She inhaled a shaky breath. “Look in the closet. I bought some for Weezie and stored them in a bag up here—in case I ever need to give some to her.”
“Don’t move.” A second later, he was back with a tinfoil package. “You do need to give them to her. Before she starts school.”
“Really?” True closed her eyes.
“It doesn’t mean she’ll use them.” He spanked her lightly. “But she needs them.”
“You’re right.”
“You’re hell on a man.” She sensed him moving around, readying himself. “But you’re a good sister.”
“Thanks … I think.”
He straddled her, one muscled arm holding his weight up, the other running up and down her belly, his fingers finally settling at the nubbin that was the center of her pleasure—and frustration. “You have to make a decision,” he said into her ear. “It’s me or him.”
“No.” She drew in a quivery breath and pulsed her bottom against his hand. She couldn’t help herself. He brought out the heathen in her.
His erection pressed relentlessly against her flesh. “You’re the only one who’s ever made me crazy. Ever.” One hand on her breast, he entered her from behind.
Sweet mercy. The fullness of him inside her! She rolled her head in a circle and moaned with the sheer wonder of it.
“Choose,” he said, stroking her slowly.
“Later.” She was panting, for goodness’ sake. Couldn’t a girl enjoy the moment?
“Now. You can see all the good turning away from me does for you. I’m still the one. And I always will be.”
In. Out. A sweet pinch of her nipple. A slow roll of his hips. He was torturing her.
“Make me come,” she said. “Please.”
“You’re a stubborn woman.”
She didn’t deny it.
He quickened the pace of his ministrations. “Say you choose me.”
“I—”
She was coming. She was on the brink.
“Say it.”
“I choose—” He was pumping now, the eroticism so great she was getting lost in it, the sweet, heady prelude to utter bliss.
But then he withdrew, pushed himself off the floor. She felt him behind her, but she was cold. Oh, so cold.
“Make a decision, True.”
“Come back,” she whimpered.
“No more chances. I walked away from you once, and I can do it again. Can you?”
God, she felt empty. Cold. A shell without him. She bowed her head. “No,” she whispered to the floor. She’d lost her little game.
But it felt so good to admit it.
Finally.
She gave a little sob. “I choose you. I do.”
She felt him over her again, his solid, comforting presence. “It’s all right, baby,” he murmured into her ear. Then he kissed her shoulder and entered her once more, showing no mercy until she climaxed with a roar.
At least, it felt like a roar. She was a tigress on a high rock, proclaiming that this was her territory—this man, this time, this place, this love.
“Oh, God. Just like the Katy Perry song.” She gave a little laugh, and wilted against his hand on her belly.
He chuckled and lowered her down so that her cheek pressed against the floor and her arms splayed out. Only then did he take his own pleasure, supporting her lower body weight and caressing her flank as he entered her again from behind. She came again with him, a wild woman dangling from his arms.
A woman who’d chosen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Harrison lay down beside her and they kissed, a long, luxurious kiss, a let’s-not-let-this-end kind. She laid her head on the crook of his arm. He was a sated version of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. She was his. His. He didn’t know how they’d work things out. But she wasn’t going to marry Dubose.
No way. No how.
“Let’s go outside,” she said eventually, “to really catch this moon in all its glory.”
“I like how you said that.” He sprang to his feet without making any noise, fully alert.
“Don’t tell me you take ninja classes, too,” she said with a chuckle.
“Nope. I teach them. Superhero classes, too.” He helped her into her father’s shirt, then pulled on his own T-shirt and boxers. “What about the dogs?”
“They’ll try to get up and ask us what’s going on, but if we give them a quick head rub, they’ll go right back to sleep. We’ll go out the back door.”
“Gage sleeps hard,” he said.
“So does Weezie.”
Their plan went off without a hitch, and they stepped into a friendly darkness. The earth was sleeping off a heady day. They held hands and walked into the tomato field.
“Everything looks so different at night.” He enjoyed the feel of the cold dirt between his toes and the green vegetation smell of the ripened crop. His heart rate was still a little elevated from the hot sex and True’s nearness.
She crouched between the rows, looking like a stealthy cat in the jungle. And then she sat with her palms back and lifted her gaze to the moon.
God, now she was a she-wolf.
He’d waited so long for this. Too long.
He sat at her feet and leaned on her shins. “We’re good together,” he said simply.
“I know.” She stroked his long, silky hair.
She let her legs fall open, and he landed on her belly. Then she lay on her back in the dirt and they both laughed.
“This dirt feels amazing.” She wrapped her legs around his chest. “I’m not letting you go.”
Dang. He was so overwhelmed, he wanted to have sex again. It came the closest to expressing how he felt about her. He caressed her shins with his hands, and then he twisted around and cradled her in his arms.
They started kissing. Before long, they were naked between the tomato plants, his shirt and boxers laid in chivalrous fashion beneath her bottom. He had a hard-on that was begging for release.
“I didn’t bring anything,” he said.
“Check Daddy’s shirt pocket.” She grinned. “I slipped a condom in there. Why do you think I wanted us to come outside?”
“Ah,” he said. “She a hot tamale and a vixen, all rolled into one luscious, vanilla-scented package.”
But he took his time, kissing the whole length of her. She threw her arms out to the side—a silent invitation for him to storm her castle. He lifted one of her legs over his neck. “Gorgeous,” he said, and brushed his lips across her inner thigh.
Her fingers uselessly clutched the dirt.
And then his tongue went to work. She bucked and moaned, and his fingers joined the action. All the while, he murmured against her skin how beautiful she was, how much he wanted to be inside her. When his mouth took full possession of her, she arched her back like a bow about to let fly an arrow. And when she came, she cried out loud, her legs wrapped tight around his neck.
He was smothered in sex. And he loved it.
When she was done, she lay spread-eagled in the dirt.
“I’ve never felt better,” she told him with a smile.
“I’m glad.” He pulled her up and kissed her lazily, rubbing his hands in little circles on her back.
But very quickly, she insisted on pleasuring him.
“I won’t fight you.” He leaned back on his palms, his knees propped wide apart.
“You have to lose the boxers,” she told him.
“Make me.” He pulled his legs in and sat cross-legged.
“You do yoga, too, don’t you?”
“All the time.”
It was easy enough to gain his cooperation. All she did was rub him between the thighs with her palm while she told him what she was going to do to him. And then she stood tall and stretched, her back to him, her face raised to the moon, her sweet bobbed hair now a mess curling on her shoulders.
“Aphrodite,” he said.
She giggled, and when she turned around, the boxers were off.
Now it w
as her turn to take her time. She teased. She licked. She stroked. He moaned. He told her that she was the most beautiful fairy creature he’d ever seen. When she took the length of him in her mouth, she took him down like a sacked quarterback.
Almost.
He had another play in him. Oh, yes, he did.
He chased her across a few rows of tomatoes, and when he tackled her, they lay and laughed a long minute. Then sheltered by the plants, cradled in the dirt, and shellacked by a silver moon, she let him all the way in, rocking him between her legs while the world sang its night song, a lullaby of love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Half an hour later, they were back in the house heading upstairs to return to their separate bedrooms.
“Can you show me some of your art?” He thought it was a simple question. But judging from True’s face, he’d asked her to scale Mount Everest.
“Sure.” She didn’t look too happy about sharing. But he didn’t give her any slack.
In the attic, he followed her to the wardrobe where she stacked her canvases. Man, there were a lot of them … some big, some tiny.
All freakin’ awesome.
When he was done looking through them, he shook his head. “These shouldn’t be in a closet.”
She bowed her head.
“Why haven’t you shown anyone?”
She shrugged.
He took her by the shoulders. “They’re beautiful. You’re good. You should have an art show. Why haven’t you taken them to a gallery?”
She started to laugh but held it in. “I don’t know.”
He sighed. “You and I both know who you really are. Let the rest of the world know, too. You can still be your buttoned-up, prissy Maybank self when it suits you. But there’s so much more to you than that. You’re not honoring any dusty old ancestors by hiding.”
“I’ll have to think about it.” Her mama was written all over her face.
“I’m out there stripped naked for the world to see in my songs, aren’t I? There are some nuisances that come with that kind of exposure, but the payoff outweighs any pain-in-the-ass factor. I get to share my songs. I even get paid for it. It’s a great feeling.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“Don’t give me lip service.“
She didn’t deny it.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s try a little Weezie-style interviewing. If you weren’t afraid, what would be your next step as an artist?”
“I’m not an artist—”
“Yes, you damned well are.”
“Okay, I’d—”
“You’d what?”
And she told him about the big copier machine she wanted, the kind that could copy and magnify fabric patterns, leaf veins, product labels, postcards. It would give her so many new options. “I love working with 3D textiles, but I’m really excited about trying something new with a two-dimensional surface. A flat canvas is so much easier to transport and sell, too.”
“See?” He chuckled. “You lit up like a Christmas tree. You even talked about selling! You can’t not do this. You’re an artist. Follow through.”
She pushed her hair off her face with both hands. “I-I’ll work on it.”
He pulled her close. “I hope you do, baby. You won’t be totally happy until you do.”
She was stiff in his arms, but he held her anyway. “I work with an art broker. She helps me find great pieces for my houses. Anytime you want me to show her your work, she’s a call away.”
She didn’t say anything, but her fingers uncurled on his chest. “Thanks,” she whispered.
But something was wrong. It took him five more minutes to get it out of her. Five minutes in which she cried softly, nonstop.
“Come on, True,” he urged her gently. “What’s going on? How can we do what we just did together and you leave me out? Again?”
“Okay,” she finally said, wiping her nose with her arm. “I’m ready to tell you. I have to tell you.”
Shit. Her tone didn’t sound good. The room was still dark, but nighttime was sliding away. “What is it?” He braced himself. It obviously was going to be bad news, whatever it was.
“I told you I chose you.” She pushed some hair off his brow. “And I meant it.” She paused for a long time, her eyes bleak. “But let’s get real. We can’t happen as a couple.”
A sick feeling fell over him. It was happening—again. “Come on, now. We can work this out somehow.”
“Listen to me.” She took his upper arms and squeezed. “You want me to be an artist. You tell me I need to be. Otherwise, I won’t be happy. Harrison, don’t you see? You were talking about yourself, too! I don’t want to be the woman who keeps you from your art. I refuse to be country music’s Yoko Ono, you hear?”
“Yoko didn’t deserve that rap. And I’m not a Beatle.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m in your way.”
“Stop saying that. Let’s think.” He was desperate to find the right answer. It was there, on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t speak. The old numbness was on him, the same one that accompanied him to Nashville after the last time she rejected him ten years earlier. And when Dad had died. Mom, too.
He knew no other way. You just kept going. You didn’t stop.
“You know we don’t need to think about this,” she insisted. “We both know. Some things are meant not to be.” Her eyes filled with tears. “When we put on our thinking caps, we’re pretty smart people, and I’m calling it, for the last time. I’m going to marry Dubose, and you’re getting back to your career.”
“No.” But it was like watching a wreck happen on TV. He couldn’t get to it—to her. His wires were cut. “No,” he said again.
It was the most he could come up with. But he heard the feebleness of it. The pain. The fear. The giving in.
Her face was grim. “I’ll see you in the morning, and please—let’s say good-bye on good terms this time.”
And she slipped away.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Being a mature man sucked, Harrison thought the next morning at breakfast. Gage was making everyone fried-egg-and-bacon sandwiches. He even had fake bacon for Weezie. What a guy.
Harrison sat in the chair next to True, which was tough. But he soaked up every second of being near her while he ate his sandwich, a puny distraction but pretty damned good. He felt like shit, but for Weezie and Gage’s sake, he was determined to go out on a good note. Let True see what she was missing.
Damn that girl. But damn him for not knowing what to do about her. Again.
He could pull it off. He’d done a concert once with a 103-degree fever and vomiting between songs. Leaving behind a heartbreaker with a penchant for wearing pearls at breakfast would be a piece of cake.
Gage joined them at the table with his own sandwich.
“I’ve got some news,” Harrison said.
True’s eyes widened. And he understood why. If he had news, why hadn’t he told her during their middle-of-the-night tryst-turned-relationship? Or afterward, during their almost instantaneous breakup?
“News?” Weezie sat up super straight. “Is it like … a secret, maybe?”
“Sorry, Barbara Walters,” he said. “Nothing like that.”
Her expression dropped just a tad. “It’s still news.”
“With any luck, good news,” Gage said warily.
“I hope you’ll think so.” Harrison was actually sweating bullets. “This is gonna sound a little strange. But if anyone can pull it off, Vince can. I actually got the idea from an artist friend of mine. She reuses materials—all kinds of things. Fabric, bottle caps, string, shells, paper … and she makes them into something new and beautiful.”
True’s face went beet red.
He took a leisurely sip of coffee, enjoying her acute discomfort.
“Wait.” Weezie looked around the table. “That’s my sister.”
True took a big bite from her egg-and-bacon sandwich.
“Well, maybe it is,”
Harrison said, and put his cup down. “I’m not telling. It’s not my place. But have you ever noticed that taking big bites out of a sandwich is a good speech-avoidance strategy? I’ll have to use that tip in my next interview.”
True swallowed. “Your brother’s a troublemaker, Gage.”
“I know,” he said, a glimmer of a smile playing about his lips.
“Is anyone gonna listen?” Harrison asked. But he looked only at Gage and Weezie.
“I am,” said Weezie. She actually had her cell phone out, her fingers poised on the keys.
“No,” Harrison told her. “This doesn’t go on Facebook.”
“I was gonna send it to AP’s Twitterfeed,” she said.
“Uh-uh,” he told her. “This is family talk. It doesn’t go anywhere else.”
Only slightly abashed, Weezie put her phone away. He knew True must have heard him say family, but she didn’t even flinch. Too bad. He wanted her to feel guilty. Because they had become a little family in a way.
Ed butted his knee, looking for bacon.
And that included the dogs.
He scratched Ed’s muzzle. “Vince has done some consulting work on Hollywood movie sets. He’s got an expert—a close friend of his who needs a vacation—flying out here today to help us. The plan is to take the trailer”—he looked at Gage—“and put it inside the new house. It’ll be Gage’s retreat. It can even be a cool guest area. Vince is calling it ‘the trailer pad.’”
“I love it!” Weezie clapped.
True’s mouth dropped open.
Gage pushed his chair back and stood up. “That’s ludicrous. It’ll cost a fortune, too.” The color on his cheeks was high.
“Nothing I can’t afford,” Harrison assured him calmly. “And whatever I spend on this house, I’m matching that amount and donating it to the Biscuit Creek United Way. So get off that high horse of yours and sit back down.”
Slowly, Gage sat. True reached over and squeezed his hand real quick then put her hands in her lap and looked at Harrison, her gaze excited but afraid, too.
He appreciated her seeing to his brother. And he was glad she was giving him a chance to explain his dastardly genius idea without pooh-poohing the whole thing right away. But he’d never tell her so. They were done. Over. Kaput. And he couldn’t wait to get the hell outta Dodge.
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