Texas Gothic

33



it’s hard to walk while you’re kissing someone. Harder still to work a door handle. And that’s not a euphemism for anything dirty. So don’t ask me how Ben and I managed to get where we were, tangled up together on the bench seat of the truck, somehow working around the console and the steering wheel and the gearshift, and only once blowing the horn.

That’s not a euphemism, either.

I only know that when Ben was kissing me, the whole world retreated. I felt things I’d never felt before, in places I never knew were connected.

But I was pretty sure that whatever was buzzing against my thigh was not normal. For one thing, it was ringing.

Ben dragged his mouth away from mine and mumbled a curse that was a little shocking and kind of hot.

“Ignore it,” he said.

That was easy for him to say when his cell phone was rounding third base. If anyone got a home run tonight, I didn’t want it to be Verizon Wireless.

“I can’t,” I said when it buzzed again. “It’s in a really distracting place.”

He shifted his weight enough to reach into his pocket—I sucked in my breath at how high his hand grazed my thigh-took out the phone, and tossed it toward the dash. It fell to the floorboard and kept ringing.

“Problem solved.” And then he kissed me again, and I forgot about the ringing, until there was a chirp of a voice message and oh my God how was I even paying attention to that?

I turned my head, asking breathlessly, “Aren’t you going to see who it was?”

“No,” said Ben, his voice tickling the spot behind my ear. I shivered all the way to my toes, and I wanted to lose myself in that sensation, but a really unwelcome worry kept tugging me back to earth.

“What if it’s your mother?”

“It probably is. I don’t care.”

My insides melted at the rough edge in his voice. Mr. Responsible wanted to be with me so badly, he didn’t care who was calling. It was, quite possibly, the most flattering thing a guy had ever said to me. Verbally or nonverbally, and trust me, he was really eloquent with the nonverbal just then.

“What if something is wrong? It’s really late.”

He tensed, and it had nothing to do with me, or with the way his weight pressed me into the cushion of the truck seat or the way our shirts had worked up so that the skin of my stomach was so hot against the hard muscle of his.

“I don’t care.” He touched his forehead to mine, his voice frayed at the edges with a conflict that went beyond us and the cab of his truck. “I’ve given up my fraternity and my apartment and my band, and I’ve been wanting for three whole days to see your underwear again, and for just one hour I’m not going to let the ranch interrupt.”

That was really presumptuous, that he was going to get to see my underwear again. But considering he was kind of seeing my bra by Braille at the moment, maybe not so much of a stretch.

And God, if anyone understood about wanting to just be there, breathing the warm air that he exhaled, seeing how long we could prolong the moment before my head cleared or his did or we started arguing again … that person was me.

Which was why I couldn’t let it go. I wouldn’t have been there with him like that if he hadn’t been the uptight control freak that he was.

“What if it’s something with your granddad?”

And that was that. He drew back a fraction and looked at me. I could see him pretty well, thanks to a clear night and a country sky. It’s amazing how bright the stars can be, and all of them shone down on us just then, as we were caught between what we wanted to do and what we—both of us—knew had to happen.

“Dammit,” he said.

“I know.” Boy, did I know.

He pulled his hand out from under my shirt, letting his fingers trail over my stomach. I shivered and wished I could be an enabler.

“Where’s the phone?” he asked, tactfully looking for it while I straightened my clothes.

I found it on the floor and handed it over. He thumbed through the menu until he got to voice mail, and listened. In the cool glow of the phone, I could see the animation leech out of his face. The nagging worry that had tugged at the shirttail of my conscience bloomed into an ominous dread that pushed everything else out of my head.

“What is it?” I asked when the message was done and he clicked open the keypad to send a quick text.

“We have to go.” He dropped the phone into the console between our knees. “Granddad’s missing. Mom doesn’t know where he went.”

“Where could he have gone?”

He’d turned on the engine and put the truck in gear. “If I knew that, he wouldn’t be missing, would he?”

I didn’t appreciate the sarcasm, and that was not the tone you took with someone you’d been making out with just three minutes ago. The pitch of his brows, the tightness in his jaw—those I got. It was his grandfather. But I didn’t understand the walls going up, pushing me back.

Those worries, however, could wait. “He can’t drive, right? And none of the cars are missing? So he’d have to go on foot or on horse. How far could he go?”

“That’s just it. Mom doesn’t know how long he’s been gone. She’s got Steve looking in the stable to see if Grandpa took one of the horses. They’re also checking to make sure none of the guns are gone.”

My stomach dropped. It was an abrupt, elevator sensation, and I really thought, for a moment, that it might come back up again. I hadn’t thought about that. Aunt Hyacinth had a .22 rifle just because she lived in what was pretty much wilderness, but otherwise the Goodnights were not a gun-toting family.

“The gun cabinet stays locked, and it’s in the ranch offices, which are also locked. Granddad doesn’t have a key to either. Hasn’t for a while.”

The reasons for that would be pretty obvious. And I knew that Alzheimer’s patients could turn in a moment to depression—and Grandpa Mac definitely had some mood swings. But he wasn’t so far along he couldn’t almost pass for a forgetful curmudgeon.

“He’s probably headed over to Goodnight Farm.”

“Because you know him so well?” he snapped.

“Oh, don’t be an ass, Francis.” The words burst out of me, because what I wanted to say was Please don’t go back to being an ass because I like you, and I’m not the kind of girl who likes guys who are asses. “I’m trying to help. I really like your grandpa, and I can tell Aunt Hyacinth does, too. And he seems to really like to visit her.”

“Yeah, to chat about the Mad Monk and my dead grandmother.”

“Well, maybe she’s the only one who doesn’t act like he’s crazier than a sack of weasels because he talks to his departed wife.”

He was silent for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead. But I could tell he recognized his own description of my aunt, because I could see the muscle working in his jaw. So square, strong, and stubborn.

“I get your point.” The words seemed dragged out of him. And they were far from an apology. “Except that it’s not my grandma Em who sends him out searching in the pasture like he’s on a freaking snipe hunt. And even if he heads straight for your place, there’s miles of terrain to cross. You already know what that’s like, even without ghosts or grave robbers and people pretending to be Mad Monks.”

“Just drive,” I said. That was all he could do at the moment, and no amount of willpower would make the truck faster or the road straighter.

But when we reached the gate, I realized what I could do.

“Turn left,” I said.

Ben looked at me like I was crazy. “I need to get home to join the search.”

Right was the way to the McCulloch house. Left would take us to Goodnight Farm.

“We need Phin and Lila.”

“I need to get home to my mother and the search party.”

“Ben,” I said, letting my conviction color my voice. I turned in the seat so that I could look him in the eye. “Your mom has called in the cavalry, right? So they’re searching already, spreading out from your house. You lose nothing by coming at it from a different direction. Literally and figuratively. And Lila is a search dog. She has a vest and everything.”

It was an impassioned plea, rooted in logic. I could see him try to dismiss my points, and fail.

He closed his eyes and gripped the wheel. “He’s my grandpa, Amy. He’s not always himself anymore, but losing him completely … And after Dad …”

I touched his arm. “I know, Ben. And I know it’s a lot, on top of everything else you’ve seen tonight, but please believe that we can help.”

Without saying yea or nay, he put on his left turn signal. I exhaled for the first time in minutes, and reached for my phone to give Phin the heads-up. She answered on the first ring.