Authors: Carolyn Brown
I’d rather be kissing you or making love to you under the stars than hearing about your fancy-pants aunts.
“And you? You going to grow up to be a vegetarian?”
“Hell, no! I like steak too well to be a vegan. When will it be ready?”
Holy shit! Either Terral or watermelon wine is rubbing off on me! I’m cussin’ just like Granny!
“Five minutes. I’ll bring out the salad and bread. The potatoes are already done. Would you please refill our wine glasses while I get it on the table?”
He carried out a salad in a clear crystal bowl with a hinged plastic fork and spoon stuck in the middle. “Granny gave me her recipe for dressing. I hope you like it because I’ve already added it to the salad.”
“The oil and vinegar with all the seasonings?” Austin asked.
“That’s the one.” He put a hand on her shoulder and set the salad on the table. He’d like to forget supper, take her to bed, and touch her body all over at least a dozen times.
“You’ve got to write it down for me. I love that dressing and never even thought to have her copy it for me.”
“It’s in her recipe book. The loose-leaf binder up in the cabinet above the microwave where she keeps her cookbooks, all except for her wine secrets. They’re on the computer in the wine cellar.”
He set a small bowl in front of each plate on the table, opened the grill lid, and stuck a fancy fork in each steak. “Looks done.”
“What is that thing?”
“A meat fork. It shows when they are medium rare, rare, or well done,” he said.
And if you stuck one in me, it would register off the chart with heat.
“Handy looking little thing. If I ever buy a house and get a grill, I’ll have to purchase one of those.”
“You have a house right across the street so I guess we need to make a trip to Walmart and buy you a meat fork.”
“You know what I mean.”
“So you don’t own your home in Tulsa?”
“I rent an apartment.”
“I couldn’t live like that. All scrunched up with neighbors so close they could hear…” he stopped before he said “bedsprings.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Hear what?”
“A beer burp,” he said quickly and plopped a steak in the middle of her plate and one on his. Then he shifted foil wrapped potatoes beside them and made a hasty trip back inside to bring out a loaf of French bread he’d heated in the oven. “It’s not homemade. I don’t do so well with bread so I just buy it or pop a can open.”
“I’m hungry enough that I might even eat the wrapper.”
“Well, saw off a piece of that Angus and tell me how you like it.”
She cut a bite-sized piece and put it in her mouth. “Mmmmm,” she said the whole time she chewed.
The only thing better would be a long romp between the sheets with you. God! Where are these thoughts coming from? I bet they aren’t coming from God. More likely from Lucifer who set up shop in my brain from the minute I figured out you weren’t a seventy-year-old man with a gray moustache.
“So you like it?”
“It’s wonderful. If my aunt ever came down here and ate your steak they’d convert to carnivores and cowboys.”
“Now that’s the best compliment I’ve ever had.”
“Oh! My! God! This bread is…”
“Good? Bad? Or what?” He frowned.
“As good as the steak. What did you do to it?”
“That’s my secret. I whip real butter and like the good KFC Colonel does to his chicken, I add herbs and spices. And you won’t find the recipe in Granny’s cookbooks. I don’t give it away.”
She blushed. “And what happens if a woman wants bread and you don’t want to give it to her?”
“We still talking about this bread?” His grin widened.
“Of course.”
“Then I suppose she will simply have to go hungry.”
A smile tickled the corners of Austin’s wide mouth as she ate her dinner. She chewed slowly even though she was so hungry she wanted to wolf it all down and then fight him for what was left on his plate.
“Tell me how you came to live in Terral, anyway?” she asked.
“My mother’s brother, Uncle Terrance, lived out in west Texas. He’d inherited a farm from one of their uncles back when he was about twenty. Long story short, he was out rounding up cattle one day and was coming down a small rise when his horse tumbled and his foot hung up in the saddle. He couldn’t get out and the horse rolled on him. A rib pierced his heart and he died instantly.”
“I’m sorry. Were you close to him?”
“I went every summer and stayed a couple of weeks with him. When I was a teenager I worked summers for him. I was twenty-five when he died and he left everything he owned to me. I didn’t want to live in west Texas so I sold his ranch and used the money to buy this one. There was an old house sitting right here but I tore it down, used the same electric and water lines to hook up my trailer, and moved his cattle all up here.”
“So you just raise Angus?” Anything to keep her mind off that broad chest and the barbed wire tat on his arm.
“That’s what I raise for beef cattle. I also ride bulls and keep rodeo stock and in the summer I’m in Mesquite, Texas, every weekend making a few dollars with them,” he said.
“Did your Uncle Terrance do the rodeo stuff too?” Keep him talking about cows and bulls. Surely that wouldn’t conjure up visions of her cheek lying on that barbed wire tat.
Rye nodded. “Yes, he did. Only he was a bronc rider like Raylen. I learned to pick out good bulls for rodeo from him and he taught me a lot.”
“How to make this bread?” She smiled brightly.
Rye’s eyes twinkled. “You are a sly one but it won’t work, Austin Lanier.”
“Never underestimate me, Rye. I’m used to getting what I want whether it’s by hard work or plain old good luck,” she told him.
“And what do you want?”
“The recipe for what you dose up the butter with for this bread.”
“Good luck. You’ll need it.”
“Fair enough. So you moved here ten years ago. That was when you were twenty-five. What did you do before that?”
“Rode a few bulls. Finished high school. Went to college.”
“What did you study?”
“Agribusiness. Finished college. Spent a year out on Uncle Terrance’s place and decided I didn’t like it out there. Did a few rodeo rounds but I’m not as good as Dewar or Raylen. Made a few dollars though. Worked at an agribusiness center in Plano for a year but hated the city and couldn’t wait to come home every Friday night. Was saving to buy my own place. Living cheap. Driving an old truck. Then I had the good luck to have a quick buyer on the west Texas property and I bought this place. Not much exciting. Just plain old living. Now tell me about you?”
“You already know about me. Granny kept you well informed. You said so yourself. Why did you choose a barbed wire tat?”
“It’s a long story. Only Gemma and I know the real reason.”
She waited.
“Okay. My girlfriend dumped me. I was drunk and I decided to get a tat to remind myself never to trust another woman. On my left arm because that’s where the vein is that runs from the finger to the heart according to the old wives’ tale about why we wear wedding rings on our left hands.”
“Why barbed wire?”
“At the time I decided to stretch barbed wire around the vein so that no woman would ever hurt me again. It was a symbol to never let anyone near my heart again.”
“Have you?”
“Not yet,” he lied. “How about you? Fellers?”
“A few.”
“Serious?”
“A couple.”
“Ever lived with one?”
She shook her head. “Never got that serious.”
“Why? Are they stupid?”
“I tend to turn men off.”
He cocked his head to one side and stared at the beautiful woman sitting across the table from him. Dark hair floating like strands of silk to her shoulders, eyes the blue of a summer sky with thick lashes, lips that begged to be tasted on an hourly basis. Were all the men in Tulsa brain-dead?
She took a deep breath and went on, hoping that she didn’t get tangled up in her words. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten tipsy and wasn’t sure what might happen.
“You’d think I was a blonde. You’ve heard all those blonde jokes. Well, most men seem to expect that kind of mentality from me. Mindless stupidity. They want a robot that looks like a movie star and performs in the kitchen like Rachael Ray and in the bedroom like a whorehouse madam. By the second date they realize I’m none of the above and they walk me to the door, give me a peck on the cheek, and I never hear from them again.”
He finished the last bite of steak and asked, “And the two who did call back?”
“One in college. We were in our rebellious years and that was our connection. When I settled down to study for my master’s he went on to the next rebellious girl. The other was a workaholic just like me. We had everything in common on a business plane but no actual vibes on a physical level. You’d make any woman a wonderful wife the way you can cook. You think you’ll ever find a woman you can trust?”
“Never know. I might. I did once but Granny was too old for me. She said so herself when I proposed.” Rye reached over to a chair pushed up beside the grill and touched a button on the top of a portable CD player. A country piano and drumbeat started then Hank Locklin began singing “Please Help Me, I’m Falling.” He stood up and held out his hand. “May I have this dance, please, ma’am.”
“Dinner and dancing too. This
is
a date,” she said.
“Yes, it is. Did you have a doubt that it was?”
She shrugged and melted into his arms, her face on his chest where she could hear his heart doing double time. She started with one hand around his neck and the other in his hand. Before Hank finished the first song and George Jones began singing, “Walk through this World with Me,” she had both arms around his neck and he had her hugged up to him with his hands on the small of her back. The porch became a dance floor and the deck the best honky tonk she’d ever set foot inside.
“Where did you find a CD like this?”
“One of those things on television. You know those ‘get this for only nineteen ninety-nine—but wait! There’s more!’ Well, I ordered this box called
Lifetime of Country Romance
. It’s all the oldies.”
They danced through another song and then Willie Nelson began singing “Georgia on My Mind.” She and Rye were swaying and moving their feet very little by then. She would have gladly stayed in that vertical position until eternity. It was peace wrapped in wanton desire; heat and angel wings all rolled into one.
Rye was afraid to stop dancing for fear she’d go home, and he didn’t want to ever let go of her. Willie sang about how an old sweet song kept Georgia on his mind. Well, that CD would always put Austin on his mind. He shut his eyes and inhaled the sweet coconut smell of her shampoo.
“Tired?” he asked.
“Not at all. I haven’t danced in years. Is that ‘Johnny and June’? I haven’t heard this song in years,” she said.
“It’s ‘If I Were a Carpenter.’ Someday I’ll get the family to sing it and we’ll dance on the grass in our bare feet,” he said.
His warm breath on her neck weakened her knees and made her glad she could lean on him. “Oh, my Lord, is that Ray Price? Daddy loved him. Momma hates country music so it was a fight in our house. Daddy finally kept his music in the den and listened to it after she went up to bed.”
She leaned back when the song ended and looked up at Rye. His eyes were all dreamy and soft and she was drawn to them like a moth to blazing flame. It was a dangerous situation and the closer she got the hotter the fire, but it was so intriguing she had to see what it was all about. Her gaze had shifted to his lips and hers parted slightly just thinking about a long, lingering steamy kiss.
Rye could have gone swimming in her crystal clear blue eyes. Hell, he could have gone skinny-dipping in them and stayed there until his hair turned gray. He knew he was a goner when he looked at her lips. If it had meant hanging from the nearest oak tree for kissing her, he’d have put the noose around his neck and gotten ready to hear his neck snap.
The kiss was a completely out of control wildfire. Austin couldn’t hear for the buzzing in her ears. She parted her lips and nipped his lower lip gently, tasting the remains of the steak and watermelon wine. She felt as if she were drowning and couldn’t breathe and she didn’t give a damn. Drunk. Sober. Somewhere in between or over the top, it didn’t matter. She belonged in his arms and his lips belonged on hers. Simple as that.
Rye’s heart was thumping in his ears like a bass drum. His tongue eased past her lips and tasted watermelon wine. It was even headier than what he’d drunk out of the glass. He’d hit the repeat button and the CD started over again with Hank Locklin asking her to close the door to temptation. Well, it was damn sure too late for that to happen. If Austin closed the door to temptation now, he’d kick the damn thing down with his boot heel.
He picked her up like a bride and carried her into the house where they both collapsed on the sofa. In between heart-stopping kisses, he untied the knot in the shirt and ran his hand up her naked back, hugging her up against him so tight she could barely breathe.
“We shouldn’t,” she whispered.
“I know,” he answered but didn’t stop.
His callused hands touching her bare skin caused a flooding desire that she couldn’t and didn’t want to stop. She didn’t care if they shouldn’t; there was no way she wouldn’t, not at that point. She could feel the heat and hardness of his desire pressing against her belly and she knew she was driving him as crazy as she felt. Her panties were so wet she wanted to squirm right out of them and as she ground her hips against him a moan escaped her lips and in that moment his bare hand teased its way up her spine and his fingers fumbled with the fastening of her bra.
Her skin was silky satin to his rough hands. In a flash he understood addicts if they wanted drugs as badly as he wanted to touch every inch of her body. He was unhooking her bra and panting against her throat when the phone rang.
“Ignore it,” she said breathlessly.
He tasted her earlobe. “I intend to.” She threw her head back to give him access to her throat and felt his tongue rasping against her collarbone as their hips pressed hard against each other.