My Cone and Only

by Susannah Nix

  For everyone who’s always wanted to have a book dedicated to them. Now you have.

  Contents

  Preface

  1. Andie

  2. Wyatt

  3. Andie

  4. Wyatt

  5. Andie

  6. Wyatt

  7. Andie

  8. Wyatt

  9. Wyatt

  10. Andie

  11. Wyatt

  12. Andie

  13. Wyatt

  14. Andie

  15. Wyatt

  16. Andie

  17. Wyatt

  18. Wyatt

  19. Andie

  20. Wyatt

  21. Wyatt

  22. Andie

  23. Wyatt

  24. Andie

  25. Andie

  26. Wyatt

  27. Andie

  28. Wyatt

  29. Andie

  30. Andie

  31. Wyatt

  Epilogue

  More Books by Susannah Nix

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Preface

  Dear reader,

  * * *

  This book contains brief references to cancer and the past deaths of parents and a sibling by illness and/or accident.

  I offer this warning so that those for whom these are sensitive subjects may make an informed decision about whether or not to proceed with the story.

  (But I promise you don’t need to worry about something bad happening to the cat. He’s going to live forever because this is my world and I make the rules.)

  Be good to yourself,

  Susannah Nix

  1

  Andie

  I sensed it the moment Wyatt walked into the room. Like an electrical charge or a change in barometric pressure, I could always feel when he was near. I didn’t even have to turn and look.

  It was Saturday night, and I’d come out with some friends to go dancing at King’s Palace, the local country-western dance hall here in Crowder, Texas. There was a bar to one side of the stage at the back where live music played every Friday and Saturday night, and an open space for dancing in front of the stage. People came from all over the state to two-step in the historic dance hall, but for us it was just one of our regular local hangouts.

  “Wyatt just got here,” my friend Kaylee said, because I wasn’t the only one who noticed Wyatt King. Every head at our table snapped toward the door at the opposite end of the hall.

  Except mine.

  I didn’t need to see Wyatt with my own eyes to know he’d be looking fine as hell, and I was in no hurry to inflict the sight on myself. Besides, I knew he’d find his way over to me eventually. He always came to pay his courtesies.

  I also knew he’d be stopping to say hello to every pretty woman he passed on his way through the dance hall. Wherever he went, he had to work the room like some sort of celebrity. Wyatt was addicted to attention, and most of the people in this town were only too happy to give it to him. Like the three women I’d come out dancing with tonight.

  We were standing around one of the high-top tables by the bar. The band didn’t take the stage until eight, so a George Strait song was being piped over the sound system. The Palace was one of the oldest buildings in town, five thousand square feet of weathered wooden floor beneath a pitched beam ceiling, the rough-hewn walls decorated with vintage music posters and old tin signs. There were a couple of pool tables on the other side of the stage, and rows of long wooden tables up at the front where Wyatt was currently mingling his way through the room.

  Kaylee sighed and rested her chin in her hand. “I’d let Wyatt King ruin my life.”

  I didn’t bother to suppress my eye roll. The irony was, I more or less had let Wyatt King ruin my life, just not in the way Kaylee meant.

  “I’d let any of the King brothers ruin my life.” Megan smiled as her eyes tracked Wyatt’s slow progress toward the bar. “Even the stuffy suit and tie one.”

  “Nate?” Kaylee’s pierced nose wrinkled. “Isn’t he like forty?”

  “Thirty-eight,” I corrected without thinking. Kaylee gave me a sidelong look and I shrugged. “Nate’s eight years older than Wyatt, who’s the same age as my brother. It’s not like it’s hard to remember.”

  “Whatever,” Megan said. “I’d still hit that.”

  “Same,” said Rain, who was standing across from me, twirling one of her box braids. Rain and I had been in the same high school graduating class, while Megan and Kaylee were a couple of years younger—young enough not to have known Wyatt in high school as well as we had. “Although…” Rain’s brown lips tilted. “I’d rather break me off a piece of Brady King.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Megan’s gray eyes lit up as she nodded. “And he’s even older than Nate, right?”

  Brady was the oldest of Wyatt’s siblings and the town’s only homegrown celebrity. He’d left Crowder when he was twenty-one and wound up the lead guitarist for Ghost Ships, who’d been topping the alt rock charts for more than a decade. Brady also hadn’t been back home or spoken to his family for almost twenty years, so there was pretty much zero chance of Rain getting her wish.

  “Quite frankly, it’s rude of all the King boys to be so good-looking,” Rain said.

  “Right?” Megan set her beer bottle down a little too hard, sending droplets of foam flying. “Like it’s not enough that the Kings are made of money and own half the town. They all have to look like the sons of Aphrodite to boot.” Megan had been a classics major but was currently waiting tables at the new craft brewery that had opened in town.

  “Mmm hmmm,” Rain hummed in agreement. “And don’t forget all the free ice cream they can eat. Total bonus.”

  I smiled, probably the only one at the table who knew how much Wyatt King hated ice cream.

  His family owned King’s Creamery, the second-best-selling ice cream brand in the country, which had been founded by Wyatt’s great-grandfather here in Crowder. Between the corporate headquarters, the ice cream plant, and the accompanying amusement park that brought hundreds of tourists into the town every day—not to mention all the other businesses that fell under the King corporate aegis—the whole town had basically been built on a foundation of ice cream and King money. Even the dance hall we were in right now, King’s Palace, was owned by Wyatt’s uncle Randy.

  “I’d sure like to lick Wyatt King’s ice cream cone.” Megan waggled her eyebrows as the others snickered.

  “I’d let him eat my ice cream sandwich any day,” Kaylee added with a dramatic nod, and even I snorted in amusement.

  Megan slapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening as her attention caught on something behind me. “Holy shit, I think Brianna Thorne just stuck her tongue in Wyatt’s ear.”

  Everyone turned to look, including me this time. Sure enough, Brianna had her lips stuck to Wyatt’s ear like some kind of suckermouth catfish. He was laughing as he sipped a beer someone must have given him, seemingly in no hurry to shake her off.

  Of course he was enjoying himself. It was Saturday night, and if he was here, it was probably because he was looking to get laid. All the single women of a certain age would be vying to keep Wyatt King company for a night.

  He looked just as good as I’d known he would, with his longish golden brown hair hanging down in his face and the sleeves of his midnight blue shirt rolled up to expose the tattoos on both his forearms. The sight of him with Brianna plastered to his side made my whole body clench.

  I turned back to my beer, knocking back a mouthful to hide my grimace. It shouldn’t still bother me after all these years. This was exactly who Wyatt had always been, after all.

  And yet, here I was, totally freaking bothered.

  “Shameless.” Rain shook her head as
she tipped back her own beer bottle.

  Megan shrugged. “Whatever works, I guess.”

  “It won’t work,” Kaylee said, pursing her glossy pink lips. “He likes it better when they play harder to get.”

  “How would you know?” Megan’s eyes went to slits.

  Kaylee shrugged. “It’s obvious if you watch him. Wyatt gets off on the chase.”

  “Don’t all men?” Megan muttered.

  “Is that your big plan to seduce him?” Rain asked in amusement. “Hang back and watch him obsessively until he’s so captivated by your cool disregard that he drops to his knees at your feet?”

  Kaylee smiled and stuck out her tongue. “Something like that.”

  As she shook her head, Rain’s eyes fell on me and narrowed. “I feel like Andie’s been awfully quiet on the subject of Wyatt King.”

  “That’s because I don’t have anything to say about him.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans and rested the toe of one boot on the floor, trying to look casual.

  “Come on, Andie.” Megan gave me a gentle shove. “You’ve spent more time with him than any of us. Tell me you’ve never lusted after that bod.”

  “Yeah,” Kaylee said. “You have to admit he’s tasty as hell.”

  “No me gusta.” I wrinkled my nose and repeated the lie I’d been telling for years—the lie I could tell in my sleep at this point. “I don’t think about him like that. He’s my brother’s best friend and was over at our house so much when we were growing up, he might as well be my brother too.”

  “You’re crazy,” Megan said, brushing her copper brown hair off her shoulder.

  Not crazy, just realistic. I’d learned a long time ago not to think about Wyatt like that, because he’d never shown the slightest inclination to think about me that way. Wyatt treated me like another little sister, and he’d made it very clear over the years that I’d never be anything else to him. I was practically the only woman in town he’d never hit on, even jokingly. If that didn’t send a clear message…

  Kaylee stood up straighter. “Oh shit, he’s heading over here.” She smoothed her shiny blonde hair, arranging the long locks over her shoulders while Megan scrambled to give her lipstick a quick check in her phone’s camera.

  As I watched my friends primp, I wondered—not for the first time—if they’d invited me out tonight for my company or for my connection with Wyatt. Even Rain was swiping her fingers under her eyes to clear away any stray flecks of mascara.

  I’d never understood why people bothered with makeup. If I was going to go out dancing and get all sweaty, I’d rather not have to worry about shit dripping down my face. How did that look any better than your actual, natural skin? Since my job at the state park involved a lot of tramping around outdoors in the woods, makeup seemed like a colossal waste of time and money.

  The subtle scent of Wyatt’s cologne greeted me a second before he did, and I felt my stomach tighten.

  “Hey you.” He gave my ponytail a tug before draping one of his tattooed arms around my shoulders.

  “Hey you,” I said back, smiling as I looked into his familiar blue eyes.

  As an avid collector of trivia, I knew that blue eyes weren’t actually blue. They had no pigment at all, and their blue appearance was merely a trick of physics—a result of scattering light similar to the effect that made the sky and water look blue. That meant Wyatt’s eyes had no set color, and their appearance depended entirely on the available light wherever you happened to be looking at them. Tonight, for instance, against his midnight blue shirt, under the lights of the dance hall, his eyes were a brilliant azure, like the ocean on a painfully clear day.

  He pulled me into a crushing hug, his arms encircling my rib cage and squeezing hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. I closed my eyes as I pressed my face into his chest, savoring the sensation while it lasted. Which was never long enough.

  Letting go of me, he turned to greet the other women at the table. “Evening, ladies.” His azure eyes twinkled, and his mouth tilted in a sultry smirk as his gaze traveled over all three of my friends. “How’s everybody doing?”

  “Great!” Kaylee chirped, blinking rapidly. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to bat her eyelashes or if it was more of a deer-in-the-headlights situation.

  “Better now.” Megan smiled brightly as she sidled closer to Wyatt, close enough that their shoulders brushed. “Where’s my hug?”

  “Right here.” Wyatt grinned as he leaned in to embrace her. It wasn’t as vigorous a hug as he’d given me. Instead, he stroked his hands up Megan’s back in an almost sensual caress as he turned his head to nuzzle into her hair. I heard him whisper something I couldn’t make out over the music playing over the speakers, and Megan let out a peal of laughter.

  Wyatt went around the whole table like that, passing out hugs and flirtatious comments calculated to make every recipient feel special. That was his gift—his ability to turn his charm on you and make you believe for one magical moment that you were the most important girl in the room. Even when you’d just watched him turn the exact same charm on every other woman in the room before you.

  They all ought to know better than to fall for it. Wyatt had the attention span of a gnat when it came to women. Actually, scratch that. Gnats were persistent as hell—unlike Wyatt. No woman had ever managed to hold on to him for longer than a few weeks, and most didn’t even rate more than one night.

  Yet here we all were, putty in his hands anyway.

  As I watched Wyatt brush Kaylee’s carefully placed hair off her shoulder, I scowled and downed another mouthful of beer to chase away the bitterness in my throat. My friends were so busy envying my friendship with Wyatt that they’d probably never considered I might envy them.

  At least they had a fighting chance. I would never be anything to him but his best friend’s tomboy little sister. Fun enough to hang out with, but forever beneath his romantic notice. I didn’t get sensual back caresses, hair nuzzles, or sweet nothings whispered in my ear. I got the same hearty hugs Wyatt gave my mom, who’d practically helped raise him, and my aunt Birdie, who’d been his preschool teacher. I probably ought to be honored by that, but it was hard when I’d been yearning to feel Wyatt’s lips on mine since I was old enough to understand what kissing was.

  Wyatt continued to chat up our table as we waited for the band to take the stage. He had his arms around Rain and Kaylee, casually holding them both against his sides, but his eyes kept jumping to Megan with a heated sparkle I’d seen too often to count. If I was a betting woman, I’d lay odds on Megan taking home the prize tonight.

  Once the band started playing, however, Wyatt peeled himself off his two sidekicks and came around the table to claim my hand. “Your first dance is mine,” he declared and pulled me toward the quickly filling dance floor.

  My body went into autopilot mode as I fit myself into Wyatt’s arms, my right hand in his, and my left hand resting on his shoulder. We inserted ourselves into the growing whirl of dancers as we’d done so many times before, his thigh brushing against mine as he glided me around the floor with an offhand grace.

  My parents used to bring me and my brother here almost every weekend of our adolescent years, and Wyatt was always around in those days. He and I had learned to two-step, waltz, and swing dance in each other’s arms.

  My stomach squeezed at the memory. Back then I’d still had dreams of turning Wyatt’s head, and every dance had left me flying high with hope.

  I knew better now. A dance was just a dance. A chance for Wyatt to show off his moves without committing himself in any particular direction. I had accepted that I’d never turn his head, because he was too busy trying to turn every other head in the room. The only reason he wanted me in his arms was to help him do it.

  We moved in unison as he spun me, just starting to get warmed up. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight,” I said once we were face-to-face again. “I was starting to think you’d found something better to do with your Saturday n
ights.”

  His gaze remained fixed somewhere over my shoulder as he grinned. “Never.”

  “It feels like I haven’t seen much of you in a while.” Almost three weeks, by my reckoning, which was unusual. If we weren’t bumping into each other at our usual haunts, he was turning up at my aunt Birdie’s house for a home-cooked dinner, or showing up at my place with my brother. Wyatt was always around, a permanent fixture in my life. It was odd that I hadn’t laid eyes on him in weeks. “It’s almost like something’s been keeping you busy.”

  For a second, I swore his smile slipped a little. But before I could be sure, he spun me into the sweetheart position, backing me up against his chest with my arms crossed in front of me. He followed up with a series of complicated spins and a behind-the-back pass before he pulled me into a standard dancing frame again.

  “I love dancing with you,” he said as we settled back into a simpler two-step rhythm. “It’s like you know what I’m gonna do before I do it.”

  I laughed, lightheaded from the spins, or maybe from the two beers I’d had before the dancing started. “That’s because I do, usually. We’ve been doing this since I was twelve. I know all your moves.”

  “Are you saying I can’t surprise you anymore?” His face pulled into an expression of mock offense.

  I let my gaze meet his, knowing he’d take it as a dare. “Maybe.”

  Eyes glinting almost violet in the pink and yellow lights above the dance floor, he lifted his arm and spun me into the center of the floor for a series of complex western swing combos, starting off with a princess dip to test my trust in him. My pulse jumped when he leaned me back, his strong arms taking all my weight as I lifted my feet off the floor and extended one leg toward the ceiling. After that we did a move called a sausage roll, and my stomach tightened as he slid me between his muscular thighs, my face passing just inches below the crotch of his jeans.