by Tina Leonard
“Maybe it falls under your definition of trashy.” She smiled at him. “Or I could undo my halter and see if that works.”
The only way he could cool off now was if he jumped overboard and swam a mile. “Cissy—”
She untied the top of her halter and let it drop to her waist. Her breasts were round and beautiful with perfect nipples. All thoughts of staying away from her fled his mind as he pulled her close to him and took a breast in his mouth. She moaned, holding herself up against him, and he swept a hand underneath the skirt to find nothing but a smooth, round bottom. She was wet between her legs, and he knew the perfect place to cool off.
Turning her toward the rail, he lifted her skirt, holding her tightly against his chest so that he could caress her breasts. Hungrily, he entered her, needing to be inside her and completely aware that he was starting to lose his mind.
And his heart.
TWO HOURS LATER, CISSY awakened from a contented sleep in Tex’s arms. After she’d lured him into making love with her again, they’d collapsed on a lawn chair and fallen asleep together.
It was the closest thing to a real marriage she’d ever experienced. “I never want this to end,” she murmured.
“I have to say I’m enjoying the benefits of baby-sitting this floating pleasure palace,” Tex said.
“It’s a nice honeymoon, even if it’s fake. I’m going to make you breakfast.” She eased off the chair. “I have a new recipe I want you to try. Lie there and don’t get a sunburn.”
“Sunburn isn’t what’s going to kill me.”
She smiled and hurried down into the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, she returned bearing her creation. “Eggs and sausages and biscuits.”
“I’ll take it.”
She watched with pride as he ate it. “All I get is what Helga cooks, or what we sneak. This is the best breakfast I ever had. Thanks, Cissy.”
“You’re welcome. But it’s a bribe.” She winked at him.
“Whatever you want. It’s yours. Especially if you’re cooking dinner.”
“I might. Then again, I might make you do it.”
“Hmm.” He reached for the orange juice she was holding. “On with the bribe.”
“I want to know who tossed Marvella overboard.”
“Oh. You want to play twenty questions.” He nodded. “I can’t tell you. It’s confidential.”
“Why?”
“Because we Jeffersons never rehearse, review or replay an incident.”
“You just let it go.”
He nodded happily. “Yes. Once it’s over, it’s over.”
“All right. Why do you stay at the ranch if your brothers make you so nuts?”
A shrug met that question. “They’re my family and my job is there.”
Same for her, she supposed. “What does Last really want from you? Because I don’t exactly see that you have any more intimacy issues than any other man. And trust me, I saw a lot of men come and go through the Never Lonely salon. They all had some kind of issue.”
“I guess family members bear down on one another about stupid stuff.” He moved the plate to a table and leaned back. “Mason says Last has lollipop-colored vision and he’s probably right. Last wants to bring back what we had growing up. But it’s not coming back, and the more he pushes, and the more Mason pushes at the family, the more it seems to backfire. Look at me. I could be home doing chores, but I’d rather rescue you.”
She smiled. “Only I don’t need rescuing anymore.”
“Maybe not. But you can’t run this big ol’ river yacht by yourself.”
“It’s docked.”
“Still, I wouldn’t leave you out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“You are so gallant.” She allowed her gaze to wander over Tex’s chest and wondered how she could say what she was about to. “Tex, I’m not going to lure you anymore.”
He stared at her. “Why not?”
“It’s not right. I have an unfair advantage.”
His eyes blinked rapidly. “What?”
“Well, you want sex. I give you sex. It’s a bad analogy, but a man’s stomach growls when it gets hungry. I feed you. If I didn’t feed you, you’d go away.”
“No, I’d order pizza.” He frowned. “So you’re saying that if you don’t seduce me, I won’t try to get it on my own, and so I’ll go away.”
“I would have said that if I don’t give you sex, you won’t ever ask for it, and so it’s my fault because I’m playing to your masculine desires.”
“Which I’m ignoring.”
“I think we covered that last night. I wanted one night of real lovemaking. You were going to think of a noble way out of it. I overcame your resistance.”
“Which I appreciate.”
“Yes. But if I continue to do that, I’m manipulating you. I don’t want that.”
He sighed. “Because I’ll never seduce you.”
“Well, you didn’t, even when we were in the barn. If you recall, I came on to you.”
He grinned. “Yes, and I appreciated that as well. I would never have had the presence of mind to consider taking you in a barn.”
“But if you’d known I was a virgin, you wouldn’t have.”
“That’s right. I…would have…passed.”
“You hate admitting that.”
“Yes, I do. Because every man probably has fantasized about a virgin at some time or another. I just wasn’t ready for mine. But I am now.” Reaching over, he pulled her to him, making her straddle him so that she was right over him.
“You’re hard again,” she said, flattered that he could recover so quickly.
“Yes, and if you’re through yakking, you can have me.”
He reached under her dress, touching her in places that made her sigh with longing. “I don’t want you to think I’m only after you for sex,” she said as he undid his jeans. “I am, but I’m not. Does that make sense?”
Pulling a condom from his jeans pocket, he let her help him slide it on. Encircling her waist with his hands, he lifted her, gently positioning her and then sliding her down until he was fully inside her and their bodies were one. “You are after me for sex,” he said as she moaned and closed her eyes, “and I’m tossing all your panties into the river.”
They rocked together slowly until they both reached the point of no return. Almost silently, as if the mood was one of shared serenity, they found fulfillment. Cissy collapsed against Tex and he held her, stroking her back. “I could stay here forever,” she murmured. “I love this riverboat.”
He gave her a light spanking on her bottom. She gently nipped his earlobe. Last was wrong, Cissy realized. Tex was not afraid of intimacy. She was.
She was afraid that he would know her feelings as well as he was beginning to know her body. Tex was not a complicated man. He lived by a certain set of rules that involved honor and decency. They’d made an agreement. He would honor that agreement.
And when it was over, for him, it would be over.
But she had pride. In her world, there hadn’t been happy endings. There were ladies at the salon who received callers who never materialized into permanent relationships, and there was a husband who lied, and siblings and in-laws who disappeared. These moments of pleasure with Tex were her happy ending.
She didn’t want him to feel that he couldn’t walk away from their short-term marriage. He didn’t have to protect her forever. “I can take care of myself,” she whispered against his chest.
But he heard her. “Of course you can. That’s what I like most about you. You’re not the kind of girl a guy has to worry about.”
He meant that, of course, to be complimentary. He just didn’t realize that she’d fallen in love with her cowboy.
Chapter Sixteen
It was the shrieks of joy that awakened Tex from a sound sleep. He shot to his feet, wondering if the children were back. Swiftly, he checked his jeans and his hair to make sure everything was back in place.
Cissy was going
to wear him out—did the woman ever sleep?
Now she was running off the riverboat toward people he didn’t know. She flung herself into their arms, and they embraced her. Hawk and Jellyfish were bringing up the rear, and Tex went to meet them.
“How did you manage that?” he asked as he shook hands with Hawk and Jellyfish a safe distance away from the happy reunion. “You can’t get to South America and back in two days.”
Jellyfish slapped Hawk on the back. “Brother Miracle Worker knows everybody between here and the border. He had this great idea to stop at the military base and ask questions. Request assistance. Grovel for tips.”
“I didn’t grovel,” Hawk said with a grin. But it was clear he was proud of himself.
“So everything in America is locked up tighter than a drum, right?” Jellyfish continues. “But not for him. It appears that he has some kind of special—”
“Let’s just get on with what happened,” Hawk interrupted. “No one wants the details. They were on the base, Tex. On the base.”
“Why didn’t they call if they were on American soil?”
“Because they were being debriefed. They were getting some medical care and being checked for dehydration and disease, stress, the usual drill. Apparently, they did try to call Cissy, but Marvella told them some sob story about how she’d deserted her and was shacked up with a bad man who threw old ladies into rivers.”
“Oh, yee-haw,” Tex said.
Jellyfish and Hawk laughed. “At that point,” Hawk continued, “they decided not to call Gran. They didn’t want to worry her since they knew she’d want to call Cissy with the good news. And they sure as hell didn’t want Marvella telling Gran what she’d told them.”
“Wise choice. The lady’s had her hands full.”
“We figured Cissy and her family would like riding back with you to Union Junction.”
He frowned. “Might as well, since I hadn’t planned that far ahead. I certainly had no idea you’d return so soon. But, yeah. I’ll take her family back home.” He didn’t say he’d take Cissy anywhere because he wasn’t sure where she’d want to go.
“So, I can’t accept this money.” Hawk handed over the cash that Cissy had given to Tex.
“Why don’t you give it to Cissy?”
“I have another job lined up,” Hawk said, giving Jellyfish a last slap on the back. “And I want to see my arroyo before I go. Keep it cool, Brother Jellyfish, Brother Tex. When next we meet.”
He took off walking to the road. Jellyfish and Tex looked at each other. “I’d offer him a ride, but he’d say no.”
“That’s right,” Jellyfish agreed. “Our Native American brother does not ask for favors, and he doesn’t say many goodbyes.”
“Probably a good thing for everyone to practice sometimes.”
“How’s my boat?”
Tex grinned. “I love your boat.”
“Dude. Buy my boat.”
The smile slipped off Tex’s face. “What would I do with that caravel of tourism?”
“I don’t know. Cissy loves it, though.”
“Yeah, well. Riverboats are not part of a cowboy’s life. Not permanently. Thanks, though.”
“Well, come on. You should meet your in-laws.”
“My in-laws!” He looked at Jellyfish, and Jellyfish looked at him strangely. “I mean, my in-laws,” Tex amended. “Of course I should meet my in-laws.”
But what he noticed was that Cissy hadn’t brought her brother and sisters over to meet him. She hadn’t even glanced his way. And suddenly, he knew why.
She was going back home. Without him.
“THANK YOU FOR BRINGING ME home, Tex,” Cissy said as she walked Tex to his truck four hours later. It had all happened so fast. She’d said goodbye to Jellyfish and thanked him for letting her hide out there. He’d offered her a job, and she said she’d be back soon, after she reunited her siblings with their children. Cissy wrote a check for the cash that Delilah had given her and mailed it back to Delilah, with grateful thanks for her help.
Tex loaded everyone into his truck, and it was nearly a silent ride to Gran’s. Her siblings and their spouses were tired and they slept in the back seat. She read magazines. Tex drove.
The children went ballistic when they saw their weary parents. Cissy had never been so grateful for any sight in her life. She cried, and then she cried again. All she could do was thank God over and over for this precious miracle. And the look in Gran’s eyes made everything worth it.
Tex leaned up against his truck, and every once in a while she saw him wipe his eyes. “Thank you,” she mouthed to him.
He nodded, and after the children had settled down a bit, she walked over to him. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Can I offer you anything?”
“I’m going, actually.”
She looked into his eyes, seeing what she’d always known would be there. The Great Goodbye. “Is that what you want?”
“You need time with your family. I’d just be underfoot.”
“Not underfoot, exactly…”
He put his hand in her hair at the nape of her neck, caressing her. “Babe, listen. I’m happy I got to see everybody reunited. You can’t imagine what witnessing a real family reunion means to me. But you’ve waited a long time for this, and you need to enjoy it. I don’t want to be in the way.”
She nodded. “It’s not that you’d be in the way, but I understand what you mean.”
“We’ll see each other again some day.”
Her gaze lowered for an instant. “Thanks for everything, Tex. You gave me back my family.”
“I’d best head on to mine. Tell everyone I said goodbye.”
“All right.”
He kissed her palm, waved, got in his truck and drove away.
And it was all she could do not to cry big, fat, slobbery, sentimental tears over the man. But she had a family to put back together, and he had a ranch, and life went on.
ON THE RIDE HOME, Tex thought a lot about what had happened between him and Cissy. On a scale of one to ten, he’d had to give their partnership a ten. They’d made a bargain, they’d kept their bargain, and when they achieved their goals, everybody had walked away happy.
He slipped his rope ring into his jeans pocket. Last was going to bug him to death, but he didn’t care any longer what his brother had to say. He and Cissy had the closest thing to a true marriage he’d ever be able to manage.
In fact, it had felt real.
Walking into the house, he found all his brothers sitting at the long plank table in the kitchen eating dinner. They stared at him as if they’d never expected to see him again. And then they glanced at one another.
“Hello to you, too,” he said, annoyed.
His brothers mumbled a hello.
“Where’s Cissy?” Last asked. “You by yourself?”
“Hawk and Jellyfish brought her family back. They’re going to take some time to re-bond,” Tex said easily. “I’d be underfoot, and I’ve got work to do here, anyway. So I figured I’d come back for a while.”
“You’re not wearing your wedding band,” Last observed. “Did you lose it in the river when we were horsing around with the kids?”
“No,” Tex said casually. “I’m fixing to go dig up my garden. I’ve decided to take Mimi’s advice and start fresh. Uprooting plants is going to be grimy work and it should take me a couple of weeks to get everything settled. I’ve got a bunch of plans, and I can’t wait to get started.” Tex felt good that he had all the answers. There was no need for his brothers to know more than the bare minimum.
“Um, sit down and eat with us,” Last said.
“Pass. I’ve got to do this. It’s really on my mind.” Leaving the room, he practically flexed his fingers. This was going to be a cleansing. His garden redux. It was time for him to put everything that was unproductive about his life behind him so that he could move forward.
He stopped in his tracks, seeing blooming flowers and small evergreen bushes where his stun
ted rosebushes had once struggled. Pink and white begonias, red geraniums. Little signs proclaiming future wildflowers that would bloom behind these more formal plants. His garden was cultured and planned with fresh plants and compost and even a collection of wire-on-stick dragonflies. Orderly and successful and beautiful. There was a redwood picnic table nearby, with cast-iron tiki torches set into the ground. “Holy cow,” he muttered. “I don’t believe it.”
His solitary Tex-only spot was gone. It was no longer his place.
“Tex,” Last said from behind him. “I was going to tell you we made some changes, man. But I didn’t expect you home tonight.”
Tex stood silently, too angry to speak and too lost to find words.
“I didn’t expect you here at all,” Last told him. “Married guys usually don’t return home after a couple of days.”
He’d heard it said that every man needed a “cave.” This small plot had been that, a place just for him.
Now it had been taken over by his brothers.
“Look, Tex, I get a funny feeling you’re more upset about this garden than anything else in your life.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, why are you not with your wife? That’s bullcrap about her needing time with her family and you having work to do here.”
“No, I really do have work to do.” Tex held his temper back with difficulty. “And my marriage is none of your business, Last. I know you’ve appointed yourself the family therapist, but you know what? I don’t need any help.”
“Gardening might be good for the soul, but it wasn’t doing anything for yours. Maybe you should face facts.”
“So you helped me by doing this?”
Last looked at him. “I was sick of looking at your scary sticker-land, to be honest. This is inviting. This says the Jefferson brothers aren’t totally Malfunction Junction.”
All the years that Last had been the baby, Tex and his brothers had looked out for him. They’d protected Last’s feelings and covered his ass. But little brother had grown too big for his britches. “Get the hell away from me if this is your idea of an apology.”
“I’m not apologizing!”