She pushed farther into him, twisted her neck and kissed his chest then rested her cheek there again and murmured back, “Thank you, honey.”
“You have that, feel safe in it,” he told her. “But just to say, you need to talk shit out, even if you’re pissed at me and we got something to work through, hit me with it. I’m here. I’ll listen. If you’re talking to me, snapping at me or yelling at me. I’ll listen. And we’ll get to the other side.”
To that, she didn’t kiss him.
She turned her head and nuzzled her face against his skin like a sleepy cat or a newborn baby.
Johnny’s chest constricted and only did it more when she settled with her cheek back to his chest and whispered, “Okay, h?schen.”
She remembered.
She remembered what his grandmother called him.
And she gave him that back.
He was staring at the TV and not seeing a thing, just trying to remember how to breathe.
When Ranger licked his wrist it came back to him and Johnny murmured, “Right, boy. Down.”
Without delay, Ranger slid with a dog groan down the side of the bed and disappeared.
“Want your wine?” Johnny asked Iz.
“In a sec,” she answered.
He started tracing patterns on her hip and the cheek of her ass.
She sighed and curled in closer.
This was more like it.
Johnny smiled at the TV.
Then he watched a great program cuddled in bed with his woman.
A New Member
Johnny
“YOU’RE GOING TO do what?”
Johnny wasn’t altogether there.
It was the next morning and they both needed to leave. Him, to go deal with the horses, her, to go to work.
Ten minutes ago, he had heard her heels on his floors as she walked down the hall to appear in his kitchen fully dressed for work.
He turned from scrambling some eggs for her to see Iz in a navy dress that hit her at the knee and had short sleeves.
The thing about it was, it hugged her figure close and had a stripe of sheer navy across her upper chest and another one a couple of inches above her hem taking class and making it sexy.
She was also in beige pumps with spiked heels that looked professional but still called to him to fuck her.
Even though he had that overwhelming desire, since they had to get their shows on the road, he instead launched into his plans for her sister while scraping her eggs on a plate with the toast and bacon he’d made her, handed it to her and made his own plate then stood there shoveling it in while telling her how things were going to go.
She held her plate in front of her while he did this, her eyes on him getting bigger and bigger and he vaguely noted she’d quit eating halfway through him talking. She was just standing there, holding her plate and staring at him. But he needed to get her down with this so they could talk to Addie about it, and when they did, both of his girls could have a couple weighty things off their minds.
The problem was, throughout all this, all he could see was Iz in that dress and those shoes, and in the back of his mind he was thinking about what he’d do to her in them, so he wasn’t paying close attention to her eyes getting bigger and bigger and her not eating.
“I’m paying for the attorney,” he answered her question.
“She won’t let you do that, Johnny,” she told him.
“We’ll talk to her about it, I’ll state my case and we’ll see,” he said, taking the last bite of his toast.
“No. Really. She just won’t let you do that,” she said.
“She refuses, then it’ll be a no-interest loan. We can work out a payment schedule after she’s set that’s comfortable for her. But in the meantime, she doesn’t have to worry about it.”
“She might have a problem with that too,” Izzy replied.
He picked up his last piece of bacon and said, “That’s where you come in.”
“I’ve not been really successful with talking Addie into things she doesn’t want to do. Case in point, I told her to break up with Perry about seven hundred and ten times before he asked her to marry him. And I pleaded with her nine hundred and ten times not to marry him. You can see how that went.”
“Let’s give it a shot,” he suggested.
“You have properties?”
He guessed with the sudden change of subject they were going to give it a shot so he nodded, chewed the last bite of his bacon and put his plate in the sink to run water over it.
“Plural?” she asked, sounding weirdly choked.
Not having her in her sexy work getup as his visual, his mind snapped back to the present and slowly he turned to her to see her standing there with her plate of half-eaten food held up in front of her.
“Yes,” he said deliberately, wondering why she was looking at him the way she was looking at him—like he’d sprung a second head and she didn’t know whether to stand there and scream in terror or run away as fast as she could.
“How many?” she asked.
“Two,” he answered. “Well, three, counting the mill. Actually, four but it’s more like three and a half since both me and Tobe own the shack. That said, we did the split. He got the shack. I got the mill. So it’s really his. But he’s never around, so whenever I need it I go to the shack.”
“The shack?”
“A fishing shack we own out at Shanty Hollow Lake.”
“Is it a real shack?”
“In a way.”
“How can it be a shack in a way?”
“It’s been taken care of just by guys for the last forty-five years.”
“What way is it not a shack?” she asked.
“It’s thirteen hundred square feet,” he answered.
She looked down at her plate but didn’t pick up her fork.
“Izzy, something up with you?”
Her head came up and she looked him right in the eye.
“How rich are you?”
For some reason, this question seemed like it had a wrong answer, and that wrong answer was not the answer any woman he’d ever known would think was wrong.
“That answer is relative,” he said as reply.
“Well, I already know you don’t own as many places as Circle K,” she returned.
“I got money,” he told her.
She suddenly looked around. Took it all in.
And her eyes fell on his dining room table.
“Baby, you wanna tell me why this seems to be an issue for you?”
Her gaze came back to his.
“My father’s father died in a hunting accident when my father was seventeen. He inherited fifteen hardware stores. He didn’t run them. He didn’t even work at one. He was a musician. He was going to be bigger than Johnny Cash. But he did take the checks whoever ran them sent him.”
Johnny felt his insides growing deathly still.
“Your dad is wealthy?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Your dad is wealthy.” He said it as a statement that time.
“We had a huge house when we were young. That was the only time, until we grew up and moved out, Addie and I had our own rooms. Sometimes we only had a one bedroom place and Mom slept on the couch.”
He couldn’t process that last part.
Not right then.
He had to stay on target.
“Your dad’s got money.” He was growling now.
“Y-yes,” she stammered, suddenly standing rock solid and staring at him, not like he’d grown two heads, but was a rattler about to strike.