“An explanation for what?” I demanded, wrenching free.
Tristan looked up and down the street. Except for one guy mowing his lawn, we might have been alone on an abandoned movie set. Pleasantville, USA. “You know damned well what!”
I did know, regrettably. I’d been holding the memories at bay ever since I got on the first plane in Phoenix—even before that, in fact—but now the dam broke and it all flooded back, in Technicolor and Dolby sound.
I’d gone to the post office, that bright summer morning a decade ago, to pick up the mail. There was a letter from the University of Montana—I’d been accepted, on a partial scholarship.
My feet didn’t touch the ground all the way back to the Bronco.
Mom stood behind the bar, humming that Garth Brooks song about having friends in low places and polishing glasses. The place was empty, except for the two of us, since it was only about 9:30, and the place didn’t open until 10.
I waved the letter, almost incoherent with excitement. I was going to college!
Mom had looked up, smiling, when I banged through the door from the apartment, but as she caught on, the smile fell away. She went a little pale, under her perfect makeup, and as I handed her the letter, I noticed that her lower lip wobbled.
She read it. “You can’t go,” she said.
“But there’s a scholarship—and I can work—”
Best of all, I’d be near Tristan. He’d been accepted weeks ago, courted by the coach of the rodeo team. For him, it was a full ride, in more ways than one.
Mom shook her head, and her eyes gleamed suspiciously. I’d never seen her cry before, so I discounted the possibility. “Even with the scholarship and a minimum-wage job, there wouldn’t be enough money.”
For years, she’d been telling me to study, so I could get into college. She’d even hinted that my dad, a man I didn’t remember, would help out when the time came. Granted, he hadn’t paid child support, but he usually sent a card at Christmas, with a twenty-dollar bill inside. Back then, that was my idea of fatherly devotion, I guess.
“Maybe Dad—”
“He’s got another family, Gayle. Two kids in college.”
“You never said—”
“He was married,” Mom told me, for the first time. “I was the other woman. He made a lot of promises, but he wasn’t interested in keeping them, and I doubt if that’s changed. Twenty dollars at Christmas is one thing, and four years of college are another. It would be a tough thing to explain to the wife.”
The disappointment ran deep, and it was more than not being able to go to college. “You led me to believe he was going to help,” I whispered, stricken.
“I thought I could come up with the money, between then and now,” Mom said. She looked worse than I felt, but I can’t say I was sympathetic. “I wanted you to think he cared.”
I turned on my heel and fled.
“Gayle!” Mom called after me. “Come back!”
But I didn’t go back. I needed to find Tristan. Tell him what had happened. And I’d found him, all right. He was standing in front of the feed and grain, with his arms around Miss Wild West Montana of 1995.
I came back to the here and now with a soul-jarring crash, glaring up at Tristan, who was watching me curiously. He’d probably guessed that I’d just had an out-of-body experience. “You were making out with a rodeo queen!” I cried.
Tristan looked startled. “What the hell—?”
“The day I left Parable,” I burst out. “I came looking for you, to tell you I couldn’t go to college like we planned, and there you were, climbing all over some other girl in broad daylight!”
“That’s why you left? Your letter said you met somebody else—”
“I lied, okay? I wanted to get back at you for cheating on me!”
“I wasn’t cheating on you.”
“I saw you with Miss Rodeo!”
“You saw me with an old friend. Cindy Robbins. We went to kindergarten together. The vet had just put her horse down, and she was pretty shook up.”
It was just ridiculous enough to be true.
I really got mad then. Mad at myself, not Tristan. I’d been upset, that long ago day, because I’d just learned my dad was a married man and my mother was his lover, and because I wasn’t going to college. I hadn’t stopped to think, or to ask questions. Instead, I’d gone to the bank, withdrawn my paltry savings, dashed off a brief, vengeful letter to Tristan, explaining my passion for a made-up guy, and caught the four o’clock bus out of town, without so much as packing a suitcase, let alone saying good-bye to my mother.
Rash, yes. But I was only seventeen, and once I’d made my dramatic exit, my pride wouldn’t let me go home.
“Hey,” Tristan said, with a gruff tenderness that undid me even further. “You okay?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m not okay.”
“There wasn’t any other guy, was there?”
I shook my head.
He grinned. I was falling apart, on the street, and he grinned.
“Bob’s not a guy, either,” I said.
“What?” Tristan did the thumb thing again, wiping away my tears.
“He’s a vibrator.”
Tristan threw back his head and laughed, then he pulled me close, right there in front of God and everybody. “Hallelujah,” he whispered, and squeezed me even more tightly.
He walked me back to the Lakeside Motel, and I might have invited him in, if the minivan family hadn’t been there, swimming again. They smiled and waved, like we were old friends.
“Later,” Tristan said, and kissed me lightly.
With that, he walked away, leaving me standing there with my room key in one hand, feeling like a fool.
I finally let myself in, locked the door, and took a cold shower.
When I got out, I wrapped myself in a towel, turned on my cell phone, and dialed my mother’s number. I was expecting the usual redial marathon, but she answered on the second ring. I heard a motorcycle engine purring in the background.
“Hello?”
“Mom? It’s me. Gayle.”
She chuckled. “I remember you,” she said. “Are you in Parable?”
“Yes, and you set me up.”
“Sure did,” she replied, without a glimmer of guilt. “The meeting’s tomorrow, at Tristan’s office. Ten o’clock.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“If you’d bothered to read the documents, you would have known from the first.”
“It was a sneaky thing to do!”
“I’m a mother. I get to do sneaky things. It’s in the contract.”
I paused. My mother is no June Cleaver, but I love her.
“How are you?” I asked, after a couple of breaths. My voice had gone soft.
“Happy. How about you?”
“Beginning to think it’s possible.”
“That’s progress,” Mom said, and I knew she was smiling.
The Harley engine began to rev. Biker impatience.
“Gotta go,” Mom told me. “I love you, kiddo.”
“I love you, too,” I said, but she had already disconnected.
I shut off the phone, curled up in a fetal position in the middle of the bed, and dropped off to sleep.
When I woke up, it was dark and somebody was rapping on my door.
I dragged myself up from a drugged slumber, rubbing my eyes. “Who is it?”
“Guess.” Tristan’s voice.
I hesitated, then padded over and opened the door. “What do you want?”
He grinned. “Hot, slick, sweaty sex—among other things.” His eyes drifted over my towel-draped body, and something sparked in them. He let out a low whistle. “Lake’s all ours,” he drawled. “Wanna go skinny-dipping?”
My nipples hardened, and my skin went all goose-bumpy.
“Yep,” I said.
He scooped me up, just like that, and headed for the lake, leaving my room door wide open. I scanned the windows of the motel as he carried me along t
he dock, glad to see they were all dark.
I’m all for hot, slick, sweaty sex, but I’m no exhibitionist.
The lake was black velvet, and splashed with starlight, but the moon was in hiding. Tristan set me on my feet, pulled off the towel, and admired me for a few moments before shedding his own clothes.
Then he took my hand, and we jumped into the water together.
When we both surfaced, we kissed. The whole lake rose to a simmer.
He led me deeper into the shadows, where the water was shallow, over smooth sand, and laid me down.
We kissed again, and Tristan parted my legs, let me feel his erection. This time, there was no condom. He slid down far enough to taste my breasts, slick with lake water, and I squirmed with anticipation.
I knew he’d make me wait, and I was right.
He turned onto his back, half on the beach and half in the water, and arranged me for the first of several mustache rides. Each time I came, I came harder, and he put a hand over my mouth so the whole world wouldn’t know what we were doing.
Finally, weak with satisfaction, I went down on him in earnest.
He gave himself up to me, but at the edge of climax, he stopped me, hauled me back up onto his chest, rolled me under him. He entered me, but only partially, and the muscles in his shoulders and back quivered under my hands as he strained to hold himself in check.
I lifted my head and caught his right earlobe between my teeth, and he broke. The thrust was so deep and so powerful that it took my breath away.
I’d thought I was exhausted, spent, with nothing more to give, but he soon proved me wrong. Half a dozen strokes, each one harder than the last, and I was coming apart again. That was when he let himself go.
I don’t know how long we laid there, with the lake tide splashing over us, but we finally got out of the water, as new and naked as if we’d just been created. Tristan tossed me the towel, and pulled on his jeans. We slipped into my room without a word, made love again under a hot shower, and banged the headboard against the wall twice more before we both fell asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, he was gone, but there was a note on his pillow.
“My office. Ten o’clock sharp. After the meeting, expect another mustache ride.”
Heat washed through me. The man certainly had style.
I skipped breakfast, too excited to eat, and at ten straight up, I was knocking on Tristan’s office door. The buyers and other owners had already arrived, and were seated around the conference table. Tristan looked downright edible in his slick three-piece suit, and even though he was all business, his eyes promised sweet mayhem the moment we were alone.
The crotch of my pantyhose felt damp.
The negotiations went smoothly, and when the deposit checks were passed around, I glanced down and noticed my own name on the pay line, instead of Mom’s.
“There’s been a mistake,” I told Tristan, in a baffled whisper.
“No mistake,” he whispered back. “Josie signed the whole shooting match over to you.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
The meeting concluded amiably, and in good time. Everybody shook hands and left. Everybody but Tristan and me, that is.
Tristan loosened his tie.
I quivered in some very vulnerable places.
“Ever made love on a conference table?” he asked. He locked the door and pulled the shades.
“Not recently,” I admitted.
“Not even with Bob?”
I laughed. “Not even with Bob.”
Tristan took the check out of my hand, damp from my clutching it, and drew me close. He felt so strong, and so warm. “If you plan on having your way with me,” he said, “you’re going to have to make a concession first.”
“What kind of concession?”
“Agree to stay in Parable.”
I loosened his tie further, undid the top button of his shirt. “What’s in it for me?” I teased. I thought I knew what his answer would be—after all, it was burning against my abdomen, practically scorching through our clothes—but he surprised me.
“A wedding ring,” he said.
I tried to step back, but he pulled me close again.
“It seems a little soon—” I protested, but my heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out from behind my Wonder bra.
“I’ve been waiting ten years,” he answered. “I don’t think it’s all that soon.” He caught my face in his hands. “I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ve loved you every day in between. The engagement can be as long or as short as you want, but I’m not letting you go.”
My vision blurred. My throat was so constricted that I had to squeeze out my “Yes.”
“Yes, you’ll marry me?”
I nodded. The words still felt like a major risk, but they were true, so I said them. “I love you, Tristan.”
He gave me a leisurely, knee-melting kiss. “Time we celebrated,” he said.
I took the lead. Forget foreplay. I wanted him inside me.
I unfastened his belt and opened his pants and took his shaft, already hot and hard, in my hand. And suddenly, I laughed.
Tristan blinked. Laughter and penises don’t mix, I guess.
“I was just thinking of Bob,” I explained.
He groaned as I began to work him with long, slow strokes. “Great,” he growled. “I’ve got a hard-on like a concrete post, and you’re comparing me to a vibrator.”
I teased him a little more, making a circle with the pad of my thumb. “Ummm,” I said, easing him into one of the fancy leather chairs surrounding the conference table and kneeling between his legs.
“Oh, God,” he rasped.
“Payback time,” I said.
He moaned my name.
I got down to business, so to speak.
Tristan took it as long as he dared, then pulled me astraddle of his lap, hiked up my skirt, ripped my pantyhose apart, and slammed into me. I was coming before the second thrust.
That’s the thing about a flesh-and-blood man.
They never need batteries.
Read on for an excerpt from One Last Weekend by Linda Lael Miller, available from Lyrical Press next month.
Chapter One
“One last weekend,” insisted Ted Brayley, the Darbys’ long-time friend and now their divorce lawyer, facing the couple across the gleaming expanse of his cherrywood desk. “Just spend one weekend together, at the cottage, that’s all I’m asking. Then, if you still want to split the proverbial sheets, I’ll file the papers.”
Joanna Darby sat very still, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw her soon-to-be-ex husband, Teague, shift in his leather wingback chair, a twin to her own. Distractedly, he extended a hand, not to Joanna, but to pat their golden retriever, Sammy, sitting attentively between them, on the head.
“I don’t see what good that would do,” Teague said. At forty-one, he was still handsome and fit, but he was going through a major midlife crisis. He’d sold his highly successful architectural firm for an obscene profit and bought himself a very expensive sports car, and though there was no sweet young thing in the picture yet, as far as Joanna knew, it was only a matter of time. Teague was a cliché waiting to happen. “We’ve settled everything. We’re ready to go our separate ways.”
Ted sat back, cupping his hands behind his head. “Really?” he asked, with a casual nod toward Sammy. “Who gets custody of the dog?”
“I do,” Teague responded immediately.
“Not in this lifetime,” Joanna protested.
Teague looked at her in surprise. It always surprised Teague when anybody expressed an opinion different from his own; he was used to calling the shots, leading the charge, setting the course. Somewhere along the line, he’d forgotten that Joanna didn’t work for him. “I was the one who sprang him from the pound when he was a pup,” he argued. “He’s my dog.”
“Well,” Joanna answered, making an effort not to raise her voice, “I’m the one who house-
trained him and taught him not to eat sofas. I’m the one who walked him every day. I love Sammy, and I’m not about to give him up.”
“Joanna,” Teague said darkly, “be reasonable.” Translation: Agree with me. You know I’m always right.
“I’m tired of being reasonable,” Joanna said, examining her unmanicured fingernails. “I’m keeping the dog.”
Teague rolled his blue eyes and, shoved a hand through his still-thick, slightly shaggy dark hair.
A corner of Ted’s mouth quirked up in a smug little grin. They’d both known Ted since college, and they both trusted him, which was why they’d decided to let him handle the divorce. Now Joanna wondered if a stranger would have been a better choice, and Teague was probably thinking the same thing. “I guess you haven’t settled everything,” Ted said. “Sammy wouldn’t be the first dog in history to be the subject of a custody battle—but would you really want to put him through that kind of grief?”
“Joint custody, then,” Teague grumbled, a muscle bunching in his cheek. “We’ll share him. My place one week, Joanna’s the next.”
“Oh, right,” Joanna scoffed. “I’d never see him unless you had a hot date.”
Sammy whimpered softly, resembling a forlorn spectator at a tennis match as he turned his head from Joanna to Teague and back again. He wasn’t used to harsh tones—the Darby marriage had slowly caved in on itself, by degrees, after Teague and Joanna’s only child, Caitlin, went off to college. There had been no screaming fights, no accusations—or objects—flying back and forth. This was no War of the Roses.
It might have been easier if it had been.
“One weekend,” Ted reiterated. He gestured toward Elliott Bay, sparkling blue-gray beyond his office windows. “You’ve got that great cottage on Firefly Island. When was the last time you went out there, just the two of you? Walked the beach? Sipped wine in front of the fireplace? Really talked?”
Joanna felt a sharp pang, remembering happier times. She hadn’t been to the cottage in months—not once since she’d holed up there the previous summer, after Caitlin’s wedding, to finish her latest cookbook, with only Sammy for company. Teague had gone on a sailing trip, off the coast of Mexico. It had been a lonely time for Joanna, endurable only because she’d been buried in work.
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