by Jess Bryant
“Lucky you didn’t get abducted.”
She tried to contain an eye roll. She’d been safe. She’d called in the information, or at least she’d started to. She sighed instead.
“I got his information and left it on the answering machine in case something happened to me.” A half-truth, not quite a lie though he didn’t seem appeased.
“The world ain’t what it used to be, you need to be more careful. It ain’t safe on the roads for a woman to be talking to men these days. You got a gun or something you’re carrying?”
In a strange way, it was his way of asking if she was protected. It warmed her heart. Still, she didn’t need a gun to deal with Zach West, a gallon of water to pour over her head to cool off maybe but not a gun.
“He lives in Fate. I recognized his name. It was one of the West boys, Zachary.”
“West.” He harrumphed but didn’t continue, “You hungry?”
“Not really.”
“You should eat something. You look skinny as a bean pole.” He was already grabbing a plate and putting some extra meat on it so she simply sat in an empty seat next to him and took it.
“You’re one to talk. You look like you forgot what food is.” She gave him a pointed look so he’d know she hadn’t missed his change in appearance.
“I’m getting old Bluebell.” He shrugged as if that was all the answer she’d need and continued to stack too much food on her plate.
The tightness in her chest nearly strangled her as she watched him. Something was wrong and he hadn’t told her, wasn’t going to tell her what it was. Fear was a lead ball in her stomach.
What if it wasn’t just getting older? What if he was sick? Dying? What would she do if she lost him too?
“West’s a good guy. It was nice of him to stop and help ya but you could have called. One of us would have been happy to come get ya.”
Blue gave Billy Pickens a smile of gratitude not just for offering his assistance but for taking her mind off her worries for a second. She couldn’t think of losing her father. She wouldn’t.
But what if she did? What about the Oaks? She didn’t know a thing about running a ranch this size, or any size for that matter. Being a girl, her father had never taught her more than the basics.
And she’d been gone ten years.
A dark, traitorous part of her soul screamed at her to get back in the Audi and head for the border. Get out before she got trapped here with the man who’d never wanted her by his side to start with. She wished she’d never driven back into town, never seen her father looking so frail, never known so she wouldn’t have to face the truth. This might be home but she hadn’t felt like she belonged here in a long time.
“I went to school with his brother Devin. His other brother Riley was your age right?” Rusty Pickens added.
“Yeah, I remember him but not the other two really.” She shrugged.
She wasn’t sure how that was even possible considering how good looking the one on the side of the road had turned out to be. She vaguely remembered Riley West but as hard as she tried she had zero memories of the eldest West son from when she was a girl. Still, the way her body had reacted to those soft green eyes looking down at her told her all she needed to know. She needed to steer clear until Sunday and then get the heck back out of town.
“No real reason to I suppose, they quit extracurricular’s to help out at the Triple Star when their dad passed away. Zach took over and helped raise his brothers even sent Riley to college over at…”
“This is the table boys, not gossip hour at the knitting club.” Lyle Carter cut them off with a scowl, “And I don’t want to hear about any West’s while I’m trying to eat.”
“Yes sir.” The men said in unison though they gave Blue a knowing grin that she managed to half-heartedly return.
Maybe the family feud wasn’t as forgotten as she’d liked to believe. Then again, her father being in a grumpy mood wasn’t breaking news. Sometimes just the wind blowing could make him scowl.
“Good to see you Blue.”
“Be seeing you around. Excuse us.”
“Bye guys.” She waved as they excused themselves, tossed the remains of their dinner aside and disappeared out the back door. Several more of the hands did the same.
“What’re ya up to while you’re here?”
“I have the rehearsal dinner in a little while then Molly’s wedding is tomorrow.” She took one look at his drawn face and tried to muster some excitement, “I’ll have free time tomorrow morning. We should do something, maybe go shoot some skeet.”
Trying to think of the last time she’d done something fun with her father she came up empty. Lyle Carter didn’t know how to have fun. He knew how to work from the moment the sun rose to the moment it set. That’s just the way he was. Still, she had memories of him teaching her to shoot so she figured he must have enjoyed it enough to show her.
“Can’t. We got a stud coming in from Fort Worth to breed with Lucy. It’ll be hard work so I got to be there.”
She didn’t even bother to get annoyed. It wasn’t a surprise. The ranch always came first. It didn’t matter that Bobby or any one of the other dozens of employees at Montgomery Oaks could oversee the breeding. It didn’t matter that his only daughter had driven in from Colorado for the first time in years and wanted to spend time with him. Some things never changed and she just had to suck it up and keep moving.
“Would you want to go to the wedding with me?”
“I hate those damn things sweet girl.” He shook his head, “I’d have to leave the ranch early to get cleaned up and I don’t even have a good suit. You go and send Molly my best wishes.”
“Okay.” She sipped the glass of sweet tea in front of her and tried not to pout.
There was no point getting emotional. It wouldn’t change anything. When she was younger she’d have screamed and yelled and cried. She’d have told him that he wasn’t getting any younger and maybe just maybe it might be worth it to miss this one breeding to spend some time with his daughter. Now, she sipped her ice tea and tried to think of something else, anything else.
“We’ll have breakfast together Sunday before you head back. I’ll ask Arlene to make your favorite, scrambled eggs and bacon.”
Her favorite had always been French toast but she bit her tongue and nodded. At least he’d offered to have a meal with her. That was something.
She felt like all her life she’d been clinging to these crumbs as proof her father loved her. The little things meant so much because he’d never bothered with the big ones. She’d always taken what she could get no matter how small.
“There are a few things I want to talk about with you before you head out.”
She was so focused on his offer of breakfast she nearly missed what came next. She stopped and stared across the table at her father. His dark eyes looked tired for possibly the first time in her life.
“Talk? About what?” She swallowed past the knot in her throat.
Her father didn’t talk to anyone least of all to her. To say he was a man of few words would have been generous. She could probably count on one hand the times he’d told her to sit down because he needed to talk to her.
She’d gotten the birds and the bee’s speech from Arlene. Bobby had taught her how to drive a car. When she got a speeding ticket or detention he’d always shaken his head, told her she knew better and not to let it happen again. The only serious talks she could remember in her life were the “Suck it up cowgirl, don’t cry” ones she got each and every time she’d been emotional enough to let loose a round of tears in front of him.
“Just some ranch stuff, nothing important.”
Obviously it was important. He’d never asked to talk business with her. She had no idea how the ranch operated. He’d always handled everything himself and he’d never involved her. Sitting down to talk about it, bringing it up wasn’t just important, it was monumental.
“We could talk now.” She offered.
“No.”
She hadn’t realized she was holding her breathe until he spoke and she felt like she’d combusted like a popped balloon, “But…”
“No. It’ll hold until Sunday.” He shook his head and changed the subject in typical avoidance behavior, “Where’s this dinner at tonight?”
“Sullivan’s.”
“Nice restaurant. They serve a good T-bone.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve been there since high school.”
“I heard Molly met her man over at the university.”
“Yeah. At Tech.”
“Good for her. Be sure to give her my congratulations.”
“I will.”
“She was always a nice girl.”
“Yeah, she was.”
Small talk. They were back to the grind of small talk. He brought up something important then shut her out just like he always did. There was no point worrying about it. If he said it would hold until Sunday odds were it would hold. If there was one thing Lyle Carter was good at it was running his ranch. She’d just have to stop worrying, get through dinner, the wedding and then she’d figure it out on Sunday.
Chapter Four
Blue sipped her beer and avoided looking directly at anyone. Her head hurt, not a migraine but a dull, pounding behind her eyes that had started up the second she set foot in Sullivan’s for the rehearsal dinner and was only getting worse now that they’d gone next door to Sully’s for the joint bachelor/bachelorette party she hadn’t known anything about. She wished she could just slip out the back door and go home but Molly had insisted on drinks so she was playing along for now.
Now being the operative word because she wasn’t sure how much more she could take. Dinner had been bad enough. Just as she’d feared nearly everyone else in the bridal party was happily part of a couple and they’d all brought their significant others with them and a few had even brought their children.
The icing on the cake though was the surprise that the groomsman that would be escorting her down the aisle the next day was none other than Woody Hopkins, her eleventh grade boyfriend. He’d changed little since they parted ways except that his formerly muscular football player frame was softer and rounder and his hairline had begun to recede as though it was scared of his forehead. He asked that they not harbor hard feelings for the time she keyed his car in high school and she’d agreed even though he’d totally deserved it for lying that he’d gone all the way with her in the backseat.
Still, it hadn’t been all bad. Molly’s parents had beamed and gushed over her fiancé. For a second she’d figured it probably had something to do with the fact the guy was from a very old, very wealthy oil family from down near Odessa but she’d dismissed that as her own jealousy rearing its ugly head. Molly seemed absolutely blissful and Blue was old and alone and evading questions about why she didn’t have a man of her own.
Yes, those questions had come time and again. It wasn’t so bad from Molly or even Molly’s mother. They genuinely seemed to care if she ever found a husband and if she was happy. When the questions started coming from Molly’s cousins who’d all married before the ripe old age of 22 she’d begun to drink.
She’d never wanted to get married that young. She couldn’t even imagine marrying her high school sweetheart the way so many of her classmates had. Just the idea of spending her life with a guy like Woody Hopkins was enough to turn her stomach. She’d never gotten serious with anyone until she was away at college that first year.
Duck Tucker had been her very first love. His real name was Doug but he always went by Duck. She couldn’t quite remember why now, not that it mattered.
Duck had been handsome, the type of true-blue boy her beauty queen mother would have adored. He was all Texan with his sandy blonde hair, blue eyes and pearly whites. He played football and he’d scored the winning touchdown against Oklahoma which had sealed the deal that he’d win not just the game but her heart as well. She gave him her virginity to go along with it.
Looking back on the year she spent with him, it was easy to see he was one of the truly good guys. He was probably one of the last of a dying breed of gentlemen who could be tough but also sweet. And she’d broken his heart and never looked back.
Oh she’d loved him for a time of course, but she’d been eighteen and full of wanderlust. She hadn’t wanted forever. She’d wanted to be free and she’d left him and then followed it up by leaving her first college to travel the country for a few months. She’d wanted more than Duck had offered, more than Texas had offered; she just wasn’t sure what more there was now that she’d spent ten years out there.
Duck on the other hand was probably living the life he’d always known he wanted. He was probably married to one of those perky cheerleaders with two and a half kids, an SUV and going to work in the mayor’s office of some po-dunk town not dissimilar from Fate. He was probably perfectly comfortable and content.
Blue sipped her beer and ignored Molly waving at her to join the other girls on the dance floor. No way was she doing a line dance to a song that referred to women’s asses as “bodonkadonks.” She ordered another beer from the passing waitress, knowing she’d have to up the ante if she was going to hang in there.
After Duck she’d had a string of boyfriends, mostly forgettable faces with more forgettable names. She remembered Glenn the guitarist and Dale the drummer. Then there’d been Brad the biker and Paul the future politician. The one thing they’d all had in common was that they were emotionally unavailable and she’d tried unsuccessfully to make them love her.
Her psych professor at one of her colleges told her that she had daddy issues. She’d rolled her eyes and dropped the class. It wasn’t like she needed a PHD to come up with that logic.
Early on each and every one of them had broken her heart in one way or another. Oh she’d been crazy about them all at one point in the relationship or another so that inevitably when she realized they were never going to return her devotion and it ended, she’d felt like everything inside her shattered and would never fit back together. It had taken her a long time to see that loving blindly got your nowhere and no one.
She didn’t hand her heart out so easily anymore. It had taken enough blows over the years. It was easier to play the game and get out while the going was still good. Knowing the difference in men who stood a chance of hurting her and men she was actually interested in but wouldn’t was a line she tread delicately. Most of the time she stayed on the right side of it. Most of the time was the responsible way to go.
The waitress returned with her new beer and she finished off the old one before taking a sip and letting the chill burn her throat. Yeah, that helped to loosen her headache just a little. She watched Molly trade off the girls to rub against her soon to be husband and grimaced. Staying on the responsible side of the line meant she might someday find a nice guy to marry.
That’s what she was supposed to want right?
So why then did all of the nice, responsible men have to suck so much in the sack? Her last few relationships, if they could be called that, had all been duds. Not from the get-go, at first they seemed perfect. They were handsome and successful. They had manners and treated her well. But the minute the relationship progressed to the bedroom she quickly found out what was lacking.
She tried to stick it out. Sometimes a little instruction could help. Technique could be learned after all. Breeding was innate.
But a girl could only take so much and eventually she got tired of their misdirection and her lack of desire and kicked them to the curb. She could buy her own nice dinners and go to the movies with her friends. She needed a man to kiss her senseless and give her orgasms.
Simple really or so it should have been.
A good-looking man slid into the chair beside
her and broke into her depressing thoughts. Thick, shaggy dark brown hair fell over his forehead. Below that a pair of clear blue eyes peered at her and if she wasn’t mistaken they were dancing with mischief. A smooth smile rose up his face revealing a matching set of dimples on his baby-smooth face. She was certain she knew that pretty face from somewhere and tilted her head to meet his eyes.
“Well hello there Bluebell.” He greeted her with a dark drawl that she’d have bet money usually got the girls out of their panties in a matter of minutes.
“Hello.”
“You don’t remember me do you?” He chuckled and the sound was so familiar that her gut instantly clenched. She knew that sound but not because she remembered it coming from him. No, she’d heard it earlier in the day, on the side of the road. Recognition mingled with some really old memories and settled over the gut instinct.
“Riley. Riley West.” She guessed.
“You do remember me.” His grin verged on smug for a split-second, “I told my brother you would. We were in the same class in school. I asked you to the homecoming dance sophomore year.”
She tried not to let her eyes dart around the room in search of said brother to see if it was the one that made her stomach twist and instead smiled politely, “And I said no.”
“Gave me my first broken heart.”
“Oh I’m sure it healed.” She laughed as he clutched his chest.
“You’re just as pretty as you were in high school, prettier maybe.”
She tried not to roll her eyes, “Thanks.”
He was cute, really cute even. She’d have been a liar to say she wouldn’t have looked at him twice. Those West brothers obviously had some very good genetic material hidden beneath those ridiculously alluring faces. But the one in front of her didn’t send her body into gratuitous heat waves the way the man that’d changed her tire for her despite the fact she’d accused him of being a serial killer did.
“I heard you were in town for Molly’s wedding.”
“Yeah, I drove in earlier today for the rehearsal dinner. We just finished up and Molly wanted to get some drinks so here I am.”