” he said, not about to admit that some of his brother Bandera’s philosophical ditherings and their father’s teachings had soaked into his skull. “I’m only trying to illustrate that I’m not a loser or an intimacy-phobe. I don’t have to mate like a gorilla.”
“Now that you’ve decid
ed that I’m not a trashy girl.”
Truly, the woman had superior insight. He couldn’t have had sex with her if he wanted to now. Really. She was no different than Annabelle, Katy or Hannah—and look where those girls had led his unsuspecting brothers! “I don’t have to prove anything to my brothers. Or myself. I’ll do the raffle because charity is a good thing.”
“I see.”
Tex’s brows rose. He heard the snarkiness in her tone. Okay, maybe disbelief was more the word. “All right,” he said. “That’s it. Even a gentleman can only take so much—and I’m not even a gentleman. So I’m way past my limit, lady.”
And then he pinned her beneath him.
Chapter Three
Cissy held her breath as the cowboy on top of her lay still. They stared into each other’s eyes as if they had never seen each other before. Cissy’s heart beat slowly, yet very hard, in her throat. “Well, cowboy,” she said, “as you said, this is it.”
“Now or never.”
“Do or die,” she said, loving the feel of Tex’s weight on her. “Here we are, again.”
And yet he remained frozen.
“I promise I don’t bite on the first real kiss,” she teased.
“I do,” Tex said, touching his lips briefly to hers.
“You taste like un-wedding cake.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It’s maybe the best cake I ever had,” he said, lowering his head so that he could kiss her, and taste her more deeply. She moaned, arching, wanting to be tighter against him as she ran her hands up over his back.
Before she knew what was happening, he pulled away. Her heart plummeted as he got off the bed. “What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. Everything.
“Did your escape hatch fly open?” she demanded, sitting up on the bed to glare at him.
Tex didn’t like the sound of that. “Meaning?”
“No man leaps away from a woman like his pants are on fire, when a moment before he was sucking at her lips like a drowning man sucks air. Maybe your intimacy issue returned full force.”
He bit the inside of his jaw. His pants were definitely on fire, but he shifted so she couldn’t notice. “I’m trying to be a gentleman. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“Oh, please. You think that if you kiss me and like it too much—maybe even make love to me again—you’ll end up at the altar like your brothers. You don’t want to fall in love. Which is perfect as far as I’m concerned, because I’m the last girl who wants to see a wedding ring.”
There went that unattractive prescient side of her. “I could kiss you all day and not fall in love,” he lied, his pride in full force. “Heck, I could kiss twenty girls and not fall in love! Marriage is not a good way for men to live. All that devotion and fidelity stuff is hard on a guy.”
“Guess you won’t have any trouble with that raffle, after all,” Cissy said.
He didn’t like the gleeful smile on her face. “Sounds like the most fun I’ll have all year.”
“I’ll have to come watch.”
That hadn’t entered his thoughts, and he wasn’t certain he was entirely comfortable with Cissy watching women bid on him. “Uh—”
“I could be a mole bidder and drive up your price,” she offered.
Did he hear revenge in her tone? “A mole bidder?”
“You know, every time someone bids, I outbid them, so that they have to bid again. Of course, I have no intention of buying you.”
Trying to ignore her obvious disinterest in him—where was the jealousy, for heaven’s sake?—Tex puffed out his chest. “How much do you figure I’m worth?”
“Ten, twenty bucks?”
His brows shot to his hairline. “Oh, come on. Be real. I’ve still got all my teeth!”
“Well, that does count for something,” she said reluctantly. “How’s your continence?”
“My what?”
“You know. Your…you know.” She gestured to his jeans.
“Oh, my continence!” he exclaimed. “I can go all night.”
“You don’t say.” Her gaze swept his jeans and then lingered a moment more. “And you’ve got a full head of hair,” she said. “I think you’ll fetch about fifty bucks. I’d bid on you,” she said with a sigh, “but I’m financially embarrassed these days, and Lord only knows I wouldn’t know what to do with you if I won you. I suppose I could put you to work in the rose garden out back. I know how much roses appeal to you, those secretive buds of romance.”
Though he knew she was tweaking him, it was getting on his nerves. He’d just kissed her. Darn it, she should be acting more…more, well, appreciative. And interested. After all, he didn’t go around kissing just any girl. In fact, he hadn’t kissed anybody in a long time. Nobody since her.
Maybe that was his problem. He was out of practice. He was taking it all too seriously. “I need a trashy girl to purchase me,” he said.
“Oh, yes, the only type for you.”
“Well, there’re reasons for that.”
She frowned at him. “Thanks for bringing me the cake, Tex. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go to sleep now. I’ve got to work tomorrow.”
He nodded, noting the distance in her tone. “All right, Cissy. I’ll tell Hannah you’re doing fine.”
“You do that,” she said absently, turning away.
And darn it, she didn’t even seem to notice when he raised the window. Glancing at her, he realized her thoughts were somewhere else. She’d pulled some pictures from a drawer in her nightstand, but he couldn’t see what they were. Caught between bravado and bragging, he decided there was no other way to get her attention back on him.
He jumped.
Then he waited for her to look out to make certain he was in good health, his head crooked around so that he could see her expression.
She closed the window. The lace drapes fell together.
“Damn,” he said to himself, limping toward his truck. “Even superheroes get a little applause for exiting out of windows!”
But Cissy hadn’t seemed to care, much like she hadn’t seemed impressed when he’d ridden that bull to victory, twice. Only this time, he’d kissed her for real. And pulled away fast. He hadn’t been prepared for how much he wanted to have her. The feel of her beneath him all slick and compliant in that silk had made his brain pulsate with fire! He’d had to stop himself from…
He frowned. She hadn’t seemed as rocked as he had.
So then he dove out a window. “Damn,” he said again.
She was supposed to notice.
CISSY FORCED HERSELF not to fly to the window and peer out to see if Tex was okay. That lunatic! But what could a woman expect from a man well versed in the daredevil sport of bullriding?
“You are so not father material,” she muttered, swiftly flipping off the bedside lamp and going to the window to surreptitiously peek through the lace drapes. He was limping, the creep! “That’s what you get for being so desperate to avoid my kiss,” she told his retreating form. “Now you’re only worth forty bucks.”
And he wasn’t husband material, for sure—not that she was looking to mine the fields of bachelors. But Tex had proved that she’d never be able to count on him. The man broke into her bedroom and then leaped out her window.
“I can’t trust you,” she said as he drove off. “And if I need anyone in my life right now, it’s someone I can trust.”
She had a family to raise. “I can just see him teaching my kids to have a wild hair like his,” she murmured, picking up the picture once again. Her eyes clouded over as she looked at the faces of the tiny people who depended on her. Counted on her.
“I need stability in my life,” she told herself as she crawled into bed. “Stability. And someone who doesn’t call wedding cake un-wedding cake and then cut it with a hunting knife!”
Getting up, she grabbed the box off the dresser and slipped the cake under her pillow. “I’ll just ignore Mr. Superstitious’
s dire warning,” she said. “It’s not like I’d dream of future husbands, anyway.”
More like she’d have nightmares. Of Tex.
“WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?” Mason demanded as Tex limped into the ranch’s main house. It was just the two of them living there now, and that fact alone was starting to string Tex’s nerves tight. Mason was not a pleasant roommate.
“I just turned my ankle a bit,” Tex said. “It’s nothing.”
Bandera and Navarro came in behind him, eyeing Tex as he fell into the recliner and struggled to get his boot off.
“Need help?” Bandera asked.
“Not really,” Tex said, gritting out the words. His ankle hurt more than he thought it would.
“Hang on,” Navarro said. Gently, he took hold of the boot and did his best to pull it off without hurting Tex.
“Arrgh!” Tex moaned in spite of himself.
“Where the hell have you been?” Bandera asked. “Ranger called here a while ago and said to keep an eye out for you. Said you were three sheets to the wind last night. And then you disappeared.”
“Yeah.” Tex settled into the recliner, trying not to grimace at his swollen ankle. “Hannah wanted me to check on Cissy under the guise of taking her some wedding cake. So I took a shower, sobered up and hit the road.”
“Ooh,” his three brothers said.
“What?” Tex said, sitting up. “What does ‘ooh’ mean?”
“Cissy did that to you,” Bandera said.
“Not exactly.” But Tex didn’t feel like sharing more of the story than that.
The phone rang, and Mason swept it up. “Hello?” He listened for a few moments, then said, “Yes. The superhero made it home fine. Thanks for calling.” Hanging up the phone, Mason put on a fake nonchalant expression. “That was Miss Cissy Kisserton,” he said, torturing Tex just a little. “She says you took a flying leap out of her bedroom window.”
“Ooh,” his other two brothers said.
Tex closed his eyes.
“Fear of intimacy,” Navarro pronounced.
“And Ranger’s Curse of the Broken Body Parts has gotten to Tex,” Bandera stated. “Just look at him all laid up like that.”