A Knight In Cowboy Boots

by Quint, Suzie

  “You talking to me?”

  “You bet your ass I’m talking to you! You ran my plates.”

  “So?”

  “So Derek’s here.” Maddie hated how her voice shook. “You led him here.”

  “How would me running your plates lead him here?”

  “He’s been harassing my aunt about where her car is since I left. His father’s the damned state Attorney General. He probably knew the second those plates were run.”

  “That was weeks ago. If he knew about the plates, how come he ain’t showed up before this?”

  “Maybe he figured it wasn’t worth checking on. That I was just driving through and got pulled over. But it focused him on Texas. Somehow he narrowed it down to Galveston. Even to where I worked. But you started it. You and your damned nosiness. Why the hell did you do that?”

  “Why?” Zach’s face flushed as he stood to face her. “That takes a lot of nerve to ask. You wasn’t anything you was pretending to be. Your job app said you was from Oregon, but there you were, driving a car with Wyoming plates. Hell, you were a mystery from the first night I met you. Most women don’t go around shooting men they’ve just been kissing!”

  Mad as she was, Maddie didn’t miss the sharpened interest on Sol’s and Jeb’s faces.

  “That’s not the point. You had no right checking up on me!”

  “Educational as all this is,” Jeb interjected calmly, “it don’t matter what he done or why he done it. Can’t be changed now anyhow. What matters is that Derek didn’t find you in Galveston, so he probably done decided Jefferson was worth a look-see. If that’s so, he’s round somewheres and’ll be showing up here tomorrow night.”

  Jeb pointed at the chair next to the one Zach had vacated. “Sit down, Maddie. You, too, Zachariah.”

  Reluctantly, they sat, side-by-side, like two kids called into the principal’s office for fighting on the playground.

  “There’s more damned sparks flying between y’all than you get from downed power lines. Now it ain’t nobody’s business but your own what’s got your backs up, but whether you wanna be or not, y’all are back on for the dance. If we’re gonna pull this off, you can’t be snarling at each other tomorrow night. You gotta look like two people who can’t hardly keep their hands to their selves. Sounds like maybe that ain’t been too much of a problem in the past, but if you can’t do it tomorrow night, this ain’t gonna work.”

  Jeb let silence fall. His eyes shifted from one to the other, waiting for a response. When he didn’t get it, he said, “If you can’t do it, you need to tell me now.”

  Beside her, Zach took a deep breath. He looked sideways at Maddie. “I’ll do whatever I need to.”

  “Good. Maddie?”

  She returned Zach’s look. There was a challenge in his eyes. Could she meet him halfway? She tore her gaze away to look at his father.

  “I don’t know. And not because I’m mad at Zach. Even if I wasn’t pretending, knowing Derek will be there watching us … I don’t know if I can act like I’m not terrified.”

  “You gotta trust Zach. He’ll be the one beside you the whole night.” When Maddie didn’t answer, Jeb stood up. “Maybe y’all need to sit here until you work out how you’re gonna manage it. Get comfortable with each other again. We’ll leave you to it.”

  With that, Jeb went upstairs and Sol went home to his trailer.

  They sat there in uncomfortable silence, Zach staring at his hands where they were cupped on the table. Finally, Maddie said, “If we’re going to pull this off, you’ve got to stop looking so sad around me.”

  “I don’t know if I can. I ain’t much of an actor.”

  “It’s no different from when you pretended as a kid.”

  “It’s a lot different. When I was a kid, no matter how impossible, I still thought I could somehow be whatever I was pretending …”

  Even through the residue of her anger, Maddie couldn’t contain her curiosity. “What did you pretend to be?”

  Zach shrugged, his mind clearly not on his answer. “A rodeo star. An astronaut. An Indian tracker—” His brow creased in thought. Maddie waited silently for him to work out whatever it was.

  He met her eyes. “Do you trust me?”

  Without hesitation, Maddie nodded.

  Zach took her hand as he pushed his chair back. “C’mon.” They took the Lincoln the half mile to Sol’s trailer.

  The night air was chilly against her bare legs as they stood on the steps outside Sol’s, waiting for him to answer Zach’s knock. Only a faint light shone from the window. A gap in the curtains revealed that it emanated from the hood over the stove. Maddie wanted to cross her arms over her chest to hide the way her erect nipples poked at her nightshirt, but Zach wouldn’t release her hand.

  Sol opened the door bare-chested and barefoot, his only clothing a worn pair of jeans. Zach tossed him the keys to the Lincoln as he stepped past his brother. “Get lost, would ya?”

  Maddie trailed Zach inside, grateful to be out of the night air. Zach hadn’t said why they were there, but she knew what being alone with him would lead to. Her heart beat a little faster.

  “What? You need my trailer to talk out your … oh.” Sol sat in a tired-looking easy chair to pull on the socks draped over the chair’s arm. “How long should I be gone?”

  Zach looked sideways at Maddie. “We got a lotta things to work out. Guess you might as well get you a motel room.”

  “How come you don’t do that yourselves instead of us playing musical chairs?”

  “You crazy?” Zach shook his head emphatically. “Uh-uh. Ain’t nobody gonna be telling Mamma I checked into a motel to have relations before the wedding.”

  “But it’s okay if I check into one.” Sol reached for his boots.

  Zach shrugged. “As long as you ain’t got anyone with you, what’s to tell?”

  Sol looked at Maddie. “You good with this?”

  They both waited for her answer. She took a deep breath. This was her chance to say no. To say what a bad idea this was. But her skin remembered how his hands felt when he touched her, and she didn’t want to think she might never feel that again. She answered Sol on the exhale. “I’m fine with it.”

  “Okay, then. There’s clean sheets in the hall closet. Be sure to change the bed when you’re done.”

  “We’ll be changing it before, too,” Zach said.

  Sol pulled on his shirt but didn’t button it. “Smart move.” He paused in the middle of closing the door behind him. “There’s condoms in the nightstand. Don’t use them all.”

  Maddie and Zach stood apart as the Lincoln’s lights swept the room as Sol backed out.

  “Does Sol give up his place for you often?” Maddie asked, not really caring but needing to break the silence.

  “Never needed to ask him before. I’m a grown man. I generally date women who don’t live with their parents anymore.”

  “You live with your parents,” Maddie pointed out.

  “So I do,” Zach acknowledged. “Seeings as you don’t have your own place here, I guess it’s lucky for me the folks gave this to Sol when he married Georgia.” He pulled fresh sheets out of the hall closet and beckoned Maddie into the bedroom.

  His face blushed bright red as he picked up several piles of Sol’s clothes and threw them into the closet. “Sol’s a slob.” He stripped the old sheets from the bed and threw them in the closet on top of Sol’s clothes.

  “Ever lived in a trailer?” Zach asked as they made the bed together.

  “No.”

  “Me neither. But I’ve slept on the couch here. It’s kinda cool when it rains, listening to it hit the roof.”

  When the sheets were on, Zach came around to Maddie’s side of the bed. He tilted her face back between his hands and gazed into her eyes. The tender passion in his face stirred a matching emotion in her. Slowly, he lowered his lips to hers.

  “You’re trembling,” he whispered between kisses.

  “I’m nervous.”
>
  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The longer they kissed, the more demanding the kisses became.

  “Did we change those sheets for a reason?” Maddie finally asked.

  “Is that your way of saying please?” he murmured against her lips.

  “If that’s what you’re waiting for …”

  He lifted her nightshirt over her head then pressed her against him and kissed her again.

  Her bare skin registered the rough textures of his work shirt and jeans as masculine and erotic. Maddie’s nervousness disappeared in a wave of desire. She started unbuttoning his shirt. He thumbed her panties over her hips.

  The bed springs squeaked in protest as he laid her down under him.

  “Take your clothes off, Zach.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Zach!”

  “Nope. I don’t wanna rush this.”

  “For not wanting to rush, you got my clothes off fast enough.”

  Zach snorted as he nuzzled her neck. “A night shirt and panties. Not much of a challenge.”

  He stopped the conversation by sliding down until he could take one of her nipples in his mouth. He thumbed the other one, forcing it into a hard peak. An electrical charge sizzled through her. Maddie’s back arched, pushing her nipple deeper into his warm mouth. It had been only a week since they’d been together but it seemed like months since he’d touched her.

  His mouth surrendered her nipple as he worked his way down. It tickled when he stopped to explore her navel. Maddie curled around him, giggling and pushing him away. He grinned and proceeded south.

  Maddie gasped when his mouth settled between her legs. He licked and sucked and pushed his tongue inside her until she could barely breathe. Enjoyable as it was, her body knew there was more and better to be had from him. Her hips lifted, wanting more, wanting deeper. Desire drove her to the edge of tears.

  “Give me … please … Zach …”

  He chuckled against her flesh. The vibration drove hot spikes of desire through her. She bucked under him.

  “Okay. Just coz you said please so pretty,” Zach teased.

  He got off the bed, shucked his clothes in record time, and got a condom from Sol’s nightstand.

  *

  Zach stopped for a moment to look down at Maddie. She was so beautiful, with her hair spread across the pillow in disarray and her eyes glazed with desire.

  Instinct had driven him to bring her there. Instinct had said he needed this to get past the wall they’d erected between them. To give him something to hang on to so he could pretend that, when she looked at him, it was really him she saw and not Vince’s ghost.

  He wanted her so badly at this moment he ached from it. But it wasn’t going to be enough. It might breach their emotional distance, but it wouldn’t resolve his basic insecurities. He felt his jaw set. He had to make her see him. Somehow he would make her acknowledge him in a moment when she couldn’t lie, even subconsciously.

  Zach crawled forward from the foot of the bed until he was on his hands and knees over her. He dropped his head and kissed her hard. Still kissing her, he lowered his body onto hers, found the entrance between her thighs, and eased inside her.

  She was ahead of him in the race; he’d intentionally worked her up, knowing he would catch up quickly. Instead, he held back, driving her need before his. Keeping his own needs under control was like trying to keep a nitro-fueled racecar from exceeding the speed limit in a school zone.

  It didn’t work. His body craved the release it would find in her dark, warm depths. His motor revved even as his mind screamed at him to stop. He scrounged for something that would cool his need. Half-formed thoughts and images skittered through his mind, too quick for him to grab hold. The ones that wanted to linger only reinforced his body’s desires.

  Then the image of Vince’s face flashed through his mind, followed by how she must have looked at Vince when he made love to her. Zach latched onto it, letting his jealousy cool his desire. It still took a few strokes for his body to get the message. Even then, he couldn’t quite stop, but his tempo slowed noticeably.

  Maddie clearly didn’t share his motivation. She grabbed his buttocks, urging him to finish the job. Zach couldn’t blame her; she was maybe only a few strokes from the checkered flag. When she dug her nails into his cheeks, Zach automatically drove into her like a piston. The shock of her nails in his skin gave him what he’d been hunting for. Deep inside her, he stilled himself.

  As best he could, he ignored the thrust of her hips against his. “Maddie. Open your eyes.” His breath came ragged. “C’mon, Maddie. Look at me.”

  She continued to writhe under him. Each breath lifted her chest, her nipples stabbing at his chest. He pushed his hips down, weighting her to the bed.

  “Open your eyes, Maddie. Look at me.”

  Maddie’s lids opened slowly. In her dilated pupils, he saw his reflection. It took his breath away. Christ, he could gaze into her eyes all night and die happy. Zach had to close his own eyes to block the image.

  He moved gently inside her as he opened his eyes again. Maddie’s eyes had closed again. “No, Maddie. Stay with me. Open your eyes.”

  Zach continued to move gently inside her as he coaxed her eyes back open. When he knew she saw him, he said, “If you close your eyes again, I’m gonna stop.”

  “Why?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Because I want you to see me. I want you to know it’s me who’s pleasuring you.”

  The desire in her eyes didn’t fade, but a degree of awareness showed as well.

  Wary that he could easily lose his hard won control, Zach let his rhythm increase. Holding her gaze with his, he brushed his lips against hers. “Say my name.”

  He wasn’t sure she had the breath to spare, but he demanded again, refusing to coach her. Not wanting her to parrot him. “Say my name, Maddie.”

  It came on soft breath. “Zach.”

  His tempo increased a notch.

  “Again, Sweet Maddie. Say my name again. Say Zachariah.”

  Her response came on two breaths. “Zachariah.”

  He rewarded them both with another increase in tempo. “Again.”

  “Zachariah.”

  “Who’s inside you, honey? Who’s making love to you?”

  “Zach … Zachariah. You.”

  He let his body find the rhythm that would take them across the finish line. Maddie’s lashes fluttered.

  “No, Maddie. Keep your eyes open. You’re going to see me when you come.” He thrust hard into her, commanding her from between clenched teeth. “By God, you’re going to know it’s me.”

  He held her gaze even as the first tremors took her. In the end, they both closed their eyes, too overwhelmed by the forces that shook them. But it was all right. As he collapsed, spent, she breathed his name.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Sol stopped her at the foot of the stairs as Maddie started up to dress for the barn dance.

  “There’s something I think you need for tonight,” he said as he dug into his pocket. Maddie took a step back when he brought out a diamond ring.

  “Oh, Sol, I can’t …”

  “Sure you can. You don’t want folks thinking Zach’s too cheap to get you a ring.”

  “Is that the ring you gave Georgia? What if someone recognizes it?”

  “Georgia didn’t have a ring. Not a diamond anyway. You don’t need to worry that any one’ll recognize it. Ain’t no one here ever seen it before.” Sol picked up her hand. The ring was a simple gold band with a single diamond, and it slid easily onto her finger, as though it had been bought with her in mind.

  “Half a carat. Good clarity and color,” Sol said as though repeating a jeweler’s spiel.

  “If it’s not Georgia’s, where did it come from?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the temple. “We ain’t gonna let nothing happen to you or your baby boy.”

  Maddie di
dn’t know what to think. Coming from Sol, the gesture surprised her. Like Georgia, Ruth didn’t have a diamond either; she told Maddie that Jeb had been too poor when they’d gotten married to afford more than their simple wedding bands. She couldn’t imagine Sol had bought the ring just for this occasion, and even if someone had, how had they known her ring size?

  She wondered as she dressed if there’d been another girl in Sol’s past besides his ex-wife. Someone he’d bought the ring for but never given it to. Or maybe she hadn’t accepted it. Apparently, he was better at keeping secrets than his family imagined.

  Wondering about the ring kept her from second guessing herself about rejecting Jeb’s proposal that they park Jesse and Hannah at a neighbor’s for the evening. If Derek showed up, he had to believe his son was there. If he overheard someone mention that Jesse was elsewhere, their chance to trap him would disappear. He would swoop down on the neighbors to retrieve his son, and he’d already proven he’d kill to get him. Maddie couldn’t live with the idea of putting innocent lives in danger like that. It was enough to convince Jeb and Ruth even though it wasn’t the real reason Maddie had vetoed the idea.

  Letting Ruth take Jesse to Louisiana had felt like cutting off a limb. Selfish though it might be, she didn’t want Jesse someplace where she couldn’t check on him. If she was going to get through the night, Maddie needed to be able to reassure herself at a moment’s notice that he was okay. Besides, no one else would willingly die to keep Jesse from his father.

  After she dressed, Maddie let Jesse scoot around the floor while she watched the neighbors arriving for the barn dance from the bedroom window. She had hoped she might be able to spot Derek as he arrived, but watching from the second floor foreshortened her perspective so much she couldn’t even tell Zach from his brothers. Most of the men wore cowboy hats anyway; some even wore their Sunday Stetsons, all of which hid their faces.

  Finally, Zach appeared at the door. “You ready, honey?” His black jeans had that crisp, new look, just as his black cowboy hat had a rarely worn appearance. Between those two items, he didn’t need the shiny, silver-gray shirt or the blue bandana around his neck to look dressed up. She was surprised to see he still wore his everyday cowboy boots though he’d made an obvious attempt to polish them. She should have worn a skirt, Maddie thought, instead of jeans and an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse.