by Lori Wilde
Lacy sat next to him, her crutches propped against the wall beside her. She kept casting surreptitious glances his way. If he were being honest with himself, he would admit to searching for her gaze time and time again.
Here, surrounded by her family, she had changed yet again. She wasn’t the shy scrub nurse, nor was she the seductive party girl from the night before. At home, she was the eldest daughter, motherly and responsible.
They were a lively group, jammed around the big table that occupied most of the large kitchen. The air hummed with the sound of their collective voices and clinking silverware. They included Bennett in their conversation about the yearly exposition they were attending that day. Mr. Calder and his oldest son, Dylan, had already left to open the booth featuring crafts and food made by the Calder family. The other family members would be departing as soon as breakfast was over. Except for Grandmother Nony, who volunteered to stay behind and keep an eye on Great-Gramma.
He found their acceptance heartening and yet disconcerting. They made him feel like he belonged. But Bennett had no claim to their generosity. His presence was purely accidental. If he hadn’t been in Lacy’s apartment when the phone call had come, he would not be here.
“So how long have you and Lacy been going out?” asked Mrs. Calder.
“Mother,” Lacy said, “Bennett’s just a friend.”
Yeah, sure. Mrs. Calder’s expression was easy to read. She thought they were in a serious relationship.
That’s when Bennett knew his suspicions about Lacy were true. She didn’t bring strangers home to meet her folks. That’s why they accepted him so readily. Her family assumed if he was here, then their relationship was a serious one.
Bennett gulped. What had he gotten himself into? Lacy was a nice girl with traditional values, just as he’d suspected when he’d first laid eyes on her in the operating suite and told himself—This one is off-limits.
Seeing Lacy in her home environment told him everything he needed to know. This girl could never be a casual fling. The bold woman he’d met at the nightclub had been a front, a ruse. She’d played a part, pretending to be something she wasn’t.
Why?
And yet, those kisses. They’d certainly been real and as hot and passionate as any he’d ever received. They had not been an act.
But he had no space in his life for anything beyond a casual love affair. Pursuing his hard-won career goals prevented him from looking for love.
At least for now.
And he couldn’t ask her to wait for him. Lacy was in the prime of her life. Surely, she would want to marry and have children soon. That’s what she deserved. She needed a man who had the time to lavish her with attention, not a harried young surgeon scrabbling to build a career and pay off astronomical student loans.
Bennett felt strangely wistful that he wasn’t going to be part of this loving family, but he also felt claustrophobic, as if something beyond his control was drawing him into...what? For an educated man, he was having a great deal of difficulty expressing himself.
Then there were those cuff links that were resting in the front pocket of his shirt where Lacy’s great grandmother had dropped them when he tried to give the things back to her. The cuff links with the strange symbolism.
Thunderbolt. Love at first sight. Whirlwind courtship. His parents’ bad marriage. No thank you.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Lacy. He did. Very much. Probably too much. But he didn’t want her expecting something from him that he simply couldn’t give. Not at this point in his life. He refused to fall in love or to get married before he was ready.
His parents had made that tactical error, and it had almost ruined them.
Those childhood memories were unpleasant. Spending Christmas holidays with his mother one year, his father the next. Never a real family, always split between two warring factions. He recalled his parents bickering over who was going to pay for his dental work or buy the Little League uniforms. He remembered long lonely nights spent hugging his pillow and wondering how he could make his folks like each other.
Finally, he’d realized he wasn’t to blame. What had caused the problem was red hot physical attraction. If his parents had taken their time getting to know each other, they would have realized they were completely incompatible and that a union between them would never have worked out and they could have saved so much agony.
Then again, if they’d done that, Bennett wouldn’t be here.
“Grandmother Nony,” Lacy said, “if we’re stuck here until Dylan can look at my car, you might as well go to the expo with everyone else. Bennett and I can check on Great-Gramma.”
“Are you sure?” Grandmother Nony perked up. “I was really hoping my apple preserves might win first prize.”
“Go,” Bennett said, then realized suddenly that he and Lacy would be alone on the farm except for Great-Gramma tucked away in bed. Was that what he wanted? To be alone with Lacy?
Yes, he decided. They needed to talk and clear the air between them, and he needed to find out if she really believed in this thunderbolt thing her great-grandmother had been talking about. Absentmindedly, he patted the pocket with the cuff links.
A knock sounded at the back door.
Lacy’s mother waved at a tall, gangly man standing on the stoop. “Lester, come in.”
Work hat in his callused fingers, Lester pushed open the screen door and stepped inside, leaving it slightly ajar behind him.
“I heard about Granny Kahonachek, and I just stopped by to see if she was okay before I headed on over to the expo...” Lester’s gaze settled on Lacy, and his words trailed off. “Lacy, you’re home.”
Bennett didn’t like the look in the other man’s eyes. Not one bit. It didn’t take a rocket scientist, or a heart surgeon for that matter, to figure out the guy had a major crush on her.
Jealousy wrapped around him and squeezed tight.
“Hi, Lester,” Lacy said cheerfully, but she didn’t meet the man’s goo-goo eyes. Obviously, she didn’t return his affection.
Bennett felt a spike of triumph, and he had the urge to shout, “Yeah!” Then he immediately wondered why. He had no claim on Lacy Calder. None whatsoever. She was free to date anyone she wanted.
The screen door flapped in the early morning breeze. Lester stayed posed in the doorway, visually gobbling up Lacy.
Bennett imagined plowing a fist in Lester’s face for no good reason other than it pleased him and that was scary business.
“Bennett,” Lacy’s grandmother Nony said, “try some of my red-eye gravy.” She hovered at his elbow, gravy boat in hand.
From the corner of his eye, Bennett saw something streak through the back door and into the kitchen. Several people shouted at once, “Lester, get Frank Sinatra out of here!”
Frank Sinatra?
Bennett frowned at the same moment an evil-eyed goat dashed between Grandmother Nony’s legs, heading straight for the breakfast table.
Grandmother Nony lost her balance. Her hands flew into the air.
The gravy boat went up.
And then came down.
Smack-dab in Bennett’s lap.
10
“I’M so sorry about your pants,” Lacy apologized. “And about the clothes dryer being broken.”
Bennett glanced at her. Everyone had gone to the farm expo, leaving them alone save for Great-Gramma snoozing upstairs. Lacy was leaning on her crutches, watching him hang his Levi’s and white long-sleeved shirt on the clothesline.
Being too tall to borrow a pair of pants from anyone in her family, Bennett wore nothing but boxer shorts, his loafers, and a bathrobe that belonged to Lacy’s father belted at his waist.
“No harm done.” He smiled at her. “My jeans should be dry by the time we wake up from our nap.”
It was after ten o’clock, and the moderate weather of early morning had given way to eighty-five-degree temperatures. As a Bostonian, he wasn’t accustomed to such a warm spring climate.
&nb
sp; “Come on,” Lacy said. “I’ll show you to the guest quarters above the barn, but don’t expect anything fancy. It’s where the extra farmhands stay during harvest.”
“Hey, all I need is a place to lay my head. I’ve slept on exam tables. It can’t be any worse than that.”
“Follow me.” She crooked a finger, then ambled off. She was getting pretty good with those crutches, swinging along at a nice clip.
Unbidden, his eyes traveled from the crutches to Lacy’s delectable behind encased so enticingly in that pale floral jumper. He wanted so badly to fill his hands with her lush tush, fill his nose with her scent, fill his eyes with the sight of her set free from her clothes.
He realized suddenly she’d gone off and left him standing with his mouth agape like some love-addled teen. Bennett had to take two long-legged strides to catch up with her.
“What’s the deal between you and this Lester character?” he surprised himself by asking.
“Lester’s had a crush on me since we were kids.” Lacy sighed. “He’s asked me to marry him about a hundred times.”
“No kidding.”
She nodded.
“He’s a good-looking guy. Why haven’t you ever taken him up on his offer?”
“I don’t love him. And sweet as he is, Lester’s main interests are cows and corn and not much else.” Lacy made a face. “Why do you ask?” She stopped outside the large red barn about a hundred yards from the house and turned to look at him.
“No reason.”
“You wouldn’t be jealous, would you?” She slanted him a coy glance. She looked so cute in her buttercream jumper with her hair pulled into a ponytail.
“Me? Jealous?”
Jealous as Othello over Desdemona. Jealous as Popeye over Olive Oyl. Jealous as a kid over siblings.
Okay, the last example wasn’t so hot. But the thought of Farmer Lester with his dirt-stained paws roving over Lacy’s tight little body made Bennett’s blood run icy.
“I don’t do jealousy,” he said.
“What?” She frowned at him.
Bennett shifted. Had he actually said that? What a jerk. “What I mean is, well, jealousy is a destructive emotion born of passion, and I try not to let my emotions get the better of me.”
“Oh.” She looked damned disappointed while at the same time so much swirled in her eyes—heat, need, desire.
“I’m trying to explain something to you.” He reached out and touched her arm. Despite the words he knew he sounded pompous, and all-too-doctorly. He ached to experience deep passion with her. He wanted to see her wild, out of control, nuts with desire for him.
“Lacy, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s the reason I don’t allow my sexual urges to run my life.”
She nodded and her eyes rounded big. “I’m listening.”
He let go of her arm, too distracted by the softness of her skin. “My parents met at Cape Cod one weekend, on the beach. Their attraction was instant. Like being hit by a freight train, my mother said. And like a freight train running off the track at high speed, that attraction ruined their lives.”
She waited, said nothing.
He took a deep breath, ran his hand through his hair, and continued.
“They made love the very day they met and conceived me. They were both still in college, both studying to be doctors. The last thing they needed was to get married, but that’s what they did. Unfortunately, med school and parenthood are demanding propositions on their own. Put the two together, and something’s got to give. The powerful passion between my father and my mother turned from love into hate. They fought constantly and divorced when I was two. They still can’t stay in the same room together. I vowed I would never make a major life decision based on passion.”
He felt her gaze on his face. Unable to meet her eyes for fear of giving away his growing feelings for her, he stared intently at Frank Sinatra, who was blithely munching weeds underneath the clothesline.
Bennett studied the goat, anxious for something to take his mind off his emotional turmoil. One minute he was struggling against the urge to take Lacy into his arms and kiss her. The next minute he was ready to rip his jeans and shirt off the clothesline, wet or not, shimmy into them, and hitchhike back to Houston. Because the longer he lingered here, the more he yearned to stay.
Because no matter how attracted he might be to Lacy, her wacky lovable family, and West, Texas, they had no place in his future.
None at all. Keeping their relationship strictly platonic was in her best interest as well as his.
“Can you get the gate?” she asked softly. “I can’t get it open and stay up on the crutches.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” Jerking his head from his worrisome thoughts, he hurried ahead to unlatch the gate and usher her through.
“And the barn door.” She nodded.
He opened that too,
The barn was airless, musty, and filled with hay and sacks of grain. Dust motes swirled in the dim fight seeping in through the dusty windows.
Lacy sneezed.
“Bless you.”
She beamed at him and rested her crutches against the wall. She looked like a teenager, free of makeup, her hair off her face.
“Bed’s upstairs.” She pointed to the stairway at the back of the barn.
Bennett watched, totally mesmerized by her. He licked his lips. His pulse hammered. His stomach squeezed.
His body ignored all his mind’s earlier admonitions.
He wanted her and no amount of logic and common sense could talk him out of it.
Lacy’s insides wobbled like a sailboat in a hurricane. It was official. Bennett didn’t believe in the thunderbolt.
Question was, did she still believe? Or had she been a romantic fool all these years?
She was having a crisis of faith. First, she’d discovered the thunderbolt wasn’t quite as infallible as her great-grandmother had always claimed and now Bennett revealed the depressing story of his parents’ experience with their version of the thunderbolt. The last thing she wanted was to hurt him in any way.
She should leave the barn immediately. She’d shown him where his room was. Nothing good could come of staying here with him.
But she couldn’t make herself go.
Okay, what if the thunderbolt wasn’t real? It didn’t alter the fact that she was very attracted to Bennett. She wanted to make love to Bennett whether he was the one or not. Their affair didn’t have to end happily ever after.
Sex and love were two different things, and she was fully beginning to realize that. Perhaps what she felt for Bennett was nothing but runaway lust.
If that were true, a lusty roll in the hay would satisfy and they could get on with their separate lives.
For hours she had been unable to think of anything but kissing him again. In the car on the way here, beside him at the breakfast table, upstairs in her great-grandmother’s bedroom. Her lips ached for his mouth; her arms yearned to wrap around his neck; her nose itched to bury itself in his chest. She wanted to smell him, touch him, taste him, feel him.
She wasn’t pretending to be something she wasn’t any longer. Nor was she still tied to some bizarre familial myth. The time had come to free herself. To simply be Lacy, with no agenda or hidden motive other than to be with Bennett.
For once in her life, she felt no embarrassment over her sexuality, no shame at her inexperience.
In her pocket lay the condom CeeCee had given her the night before. She’d forgotten to take it out of her jumper, and now she was glad.
She wanted Bennett, and she didn’t care if he loved her or not. Sure, it would be nice if he returned her affections, but she was tired of believing in fairy tales. Tired of waiting for the perfect man. She wanted to know what it was like to be a woman. To have a man desire her, hold her, make love to her. If he walked away from her after they had sex, she would survive.
She angled him a come-hither glance.
/> And he came hither at blinding speed.
“Be careful.” He wrapped an arm around her waist. “You could fall so easily balancing on one leg like that.”
His chest was pressed against her back, his hips flush with hers.
There was no mistaking his arousal.
Lacy turned her head. Her cheek brushed his chin. Their lips were so close.
Then indecision struck, and she began to tremble. Her belief in her plan flew away, and she was left with the stark reality of what she wanted and what was about to happen between them.
Bennett groaned, low and guttural.
The barn smelled earthy, rich, sexy. Thick mounds of coarse hay were strewn across the floor not two feet away. The thought of her bare flesh pressed against that rough hay made her tremble all the harder.
Tremble with starving, desperate need.
She’d waited so long for this.
It was warm in the enclosure. Beads of perspiration formed at the hollow of her throat. She saw that he was sweating, too, droplets glistening on his forehead.
She wanted to lick his skin and taste his salty flavor. She wanted to peel back that bathrobe and get her hands on what lay beneath. She wanted to skyrocket to heaven in his arms.
Oh, the things she wanted!
Lacy’s lips parted, but before she could whisper a word, his mouth covered hers in a spectacular kiss.
His hands spanned her waist, holding her steady. His breathing was raspy, ragged. His tongue teased and coaxed. His eyes shone feverish with desire.
Lacy turned into his arms, and he lifted her to his chest. Without uttering a sound, he took her to the hay and arranged her gently on the floor.
He ripped the bathrobe from his body and tossed the garment aside, baring his muscular chest. He stood in nothing but his boxer shorts, and the you’re-the-most-sexy-thing-I’ve-ever-laid-eyes-on expression on his face told her that he wanted exactly the same thing she wanted.
Their bodies joined together. Here. In the barn. On the hay. All emotional consequences be damned.
