Love Drunk Cowboy

chapter 14

Austin looked down the furrows at the tiny plants turning the whole sandy field pale green. A sense of accomplishment filled her heart and brought a big smile to her face.

“Just look at them. Aren’t they beautiful,” she said.

“There will be lots of days between these first leaves and the final watermelon harvest but it looks good right now. There’ll be spraying, plowing, weeding, and lots of praying for rain to make them full and plump. All the snow they got in this area last winter helped so we’re looking for good things,” Felix said.

“Snow is better than rain?” Austin asked.

“Si! It puts the nitrogen into the soil.”

She wanted to learn, wanted to be there when they cut the first melon from the vine and hauled the first load into town to the watermelon shed where the semis came and hauled them away to be sold in supermarkets everywhere. For the first time she understood why her grandmother had farmed until her dying day and why she wanted her son to love it like she did.

“The boys and I will be working on the east end of the place today if you need us. Lobo is going to mow the yard this evening after work and Estefan has the vegetable garden looking very good. We’ll have green beans and little potatoes before long.”

“Thank you, Felix,” Austin said.

“We are grateful for work this year. We were worried that we wouldn’t find anything and our families would suffer for it.” He settled his straw hat on his head and left her standing at the end of the rows and rows of plants.

Will they have work another year? Verline’s voice was back inside her head.

Granny, I love it here but my career is in Tulsa, Austin answered.

Verline didn’t answer but Austin had the distinct feeling that she was still there as she drove into Ryan to do the banking business and meet Molly and Greta for ice cream.

“Sex. Two times! And ice cream all in twenty-four hours. Have I died and gone to heaven?” Austin talked to herself as she walked across the wide street from the bank to the drugstore.

Not heaven, honey. Terral! Verline answered.

“I didn’t figure you’d give up without a fight.”

I’m not fighting with you. It’s your farm and your decision. Do with it what you want. But don’t come whining to me when you are sixty years old and hate sitting behind a desk when you could be up to your elbows in watermelon juice making your own wine. And when you could have Rye and a dozen grandkids by then.

Austin darted the rest of the way across the street and pushed the door of the drugstore open. Molly and Greta both waved from the back.

“We saved you a seat and they’ve got fresh strawberries so we ordered three sundaes with whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry on the top,” Greta said loudly.

Austin pulled out a chair and was barely seated when the sundaes arrived. “How’d you girls know I’d be here?”

“You can’t hide that bright red sports car,” Greta said.

“We parked about the time you went in the bank,” Molly told her. “Now what’s this about Rye O’Donnell coming to see you real late last night?”

Austin’s face felt as if someone had just pushed her into a bonfire. “What?”

“Come on, honey, we’re talking Terral and Ryan. Together they might have a thousand people if they padded the census more than a little bit. We got gossips that would put them television soap operas to shame. ’Fess up. What happened? Did he miss you? Was that the reason you went back to Tulsa? Was the fire gettin’ too hot between you?” Molly fired questions more rapid than a machine gun spits out casings.

“We saw you at the rattlesnake festival with him and it looked pretty serious,” Greta said.

Molly pointed at the ice cream with her spoon. “Eat your ice cream ’fore it melts and figure out a way to tell us meddling old women to mind our own business while you cool off. You are blushing so bad it looks like your face is about to catch on fire. I betcha Greta could light a cigarette off the tip of your nose.”

Greta laughed. “That blushin’ stuff must come from your mother’s side. I never saw Verline blush in her life, not even when she got pregnant and…”

Molly slapped on the top of her hand with her spoon. “Shhh.”

“Don’t shush her. What about when Granny got pregnant?” Austin asked.

“Cat’s out of the bag now and it’s a helluva lot harder to put the damn thing back inside the bag than it is to let it out. We might as well go on and tell her. Besides, she’ll find the marriage license and her daddy’s birth certificate and figure it out herself,” Greta said.

Austin shook her head but the notion didn’t fly out of her ears. “Granny was pregnant when she got married?”

Greta nodded. “And Verline didn’t blush or fret about it, neither. She was eighteen and Orville was nineteen. Verline’s momma said that if she was the first one to get pregnant before she got married then we’d take her to the river and drown her right then. And if drowning her would guarantee no other young girl would mess around before they got a ring, then we’d toss her off the bridge in a burlap bag tied to a rock. But it had happened back before Jesus was ever born and would keep right on until the end of the world. Wasn’t the same story with Orville’s momma. She had a fit. Swore that Verline didn’t even know who the baby belonged to and wasn’t about to let Orville marry a cotton farmer’s daughter.”

“Cotton?”

“Yes, honey, fifty years ago we raised cotton down in these parts more than anything else, and Verline was the only daughter of a cotton farmer. Orville’s daddy was a big shot on the railroad and they lived down in Ringgold. His momma had come from back east.”

“Hampton, Virginia,” Molly said. “And God Almighty, but that woman liked to put on airs. She even wore white gloves to church on Sunday. Said her ancestors come across the waters on the Mayflower. Lord, we didn’t care if they walked across them waters but she took great pride in being a Mayflower woman.”

“And this would be my great-grandmother?”

“Guess it would since it was your granddad’s momma,” Molly said. “Verline and Orville had only been married a few months when Verline’s daddy dropped dead with a stroke out in the cotton fields. So she and Orville went to live on the property so she could help her mother. Orville had a real good job by then and he built that house for Verline. Grandma lived where the hog lot and garden is still at, down at the end of the property, in a house that was about the same size. She and Verline ran that place until she died. By then they’d already give up the cotton and started watermelons.”

“And she adored your daddy. Not as much as Verline but she did love that boy. She died right after you were born,” Greta said.

“Granny never talked about her.”

“Verline always set her course for straight ahead and didn’t dwell much on the past,” Molly said. “Now enough about that. Tell us what Rye was doing at your house last night.”

“A woman don’t kiss and tell.”

“If that didn’t sound just like Verline. We tried to get her to tell us about s-e-x when she got pregnant so we’d have an idea what it was like. You know, back in them days folks didn’t talk about such things. Not even women when they was all by themselves in a kitchen with the windows and doors closed. But she wouldn’t tell us a thing.”

Austin kept eating. If her grandmother had been as attracted to Grandpa Orville as Austin was Rye, then it was no wonder she got pregnant. Hell’s bells, in those days they didn’t tell girls a thing about birth control. Austin wasn’t even sure they had such a thing back then. She stopped eating and thought hard… she hadn’t used any protection last night. Dammit! She’d have to be more careful next time.

Next time!

That put some extra kick in her adrenaline.

“If you won’t tell us what went on last night, at least tell us what went on up in Tulsa.”

“Okay, it was a hectic week. I worked late every night so I’d be ready to leave yesterday. There’s a man there named Derk who wants my promotion and he’s lobbying behind my back for it.”

“Give it to him and move down here. We’ll adopt you,” Greta told her.

“My mother is terrified that I’m going to do just that. But I went to college for a business degree in management and I’ve got a fantastic job with a promotion in line that’s out of this world for a thirty-year-old woman.”

“Can it make your little heart go wild at night? Can you wake up in its arms? Can you argue and fight with it and then make love to it?”

Austin shook her head.

“Then kick it out in the road and tell it to go to hell and live down here,” Molly said.

Austin finished off the last of her ice cream and licked the spoon clean. “I’m not making a decision of any kind right now.”

Greta poked Molly on the arm. “At least she’s not turning us down flat.”

“Where there’s hope there’s a will.” Molly grinned. “Now get on out of here. I understand you got a date and he’s pickin’ you up at six. Don’t be sittin’ here with us old women when you need to be gettin’ all pretty, and don’t forget to shave your legs.”

Austin cocked her head to one side.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not so old that I don’t remember that men folks like to run their hands up a nice slick thigh,” Molly said.

“How did you know I’ve got a date?”

“Rye told Kent that they were callin’ it quits at five o’clock because he’s got a date with you tonight. Kent told his mother who called my neighbor because she’s Kent’s momma’s cousin and told her. Then the neighbor came over and I was at the beauty shop gettin’ my hair cut and curled up so she told Greta who was waitin’ for me to get finished so we could ride down here together. Greta called Pearlita but Kent’s momma done already called her by that time and she already knew all about it. She’s jealous as hell because she really wanted her great-niece, Pearl, to fall for Rye. Now she’ll have to pick out one of the other O’Donnell men and Rye is the prettiest one.”

Austin pushed back her chair. “Good Lord! Doesn’t anyone have anything better to do than gossip?”

“Probably but this is a hell of a lot more fun. Use some baby oil on them legs when you get done shavin’ them. Makes them all shiny and Rye won’t be able to keep his hands off them. We’ll expect a full report next Friday unless you want to talk and then you can call us any old time,” Greta said.

“Were you two wild in your younger days?” Austin asked.

“We were later bloomers than Verline but when we did bloom, honey, we made up for lost time,” Molly answered.

“Tell me that story next week?”

“We’ll tell you a story every week you make it for ice cream. Maybe not that one but we guarantee a good one,” Greta said.

***

Austin dressed that evening in a pastel plaid sundress that she’d bought when she and her mother went shopping. Barbara had declared that she was wasting her money because she’d never wear the dress but Austin purchased it and the pink knit cotton cardigan sweater that was shown with it. She straightened her hair, slapped on a bit of blush, and touched up her eye shadow.

All that was easy but then it came time to decide what shoes to wear. She had white leather flat sandals that were very comfortable, pink high heels that made her freshly shaven legs with baby oil on them look very shapely, and her cowboy boots. Rye knocked on the door and she had a high heel on one foot, a boot on the other, and carried the sandals in her hands when she opened it.

“Wow! You look handsome enough to…” she stammered.

“And you are beautiful enough to…” He met her halfway across the floor and wrapped her up in his arms. She dropped the sandals on the floor and wrapped her arms around his neck. When she leaned back his eyes were closed and his lips were already zeroed in on hers. She shut her eyes and got ready for the jolt. She was not a bit disappointed.

Finally, she broke away but he kept an arm around her waist.

“Which one?” She pointed at her feet.

“Boots. Nothing sexier than a woman in cowboy boots and a pretty dress.”

She kicked off the high-heeled shoe and went back to the bedroom for her other boot. He followed right behind her, slipping a hand up her dress and cupping her fanny.

“Checkin’ to see if you are going commando tonight,” he teased.

“Are you?”

“I’m not tellin’. You’ll have to find out for yourself. Just remember that I might be the whole time we are having dinner.”

“Where are we going?” She gasped when his hand moved under the elastic of her bikini underpants and she felt a calloused hand on bare butt.

“Steak house over in Wichita Falls. Then a movie or maybe to a honky tonk to do some dancing.” He bent down and kissed her bare fanny.

The fiery heat of his lips on her left cheek made her suck air.

What if I’d rather just go straight to a sleepover in your big king-sized bed?

“Enough of that or we’ll never get out of this room,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am!” He teased her mouth open with another kiss.

She managed to get the other boot on between kisses and then he picked her up and carried her to the pickup, settled her into the seat, shut the door, and whistled all the way around the truck.

You idiot! that voice inside his head said. You know down deep in your heart that she’s never going to leave Tulsa. Pull them reins in and put a halt to this.

He got into the truck and looked over at her sitting not three feet from him. He flipped the console back and patted the seat beside him. “Slide over here beside me.”

When she was plastered next to his side, he put a hand on her knee, then slid it up to mid thigh and let it rest there as he drove with the other one.

She threw her left hand up over the back of his seat and toyed with his hair.

“Next weekend starts the rodeo season with the Rodeo and Real Texas Festival in Mesquite, Texas. We’ll be down there all weekend from Friday morning until Sunday morning,” he said. Her hands felt like hot embers in his hair.

“Do you stay down there or drive back and forth?” She felt like someone had stuck a straight pin in her helium balloon. One minute it was flying higher than the clouds. Now it was tangled up in tree branches.

“We have reservations for the whole season at the Hampton Inn right there beside the Resistol Arena. That way we can keep an eye on the bulls. Raylen and Dewar do some team roping and bronc riding.”

“Do they bring horses from your folks’ ranch?”

“Momma doesn’t raise rodeo stock. Her horses are bred to race.”

“You ride?”

“I ride bulls. But not at the Resistol Arena. It would be a conflict of interest for me to provide the bulls and ride my own animals.”

“Why do Raylen and Dewar ride horses and you ride bulls?”

“I have no idea. Difference in brothers, I guess.”

“What about Gemma and Colleen? Do they rodeo?”

He slowed down and swung right onto Highway 82 toward Wichita Falls. “Gemma rides bulls in the lady’s division but it’s not a conflict for her to ride my bulls. Only for me to ride them. Colleen used to do some barrel racing but she broke her leg a few years ago and gave it up. That does not mean that she won’t be there to cheer on Raylen and Dewar and to check out the cowboys.”

“Your parents go to the rodeos too?” His hand had moved upwards a few inches. She couldn’t stop him, but if it didn’t stop, she was going to make him stop in Henrietta at a motel and forget about food.

“We’ve got a block of rooms on reserve from one year to the next. Momma loves it. Two nights a week from the end of May to the end of August.”

“I thought you said it starts next weekend.”

She was already missing him. She’d get into Terral on Thursday night and he’d leave Friday morning, returning Sunday morning after she’d already gone home to Tulsa.

“That’s the Texas Festival rodeo. It’s kind of like the hot pepper popper appetizer before they bring out the steaks at dinnertime. Gets the folks in the mood for the summer. The schedule for the summer is in the glove compartment. It tells when it’s just a rodeo and when it’s a rodeo with a concert afterwards.”

She removed a stapled set of papers. “Looks like they have a concert once a month. Oh, my! Cross Canadian Ragweed and Tracy Lawrence are among the performers.”

“Want to go? Gemma doesn’t come down until Friday night because she’s got appointments, and now that she’s putting in her own shop down by the Chicken Fried Café she’ll be real busy on Fridays. Colleen works Friday night and comes down on Saturday morning. You could catch a ride with either one of them. We’re home by early afternoon on Sundays.”

“Sounds like fun. Maybe I could work things around to go. When does Gemma begin to work on her shop?”

“She’s ordered the chairs and sinks and got a plumber coming to put everything in this week. She’s painting the inside herself and putting a tanning bed in the back room. Folks in Ringgold and the surrounding area have to go all the way up to Ryan or to Bowie for haircuts and tanning right now.”

“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.

“Mother says I can’t hiccup, sneeze, or burp like a lady.”

He patted her leg with his free hand. “Shall we try again?”

“Hell, no! My leg still hurts.”

“Then get dressed and I’ll take you home.”

“Not until I see that head better and bandage the wound. You can’t go to bed like that. What if you bumped it in the night? What have you got in the medicine cabinet?” She didn’t wait for him to tell her but opened the doors and checked for herself. “Besides six boxes of condoms?”

“Man has to be ready.”

“Iodine. Spray antiseptic. Triple antibiotic ointment.” she said as she lined the bottles and tubes up on the cabinet. “Band-Aids.”

“Just slap a Band-Aid on it.”

“I’m the nurse tonight. You are the patient. Put your hands over your eyes and close them as tight as you can.”

“The nurse at my doctor’s office isn’t naked while she treats me,” he said.

“I’m fixin’ to spray this stuff so you’d better close your eyes.”

He did.

She sprayed.

He yelped.

She blew on the burn.

Her warm breath created a fire in the rest of his body that made his wound feel like a warm candle compared to an out-of-control Texas wildfire.

“Okay, now the ointment and then the Band-Aid. What are you going to tell Kent when he asked what happened to your head?”

“I don’t know. What are you going to tell your momma on Sunday when she asks about that big old hickey on your neck?”

She spun around to look in the mirror and sure enough there was a bite mark the size of Rye’s sexy mouth right there below her ear. She’d have to wear high-necked blouses all next week to cover the thing up or else Barbara would demand details.

“That I was in bed with a sexy cowboy and he was making wild passionate love to me when I got a Charlie horse in my leg. And that if that hadn’t happened, I’d have a matching one on the other side and when she starts breathing again, I’ll ask her if she’d like to see the one on my inner thigh.”

“Okay, then I’m telling Kent the truth.”

“You wouldn’t!”

He smiled. “Kiss me and I’ll be good.”

She leaned forward and he wrapped his arms around her naked body. His lips met hers in a searing passion that almost, but not quite, made them forget the bedroom fiasco.

“Promise you won’t tell Kent. I don’t think I could face him,” she said.

“And you think I could face your mother if you told her that story about the hickey?” He teased her mouth open for another fiery kiss.

“I’d better take my sore leg home and you’d better get some sleep. We’ve both got hard work tomorrow and it’s past midnight. Walk me to the door. I can find my own way across the road.”

“I’ll walk you home. Granny Lanier would resurrect and tack me to the cellar door if I wasn’t a gentleman.”

He pulled his boots on after they were dressed and she carried hers as they walked across the dew-kissed grass in his yard, the rough dirt road, and then the sweet wet grass in her yard. He kissed her at the door so hard that she forgot all about the cramp in her leg and pulled him inside the house. He backed her up against the bar separating the living room and kitchen and continued to erase all memories of a failed attempt in his bed. Finally, she broke away and using her forearm brushed every knickknack off the bar. Ceramic animals met their death when they landed on the floor in a clatter. She peeled his shirt over his head and he removed her dress and set her up on the countertop. She laid back and motioned toward him.

They’d had the foreplay and the teasing so he shed his clothes, peeled off her panties, and stretched out on top of her. She was more than ready so he slipped inside and she groaned. The cabinet top was hard as a rock but she couldn’t say a word, not until that deep aching need was satisfied and she was wallowing in the afterglow again, pressed up to his side with his arm thrown around her.

They’d had a king-sized bed, big enough for sumo wrestlers to roll around on and it was a disaster. They’d had a room full of knickknacks and barely enough floor room to have sex without bumping into something and it worked fine. Now tonight they’d had a cabinet top not even as wide as a twin-sized bed and managed not only to have sex but to get comfortable in each other’s arms afterwards.

Austin would bet her under britches on the fact that her grandmother was meddling from the other side of eternity to fix things the way she wanted them to be.