Authors: Carolyn Brown
“What is this Chicken Fried place?”
“It’s a little café about two miles south of Ringgold. Serves breakfast and lunch and shuts the doors about three in the afternoon. Owner is about to retire. You want to go into the café business?”
“No thank you!”
Rye cut his eyes around at her. “You said that pretty damn quick.”
“Yes, I did. Right now I’m up to my ears in snapping alligators. I’ve got a very good job at the oil company in Tulsa and Derk is trying to edge me out of the promotion that I’ve worked my butt off for. I’ve got a watermelon farm that I’m having a devil of a time deciding what to do with because I can’t hardly bear to sell off what’s been in my family for decades, and besides, I love farming. So the answer is no, I do not want a café to run.”
“This Derk the man who’s trying to brownnose his way into your promotion?”
“That’s the one.”
Rye chuckled. “Believe me; bosses know when a person is just kissing ass to get ahead. You’ll get the promotion because you’ve worked hard for it.”
“Thank you.”
“You are quite welcome but that’s just a fact, darlin’.” There was road construction and he had to use both hands to drive. She slipped her hand onto his thigh and squeezed. His body began to respond so he reached down and held her hand tightly.
He nodded toward a neon cowboy sign when they passed the Longhorn Inn on the left-hand side of the road right after the “The Baptist Church of Henrietta Welcomes You to Henrietta” sign. “There’s Pearlita’s motel. Looks like she’s got a full house tonight. Wonder what’s going on?”
“I’ve been over here lots of times when I was a kid. Pearl would come to Terral and stay a night or two and Granny would let me visit her. I wonder if they’re having a fishing tournament.” She saw a man sitting out in front of one of the rooms with a rod and reel.
“Probably so. Wonder what will become of the motel when she really retires or drops like Granny did?”
“Pearl will probably inherit it. She’s always been Pearlita’s favorite and she was named after her so she’ll most likely have to make some decisions too.”
“Pearl is Colleen’s friend. She’s been to the house a few times. I can see her being your childhood friend. She’s sassy like you?”
“I’m Verline Lanier’s granddaughter and she’s Pearlita’s great-niece. We didn’t have a chance at being all syrupy sweet.”
“What does Pearl do these days?” Rye tapped the brakes to slow the truck down to the right speed to go through town.
“She works over in Durant, Oklahoma, at a bank. She’s got a degree in business finance but I don’t know what it is that she does actually. I think she teaches a couple of classes at the college at night but that was news from five years ago. Could be that she doesn’t do that anymore.”
Rye loved the sound of Austin’s voice. Even when she wasn’t making those little sexy noises as he undressed and kissed her.
“That must mean you two don’t stay in close touch?”
“We wouldn’t have even known each other if my grandmother and her great-aunt hadn’t been friends. And if Granny hadn’t been trying to find someone to keep me company while I was here. Pearl was… how do I explain Pearl?” She pondered.
Rye gave her a few minutes to think about her old summer friend.
“Kent’s boys, only worse!”
“You’re shittin’ me!” he exclaimed. Pearl hadn’t seemed like that to him when she visited Colleen.
“No, that’s the best way I can explain Pearl.”
“Examples?” he asked.
“One comes to mind instantly. We must’ve been about eight and Pearl came to stay a couple of days. Granny was busy with the watermelons and it was so hot that we could almost fry eggs on the metal cellar door. Yes, we tried. Granny caught us after we’d wasted a dozen eggs. Actually we didn’t waste them; we fed the half raw things to an old stray cat that had come up. We thought if we tamed her she might lead us to where she had kittens.”
“How’d you know she had babies?”
“Her boobs were sagging. But that wasn’t the story I was about to tell. I just wanted you to know how hot it was. It had been a dry summer so the river wasn’t very deep or wide. We begged Granny to let us go exploring on the riverbanks and she said that we could but not to get our clothes wet.”
He chuckled. “How you get around that?”
“We went skinny-dipping. Two little girls out there in the river splashing and having a big time. Granny threw a fit when she found out.”
“You tell her?”
“No, our hair was wet. She never thought we’d go all the way to the river. She figured we’d go about halfway and turn around and come back to the house. She fussed and fumed the whole time she washed the red mud from our hair. But that was Pearl. The two of us could get into the most amazing trouble.”
“Did you stay in touch when you went back home every summer?” He would have rather gotten a room at the Longhorn than eaten supper. Hell, he could have Austin for supper, midnight snack, and breakfast the next morning. But explaining to Pearlita what he was doing in her motel with Austin Lanier would make him stutter and blush at the same time.
Austin shook her head. “No, we were just summer friends.”
She remembered that last summer they’d spent a couple of days together. Fifteen years old. Pearl was dating. Austin wanted to date but Barbara said she was too young. There was a really hot Mexican boy working in the melons and they had both drooled over him. That had been a lifetime ago.
Rye had made reservations at the steak house and asked for a secluded table. The waiter seated them at a corner table with a burning candle in the middle. He laid menus in front of them and took their drink orders. When he returned with two beers in frosted mugs, Austin ordered a filet mignon, medium rare, baked potato, and house salad. Rye asked for a rib-eye with loaded baked potato and a house salad.
The waiter disappeared and Austin slipped a boot off under the table and ran her toes up the inside of Rye’s thigh.
“Be careful. There
is
a table cloth and I will crawl under the table and have my way with you,” he said.
The wicked twinkle in his eye said he wasn’t teasing and he’d really do it so she dropped her foot and grinned at him. “You were evil with those text messages.”
“So were you.”
“We should’ve eaten oyster stew and gone to bed in your king-sized bed,” she teased.
“Too late now. We’ve already ordered but I’m game for forgetting about the movie and going home,” he said.
“Me too,” she whispered and blew him a kiss across the table.
Stars twinkled like diamonds on a bed of black velvet when they left the steak house. A red rose bush in the flower bed in front of the restaurant put off a fresh intoxicating smell. Parking lot birds hopped around chirping to one another about their latest find, whether it was a dropped French fry or a chunk of dinner roll.
“It’s a beautiful night,” Austin said.
Rye pulled her close to his side. “Not as beautiful as you and it’s about to get even better.”
“Thank you. Let’s go home and have a glass of wine. I’m too damn full to make love right now and the night is young. Think we could put a movie into the DVD player and fool around until our food settles. You got anything interesting?”
He laughed out loud. Austin was so damn blunt that it was refreshing. After a meal like they’d just eaten it would take at least an hour of fooling around before either of them would want weight put on their stomachs. And as hot as it made him to think about her cute little naked fanny sitting on him, he rather liked the idea of fooling around. “How about
Eight Seconds
?”
“What’s it about?” She slid into the passenger’s seat and he shut the door.
“Bull riding. You’ve never seen it?” He put both arms around her and kissed her hard before he pulled his seat belt around his broad chest.
She shook her head.
“Then you have to see it. I’ve still got a bottle of Granny’s watermelon wine.”
“Is it a guy movie with blood, guts, and gore?”
“It’s based on a true story about Lane Frost, a real bull rider and all the trials he went through on his way to fame.”
“Now you’ve got my interest if it’s a true story. Is he pretty?”
“Well, I wouldn’t think so but he was a damn fine rider.”
“Was? As in he doesn’t ride anymore?”
“I’m not saying another word. You can decide if he’s any good or not.”
“But I don’t know a thing about bull riding. Will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Of course I will, darlin’.”
When they reached the house, she kicked off her boots, poured a glass of wine for each of them while he started the movie, and curled up on the sofa. His boots joined hers and he sat down beside her, a glass of wine in his right hand, his left arm thrown across the back of the sofa with his fingertips barely touching her shoulder.
He kissed her once but when the show started she got so involved in it, that her facial expressions mesmerized him. Halfway through the movie she looked up at him and asked, “Do all rodeo men commit adultery?”
“Not all of them.”
“Right now I don’t like Lane Frost so well.”
He picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips, nibbling on each one a few extra seconds. “It’s life, Austin. Bad things happen. You either get over them or let them take you into the gutter.”
By the end of the movie she’d forgiven Lane and cried when he rode his last ride. She buried her face in Rye’s shoulder when the credits started to roll. “He didn’t really die, did he? Please tell me he’s still alive and he and his wife have a dozen kids on a ranch like this one.”
“Can’t,” Rye said with a lump in his throat. No matter how many times he watched the movie, he was always stunned at the end.
“How can you ride bulls after that?” She sniffled.
“Just get on the old boy and hope I can make it eight seconds.”
She was going to sell the watermelon farm and never look back. She might not even come back to Terral when she left that week. She could make arrangements for payroll through the bank over the phone. Her heart would break if what happened to Lane ever happened to Rye. She might as well nip the whole thing in the bud right then as watch it blossom only to have him die before her eyes.
He picked her up and carried her back to his bedroom, laid her on the king-sized bed, and stretched out beside her, just holding her hand and looking deep into her eyes. He shifted until they were face to face, pressed against each other. He teased her mouth open with his tongue and tasted the sweetness. His kisses sent surges of desire through her body but she was determined to take it slow and enjoy every single minute of making love with him in a king-sized bed instead of the floor. She unfastened his shirt a button at a time and peeled it from his body. Running her hands over his back as he tasted her neck, her breasts, and started down toward her belly button as he undressed her. With the touch of his lips on her skin she forgot all about Lane Frost and her determination to never see Rye again.
“You taste like honey and warm butter all mixed together,” he mumbled.
“Mmmm,” was all she got out.
She couldn’t have spoken intelligent understandable words any more than she could have suddenly become fluent in an obscure dialect from a remote mountain tribe of Russian people.
“Your skin is so, so soft,” he said as he ran his tongue back up her midsection toward her neck.
“Oh, my God!” she yelled.
He rose up on his elbows and looked at her, writhing beneath him, rocking from one side to the other. “What?”
“Get off me. I’ve got to stand up,” she yelped.
“Why?”
She pushed him and he rolled off the bed, hitting his head on the nightstand on the way down. Her foot hit the floor and she tried to stand but stumbled over his leg and landed halfway out in the hall, still yelling and screaming like a half dead coyote.
He rubbed his head and brought back a hand streaked with blood. “What in the hell?”
“Charlie horse!” She panted as she pulled herself up by the doorframe.
“Well, thank God.”
“Thank God! My leg feels like it’s in labor and about to deliver an elephant? That’s real sympathetic of you.”
He looked up at her standing on one leg, naked as the day she was born and sexy as hell even with a cramp in her leg. “No! Thank God it’s not something horrible that I did to turn you off.”
“Darlin’, you could never turn me off! What is that on your head? My God, you are hurt, Rye.”
She limped over to the bedside table and turned on the lamp. The light showed the lump on the side of his forehead and a puncture wound that was oozing blood down across his cheek.
“We need to take you to the hospital right now. Is the nearest one at Nocona or do we go to Duncan? Ouch, ouch! Dammit! It’s not gone yet.” She hopped around on one leg while trying to pull on her underpants.
He felt the lump as he stood up. “I’m not going to a hospital over a bump on the head, Austin. See, I’m not even dizzy. It’s bumped out which means it’s not a concussion.”
He headed toward the bathroom with her right behind him, her underpants dragging along on one ankle. He flipped on the light and leaned in close to the mirror. A quick swipe with a washcloth showed that it was a hole put there by the corner of the nightstand. He’d had a tetanus shot last year when he got tangled up in some rusty barbed wire so he was good there.
With a little hop, she was sitting on the vanity with his head between her palms. “I’m telling you that could be dangerous.”
“And I’m telling you I’m caught up on shots and look, it’s almost stopped bleeding. It’s not dangerous but it damn sure spoiled that mood, didn’t it?”
She bit the inside of her lip to keep from giggling. Greta and Molly would love that story but she couldn’t tell it. They’d set the phone lines on fire telling Oma Fay and she’d tell Kent and Rye would never speak to her again.
“Proved to me that there was more ways for a bull rider to get killed than eight seconds on the back of a bucking bull,” she said.
It started as a chuckle and built up into a roar that had them both wiping tears. She held her ribs. He sat down on the edge of the tub and held the washcloth against his wound. When it settled into soft laughter, she got the hiccups and blushed.