Authors: Lola Newmar
Bad start. Try again.
“Are you hungry or anything? I think there’s a burger joint coming up here pretty soon.” He turned to smile at her, but she kept her focus out the window.
“I lost my appetite,” she retorted.
Fuck, she’s really going to make me say it. Isn’t she?
“I’m sorry, sugar.” Rhett swallowed a lump of frustration as he urged himself to go on. “I was wrong.”
Scarlett turned to him, the hurt in her eyes slowly fading before she gave him a small smile. “That just about killed you, didn’t it?”
He chuckled as he watched the road in front of him, the anxiety slightly settling with her unspoken acceptance of his apology.
“Maybe.” He turned his head to her, and she playfully rolled her eyes, but he could still see the upturn of her cheek as she pretended to turn her attention back to the road to her right.
* * * *
Rhett was glad he’d planned ahead for moments like this. One thing Rhett was not was dishonest with himself, and he wasn’t blind to the fact he often tended to ruffle a few feathers with his blatant sexuality and crude humor. And Scarlett Rose was the toy Chihuahua down the street to his perverted monster of a Rottweiler. She may have been a tiny thing, but she faced him head-on as if she outweighed him by eight tons. Whether or not this was the smartest habit for her to possess was up for debate, but he had to give it to her. His blue-eyed city girl had more
cajones
than most grown cowboys he knew.
Her head snapped toward him, the clean scent of her hotel shampoo wafting through the truck cab. He turned the truck into a hidden path on the right. “Another detour, huh? Why do I get the feeling you’re more than familiar with every hidden spot from here to Knotty?” An eyebrow shot up suggestively.
Scarlett was right. He’d traveled back and forth to Dallas so many times in his twenty-six years that he’d found it a necessity to scout out a secret spot or two. He was a man who needed a
lot
of relief. He’d found his secret hiding spots had proven useful during the times he traveled with a female companion. Or not.
He shrugged casually. “I figured we could use a little recreational therapy after the long day we’ve had, don’t you think?”
Creeping just a few minutes farther into the woods, he put the truck in to park when he spotted the familiar beaten-down wooden fence in the near distance then hopped out. He was relieved to see Scarlett remembered to wait patiently for him to open her door. It may have been just a small thing, but he loved how masculine he felt every time he’d do something for her, even if it was so simple. Taking care of Scarlett made him feel like he had a purpose. And with her being the only strawberry girl within the contemporary generation of shape-shifters in the entire world, that purpose would soon gift him with as many human children they cared to have.
The sound of dried leaves crunching beneath his cowboy boots was one of very few things he heard as he pulled the passenger door open. Scarlett smiled wide as she took the hand he offered, her teeth a perfect row of white, which tended to make the contrast of her red lips that much more intense. Staring at those lips caused a pressured vibration in his temples, a clear indication his longhorns wanted to come out and play. He forced himself to focus on her sparkling-blue eyes to distract the beast.
“So word on the street says my little candy pants used to be a sharp-shooting child prodigy just a few years ago.” He unbuttoned his shirt but left it on. Then he reached into the bed of his truck to open the wide chest where he kept his silver-plated revolvers then turned to hand her one.
He heard her swallow as she stared at it for a long moment, uncertainty clearly etched in her features. “Um, that doesn’t look like the gun Leo let me shoot a couple of days ago.”
He smirked at her adorably inappropriate insecurity. “You were an Olympic contender with a shotgun. You competed against the biggest
talents in the world when you weren’t even old enough to buy Skoal.
I’m sure you can handle a little hand gun, darlin’.”
She stared up at him as she finally wrapped her tiny, pale fingers around the shiny weapon. He gave her an encouraging wink, and she smiled confidently in response. He loved the way he and his brothers were able to force her to look at herself in a different way. They all knew she was much stronger than she often gave herself credit for. As she inspected the beautiful gun, he began to search for some targets.
He hit the jackpot when he found a dry fire pit several yards away from the truck. The previous occupants had left behind several cigarette butts and about a dozen empty beer cans. He ran up ahead to position the beer cans along the top of the fence about a hundred yards in front of them. Once he was satisfied with their positions, he jogged back to where Scarlett still stood. He smiled at her when he caught her eying the hard muscles of his abdomen.
The cassette in his car radio rang the first few notes of “Hey, Good Lookin’,” and he turned to reach over into the open window to turn it up a few notches. When he turned back around, he was surprised to see Scarlett facing him. She was looking at him in admiration, strangely enough.
“I love when you sing,” she finally drawled with a flirty smile. It wasn’t until she’d pointed it out that he realized he’d been doing so. He watched her eyelids drift down, her thick lashes flat against her face, as her womanly hips moved fluidly from side to side. “You sound like an archangel in spurs pouring his blessed little heart out to his one and only.”
He cocked his head to the side, at first not quite sure he’d heard her right. What she’d just described was far from the man he actually was. He was no archangel, and he most certainly sucked pretty badly at pouring his heart out. The thought she saw any sort of potential in him made him a little proud, though.
Scarlett opened her eyes, but her hips continued to sway in the warm breeze. “This is a good tape. I like this one a lot.”
The amnesia seemed to have suppressed her previous music knowledge, but Rhett thought it made her even more fun. It was like having a sexy little alien who needed to be introduced to the common interests of his human culture. To his relief, she’d taken an instant liking to Dolly Parton when he’d first begun teaching her what he liked. Such a young woman who could appreciate the classics was a rare gem nowadays, and it warmed his chest to know they’d have something to share.
“I’m glad you like it, darlin’.” He stepped to her and reached over to turn the safety on her gun off. “It’s a very special album to me.” He remembered the way his daddy’s breath had smelled like bourbon when he came home drunk one night and gave it to him.
They both turned to face the lined-up beer cans, each one taking several steps away from the other before holding their guns up in the proper stances. His gun went off, and then he heard her shoot the one she held a second after. One can went down on each side.
“Doing good, darlin’?” He looked over at her, his cock immediately getting hard at the confidence she radiated as she lifted the gun back up with her small hands. There wasn’t a sexier sight than Scarlett Rose wearing that flimsy, short blue summer dress, one of the thin straps hanging off a pretty shoulder, as she held a deadly weapon in front of her.
“Doing good, sugar!” The pure joy was obvious in her sweet country voice. Another shot rang out, and another can went down. “Seems to come to me easier than I imagined.” She shot three more down then began reloading the gun with the bullets he’d rested on the tailgate. She looked away from reloading the gun for a brief moment to glance at him. “So was this tape a gift?”
He held the gun up and pulled the trigger. One more down. “One of my daddies gave it to me.” He watched Scarlett’s whole body turn toward him from the corner of his eye.
“How many daddies did you have?” she asked, sounding very much interested and genuinely curious.
He knew this conversation would come up sooner or later, but he and his brothers had purposefully avoided talking about their childhoods for the time being. They all loved their fathers deeply, but the wounds for some of them had never quite closed, especially for Devlin. But most of all, he knew the memory of their mother still haunted all seven of them, just as it had his dads in life. He remembered waving his chubby little four-year-old hand as he watched her walk out of their door and out of their lives forever. His dads never recovered from how their human mother abandoned them, and it didn’t take long before they’d all either died from heartbreak or drank themselves to death.
“I had four.” He hated the way his chest would burn with anger whenever he talked about them. The loyal son inside wanted to punch himself for the evil thoughts he had when he remembered any of his parents.
“Did they love you a lot?”
He briefly turned to look at her, and he could tell by her cheerful expression that she meant it in more of a rhetorical way. The gun hung at her side, her full attention awaiting his answer. He wasn’t sure how to soften the blow for her, so he just went for it the best he could.
“We’d like to think so.” He aimed at another can then shot. “But I assume they were just a little bad at showing it.”
He pulled his gun down and turned to her. Her smile faded as his words seemed to register. The area around her eyes flushed red, yet she didn’t cry. He saw her swallow as she turned to face the cans again. Another accurate shot, another can down.
He walked back to the truck and sat down on the lowered tailgate. Scarlett came to sit next to him, her gun resting demurely in her lap as she sat cross-legged facing him.
“I remember when Papa Wyatt came home late one night from the bar. He woke me up at three in the morning, saying he wanted to go on a horseback ride to clear his head a little and that he wanted me to go with him.” He smiled a little at the thought. “He was drunk, but I remember how special it made me feel that he’d chosen
me
out of the seven of us. I’d never felt so special. We rode for a good hour or two, and he told me stories about what it was like to be a boy in west Texas. He gave this tape to me when we returned to the ranch, told me I should keep it to remember that night.”
“And you always have,” she said, more in statement than question, and he could feel her eyes roaming over him as if looking to confirm her guess.
“Always.” He looked down when he felt her place her tiny hand on his thigh. Looking up at her as he took it in his, he returned her sympathetic smile. For several more songs, he just concentrated on the way that small hand felt in his, so soft and cool, a little bit of feminism in itself.
* * * *
She loved how he’d often give her a little story behind the songs blaring through the speakers. It was surprising to find he seemed to know quite a lot about music. When she’d thought about it, it made sense. Rhett was a very sensual man, and a man like him could appreciate the passion of rhythm. And from what she gathered as he offered fact after fact of music history, he was also a very smart man. According to him, many of the songs they’d listened to were written up to seventy years ago. That had her thinking this twenty-six-year-old young man was actually a bit of an old soul.
“I got another one you’d like.” He stood and walked around the truck, sending a smile over his shoulder when he looked back at her with excitement. The creases around his aquamarine eyes weren’t as deep as his oldest brothers, but she loved how all the brothers seemed to share that one adorable physical trait.
It didn’t take him long to settle back down beside her. As he sang, he pulled her bare legs over his lap and massaged them as they enjoyed the lovely afternoon. He’d never seemed so vulnerable as he did when he listened to his old records. Rhett had a voice gifted from up above, very deep and old South, seducing her body into a limp, sated state as she leaned back on her hands and gave herself over to it.
While he sang along to the poetic words of one called “Forever and Ever, Amen” by a supposedly-very-famous man named Randy Travis, she let her head fall back as she fantasized about Rhett actually singing
to
her, expressing his love for her without a hint of awkwardness as he’d serenade her into submission.
Opening her eyes, she watched him closely. He looked so happy-go-lucky as he swayed seductively in his seat, his fingers softly snapping on every third beat as he crooned each word, yet she wondered if she crossed his mind at all when he sang along. The thought of him singing words from his heart to her was so uncharacteristic it was almost laughable. She sighed. But it was a very nice thought, nonetheless.