“So, the cootie queen stole your diary and sold it to a trashy tabloid,” Cait summarized. The cootie queen was a play on words for beauty queen, Cait’s term for Sunshine, who had indeed once been a beauty queen. There were other terms, ones not so G-rated, but Cait likely hadn’t wanted to use them in front of Kinsley.
“It looks that way.” Sunny was sighing when she bit into a Milk Dud. “She’s not answering my calls so I haven’t actually gotten a confession from her.”
“Want me to find her, flash the badge and have a go at making her regret screwing you over?” Cait asked.
Shaw was almost sure his sister was kidding. Almost. But even if she wasn’t, he was hoping just the thought of it would cheer Sunny up. She didn’t look as if she was in pain, but she looked sad.
“You don’t even wear a gun,” Kinsley pointed out.
“No need,” Cait insisted. “We’re not exactly living in a hotbed of crime.” She pulled a small travel-size can of Mighty Hold hairspray from her pocket. “But if necessary, I could use this.”
“Hard to scare somebody with just a badge and some hairspray,” Kinsley muttered.
Cait lolled her head in Kinsley’s direction. “Hey, one squirt of Mighty Hold will glue eyes shut. Then, I could go in for the takedown. I was raised in a house with brothers so I know how to defend myself. Mean brothers who used to fart in my face when I was sleeping.”
“Not me—that was Austin,” Shaw clarified.
Cait shifted, zooming right in on him. “No, but you peed in my shoe.”
“Once,” he admitted, “and that was an accident. You’d left it by the toilet, and when I went to swat at a fly, some pee went in your shoe. If you’d put your shoe where it belonged, that wouldn’t have happened.”
And he suddenly realized he and Cait sounded as if they were eight years old. He frowned. Then he saw Sunny’s slight smile. He knew instantly that the humiliation of a misdirected pee stream was worth it if he could lighten things up for her. Especially since her humiliation was even greater than his over the diary being leaked.
“Come on, little sis,” Cait said, getting to her feet and pulling Kinsley to hers. “Let’s give these lovebirds some privacy.” She reached down, picked up the tabloid and waved it at Sunny. “‘Chest hair dewed with moisture that carried his musky scent’?”
Sunny shrugged. “I wrote that when I was watching a lot of Sex and the City.”
“Ah,” Cait said as if that explained it all perfectly. “It would have taken on a whole different tone if it’d been when she was binge reading Stephen King.”
True, but Shaw figured that kind of influence would have sounded better when being read aloud by ranch hands.
Shoving the tabloid in the back waist of her jeans, Cait poured some of the Milk Duds into Sunny’s lap. Then Cait helped Kinsley put the albums, remaining candy and Coke in the burlap bag. Once Kinsley had used the rope to lower it to the ground, she and Cait left.
“I’m sorry,” Sunny said once they were alone. “And I know I’ve already told you that, but if I repeat it six million times, it won’t be enough.”
If she’d said that when he’d been in the worst of his ass-kicking mood, he might have agreed, but she looked as whipped as he did. “It wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of a sleazy reporter who used a stolen diary to make our lives miserable.”
She nodded, but Shaw didn’t see any acceptance of that. She was still carrying this on her shoulders. Crap on crackers. He hated to see her like this, and it made him want to do something stupid like pull her into his arms.
Considering her stitches, that wouldn’t be wise.
Plus, she didn’t need close contact with him in the very place that would remind her of other close contact. Sunny might have written flowery stuff about their encounter here, but he was betting all of that had now been significantly overshadowed by the gossip and publicity.
“I hired a lawyer.” She took a bite of one of the Milk Duds, but Shaw shook his head when she offered him one. “Cora Neely from a law firm in San Antonio. She’s a friend of McCall’s. Along with trying to get an injunction to stop Tonya from publishing anything else about us, she’s pressing Tonya to give up the name of the source.”
“The diary was stolen,” he pointed out. “You can’t file criminal charges?”
“No. At least not now. I can’t prove the diary was indeed stolen. Yes, it’s missing from the last place I saw it in a box in the attic, but in theory it could have been taken at any time in the past fifteen years. Or even thrown away, though Em doesn’t remember ever doing something like that.”
Well, Em was getting on up in years and might forget a thing or two, but he still couldn’t see her tossing Sunny’s diary.
“Tonya’s got a lawyer, too. Her brother,” Sunny added. “And he’s saying that the source who gave Tonya the diary didn’t steal anything, that Tonya gained access to the diary through legal means.”
“Bullshit,” Shaw growled, and he felt that kick-ass mood start to bubble and churn again.
“Definite bullshit,” she agreed. “Of course, Tonya’s lawyer isn’t saying what those legal means were. I’m guessing Sunshine stole it and then sold it to her. That doesn’t make it legal. So, I’m hoping when the dust settles, Tonya won’t be able to print anything else about us.” She paused. “But there’s a chance more will come. I could lose this legal wrangling.”
“Hell.” Shaw tacked on some more curse words and groaned at that possibility. He hoped like the devil that there wasn’t anything else like what had already been published.
Sunny ate the rest of the Milk Dud in silence, wiped her hand on the hay and glanced around the hayloft. “This is where it all took place.”
Yep, and he figured her head was full of the memories they’d made here. His certainly was.
“Uh, there were some things not quite true in the diary,” she added a moment later.
“You mean the part about my chiseled body and chest hair dewed with moisture that carried my musky scent?” he asked, his tone on the dry side.
“No, that was true,” she said, her tone nowhere near dry. It sounded, well, genuine. “It was an amazing experience—”
“I hurt you,” Shaw interrupted. “Don’t deny it.”
“Oh, I won’t deny that part. Darn right it hurt. You were huge and I hadn’t expected that.”
Shaw waivered for a moment between stupid male pride over the huge and the less-than-stupid reality of that particular situation. “I was huge because you were a virgin.”
“No, you were huge because you’re huge. I’ve been with other men since then, Shaw, and you’re what women call a big boy. I had no idea what to do with all those inches.”
Well, crud. The stupid male pride won out after all. “You did just fine.” And, yes, that was a drawl that he knew complemented foreplay.
“That’s your horniness talking,” Sunny said, calling him on the drawl and the sizzler of a look he was no doubt giving her. “And don’t you smile that smug smile because I gave you a backhanded compliment on the length and girth of your manliness.”
“Girth, too?” he asked, just to see her smile.
It worked. For a second or two anyway. She looked up at him, their eyes locking long enough to let him know that she was experiencing some of the same horniness he was. He could have withstood that, letting the fear of her stitches hold him in check, but then her eyes lowered to his mouth, and Shaw could have sworn that she tongue kissed him.
Sunny clearly picked up on the dirty dream kiss, too, because she glanced away and pushed her hair from her face. He was about to tell her that she’d smeared chocolate on her cheek, but she started talking before he got the chance.
“It’s a good thing I can’t do anything about the old heat because of this,” she said, motioning to her chest area and arm. “I suck at relationships, Shaw, and I’m not in
to casual sex. In fact, I think that’s why I jumped twice into getting engaged.”
That should have cooled him down. After all, Sunny seemed to be pouring her heart out to him along with clarifying, in no uncertain terms, there’d be no repeat performance in this hayloft. But the impulsive, ignorant part of him behind his zipper, the one with both length and girth, was urging him to kiss her.
Along with giving her that orgasm he’d failed to give her fifteen years ago.
“Did you just hear what I said?” she asked.
Possibly. It was also possible that he’d missed something because his heartbeat had started to thud in his ears. It was keeping rhythm with the thudding in the rest of his body.
“I’m bad news,” Sunny said, as if repeating it.
So, that’s what he’d missed her saying, and Sunny had likely meant it to be a big turnoff. It had a slightly different effect on him.
Shaw leaned in and kissed her.
Oh, man. This was so much better than the infamous bloody kiss. Her mouth was soft. And familiar. The kind of mouth a man could just sink right into, so that’s what he did. Sliding his hand around the back of her neck, he eased her closer and had that mouth for supper.
She tasted like chocolate and sin. All in all not a bad combination, and paired with that soft hiccupping sound of surprise and pleasure she made, it slammed him right back to a different time. Same place, though. He’d definitely kissed Sunny before the bad sex that he now felt compelled to fix. He didn’t want that to be her sole memory of his abilities to please her. Shaw wanted to remedy that right now.
Sunny didn’t nix the notion, either. Despite the bad news lecture she’d just given him, she moved in, her mouth doing its own share of sampling and tasting.
He brought Sunny even closer to him, forcing himself to remember stitches and surgery. Also forcing himself to remember that he didn’t want to have sex with her again in a barn but rather a bed. The chocolate scent might be offsetting those other barn smells, but Sunny deserved better. And neither of them deserved hay pricks in their butt.
Keeping away from her breast, Shaw settled his fingers on her waist, touching as much of her as he could. That escalated things for him. Of course, he was already primed, so that wasn’t a surprise. He felt like a teenager again. Way too hot. Way too ready.
Way too stupid.
Because hay pricks and smells suddenly didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
Without breaking the air-starved kiss, Sunny slid her hand from his hair to his neck. Her body did some sliding, too, and she moved onto his lap. Shaw normally would have thought of that as a move in the right direction, but the whiff of chocolate became more than a whiff. And he was pretty sure the stickiness he felt on his throat wasn’t sweat but rather a melted Milk Dud.
Sunny must have realized that, too, because she stopped and pulled back. Looked at him. And cursed.
“I just smeared chocolate all over you,” she grumbled.
He’d already figured that out. Figured out, too, that the candy was gobbed and smeared in both of their laps.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
Sunny climbed off him, grabbed a handful of hay and started wiping. Unfortunately, she took it upon herself to try to wipe it off his jeans, too, and she would have given him a hand job if he hadn’t stopped her.
“Sorry,” Sunny repeated, probably because she’d noticed the way he was grimacing.
“Not to worry. It went better than our first kiss.” No blood or sore nuts, and that reminder made him smile. Then, chuckle.
“I told you I was bad news.” She was smiling, too.
Shaw couldn’t help himself. He kissed her again, but this time he didn’t go in for the tongue play. He kept it short and sweet. The chocolate helped with that last part.
“You’re not bad news,” he assured her. “Not when it comes to kissing.” He wouldn’t touch the commitment-phobia stuff she’d mentioned, but there was another area he could maybe soothe over for her. “Now, that the diary’s been printed, the worst has been done. The gossip will die down soon.”
She was still using the hay to remove the chocolate from her jeans, and she stopped in midswipe. Actually, she froze for a couple of seconds before her gaze finally lifted to meet his. Not a quick jerk to make eye contact. It was slow, like a striptease.
But without the heat.
There was definitely no heat in Sunny’s eyes when she finally got around to looking at him. However, Shaw did see something that he thought might be a whole bunch of regret and an apology or two.
Hell.
“What’s wrong?” he managed to ask.
Like the eyeball striptease, she took her time with the words. “There were six of my diaries in that box,” Sunny finally said. “And every single one of them is missing.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“BULL BALLS ARE really ugly.”
Sunny frowned at the text from Shaw, wondering why he thought she might like to know that particular tidbit about bovine genitalia. She got some clarification when his next text came in.
The buyer for those Angus is here. She’s a twenty-year-old city girl who inherited her granddaddy’s ranch, and she didn’t have a positive reaction to certain parts of the bull. How well do you think our meeting is going?
Now Sunny smiled and answered. I’m guessing it’s not going well. Any chance that bull will be covering some heifers for cow sex? That’ll really give her an eyeful.
Sunny went back to frowning again when she read the text she’d just sent to Shaw. It probably wasn’t a good idea to launch into sexting even when it didn’t apply to them.
Not after all the kissing and groping she and Shaw had done in the hayloft.
And especially not after what’d happened after the kissing and groping.
When she’d dropped that nasty little bombshell of the six missing diaries, it had instantly cooled him down, that was for sure. There had been shock. Followed by some creative cursing, including voicing a desire to smother Sunshine in her sleep. Sunny had liked that one, but there’d been no other kisses that day.
Or since.
However, the texts and calls from him had been promising. Judging from his often lighthearted tone, he didn’t blame her for the diary thefts and hadn’t planned any trips to find Sunshine and smother her. In fact, when he’d talked to her on the phone Shaw had sounded flirty and open to taking more trips to the hayloft.
Sunny wondered just how big of a mistake that would be.
Probably a huge one, but it suddenly felt like a big storm coming. Something that she couldn’t stop and hoped she could, well, weather.
She went back to the illustration she was working on. Slackers lounging on the back of a crocodile. Because in theory this was still a story targeted to kids, she minimized the croc’s teeth and tried to give him a dopey look that was probably more suited for a cartoon donkey than a deadly reptile. Still, it meshed with the equally lounging, dopey smile on Slackers’s face.
However, there was still a problem with the blasted tail feather. Way too phallic. The shape was only emphasized because of its white color against the crocodile green. Maybe she could make the croc an albino? Not having Slackers lounging was out because that’s how the narrative described him. So, how could a duck stretch out and lounge without exposing that pointy little projection between his legs?
Her phone dinged again, and she saw another message from Shaw. Cowboys shouldn’t scratch their privates. That’s the opinion she just shared with Rowley who might or might not have scratched himself in a private place.
Sunny was back to smiling, something she suspected Shaw and his top hand, Rowley, definitely weren’t doing with this particular customer.
Scare her and tell her that bulls sometimes scratch their own ugly privates, too, she texted back, and then turned to the illustration again.
“Fire!” someone yelled.
That gave Sunny a jolt and caused her to slash the pencil over the sketch pad, giving Slackers an even more elongated tail feather than it should have. It looked as if he was peeing. She tossed the pad aside, hurrying to the window, and she saw the shouter.
Bernice.
Sunny saw the fire, too. The flames were shooting up from the oversize concrete birdbath. Sunny figured that the sight would have caused most people to gasp, run and call the fire department, but she’d been down this particular road before and knew there was no need for that. The fire department, or rather Bennie Harper, would be nearby.
She opened the window, still feeling a tug from her incision and the bra injury. A tug was far better than pain. Sunny was about to tell Bernice to go get the fire extinguisher, but before she could even open her mouth, Ryan came running out of the house with one. He took aim at the flames and doused them with the white foam.
“Here, let me do that,” Bennie called out. He was running across the yard, no doubt coming out from wherever he’d been hiding and waiting. He, too, had an extinguisher. “Good thing I was driving by and saw the fire.”
Sheez. He was stupid. Did he really believe she would buy that? Apparently so, because Bennie gave the already doused flames another hit from the extinguisher and then looked up at her.
“You should come down and take a look at this,” Bennie said, giving her what he probably thought was his best lady-killer smile.
Bennie probably thought she’d smile at him in return or at least give him the attention he’d been seeking. In the past she might have toned down the glare she aimed at him, but Sunny wasn’t in a generous mood. In the week and a half since she’d come home, Bennie had become a huge pest, and it was time to put an end to it.
“Leave me alone, Bennie.” And because that would in no way make him stop, she said, “I’m with Shaw now, and trust me, you don’t want to make him jealous.”
Even from this distance she could see that had indeed put some concern in Bennie’s eyes. Some disappointment, too. “I thought that was a rumor.”
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