“Well, I sure miss seeing your beautiful face every day, but I’m so happy for you, sweetie pie,” Tami Lynn said, winking before heading back up to the front.
“I miss you too,” Destiny called after her, turning back to us and lowering her voice. “But I do not miss working here. I can’t wait to open Sugar Rush.”
“Do you have an opening date yet?” I asked eagerly, happy the conversation had moved on to anything other than my virginity or what I’d been doing for the last few weeks.
“No. Things aren’t moving quite as fast as I’d hoped. Even now that I’m feeling better, JJ freaks out if I do too much. He wants me resting all. The. Time.”
“Aww. I think that’s sweet.” I would’ve loved to have a man—Trace!—worried about me and wanting me to take it easy because I was carrying his child.
Harmony didn’t share my enthusiasm about her brother’s overprotectiveness. Sitting up straighter, she shifted towards Destiny and when I saw her finger point, I knew we were in trouble.
“You need to tell him to back off. Just because he put a ring on it does not mean he can tell you what to do. If you want to work at the store, go work at the store. He can deal with his life.”
Destiny tried to suppress an amused smile. “I appreciate you having my back, but I kind of like that he wants to take care of me. Also, I think maybe you’re coming from a very different place than me since, from the time you were born, you’ve had eight guys wanting to take care of you.”
“Maybe.” Harmony shrugged. “I think I’m also just cranky because things didn’t work out with Dr. Hottie—”
“Tim,” Destiny and I chorused in unison, both of us sounding undeservedly proud of ourselves for remembering Dr. Hottie’s name.
“Yes, Tim. We didn’t even get to the good stuff, and now, he’s heading off on some Doctors Without Borders mission and I’m still in the Sahara Desert of dry spells with no water in sight.”
Normally, when Harmony began complaining about her lack of a sex life, I pointed out that at least she had one. Today, I remained silent and hoped that no one would notice.
“Honestly, I think I’m going to miss Romeo more than him.”
“Who’s Romeo?” A deep, familiar voice sounded, causing every inch of my skin to tingle with awareness.
My breath caught before I looked up, and I hoped that my friends didn’t notice. Thankfully, Destiny had just received a text, and from the look on her face, it was from JJ. And Harmony was busy telling the source of my sudden inhale exactly what she thought of his question.
“Oh, I don’t know if you know him…his full name is None of your Business.”
My palms dampened as I lifted my gaze to the face of the man I’d been spending all of my free time with, and my heart hammered against my rib cage in fear. This was the first time Trace and I had been out in public. Around people. And there was a better than good chance I was announcing our new friends-with-benefits relationship in neon with my face.
“Who’s none of your business?” Travis walked up holding a to-go bag and slapped his brother on the shoulder.
Harmony rolled her eyes as Trace answered, “Romeo.”
“Who’s Romeo?” Travis posed his brother’s initial question to the table at large.
From the expression on Harmony’s face I knew that she was at her breaking point, and normally, I would step in with an assist, but I was too busy trying to “act natural” so no one would suspect that anything was going on. It didn’t help that I could feel Trace’s heated stare on me but I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. So, yeah. I wasn’t doing a great job.
Thankfully, Destiny set her phone down and swooped in like the Superwoman that she is to save the day. “Romeo is a character on one of our favorite shows.”
“Oh.” Travis immediately lost interest. “Come on. Food’s going to get cold.”
I was about to sigh a breath of relief when Trace put his hand on my shoulder and halted my exhale of reprieve.
“Hey. Speaking of favorite shows—what was that one show that you guys always used to watch?” He then proceeded to hum the theme song.
I wanted to kill him, crawl under the table and hide, or disappear into thin air. I wasn’t picky; any one of those would do.
“Dawson’s Creek!” Destiny and Harmony yelled at the same time before breaking out in song and singing that they didn’t want to wait for their lives to be over.
“That’s it.” Trace nodded as he began massaging my shoulder blades.
To everyone else, it looked like his hand was casually draped on my shoulder. They couldn’t see the erotic way he was moving his fingers.
“Come on,” Travis impatiently prompted again.
“Have a good lunch, ladies.” Trace squeezed one more time before following his brother.
Just when I thought I was out of the panic woods, Harmony pulled me right back into the fear forest when she grabbed Trace’s arm.
“Hey. Where have you been lately? I can’t remember the last time I saw you.”
Oh no! This was not good. What was he going to say? Everyone knew he was staying out at the ranch, so he couldn’t lie and say that he had been out of town or something. He and Travis worked together, so it wasn’t like he could claim that he’d been sick. My mind was flipping through a mental Rolodex of excuses and coming up with nothing.
Unlike me, Trace excelled at thinking on his feet. Lowering his voice, he earnestly explained to his sister, “I’ve been lyin’ low because Lizzy doesn’t really take a hint.”
Harmony’s eyes lit up as she jumped on the Clueless Lizzy express train. “Oh my gosh! She’s crazy! Last Saturday night, at the Movies in the Park, she sat by me and kept asking me where you were and if you were coming. I even caught her picking up my phone when I was talking to Destiny. She said she was just looking at the case, but I swear she was going to call you from it to see if you would answer.”
I was shocked at this girl’s behavior, but apparently, this was par for the course in the Wild World of Trace Briggs’s Dating Life, because he seemed totally unfazed as he shrugged.
“See? I told you,” he said.
“You seriously need to stop messing around with these psychos and settle down. I’m not saying you have to get married, but having a girlfriend wouldn’t kill you, and it would keep the crazies at bay,” Harmony pointed out.
Destiny raised her hand. “I second that notion. I know you’re not big on relationships, but I think you’d be surprised how great it is to have a nice girl to come home to instead of a constant rotating lineup.”
“Rotating lineup?” Harmony looked at Destiny. “You’ve definitely been spending too much time with my brother.”
“What about you, carrot cake?” Trace turned his full attention to me and under the heat of his stare, I was worried I was going to combust into flames right there in the back booth at the Spoon. “What’s your vote? Do you think I should I settle down with a nice girl? Give up my rotating lineup?”
Not only was Trace’s gaze directed at me, but everyone else’s was too. My heart felt like it was going to hammer its way right out of my chest.
“Um, I don’t think… I mean, you should do, you know… If you want to…. Just…do whatever you want.”
Wow. My conversation plane took a nose dive to a horrific crash and burn and just like any accident, I watched it helplessly as it went up in flames.
“Hey, Care Bear? You might want to work on your relationship advice before you answer any love-related questions online,” Harmony gently suggested.
“Good idea,” I said flatly.
Thankfully, I was saved from further humiliation when Travis—who was much less amused by this conversation than his brother since he didn’t have a dog in the hunt—pulled Trace away from the table and out of the diner. As he was on his way out, Trace gave me a wink, and even though I wanted to kill him, with just the blink of one eye, I had to stop myself from swooning on the spot.
That was
the power of Trace’s charm. I could want to cause him physical harm and want him to kiss me senseless at the same time.
As the girls launched into all the reasons Trace should settle down and started coming up with a list of eligible girls to set him up with, it was all I could do to not cut in and say that I loved him more than Paula Dean loved butter and he was mine. To tell them that I hadn’t been busy working or seeing Derek for the past few weeks. That I wasn’t a virgin anymore and that was because of Trace. That he had a nice girl he was settled down with and it was me!
Yep, I was in serious trouble.
Chapter 28
Trace
“Even a broke clock is right two times a day.”
~ Dolly Briggs
“Well, look who decided to grace us with his presence.” My oldest brother, Sawyer, smirked as I walked through the back screen door of my parents’ house for Sunday dinner.
It was true. I hadn’t been around much the past three weeks. Still, the way he’d pointed it out had kind of been a dick move.
“Oh, hey. I got something for you.” I reached in my pocket and pulled my hand out with my middle finger sticking straight in the air.
“Thanks, but I’ve got two of my own.” Sawyer lifted his hands and flipped me a double bird.
The door that separated the dining room from the kitchen swung open and my mom came through it. Sawyer and I both dropped our hands.
“Aww. It warms a mother’s heart to see her oldest and youngest boys getting’ along so well.” The sarcastic tone dripping from my mom’s voice made it clear that we had not been quick enough. “Sawyer, go drag your father in from the garage and tell him to take a shower. Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes and I don’t want to have to wash grease out of the good table cloth like last week.”
My dad had recently taken up restoring vintage cars. He said that it kept him busy and out of my mom’s hair.
“Yes, ma’am.” Sawyer stood and kissed my mom on the cheek.
The difference in their sizes was borderline comical. My brother towered over my mom, six foot five to her five foot two. All of my brothers were six foot or over, but Sawyer was the tallest and most imposing by far. And, out of all my brothers, I looked up to him the most. He was somewhat of a legend not just in Wishing Well, but in all of Clover County. No one messed with Sawyer Briggs.
On his way out of the kitchen, he grabbed a roll of freshly baked bread and ended up with a swat from my mom.
“Put that down. You’ll ruin your appetite.”
“I’m a growing boy, Mom.” Sawyer popped the roll in his mouth as he disappeared down the hall.
“You grow any bigger and you’re not going to fit through the doorway!” my mom shouted after him. Then, as she opened the fridge, she addressed me. “So, how are things going over at the ranch?”
A red flag warning lit up in my head. Dolly Briggs did not make small talk. If she took a turn down Question Avenue, it was because she had a predetermined destination programmed into her mom GPS.
I leaned back against the counter and crossed my arms. “They’re going good.”
“If you have time to lean, you have time to wash.” She tossed a bag of lettuce at me, which I caught easily.
“I think the saying is: if you have time to lean, you have time to clean,” I pointed out as I pulled a strainer out and went to work.
“I know what the saying is, son. Don’t sass me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I grinned as I straightened and turned on the faucet to rinse the greens.
I swear, if I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase come out of my mom’s mouth, I’d be a millionaire. If there had been a ten commandments of Briggs Family Rules, “thou shall not sass your mother” would have been number one. Which, as a kid, I’d found frustrating. But, as an adult, I realized that, in a house filled with nine kids, it had probably been the only way to avoid anarchy. Keep everyone in line.
“So, your brother tells me that you’re staying out there while Colton’s away filming some show.”
Yeah. This was definitely going somewhere.
I thought about answering with a one-word response—yes, yep, yeah. But that’s what a guilty person, a person with something to hide, did.
“Yeah,” I said. “Colton was worried about leaving Cara alone, so he asked me to stay and keep an eye on things.”
“Well, from what your sister and Destiny say, Colton has nothing to worry about because Cara is seeing someone. But I’m sure you know that.”
Yeah, I do. She’s seeing me.
This was a classic Dolly Briggs leading-the-witness tactic. All Briggs children lived their lives under the Miranda rights, knowing that everything they said could and would be used against them in the court of Mom. No matter what she said, I had to plead the Fifth.
Cara had been really upset after what she referred to as “the stunt” I’d pulled at the Spoon. I hadn’t gone over to the table with the intent to make her uncomfortable. But, when I had walked in and seen her in the back booth, I’d been drawn to her like a moth to a flame.
Then, when she’d ignored me, something inside me had snapped. I’d had to get a reaction from her. It was like I’d been a toddler throwing a fit to get attention. For some reason, I’d needed to see her blush and know I was the one who had made that happen.
Had it been the most mature moment of my life? No. We’d even had our first fight about it. Well, fight might be an exaggeration, especially since, as soon as I’d seen she was genuinely upset, I’d started apologizing and kissing up. And down. I’d kissed every inch of her body and whispered that I was sorry again and again. If that had been make-up sex, I couldn’t wait for the next time she was upset with me.
“Hello? Earth to Trace?” My mom’s voice snapped me out of my daze. She was waving her hand. “Are you trying to drown that poor lettuce?”
I looked at the wilted, green leaves. Then I shut off the water and shook the vegetable out. “Sorry. I just zoned out.”
“Hmmm.” That noncommittal noise coming from my mom did not bode well for me. “So, have you met him?”
You could say that. “Who?” I made my voice sound as uninterested as I could.
“Derek. Cara’s boyfriend.”
“Her boyfriend? Derek?” I tried not to let the anger that had spiked like heat in a sauna show on my face.
I knew Cara didn’t have a boyfriend, but just the fact that anyone was saying that she did, and they even had a name attached to this fictional “boyfriend,” had me so mad that I wanted to put my fist through the wall.
I didn’t miss the twinkle in my mom’s eyes, which meant she hadn’t missed my reaction, either. “Yeah. Your sister and Destiny said she’s been spending all of her time with him. And, since you’ve been staying there, I was wondering if you’ve met him.”
My dad had always teased my mom that there were tiny horns holding her halo up. We kids had always defended her because, in our eyes, she truly was an angel. But this conversation was leading me to believe that my old man might have been onto something, because she knew exactly what she was doing. And she was enjoying every minute of watching me squirm.
“Nope, I haven’t.” I grabbed a cutting board and started chopping the lettuce for the salad.
“So, how’s she doing?” My mom handed me carrots to shred.
I wasn’t sure why my mom had put so much emphasis on she, but I wasn’t about to ask her. “Who, Cara? She’s good.”
“Oh, so it is Cara?” Whenever my mom was in a verbal chess game, she usually revealed her check in the form of a question. But, I still wasn’t sure what play she’d thought that she’d forced me to make.
I’d been forgoing a lot of sleep for the hottest sex of my life over the past few weeks, and my normally sharp brain was not anywhere near the functioning power I would need to solve my mom’s riddle. So, instead of trying, I asked. “Who’s Cara?”
“She’s the she,” my mom explained as if she’d just moved ont
o checkmate.
Setting my knife down, I leaned across the island and pressed the back of my hand to her forehead. “Are you feeling okay? Because you aren’t making any sense.”
“Oh, stop it!” She swatted my hand away and pointed the fork she’d been mashing potatoes with at me. “I am making perfect sense. You just don’t want to come clean.”
I shook my head, still totally lost.
Dropping her fork, she put her hands on her hips, which meant I was about to get a piece of her mind. “She is the girl I asked about in this very house while I was working on my Noah’s Ark puzzle. She is the girl who’s had you smiling like a fool every time anyone’s seen you lately. She is the girl who had you ‘zoned’ out when you should have been minding the lettuce. She is the girl you’ve been waiting for. She is the one.”
Well, damn. My mom had always been perceptive, but this was almost creepy. Even if she was right on all counts, Cara had made it very clear that she did not want anyone to know about us.
“Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking—”
“Seriously? Son, I was born, but I was not born yesterday. Let’s just go over the facts. Out of the blue, Cara has some mysterious boyfriend no one has met at the exact same time that you happen to be staying out at the ranch and no one sees you? It doesn’t take a genius to put the pieces together.”
She tilted her head towards me and lowered her voice. “Listen, whatever’s going on or not going on between you two is none of my business. But I want you to know that I’m so happy that you removed your head from your rear and finally did something about this.”
I really didn’t want her to get her hopes up. Things between Cara and me were…complicated. I wanted to un-complicate them, but I wasn’t sure how. The last thing I needed was my mom gettin’ carried away.
“Mom, it’s not what you think.”
“Yes, it is.” My mom’s stern voice cracked, and tears welled in her eyes. “You’ve been in love with that girl since forever.”
Dolly Briggs was a lot of things, but a crier was not one of them.
I started to round the island to hug her. “Mom—”
Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2) Page 18