by Tina Leonard
“Yeah. They’re the biggest bunch of fakers I ever saw.”
Bandera snorted. “Last is always working on a conspiracy theory.”
“Hey. I know an imposter marriage when I see it.” He shrugged. “It’s no different than Mimi’s marriage. What I’m seeing is that there’s trade-offs in life. People cut deals. Maybe they don’t say it up front, but it’s implied. And maybe that’s why people divorce, when one or both of them step outside the box of implied agreement.”
“Jeez,” Crockett said with a scowl. “If you’d ever stop sitting on your head for a moment, you might actually start speaking like a human being instead of blah, blah, blah.”
“I am a student of human nature,” Last told him. “Just because you don’t like it and have no talent at studying the same, does not devalue my instincts.”
“Criminey.” Bandera thumped down his beer. “Somebody please puncture his brain so some of the hot air can escape!”
“Back to the part about Mimi,” Mason said slowly. “What did you mean by that?”
“First let me finish what I was saying about Cissy Kisserton Jefferson,” Last said airily.
The brothers groaned, realizing they were going to have to sit through Last’s postulations.
“That gal is a one-man woman.”
Every man in the room focused their attention on Last.
“There’s no such thing,” Bandera said. “Not when she looks like that. Dang, if she hadn’t married Brother Budus, I might have had to ask her out. She made my heart thunder in my chest!”
“Yeah, but any dunce could tell they were in cahoots. Their stories were so crooked a child could figure it out,” Last said.
“That’s true,” Crockett agreed. “There were holes.”
Navarro snapped his fingers. “Maybe she’s pregnant and he had to marry her! Remember when there was some discussion between Laredo and Ranger—I think—about Tex eating from the garden of good and evil in the barn in Lonely Hearts Station? That was two months ago, long enough for Cissy to know if something’s missing, so to speak.”
“Back to Mimi!” Mason exclaimed, pounding the table with his fist.
They all stared at him.
“Well, Mason, it’s so obvious,” Last said. “I like Brian and all, and I know he’s busy, but even legal beagles spend time with their new wives.”
“The sheriff’s been sick.” Mason shook his head. “Mimi spends all her time with her father.”
Last shrugged. “Just saying. You don’t have to listen, you know. And it all happened real quick, right? So…I don’t think she’s ever gotten over you.”
Mason couldn’t help the pleasure that glowed inside him—but then he stamped it out ruthlessly. “I’m going out.”
The brothers looked at one another after their brother slammed the front door. “Whoa,” Crockett said. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Mimi,” Navarro stated. “What’s it always been about?”
“He took his keys,” Bandera said.
“It doesn’t matter.” Last examined his boots as he glanced around for Helga before putting his feet on the coffee table. “Here’s what does matter. I’m going to turn the soil in the bed out back and plant wildflowers.”
Crockett frowned. “In Tex’s rose bed?”
“Yup.”
“You can’t.” Bandera frowned, too. “That’s hallowed ground. It’s practically sacred to Tex. He’d feel…desecrated. Violated. Encroached upon.”
Last pointed his finger at his brothers. “I don’t care how he’d feel. I’m sick of looking at that dead garden. Tex is married now. He can tend his wife, and I will tend his no-rose zone.”
Crockett looked at him. “Last, it’s a bad idea, I’m pretty sure. That’s Tex’s space. It’s like his shrine to Mom. Even if nothing grows right for him, it’s his eyesore.”
“I don’t want to avert my eyes anymore when I’m out back. I’d like to, just once, have a garden party and not be embarrassed by the lack of fruition.”
“A garden party?” Navarro laughed. “When was the last time we had any kind of party?”
“When Frisco Joe’s wife Annabelle and the baby and all the Lonely Hearts women were here,” Last said wistfully. “I sure did enjoy all those girls around. Since then, four brothers have left, and we’ve got nothing to show for it. No babies. No wives to invite girlfriends over. You know, start up some coffee-klatching. I’d like to hear the sound of womanly laughter.”
“Helga doesn’t laugh, I’ll grant you that,” Crockett said. “She drinks lemon juice when she wakes up in the morning.”
“It’s Mason that lives on the stuff. I’m taking over the garden,” Last said with determination. “Something’s going to bloom around here if it’s the only thing I accomplish this year outside of taking care of the ranch. And then when the garden blooms, I’m inviting the new salon girls out, and we’re going to…we’re going to have a party.”
“Wet T-shirt contest?” Crockett asked hopefully. “Thong archery?”
“No,” Last said. “We’re going to have every single girl in the county over, and we’re going to have our own cowgirl raffle. The Great Cinderella Quest. It worked for Tex. Maybe it’ll work for Mason.”
“Mason!” the brothers echoed with dismay.
“Yes, Mason,” Last said. “If I have to, I’ll hire a landscape architect to speed things along!”
TEX WANDERED THE DECKS of the riverboat, making certain everything was secure. He tried not to think about Cissy, which was impossible, and forced his mind to other topics.
But Cissy was downstairs sleeping, and he couldn’t help wondering what she was sleeping in. It was, after all, their honeymoon. But he really couldn’t call it that, since there was no longer any reason for them to stay together except for loyalty on her part. Her dilemma with Marvella was solved. Being married wasn’t required to wait out her family’s hopeful return. After his brothers had brought Cissy’s kids today, and then willingly jumped into the fray with Marvella’s thugs, he’d learned an important lesson: the Jefferson brothers were always going to be there for one another. Sure, they weren’t likely to give him a pass any time soon about his so-called intimacy issue, but the teasing wasn’t going to kill him.
That left Cissy’s request for one night of lovemaking under the stars still unsatisfied, but it was quite possible she’d changed her mind. Women did change their minds often.
He checked a lock and moved to look at the water, which was calm around the boat. It was a windless night, and the moon shone bright and full and teasingly romantic.
He’d always avoided love by keeping his relationships minimal. That wasn’t going to work now, because Cissy was way past minimal with him. Maybe he was hoping she’d changed her mind so that he wouldn’t have to make love with her.
Once he allowed that notion to creep into his mind, Tex forced himself to examine why a man wouldn’t want to make love to Cissy Kisserton.
He’d taken her virginity. That knowledge was stirring up feelings of possession and male pride inside him that he didn’t want to recognize. He did not want to fall in love.
He wasn’t going to keep up his end of the bargain. “I just won’t do it. I can renege since I didn’t know that she was a virgin in the first place. I don’t want to be a cad by compounding the error. If a man wants to stay out of trouble, he stays away from trouble.”
Of course, that’s what his brothers had said right before they’d fallen head over heels. Tex groaned. He was already too close for comfort, he knew, because he couldn’t stop thinking about Cissy. He wanted to smell Cissy’s neck and touch her skin and listen to her laugh.
“I’ve got it bad,” he complained to himself. “Or I’m getting it, and I don’t want it!”
That left him with a couple of options.
He could settle down, like Frisco Joe, Laredo and Ranger. Make some babies, go to bed every night with the same woman, enjoy the creature comforts of stability.
/> Or he could point out the obvious, that she was safe now and no longer needed him, and therefore he was going to be a gentleman and not make good on the lovemaking issue since…since their marriage would be so abbreviated. It was chivalrous to allow her a way out of her request.
Hmm. “The second option has the feel of honor to it,” he murmured. Last couldn’t say he was being intimacy-stunted if Cissy chose to opt out of the marriage. Drumming his fingers on the rail, Tex decided he would put the question to Cissy at the first opportunity.
It was the gallant thing to do.
“Tex?”
He jumped at the sound of Cissy’s voice. “Whew! I didn’t hear you come up the stairs.”
She patted his arm. “Sorry. I could tell your thoughts were somewhere else.”
Yeah, like on you. “Can’t sleep?”
“Not really. I’m not sure why.”
She laid her head against his shoulder. His heart began beating a frantic tattoo. Cissy felt good to him. Them being together felt right. He thought he felt his scalp break out in hives.
“Come to bed, cowboy,” she whispered.
Yikes! “Uh—”
She stroked the skin just above his shirt collar and just below his hair. The skin betrayed him, jumping.
“Cold?” she asked.
Hot, hot, hot was more the description. Tex cleared his throat. “Cissy, I was thinking that your problem is solved. Well, the Marvella problem, anyway. So there’s really no need for us to continue our marriage of convenience. I know how you feel about marriages of convenience, so valor and decency compel me to allow you to end our bargain.”
“Whatever you say,” she said easily. “But valor and decency compel me to point out that I have no panties on under this nightgown.”
His throat dried out and that traitorous thing in his jeans zapped poker-straight, the way it always seemed to around Cissy. It was like a freaking homing pigeon, and Tex could only be glad of the cover of darkness, or Cissy would know just what she did to him.
She put her hand against him, finding what he wanted so badly to hide. In that split second, he knew that whatever Cissy wanted, Cissy was going to have.
“Come to bed,” she whispered.
He swept her into his arms and carried her down the stairs.
Chapter Fifteen
“I should have sent you home with your nieces and nephews,” Tex murmured against Cissy’s hair. “I need distance to resist you.”
“But then your brothers would have known that we were married for appearances,” she pointed out, happy to be in Tex’s arms. “And then you would never convince them that you’re okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Normal.”
“I am normal!”
“Oh, you don’t have to convince me,” Cissy said. “I’ve had you. I know you’re better than normal. In fact, I don’t care whether you’re intimacy-stunted or not.”
He frowned. “You don’t?”
“No. I care about you making love to me again, only this time I want you to stay in the saddle for a long time.”
He thought maybe his wildest fantasies were coming true—and at the same time, his worst nightmares. “You might be scaring me.”
“Will I scare you more if I tell you that when we stopped at the drugstore for necessities, I also picked up condoms?” She licked and then kissed his neck meaningfully.
Kicking open the bedroom door, he said, “I’m encouraged, not scared. I’ll be more encouraged if you tell me you bought the jumbo box.”
She laughed. “I think we’ll have plenty.”
He laid her on the bed, watching her move with an eagle eye. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”
“You? How about me? I didn’t think I’d ever break down your walls. For a while, I was beginning to wonder who the virgin was.”
He ripped off his shirt and lost his boots and jeans somewhere on the floor. “I’ll show you virgin,” he said with a growl, moving onto the bed beside her. “What do you mean, break down my walls?”
“I could tell you were battling with your conscience. Right versus wrong. Good versus evil. Take her or not take her. I could tell you were having a herculean struggle with your man issues.”
“Man issues?” He checked out the color of her toenails and decided he would adore pink for the rest of his life. She had delicate, well-shaped feet and ankles.
“The intimacy thing.”
She ran her fingers through his hair, and he knew nothing had ever felt so good as a woman who knew how to scrape her nails gently along a man’s scalp.
“But I knew that in the end, I would have you,” she said.
“And how do you know I was suffering such a division of need versus deed over you?” he asked, running a light hand up her arm before taking her hand in his to kiss her fingertips.
“You were wearing out the deck up there,” Cissy said with a giggle. “You were right over my room. Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! I gave you time to think about it, and then when I realized you might actually manage mind over matter, I decided to bring you over to the dark side.”
He ran a finger along her newly exposed neck. “You did?”
“Yes. It’s working, too. Jellyfish isn’t going to have to replace the deck, after all.”
She giggled again, and that sound alone was enough to give him an instant hard-on. He ran a hand up under her nightgown to give her some of her own medicine and stopped at her hip. “You’re not wearing any panties.”
“Well, I was prepared to toss my nightgown into the water if you didn’t agree to get into my bed,” she said. “Knowing the hero you are, I was afraid you’d go into the water to save it. I wanted to keep your attention fully on me.”
She pulled her nightgown off and dropped it to the floor. He’d never seen Cissy Kisserton naked. The sight was enough to bring a grown man to his knees to praise the forces that had created her.
But it was the sudden question in her eyes that charmed him the most. She looked sweet and vulnerable, and he adored her innocence.
“You have my full, complete, total, undivided attention,” he said, almost growling his desire. “And you’re going to have it until the sun rises.”
WHEN TEX AWAKENED, CISSY was gone. At first that unnerved him, since the night they’d spent together had been so passionate he hadn’t considered getting out of bed unless there was a fire. Instantly, he worried that she might have deserted him, now that she had gotten what she wanted. She could have taken his truck keys and ditched him. She could have gone home to her kids.
Hopping out of bed, he reached for his jeans, fumbling around in the pocket until he found his keys, his wallet and his knife. “Whew,” he said. Then he heard light footsteps above, and he relaxed. She was probably fixing him breakfast.
But just in case she wasn’t, he decided he’d best go check on her. He dressed with lightning, careless speed. It was the first time he’d ever worried about whether or not a woman had enjoyed sex with him, and he really didn’t like feeling insecure.
At the same time, they could now call their bargain square. He should be relieved.
And he would be relieved when he laid eyes on her and made sure she was as happy as she’d sounded all night long. “Cissy!” he hollered, hitting the stairs and then the deck in record time. “Hey—”
She turned from her place at the rail and smiled at him like the sun. She was wearing a yellow halter-back sundress with big orange and black flowers. It blew gently around her knees, fluttering delicately with each puff of wind. And she was barefoot.
He gulped, running a hand through his hair and feeling a bit awkward. She looked sexy as anything he’d ever imagined. He wanted to carry her back downstairs! What was the matter with him? She would think he was a Neanderthal if he jumped on her. Now that they were even, maybe she didn’t want him anymore. She had specified one night. He took a deep breath and told himself to look only into her eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Feeding
the fish.” She tossed corn from a bowl into the water. “I plan on feeding you eggs, though.”
He went to stand beside her, acting as if he wanted to look down into the water at the fish, too, but all he really wanted was to stand close to her. “You smell good.”
“Eggs would smell good.”
“Maybe I should shower before breakfast,” he said, realizing her hair smelled good and her body smelled good and even the damn corn in her hands smelled good. He developed an instant erection. “I’ll be right back.”
“What about breakfast?” she called after him.
“I’m not horny!” he yelled back. “I mean, hungry!”
He could not keep getting a stiff one every time he got near her or something bad was going to happen. He’d fall in love. He’d never get any work done. He’d become one of those besotted men that couldn’t stop yapping about helping their wives sort threads for needlework. She’d dislike him because he was going beyond the bounds of their original agreement.
“Cold shower,” he told himself, jumping into the enclosure and letting the spray hit him.
Five minutes later, he was feeling in control of himself. He went back upstairs and joined her at the rail.
She smiled at him, her big aquamarine eyes crinkling at the corners with happiness. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” Mentally, he checked his crotch. All good.
“Ready for breakfast?”
He smiled back easily. “I’m really not hungry just yet. And I think I should cook for you. Or do cleanup. Whichever you prefer.”
She tossed the last of the corn into the water and put the bowl on the rail. Her sundress rose lightly with the breeze, teasing her knees. But he was a foot away from her; a great spot to admire and not conquer.
“I’m not wearing any panties,” Cissy said. “Which is what I told you last night, and it seemed to work.”
He was staring at her bare back, realizing how close he was to heaven since she obviously wasn’t wearing a bra, either. His staff of life had noticed how sweet her curves looked in the dress. “Seemed to work?” he repeated dumbly.