Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2)

by Melanie Shawn

  I nodded, unable to speak. Harmony had no idea what she had just done by asking her brother to give me a ride, and I had no one to blame but myself for that.

  My feelings for Trace Briggs were the best-kept secret in Wishing Well, and even if I spontaneously combusted from the heat he inspired in me, I planned on keeping it that way.

  Chapter 2

  Trace

  “If you find yourself in a hole, the best thing to do is stop diggin’.”

  ~ Dolly Briggs

  “So, what were you and my sister talkin’ about? You two were in a serious girl huddle.” I glanced over at Cara beside me to gauge her reaction.

  “Nothing. Just…you know…” she stammered. A faint blush appeared on her smooth cheeks, and it told me she was trying to hide something.

  “Nope, I don’t know.”

  “Oh, right… Um, nothing.”

  “Nothing, huh?” I asked as a grin pulled on my cheeks.

  “Yep. Nothing,” she maintained as she stared straight ahead.

  As much as I wanted to continue down this path, just to see where it would lead, I decided to drop it. I knew the gist of what they’d been talking about. When I’d left out the side door of the church to avoid several well-meaning mothers determined to set me up with their daughters, I’d heard Cara say that she didn’t want anything serious. And my sister had asked her what her type was.

  Instead of doing the honorable thing by rounding the corner and coming into view, I’d waited and listened. Eavesdropped. I hadn’t really been able to make much out until Cara had said that she would find her own ride. Then I casually walked directly in front of my sister’s car, knowing she would see if I would take Cara home. If Harmony hadn’t spoken up, no way Cara would have. She hated asking anyone for anything.

  In fact, if I hadn’t been there, I would bet a month of paychecks that she would have walked the five miles back home. The girl beside me was as stubborn as a mule. Which was one of my favorite things about her because it had kept her alive. She’d fought her battle with cancer and won.

  A few weeks ago, Colton had called to say that the doctors had declared Cara cancer-free, and until I take my last breath, I will never forget the relief, the joy, and the clarity I’d felt in that moment.

  For years, I’d been sitting on the sidelines of Cara’s life. I knew I was more than just her best friend’s brother—I was her friend. And I’d been content with that. Well, maybe not content, but I’d accepted it. Because Cara had always had enough on her plate without dealing with any kind of romantic gestures from me.

  So, even though I’d been in love with Cara McCord since a hot summer day when I was nine and she was eight and I’d seen her running through the south field on my parents’ farm, the sun shining in her long, blonde hair, her blue eyes wide and shimmering like diamonds, I’d kept it to myself.

  First, it was because I hadn’t really known what it was I was feeling. Just that I always wanted to be around her and she smelled like flowers. And, whenever she smiled, I got a funny feeling in my chest.

  As we got older, those feelings intensified. As a kid, they’d scared me. No other girl’d ever made me feel the way Cara did. During middle school, I’d tried to ignore them. But, one night in the basement, a game of Spin the Bottle changed all of that.

  I still remember the way my heart beat so hard that I was sure that all of our friends in the circle could hear it when the neck of the bottle pointed at Cara after I’d spun it. I still remember my palms tingling and growing damp as I stood and walked over to her. I still remember the way her eyes looked when they lifted to mine through her dark, thick lashes. I still remember how soft and perfect her lips felt against mine when I lowered my mouth to hers. The innocence and intensity in that one kiss had haunted me for over ten years.

  That night, I tossed and turned in my bed until it was time to get up and feed the chickens at four thirty a.m. By the time I got dressed for school, I’d decided to ask her to the Valentine’s Day dance that Saturday. I looked for her after first and second period. Finally, I ran into Harmony, who said that Destiny had told her that Cara was sick at home.

  The weeks that followed, Cara was in and out of school. She kept having doctor visits and was sick with flu-like symptoms. Then, on a rainy afternoon, I was eating a Hot Pocket for an afterschool snack and Harmony came into the kitchen, sobbing because she’d just found out her best friend had been diagnosed with a rare form of juvenile leukemia. She fell into my mom’s arms, and I sat at the table, tears running down my face, stunned, heartbroken, more scared than I’d ever felt in my life. To this day, I haven’t been able to eat a Hot Pocket again.

  After that, I watched the girl I loved fight for her life. Literally. I’d dated here and there, mainly just as a distraction, but none of them ever meant anything to me. I never felt a tenth of what I felt for Cara for any of them.

  Now, Cara was cancer-free and ready to date. And I’d waited long enough. There was just one problem: To celebrate Cara’s good news, Harmony, Destiny, and Cara had tied one on. I’d ended up taking her home from the Tipsy Cow and she’d had a lot to say about her lack of a love life. She’d said that she didn’t want a relationship, that she just wanted to have fun. She’d also tried, more than once, to kiss me. Somehow, I’d used super-human strength and hadn’t succumbed to her drunken advances. After getting her into bed, I’d camped out in a nearby chair to make sure she was okay. The next morning, she’d basically thrown me out and, unless I was being paranoid, had been avoiding me ever since.

  We hadn’t talked about that night. The things she’d told me or the fact that she’d thrown herself at me. Now, she was stuck in my truck, and I figured it was as good a time as any.

  “Service was good,” I said, making small talk as we pulled onto the main drag of Wishing Well.

  “Mmm, hmm.” She nodded, her lips pursing as she stared out the passenger side window.

  Okay, so maybe no small talk. You could cut the tension radiating off Cara towards me with a knife. Maybe she was embarrassed by her behavior. Maybe she regretted telling me such personal things. Maybe she regretted trying to kiss me.

  Only one way to find out.

  I tried to decide what the best way into this conversation was going to be. We turned down the fire lane behind Circle M; I only had a few more minutes.

  “So, want to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me since the night I took you home from the bar?” I figured, might as well cut to the chase.

  Out of my peripheral vision, I saw her spin around so fast that her hair fanned out as she turned towards me.

  “I haven’t been… I’m not—”

  “You have and you are, darlin’,” I said. “The question is: Why?”

  Crossing her arms, she shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, let’s see. We can start by you throwing me out of your house when you woke up to me making breakfast.”

  “I did not throw you out!” Her voice rose as she defended her actions. Her hands flew up as she started talking animatedly. “I was just surprised to see you, and I told you that you didn’t need to take care of me. I said that you could go…you know…do whatever it is that you do.”

  After she’d asked, with a horrified expression on her face, if anything had happened between us. I couldn’t lie, the look on her face had stung, especially since, the night before, she’d had a very different take on the possibility of something happening between us.

  I kept that information to myself for the time being. “And when I said that I wanted to stay to enjoy the breakfast I’d made for us, you told me to wrap it up and go.”

  “Yeah, so you could go do whatever you had to do. You’d already done enough. I was just…” As she leaned back against the seat, her arms flopped down to her sides. “I was embarrassed that you’d had to waste an entire night taking care of me because I let Harmony talk me into a third pitcher of margaritas at Don Julio’s.”

 
“I think it might have been the shots at the Tipsy Cow that really did you in,” I pointed out.

  “I took shots at the Tipsy Cow?” she asked, sounding genuinely stunned.

  “Yeah. Several.”

  “I don’t even remember being there. The last thing I remember was dinner at Don Julio’s and then waking up and you being in my kitchen. Were you at the Cow? How many shots did I take?”

  “I’m not sure. Bryson called JJ after he cut y’all off to see if he could come get Harmony. Hudson and I were with him, so we offered to go help. JJ took Destiny home. Hud took care of Harmony, and I took you home.”

  “Okay, obviously I get why JJ took care of Destiny…” Cara shook her head from side to side, her brow furrowed. “But why didn’t you take Harmony home and Hudson take me home? Or you could have taken both of us to Harmony’s house.”

  Right. Yeah, of course the JJ-and-Destiny thing was easy to figure out. My brother had just retired from playing major league ball, moved home to Wishing Well, and set his sights on Destiny. She’d always had a thing for JJ, and come to find out the feeling was mutual. My big bro had just fought his feelings for a long time because of their six-year age difference and his career. But, once he’d turned his attention to winning her over, it hadn’t taken long. Within a month, they were married and she was expecting their first child.

  Now, I just had to figure out how to explain the other two pairings. The truth was Hud, JJ and I hadn’t discussed who was going to deal with whom. When we’d shown up at the bar, I’d headed straight towards Cara, JJ had done the same with Destiny, and Hudson had stalked across the bar and was pulling Harmony off the stool before I even had Cara, who was cooperating a lot more than my sister, up off her seat.

  Shrugging, I told the truth. “It just kind of worked out that way. When we got there and I saw that Hudson was dealing with Harmony, I figured, since he had the law on his side, he could handle her.”

  Hudson Reed had just been promoted to deputy sheriff of Clover County. His father, Jasper Reed, was the sheriff, but Hud hadn’t gotten the job out of any kind of nepotism. He’d worked his ass off.

  “Oh, so you just got the short end of the stick.” Cara laughed, the same self-deprecating laugh she always did, like when she’d had to shave her head at age fourteen and she made jokes about it. “Sorry about that.”

  Shit. No way in hell did I want her to think that I “had got the short end of the stick.” But our relationship wasn’t exactly on even ground at the moment, and I didn’t want to spook her. I’d waited damn near fifteen years to get a shot with Cara McCord. The last thing I wanted to do was strike out before I even got up to bat.

  Deciding that I would pretend like she hadn’t been treating me like I’d had the plague the last month, I winked at her. “There’s no one I’d rather pick up from a bar than you, carrot cake.”

  “Oh my gosh! I completely forgot you used to call me that!” Her entire face lit up. Smiling from ear to ear, she tilted her head as she asked, “Why did that start, again?”

  It started because I wanted your attention.

  That fact might be a little bit too honest.

  “My mom made that carrot cake, and at eight, you put down more of it than my teenage brothers.”

  Her head fell back as laughter bubbled out of her. I was happy that I didn’t really have to pay too much attention to where I was driving on this service road because I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her. The sheer joy on her face was captivating. Intoxicating. Mesmerizing.

  That’s how it was with Cara. One second, I would think that I had my feelings for her under control. Then in the next, she would tilt her head, look away, sigh, smile, laugh, or blush and I would be stunned speechless. In an instant, she could pull me under her spell. Which was exactly what had happened that day out in the field. One moment, I’d been watching her running with Destiny and Harmony, and the next, all I could see was her angelically illuminated face.

  Sometimes, when I looked at her, I honestly believed that God had created the sun just so he could shine it on Cara.

  “Oh my gosh!” She wiped the moisture that had formed beneath her eyes from her laughter. “Did I ever tell you how sick I got from eating all that?”

  “No. You got sick?”

  “Oh yeah!” She nodded vigorously. “I didn’t think I would ever stop throwing up. It was even worse than my first round of chemo.”

  At the mention of her treatment, the energy in the truck shifted. It was like a dark cloud had rolled in and was blocking Cara’s light.

  I wished I knew what to say. I wished I knew how to put that smile back on her beautiful face. I wished I had the right words to lighten the heavy atmosphere.

  “I still can’t believe that it’s really behind me,” Cara whispered softly—more to herself than to me—as she stared off as if she were a million miles away.

  I was so focused on her that I didn’t steer away from the pothole just before her house. The truck jostled Cara as my left wheel dipped into the uneven surface and she slid towards me. I grabbed her leg to steady her as I pushed the brake.

  When the truck rolled to a stop, I looked at where my hand was resting on Cara’s bare thigh and awareness shot through me like a bolt of electricity.

  Not only had my hand landed much higher than I’d thought, but the feeling of her silky skin beneath my work-roughened fingers combined with the sight of my tan hand against her creamy fair skin was so fucking erotic. Tingles burst in my palm as my jeans grew snug.

  For an all-too-brief moment in time, neither of us moved or spoke. We sat perfectly still, our labored breathing and my pounding heart the only sounds in the small, confined space. Without checking with my head (at least the one on my shoulders), I flexed my hold and watched as Cara’s skin dipped beneath my fingertips.

  I barely registered the tremor that raced through Cara’s body before she shot out of the truck like a clown out of a circus cannon.

  “Thanks for the ride!” she called out just before the door shut behind her.

  As she disappeared into her house, I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened between us.

  Never before had I felt so connected to another person. It was like our bodies were finely tuned to a frequency only the two of us were on. I wasn’t sure exactly how to describe it, but I did know one thing for certain: I was going to enjoy the hell out of exploring it. And, whether Cara knew it or not, she was too.

  Chapter 3

  Cara

  “Finding a good man is like tryin’ to bag flies.”

  ~ Dolly Briggs

  “Why do they call it morning sickness when it lasts all day?” Destiny sat on my couch, cuddled up with saltine crackers and 7UP.

  “It’s a conspiracy to make pregnancy seem more appealing. If they called it what it really was, no one would get knocked up,” Harmony said from the kitchen, where she was pulling out the chocolate chip and walnut cookies Destiny was making. She was in the process of opening her bakery, Sugar Rush, and trying out a new recipe. And Harmony and I were all too eager to be taste-testers.

  “Hopefully it will only last for a few more weeks. Isn’t the first trimester usually the worst?” I asked, knowing from experience that, when you had a light at the end of the tunnel, it helped keep spirits up.

  Harmony used a spatula to place the cookies on cooling sheets. “That’s actually another myth perpetuated to make growing a human being inside of you sound more appealing. Sometimes, morning sickness lasts up until the day you give birth.”

  “Wow. Are you doing Rachel Dratch’s Debbie Downer character from SNL? Because, if you are, you’re nailing it!” Destiny gave Harmony two thumbs up.

  Harmony left her post at the kitchen counter as she licked a bit of melted chocolate off her thumb and shrugged unapologetically. “Hey, I just like to keep it real. Or one hunnid, as the kids say.”

  Amused, Destiny asked, “Is that what the ‘kids’ are saying?

  “Yep. And you better
bone up on your lingo.” Harmony motioned to Destiny’s belly as she flopped into the overstuffed chair in the corner of my small front room.

  Destiny rubbed her hand clockwise around her still-flat stomach. “I think I’ll leave the ‘lingo’ to you, Auntie Harmony.”

  “Auntie Harmony,” Harmony repeated, a smile spreading on her face as she turned to me. “It has a nice ring to it. Can you believe we’re going to be aunties?”

  “No.” I shook my head, a slight tug of melancholy pulling on my heart. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.”

  The reality was Harmony was going to be an aunt. JJ was her brother.

  Growing up, Harmony, Destiny, and I used to pretend we were sisters. Harmony had eight brothers, I had one, and Destiny’s mom had passed away at childbirth, which left her an only child. So none of us had sisters. Now, Harmony and Destiny actually were sisters.

  “Okay, I think I’m starting to feel human again.” Destiny sat up straighter, set the glass tumbler of iced 7UP on the small end table beside her, and grabbed the pad of paper and pen she’d abandoned when she’d run to the bathroom about half an hour ago. “So, the list.”

  “I really don’t think a list is necessary.” As much as I appreciated my friend’s eagerness to help me out, I didn’t see the point in writing down, in detail, everything I was looking for in a potential cherry-popper.

  “Maybe it’s not necessary, but it is fun.” Destiny waggled her eyebrows. “And it’s taking my mind off the fact that I feel like I have the flu that will never end, so we’re doing it.”

  All three of us were pretty stubborn. When one of us set our mind to something, it was best to buckle up and go along for the ride because resistance was futile.

  “Fine.” I sank farther into the soft cushions of my sofa. “I want someone that doesn’t know me.”

  Both of my friends stared at me blankly.

  “I mean, someone that doesn’t know my past.”