Just in case.
Chapter 19
Trace
“A watched pot never boils.”
~ Dolly Briggs
I looked at the clock. Again. It now read five fifty-two. A full three minutes had passed since the last time I’d checked.
Over the past couple of weeks, when Cara had been out on dates with other guys, I’d thought the time had dragged on, and on, and on. But that had been like light speed compared to today. This had officially been the longest day in my life. I’d heard people say that a day had felt like a week or a year, but I’d always thought they were just being dramatic. Now, I knew the truth: They weren’t.
I’d been so tempted to text, call, or show up at Cara’s door. But I hadn’t. Last night, I’d left the ball squarely in her court. If something was going to happen between us, she had to be the one to make this move.
Cara needed to be in control. Whether it was because she’d had so little control over her body when she’d been sick or it was just her personality, I wasn’t sure, since she’d gotten diagnosed at such a young age, while her personality was still being formed. But, if I tried to persuade, coax, or even encourage her, she would most likely shut down.
Space. That was what I needed to give her. She needed to be the one to walk through that door on her own. Once that happened, then I would know what she wanted, and who was going to be in control would most definitely be up for debate. Because, in the bedroom, I had a tendency to lean towards the more domineering side.
My phone dinged, alerting me that I had an incoming text and my entire body tensed up. Fear trickled through my chest, and I hesitated before checking my phone. Part of my brain was sure Cara was letting me know that she wasn’t going to show up. But, if that was her choice, then that was her choice.
When I saw that the message was from Lizzy, I blew out a breath of relief.
Lizzy: Whatcha doing tonight? Wanna hang?
I debated briefly what I should text her back. If I said that I was tired, she would offer to come over to “Netflix and Chill.” If I said that I had to work, she would offer to bring me dinner. If I said that I wasn’t feeling well, she’d show up on my doorstep with chicken soup.
Those weren’t guesses; this was based on her track record. The girl did not take subtle well.
Instead of trying to come up with some elaborate excuse, I just typed back that I had plans tonight. After setting my phone back down on my desk, I leaned back in my chair, staring up at the ceiling as I ran my hands through my hair.
I’d never been a particularly patient or passive man. If I wanted something, I went after it. I was proactive. I made plans and took action.
Which was one of the reasons I knew, knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I felt for Cara was real. It wasn’t puppy love or infatuation. For as long as I’d known I’d had feelings for her, I hadn’t been able to do anything about it. Loving her had been one giant test in patience, and now that the finish line—or starting line, depending on how you looked at it—was in view, I had just about run out.
The knock that sounded on my door set off fireworks of excitement exploding inside my chest. She’d shown up. A full-fledged grin was pasted on my face as my gaze traveled to the doorway.
When I saw who was there, though, it fell.
“What plans do you have tonight?” Travis asked as he walked in and sat in the chair across from my desk.
“What?” I was so distracted by my disappointment I wasn’t following what in the hell my brother was talking about.
He couldn’t have known about me and Cara. In fact, he wasn’t even supposed to be at the ranch. That was the only reason I’d told her to meet me in my office. Well, that and I’d had a lot of fantasies of things I wanted to do to her in there.
“Weren’t you supposed to be out at Mom and Dad’s today?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was on my way to the bar when Lizzy texted Jaynie and said that you had plans. She wanted us all to hang out.”
“Sorry, bro. I am off wingman duty tonight.”
Travis didn’t give a shit about what I was actually doing. He just wanted to see Jaynie, and if she was busy babysitting Lizzy, he would have his work cut out for him.
“Come on, T.” Travis leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “If you’re not there, Lizzy is going to spend the whole night talking about you. Asking me where you are. If you’re seeing someone else. If you like her. If you ever ask about her. It’ll be fucking brutal.”
“Look, it’s not my fault that the girls, the girls, they love me.” I winked at him.
“Okay, take it easy, Heavy D.” He held his hand up. “One girl likes you, and all I need you to do is keep her occupied so she’s not obsessing over you.”
I shook my head, glancing at the time. It was now five after six.
She’s not coming.
I tried to hide my reaction even as the tide of disappointment pulled me under. “Can’t.”
Even if Cara really wasn’t coming, there was no way I wanted to hang with Lizzy.
I was done with placeholders and runners-up. If Cara really didn’t want anything to do with me romantically, I was taking a hiatus from the opposite sex. I was so tired of pretending to be interested in other girls. And, it wasn’t fair to them. They were all wasting their time with me. I wasn’t available. I hadn’t been since I was nine years old.
Not that I was going to give up on Cara so easily. This had been Plan A, because I’d thought it was the one she would have been most receptive to, considering that it was her idea. Well, the losing-her-virginity thing was her idea. The losing-it-to-me part had been my suggestion.
My plan had been to show her how good I could make her feel. To show her exactly how much she meant to me, on her terms. That way, she could get used to the idea of us. There was no question in my mind that, once I touched her, kissed her, made love to her, she would be mine. That she would realize we belonged together.
But, if that avenue was off the table, then I’d just have to do things the old-fashioned way. Plan B would consist of asking her out and telling her how I felt until I wore her down or she got a restraining order.
I was kidding about the restraining order.
Sort of.
“What could possibly be so important that you’d leave your favorite brother hanging?” Travis asked just as Cara appeared in the doorway.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were busy,” she said as she began backing up.
I stood up and started around my desk. “We’re not. Don’t go.”
She looked like a scared animal as her gaze darted between my brother and me, and if I handled this the wrong way, nothing would happen between us. The bright-pink stain on her cheeks and the fear in her ocean-blue eyes broadcasted in high definition that she was embarrassed.
Time to take the attention off her.
“Travis was just begging me to go out with him, because that’s the only way he can get a date.” I nodded towards my brother, who answered my comment with a one-fingered salute. “It’s sad really. He was just leaving.”
“No, no, that’s okay!” She held her hands up. “I just wanted to come and see…see if you got Colton’s e-mail about the um…the…delivery.”
Wow. She really was a bad liar.
Thankfully, I had a little more practice than she did. “Yeah. I already spoke to the distributor, and they’re going to move us up on the schedule.”
We’d just had a new crop of seed go bad, which Travis was aware of, and I had spoken to our distributor and gotten a new delivery date that morning.
“Great!” Cara beamed. “Well, thanks. Talk to you… I mean, see you… I mean, bye!”
As she left, I couldn’t help but smile. She was just too damn cute. I had to stop myself from following her. But first, I had to get rid of Travis,—which I planned on doing right now.
“Damn. Cara looks…different.” He stared at the doorway she’d just vacated.
I wasn’t normally the je
alous or the territorial type, but the way my brother had just said that Cara looked “different” made me want to growl, “Mine.”
Resisting the urge to do that, I asked, “What do you mean?” instead.
He shook his head as he turned back to me. “I don’t know. I just… She looks older, or…I don’t know, something. She looks good.”
Yeah. No shit, Sherlock.
Cara had always been the prettiest girl in Clover County. How every male within sixty miles hadn’t been banging her door down had always baffled me. Maybe she was right. Maybe people really did see cancer when they looked at her.
“Don’t you need to go meet Jaynie?” I reminded him.
“Right.” Travis pushed off his knees and stood up. “You sure you don’t want to come hang?”
Yes! “Honestly, bro, I’m not feeling Lizzy.” That was the god’s-honest truth. Travis might as well know now that, from here on out, he was on his own with Jaynie, who was practically glued to Lizzy’s side.
“Ah, so your plans are just that you don’t plan to see her.”
I nodded.
“Well, shit. I better call Coop.” He was pulling his phone out before he’d even made it out of the office.
That was one of the great parts of having so many brothers: never a shortage of wingmen.
The second his truck started up, I texted Cara.
Me: Where are you?
My heart was pounding like a collegiate drum line as I stared at my screen, waiting for her response. When the bubbles that indicated that she was responding popped up, I almost jumped for joy.
Her response was short and sweet.
Cara: Home.
And so was mine.
Me: Stay there.
Chapter 20
Cara
“You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.”
~ Dolly Briggs
Shaking my hands out in front of me, I tried to calm down as I rushed down the dirt path back to my house.
“I just wanted to come and see if you got Colton’s e-mail about the um…the…delivery,” I mumbled to myself in frustrated irritation. “Talk to you… I mean, see you… I mean, bye…”
That could not have gone worse. I’d made such a big fool out of myself.
“What is wrong with me?” I asked no one as I finally made it to my front door.
Great. Now, I am officially talking to myself.
The door hadn’t even shut before I’d begun pacing in the small area in front of my couch. This whole thing was a colossal mistake.
I was sure, after my sad performance, Travis had to know that something was going on. He would probably tell Jaynie, who would tell Lizzy, who would tell everyone. Harmony was going to find out.
What was I thinking?
All day, I’d been going back and forth about whether or not I could actually go through with this. I’d even made a pro and con list. The con list had gotten so long that I’d stopped counting after it had hit one hundred. Even up until twenty minutes ago, I’d been firmly of the nope, not-going-to-happen mindset.
But then I’d sat at my kitchen table as the digital clock above my stove switched to six o’clock and something inside me had snapped like an overstretched rubber band. I hadn’t cared about any of the over one hundred items in the con category. They didn’t matter. I’d jumped up, thrown a dress on, brushed my hair out, and rushed to the barn like my life had depended on it. And, honestly, it’d felt like it had.
When Harmony, Destiny, and I were growing up, Grandma Dixie used to tell us girls, “Just remember, where boys are concerned, your heart and your hormones will always outvote your head.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Because, logically, I knew that this was a bad idea. Not only was I way too emotionally invested to be able to walk away from this without being completely devastated, but the fact that I’d just acted like a crazy person when I’d walked into Trace’s office and seen Travis was proof positive that there was no way that someone wouldn’t find out about it if anything happened.
Wishing Well was too small of a town to think that we could fly this under the gossip radar. Not to mention Harmony was my best friend, and then there was the small but very crucial fact that Trace worked on the ranch. With his brother. Where I lived. With my brother.
So, yeah. Anyone with an IQ above seventy would have been able to puzzle out that anything going on between me and Trace was a train wreck waiting to happen.
And that was exactly what I planned on explaining to Trace the next time I saw him. Which, if I had anything to say about it, would be, oh, in a month or so, after my embarrassment had worn off.
As I rolled my shoulders back, a surge of determination rose in me. I made an executive decision. The first thing I needed to do was put this entire losing-my-virginity thing out of my mind and behind me. It had led to nothing but uncomfortable dates and humiliation. To commemorate this milestone, I would burn my lucky (yeah, right!) underwear.
Yep. Right after I took a hot shower and tried to calm down, these puppies were toast. Burnt toast.
I was headed down the hall to do just that when my phone buzzed. My first instinct was to ignore it and carry out my hot shower-panty-burning plan. But, when my pulse sped up at the thought that it could be Trace, I aborted my mission. I had never been so happy for my psychic heartbeat, because the message was from Trace.
Trace: Where are you?
I stared at the words on my screen and knew that this was a fork in the road of my life. One path led to me ignoring the text, taking a shower, and burning my underwear. The other direction led to…I didn’t know where. But my entire body shivered with anticipation at the endless possibilities.
I knew what I should do. I should stick to the right side of the road and travel down the safe lane.
But, as it turned out, Grandma Dixie really knew what she was talking about. Without any permission from my brain, my fingers started typing. I was sprinting to the left side of the road, the one that led to (fingers crossed) unknown erotic lands.
Me: Home.
Heart and hormones for the win.
Almost instantly, another message appeared.
Trace: Stay there.
A thrill ran from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and back up again, landing right in the center of my core.
I’d never really thought of Trace as bossy. Funny? Yes. Sexy? Abso-freakin-lutely. Smart? No question. Capable? Without a doubt. Hot? Ummmm, hell to the yes. A leader? Sure. But this take-charge, domineering side of him was brand spanking new to me. And I had to admit that I really, really liked it.
When we’d been at the park and he’d told me—not asked, told me—that I was staying to watch the movie, my entire body had lit up like a Christmas tree with arousal twinkle lights sparkling over the surface. Then, last night, when he’d instructed me to show up at his office at six and wear my lucky panties, his mandate has caused a very definite awakening of bliss in my lucky panties. Now, when he’d ordered me to “stay there,” those two words had caused the bliss to grow into a sensual pulsing beat.
Before I had a chance to recover from his tantalizing command, my front door opened.
I sucked in a sharp breath as Trace stalked inside my cozy living room, the door shutting behind him with a slam.
He couldn’t actually have gotten better looking in the few minutes since I’d seen him, but that really did seem to be the case. His lips looked fuller. His chest seemed broader beneath the white cotton T-shirt molded against it. His five-o’clock shadow seemed to have grown out to the perfect combination of sexy and rough. It somehow took me longer to reach his eyes, like he’d grown an inch or two and was now taller.
All of that combined with the fact that we were alone in my living room was enough to throw my already-shaky equilibrium off-balance. But, the moment our gazes met, the look in his honeyed eyes caused my world to spin out into space. I forgot how to breathe.
“Hi,” Trace’s gravelly voice rumbled
and that pulsing in my core grew heavier.
“Hi,” I managed to whisper as I awkwardly raised my hand.
We stared at each other for several beats before he placed his hands in his pockets. His new stance highlighted the lines of his sculpted forearms and his biceps, causing my mouth to water. I knew I was in deep trouble when I was so entranced by just staring at his arms that it startled me when he started speaking.
“I’m sorry about Travis. I didn’t know he was going to—”
“No! I’m sorry! I can’t believe… I just… I didn’t know what to do. Do you think he thinks anything?” I gushed.
“Thinks anything?” Trace’s left eyebrow rose.
“Yeah. About you…and me.” I fanned my hand wildly back and forth between us. “You know, because I was acting so weird.”
Trace’s strong jaw tightened, and his nostrils flared.
Was he mad at me? Irritated? I mean, that would make sense. He was probably used to girls being a lot cooler about sex than I was. My chest constricted at the thought. In all the years I’d known Trace, he’d never been upset with me. In fact, I’d never seen him angry at a person. The only time his temper seemed to show up was when sports were involved. He was very competitive.
“He didn’t notice that you were acting strange.” His voice was flat.
“Oh.” I wanted to take his word for it, but he was acting so strange. If Travis did think something was up, I’d rather know about it now. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” The strain in his voice matched his expression.
“Did he say something?”
“I don’t want to talk about Travis.” He started stalking towards me, like a predator with his prey in his sight.
As much as I would have loved to be Trace’s prey, I knew we had to talk about…whatever this was.
I held my hand up, and he stopped. My head was still spinning with all the reasons nothing should happen between us. The only problem was that my body was caught up in tornado-force winds with all the reasons we should.
Chapter 21
Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2) Page 13