“Thanks,” he said to Melanie with feeling. “I owe you one.”
Melanie shook her shoulder-length hair back and laughed. “You better believe you do.”
Caleb arched a brow. “Are you saying that dancing with me is a hardship?”
“Of course not. You know you’re one of the best dancers around. But I saved your bacon, pal. For that, you owe me.”
“Looks like your rescue was short-lived. Here she comes.”
Melanie glanced over her shoulder and saw Alyshia bearing down on them with a predatory smile on her surgically enhanced face.
“May I cut in?” Alyshia purred.
Melanie smiled. Caleb had never seen that particular look on Melanie’s face before. For a moment, he wondered which woman was the more dangerous. Then he shook off the feeling. This was Melanie, his friend.
“Go away, Alyshia,” Melanie said dismissively. “This one’s taken.” Without missing a beat, Melanie slid her hands to the back of Caleb’s head and pulled him down to meet her mouth.
The shock was instantaneous. A sharp jolt of electricity. Intense heat, flames licking from the inside out. Arousal, hard and fast. The air turned hot and heavy, and with it, Caleb thought that if Melanie wasn’t feeling what he was feeling, his life would never be complete.
Startled, he tore his mouth from hers and stared.
Melanie blinked up at him, her breath rasping. “Oh…my…God.”
Caleb swallowed. “Uh, yeah.” He swallowed again. “That was…”
She swallowed. “Yeah.”
“Come on, you two.” Alyshia smirked. “Get a room, for heaven’s sake.”
Caleb and Melanie both ignored her.
Alyshia shrugged and walked away.
“What just happened?” Melanie asked, a dazed look in her eyes.
“I…I don’t know. An explosion, I think.”
Around them friends and neighbors swirled across the dance floor, feet stomped, voices laughed, the band blared.
“Yeah.” Melanie looked away, around, anywhere but at Caleb. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. “Yeah. That would explain it.”
They stared at each other another long moment, then Caleb looked away and shuffled his feet. “Anyway, uh, thanks. For getting Alyshia off my back, I mean.”
“Hey,” Melanie said with a big fake smile. “What are friends for? Oh, look, there’s Daddy. See you later.” She escaped Caleb and the dance floor so fast, she was pretty sure she left a vacuum in her wake. What else could a woman do when she’d just done the unthinkable and kissed her best friend? And not just kissed, but Kissed.
It wasn’t her fault, she told herself. That lightning bolt from the sky shouldn’t have happened. The kiss had been meant as a joke. A ploy to get rid of Alyshia. A teasing gesture between friends. Not…not…not fireworks.
“What’s the matter with you?” her father groused. “You look like you just got thrown by a wild bronc.”
Leave it to her father to describe perfectly what she was feeling. “Uh, no,” she managed. “Just a fast whirl on the dance floor.”
He patted her on the shoulder. “Well, you have a good time, little girl. I’ll find you later.”
“Daddy,” she said as he turned to walk away.
Ralph Pruitt stopped and looked back at his only child. “Yeah?”
Melanie opened her mouth, then closed it and shook her head. “Nothing. I’ll find you when I’m ready to go home.”
As he walked away, she bit the end of her tongue to keep from calling out a warning to him: No gambling.
Maybe she was getting wiser, keeping her mouth shut this time. Lord knew the warning would have fallen on deaf ears. Gambling was an addiction with her father. He used to go to meetings up in Oklahoma City, and the people there, fellow compulsive gamblers, had been a help. But when Melanie’s mother left them a couple of years ago, Ralph had given up the meetings. He’d been gambling ever since.
Call her a cynic, but if her father would win his bets more often she wouldn’t worry so much. But Lady Luck favored Ralph Pruitt only often enough to keep him coming back. His losses were mounting, and the ranch finances were hurting because of it. It was that, rather than any upset over Sloan’s marriage, that had been troubling Melanie when Caleb had questioned her earlier.
Now, in addition to worrying about her father and the ranch, and wondering what her mother was up to, there was that kiss to torment her. She ought to be able to laugh it off and forget it, but for now it loomed large in her mind.
By 3:00 a.m. that damn kiss still occupied Melanie’s mind. It filled every nook and cranny and wouldn’t let her sleep. She had tossed and turned so much that her bed looked like a disaster zone. By sunup, so did she.
She did her best with a cold shower and makeup, but nothing could disguise the sleepless night she’d just spent.
Her father obviously noticed, if the sudden height of his eyebrows was any indication, but, with uncharacteristic wisdom, he said nothing as he drove the two of them to church.
For as long as Melanie could remember, her father had driven the family to church every Sunday morning. Only calving or foaling could keep him home, and neither of those was taking place this day. Still, it seemed odd that it was only the two of them in the pickup, though it had been just the two of them for more than two years now, since Melanie’s mother had left them.
She should be here, Melanie thought. Her mother should be here with them on the way to church. She shouldn’t be off in sunny Arizona living the high life. And sending the bills home for the ranch to pay her expenses. Mounting expenses.
Between her mother and father, Melanie was about ready to bang her head against the nearest wall, financially speaking.
Patience. She would pray for patience. If she was very, very good, maybe God would grant her some.
But first, she thought as she and her father entered the church, she would pray to become invisible. How was she supposed to sit in church and concentrate on the sermon with Caleb Chisholm just across the aisle?
She did her best to focus on the minister, her bible, her hymnal, each in turn. She must have managed to keep last night’s kiss from her mind, because lightning did not shoot through the roof of the sanctuary and strike her dead for having lascivious thoughts in church.
After the final amen was delivered and announcements were made, Melanie managed to fumble long enough with her purse and her bible and trading small talk with the pharmacist seated next to her to allow plenty of time for the Chisholms to get halfway down the aisle before her father finally took her by the arm and dragged her from the pew.
“What’s the matter with you today?” he grumbled. “You’re slow as molasses.”
She dragged her feet and slowed even more. “What’s the hurry?”
“Maybe I’m hungry.”
That was the other part of their Sunday ritual—dinner out after church at Lucille’s Café on Main. Her father would order the chicken-fried steak, and, because Melanie made pets out of her laying hens and refused to butcher them, she would have fried chicken—someone else’s fried chicken, thank you very much.
With great relief, or so she told herself, Melanie noted that when she and her father finally exited the church the Chisholms were already pulling out of the parking lot. There were so many of them now that Sloan had a wife and two new stepdaughters that it took them two vehicles to haul everyone.
At her side she heard her father mutter a curse.
“What’s the matter with you today?” she demanded, parroting his words. “You’re grumpy as a bear with a sore paw.”
“I told you,” he said tersely, nudging her none too gently down the church steps. “I’m hungry.”
“Well, by all means, then,” she said with exaggerated sweetness. “Let’s feed you.”
The town of Rose Rock had a population of just under two thousand, but it boasted three cafés, a steak house, a pizza parlor, two hamburger joints and a hotdog stand. Nearly every seat
in every one of them filled up fast at noon each Sunday.
If all the churches were to let out at the same time, it would be a disaster. People would be lined up all the way up and down Main waiting for a table. But while the Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians and the First Christians all let out at noon, the Baptists, the Southern Baptists, Church of Christ and the small congregation of Latter-day Saints never let out before twelve-thirty. Melanie didn’t know if that was because they were all so naughty during the week that it took them longer to make up for it, or if their preachers were simply long-winded. In any case, she thought as she and her father stepped through the front door of Lucille’s, it was one very practical reason to be glad she was a Baptist.
Even then, it was a near thing finding a table, but Melanie spotted one that thankfully was not too close to where the Chisholms had pushed three tables together in the middle of the room. The only drawback was that she would have to pass their table to get to the empty one.
She was being stupid, she knew, shying away from Caleb this way. They saw each other every Sunday, and usually a time or two more during the week. All she had to do was nod and smile—at the whole family, not just Caleb—and move right along. Simple. Easy. No problem at all.
Except that just as she was managing it and stepping past their table, her father placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Hold up a minute,” he told her.
He stood beside the Chisholms’ table and greeted them, leaving Melanie no choice but to face them.
“Rose,” Ralph said to the matriarch of the Chisholm clan. “You sure know how to throw a party.”
“Thank you, Ralph.” Cherokee Rose Chisholm smiled. “It’s not every day one of my grandsons gets married.”
“Some of us,” he said, casting a dark look at Melanie, “are still waiting for our children to marry and produce grandchildren.”
Carefully avoiding looking at Caleb, Melanie leaned down and batted her eyes at Justin. “Are you busy tonight? My daddy wants me to get married and have children.”
Justin screwed up his face in concentration, then smiled. “I’ve got a date tonight, but tomorrow night’s Billy Ray’s birthday, and I’m supposed to pick you up at seven. We wouldn’t be able to get married since we don’t have a license or anything, but we could probably get started on the kids after the party.”
The adults at the table laughed. Emily, Justin’s new sister-in-law, gave him that frown she used on her daughters when they’d been naughty. “Justin, shame.”
Melanie quirked her lips and pinched the end of Justin’s nose. “In your dreams, fella.”
Justin heaved a big sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. Besides, it’d be like kissing my sister.”
Melanie turned to her father and shrugged. “Sorry, Daddy. Looks like I’ll be staying single a little while longer.”
Ralph Pruitt huffed out a breath of mock disgust at their play, and at the laughter around the table. “Well, then, the least he can do is give you a ride home. I’ve got an errand to run in the opposite direction, and I need to leave now. Y’all don’t mind, do you?” he asked the table at large.
“Now wait a min—”
But Melanie’s protest was cut off by Rose’s voice. “Of course we don’t mind. You know you don’t even have to ask.”
“Yeah,” Sloan said. “Come on, Mel, pull up a chair.”
Melanie gaped at her father. He was fobbing her off on the Chisholms like she was a stray dog. An unwanted stray dog, at that. “Daddy…”
He gave her a peck on the cheek and a pat on the back. “There you go, little girl. I won’t be home till late, so don’t wait up for me. Afternoon, y’all.” He tipped his hat and walked away, leaving Melanie standing there feeling as if she’d just been betrayed.
“Daddy,” she called after him, but to no avail. Her father walked straight to the door and out without a backward glance.
Inside, over and around the embarrassment he’d just caused her by foisting her onto the neighbors, fury burned. If he was, indeed, going in the opposite direction from home, that meant he was headed in the general direction of Oklahoma City.
There were no horses running at Remington Park today, but there were a hundred other places he could go to gamble, not the least of which was any one of several dozen tribal casinos around the state. Damn his hide.
“Come on,” Sloan told her. “Join us, Mel.”
She turned to face the table. There was one empty chair. It was between Justin and Caleb. Terrific. But there was no way around it, so she stifled a sigh and sat down.
“Thanks,” she said to the table at large. “For letting me barge in on your Sunday dinner.”
“Nonsense,” Rose said matter-of-factly. “If you came through the front door in the middle of the night, you wouldn’t be barging in. Not with us. Hello, Donna,” Rose added to the waitress who came to take their orders. “Melanie has joined us. She’ll be needing something to drink.”
The meal with the Chisholms was not the ordeal Melanie had feared it would be, seated next to Caleb as she was. He and everyone else treated her as they always had—as one of the family. There was no hint that her father’s behavior had seemed, if not rude, then at least odd. There was no hint from Caleb or anyone that anything momentous had happened on that makeshift dance floor the night before.
As the meal progressed, Melanie finally began to relax. She had simply been overreacting, that was all. And what a relief it was to realize that. She had kissed a friend as a joke, to rescue him from a potentially sticky situation. That was all there had been to it. Whatever she had thought she’d felt had merely been a trick of her obviously overactive imagination.
And surely the sly looks that passed between Sloan and Justin had nothing to do with her. Again, only her imagination working overtime.
It was not her imagination, however, that had her standing alone with Caleb beside his pickup as the rest of the Chisholms piled into Rose’s SUV and drove away. And those twin smirks from Caleb’s brothers were not her imagination, either.
“Well,” Caleb said, “that was subtle.”
“As a Mack truck,” Melanie said in agreement. “I’m sorry you got stuck with taxi duty.”
“Hey, forget it.” He walked around to the passenger side and unlocked the door for her. “What are friends for?”
The instant the words were out of his mouth, they both wished he hadn’t said them. Both pretended he hadn’t. Pretended they didn’t recall Melanie uttering those very words on the dance floor the night before, right after… well, right after the big disaster.
Melanie averted her gaze and jumped into the pickup.
Caleb silently cursed himself with every step he took around the pickup to the driver’s door. He cursed his brothers. He cursed Ralph Pruitt. He cursed Alyshia Campbell.
But most of all, he cursed himself, for reminding them both of something that shouldn’t have affected them in the least, but had somehow altered the universe.
Melanie had been so uncomfortable when her father had stopped her beside their table that she had looked everywhere but at him. But eventually, as the meal progressed, her stiffness had eased. Her smile had come more easily. Her laughter had sounded more natural. She had even managed to look at him a time or two. Out the corner of her eye. When she thought he wasn’t looking.
Now she was all pokered up again.
With a heavy sigh, he climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. He hadn’t a clue what to say to her, but surely at some point during the twenty-minute drive to her house he could come up with something. Something that had nothing to do with his having lain awake last night giving serious thought to figuring out a way to kiss her again.
The very idea appalled him. He had always valued Melanie’s friendship. He had no intention of ruining that simply because his glands decided to act up. True, lifelong friends were hard to come by.
Besides which, this particular lifelong friend would likely box his ears if he trie
d kissing her again.
He was an imbecile. That was all there was to it. They were friends. Just friends. She hadn’t meant anything by that kiss any more than he had. It had been a joke, that was all. A prank. God knew Mel loved a good prank.
It was too quiet in the pickup, road and wind noise notwithstanding. Deciding a little music might help break the tension, Caleb reached for the radio knob on his dash.
Melanie must have had the same idea at the same time; their hands collided over the knob. For a brief instant their fingers ended up entwined. A sharp tingling sensation raced up Caleb’s arm and he jerked.
Melanie must have felt it, too, he thought, since she jerked away every bit as fast as he did.
“Sorry,” she muttered, using her other hand to rub her arm, further convincing him she suffered the same sharp tingling sensation.
At least he wasn’t alone in this, he thought. And he hadn’t been alone in his reaction last night, either. But that didn’t give him any insight into how to deal with the situation. Ignore it? Act like nothing had happened? Say something about it? Kiss her again.
“Melanie,” he began, with no clue as to what he was going to say next.
“I thought you were going to turn on the radio.” Her voice was sharp, terse, as she folded her arms across her chest and stared out the windshield.
“Yeah. Sure.” Okay, he thought. She didn’t want to talk. He turned on the radio. Neither spoke again.
When Caleb turned off the highway onto the gravel lane that led to Melanie’s house—essentially her driveway, but too long to be called by that name—he had to slow the pickup to a crawl. The gravel had long since disappeared, leaving bare clay, baked in the Oklahoma sun to the consistency of solid granite. The ruts were deep and many. In more than one spot he had to veer to keep from scraping his undercarriage, some of the ruts were so deep.
What the hell were she and her father thinking, letting this road get in such bad shape? They should have taken the box blade to it before it had completely dried after the last rain and smoothed it out. Then they should have hauled in a load of gravel.
The Chisholm Brothers:Friends, Lovers... Husbands? Page 21