by Ellie Danes
I gave Emily a chance to get her face and hands clean, and then went into the bathroom on the ground floor to give myself a little more thorough a scrub-down. By the time I was out and dressed, Mom was putting the last of the dinner on the table: baked pork chops and apples, Texas caviar, sliced tomatoes, and corn bread.
We all sat down to the table, and I found out that while I’d been taking my shower, Mom had been making friends with Emily. “If nothing else, when she comes here she could get a job down at the diner as a relief cook,” Mom told me.
“I don’t know if I’m that good,” Emily countered. “Most of it was done by the time I chipped in.”
“Well you take instructions well, which is the important thing,” I said.
We settled into eat, and I could tell that Emily was pretty tired; of course, I thought, she wasn’t used to working outside in the sun half the day. I didn’t know what she did for a living but it was clearly some kind of office job. Mom and I did most of the chatting over dinner, like usual—but Emily jumped in now and again, and it felt really, weirdly, comfortable.
“Emily, hon, you look worn out,” Mom observed toward the end of the meal. I’d had two helpings of everything, but Emily was struggling to finish her first, not because she didn’t like it but just from sheer fatigue.
“I’m okay, really,” Emily said.
“You don’t look like you’re in any condition to drive two hours home,” I told her.
“Two hours?” Mom looked from me to Emily. “No. I can’t let you leave the house this tired for a drive that long. Please say you’ll stay the night? We have a guest room you can use, and I’m sure I can come up with a nightgown that’ll fit—even if it’s a bit big on you. And I could wash your clothes so at least in the morning you’ll have something clean to wear.”
“It’s really all right,” Emily said. “If I could get home from the bar at two in the morning I can get home from here at…” she glanced around until she found a clock in the room, on the wall. “About seven or eight at night.”
“Please, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if you fell asleep behind the wheel,” I told her.
Emily looked from me to my mom and then smiled wryly.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll stay the night.”
I cleared the table while Mom led Emily upstairs to her room to give her something to wear to bed. I’d seen how surprised Emily was to see me just get up and start clearing things away, and I’d grinned at her. Mom—and my father—had raised me to the standard that whoever didn’t cook, cleaned.
The whole house wound down, and Mom loaded Emily’s clothes into the washer with her own stuff while Emily took a shower. When she came back downstairs, she was in one of the smaller of my Mom’s old nightgowns. She actually looked pretty good in it—and thankfully nothing like my mother. Her hair was down around her shoulders, and she looked girlish like that—like someone I could have known back in high school.
She thanked us both for our hospitality and Mom asked if she needed an extra blanket or anything like that, and Emily said no—everything in the guest room was fine.
“I’m actually heading to bed as soon as I move the clothes into the dryer,” Mom told her. “Don’t feel like you have to stay up for our sake.”
“I’m probably going to read a bit and go to sleep, myself,” I agreed.
“That’s a relief—not that you two aren’t wonderful company,” Emily said. “I just am worn out.”
“Go on up and sleep,” Mom told her.
I watched Emily go back upstairs and smiled to myself. She’d actually hung pretty tough with me through the afternoon—I thought she could probably hack it in the country life. I helped Mom finish cleaning up and went upstairs, and saw that the light was off in her room, which wasn’t a big surprise.
I went into my room, changed into pajama pants and a t-shirt, and settled in to read until I dozed off. I’d just about gotten there when I heard something from the guest room, which shared a wall with me. It was a muffled sound, gone before I could even identify it, and then after that I heard some murmurs. Mom had—I knew—already gone to sleep, so when I heard the telltale sound of the guest room door opening and closing, I got curious. What was Emily doing? Sleepwalking?
Chapter Seven
Emily
I tried to hurry out of the guest bedroom as quietly as I could when my father called me, not wanting to risk Rhett overhearing the conversation. I slipped downstairs while he waited for me to give him the all-clear, and stood looking out at the dark shapes on the farm outside, in the living room.
“Okay,” I said.
“How’s it coming along?”
I thought about the day of working at Rhett’s side. “Not bad.”
“You’re staying focused? Getting the information we need? Jacob said you were going to try and find out who’s most likely to be interested in selling.”
I bit my bottom lip. I had forgotten almost completely that Jacob had asked me to do that as a subset of my general scouting mission. When Rhett had invited me to come work with him this afternoon, I’d just come because I was interested—not because I thought it would give me an opening to investigate.
“Yeah, I’m getting information,” I said.
“Just make sure you stay on task,” Dad told me. “I’ll want to get a full report from you by Monday.”
“I understand. I’ll keep you in the loop,” I said.
I’d barely managed to get him off of the phone when I realized someone was in the living room with me—fortunately I hadn’t said anything, I didn’t think, that anyone couldn’t hear. My cover was still intact, or at least I hoped it was. I looked around in the gloomy half-darkness in the living room and saw that Rhett had come downstairs too.
“Hey,” I said.
“Something wrong? You looked worn out enough to sleep until dawn when you went up about an hour ago,” Rhett said, his voice just above a whisper.
“Just feeling restless,” I told him. “A lot on my mind.”
“Dad checking in?” He gestured to the phone.
“Always has to know where I am,” I said wryly.
“There are worse traits in a dad,” Rhett pointed out. “Come on.”
I frowned in confusion at that, but he started towards the front door and for a second I thought that maybe I had somehow said something that would have let him know what I was really in town to do, why I’d taken up his offer of a tour.
“We won’t wake Mom up if we talk outside,” he added.
Relieved, I followed him out of the house and across the yard, towards the big, blocky barn we’d been in earlier that day to get the traps and the equipment to spray the fields. After the heat of the day, the lack of clouds overhead seemed to have allowed the starry night sky to suck some of the warmth out of the air, and I shivered a bit before we went into the barn. Rhett gestured to a ladder leading up into some dark area near the roof of the building, and I looked at it uncertainly.
“It’s safe, and I’ll be right behind you,” he said.
I started to climb, looking back, making sure that he was actually there. I emerged in darkness, and shivered for an entirely different reason—there was something unnerving about being in the dark with someone I barely knew, even if it was exciting at the same time. I heard a sound like a snap, and a tiny light blazed off to my left side, and then started to soften and spread. Rhett had lit an old-fashioned hurricane lamp—just enough light to see that we were in the barn’s loft area, where there were some blankets and other things. No hay, since Rhett didn’t have any horses that could use it, but it looked cozy.
“Was this your secret clubhouse growing up?” I asked.
Rhett grinned and stepped over to a particularly big pile of blankets, which I realized—a second later—was directly under a big window that could be opened out to vent the area.
“Just about,” he said. “Come over here.” He laid back on the pile of blankets and I hesitated, but I had to ad
mit I was curious. I moved over to the pile and sat down. “Look up,” Rhett told me. I tilted my head back and saw that with the night’s clearness and the big window, I could see the stars—more stars than I ever saw in Houston.
“Oh god, it’s beautiful,” I murmured, staring up at the pinpricks of light against the dark, velvet sky.
“I started coming here when I was a kid, just to have somewhere quiet to think about things.” He sighed and I felt myself relaxing next to him. In spite of the fact that he was twice my size, I felt absolutely safe—safer than I had with any guy I’d ever been alone with. I stared up at the stars for a while, and Rhett was quiet, and I almost thought he might have fallen asleep until he shifted slightly against me.
“Where did you go to school? I don’t remember if you mentioned,” I said.
“Notre Dame,” he told me. “Scholarship out of high school. And then, of course, I got scouted for the pros.” Rhett’s arm moved around me, closer to my shoulders than my waist, and I cuddled closer to him on the blanket pile almost without thinking. But every nerve in my body seemed to tingle with that kind of electric feeling.
“It must have been a big change,” I pointed out.
Rhett half-shrugged. “I’m glad I got to grow up here, and I’m glad I had the experience of going to Notre Dame,” he said. “I’m grateful for everything I have—all the things I’ve done. I just wish my Dad had lived to see it all.” I heard the catch in his voice and it cut me to the bone. I wriggled up against him and shifted until I was almost halfway on top of Rhett’s body, and instead of looking up at the stars I was looking at his face. I leaned in and hesitated just a moment—giving him the chance to tell me no—before I brushed my lips against his. It was just like the first time we’d kissed, yesterday; there was no calculation in it, nothing other than the instinct and the desire to kiss him.
But this time, instead of catching myself when things started to get more intense, I rode the wave, letting Rhett deepen the kiss and letting my hands move over his body. I just moved them a little bit at first, but then more and more as the heat flared between the two of us. I slipped my hands up under Rhett’s t-shirt and felt the ripple of his muscles under his skin, the warmth of his body. The tingling all through my nerves intensified. I could feel the tightness deep down between my legs, the feeling like there was a knot forming down in my hips, and as Rhett tumbled me off of him, rolling over to pin me against the blankets, my heart pounded in my chest in a way that had nothing at all to do with fear.
His hands moved all over my body, and mine all over his, and Rhett broke away from my lips to nibble along the column of my throat, sending little tiny crackling jolts of sensation through me, turning me on more and more each moment. He cupped my breasts over the fabric of the nightgown I’d borrowed, and I moaned, feeling my nipples harden to his touch. I tugged and fumbled with the hem of Rhett’s shirt and finally managed to haul it up along his broad, muscular back, and then over his head, letting it fall to the side without paying attention to where it went.
Rhett stopped—completely stopped—and looked down at me in the gloomy light. “Are you okay with this?”
His gaze never wavered from my face, and when I shifted, squirming underneath him, so turned on I almost couldn’t stand it, I could feel the hard, hot ridge of his erection against my hip. Just the knowledge of it there, pressed against me, was enough to remove any doubt in my mind.
“Yes,” I said. “I am really—really—okay with this.”
Rhett chuckled quietly and kissed me again, and I felt his hands sliding down over my body, seeking the hem of the nightgown. He found it, and then I wriggled underneath him as he tugged at it, trying to help him get it off of me. I was soaking wet, my inner muscles flexing in little, desperate spasms as Rhett reached up between my legs and began to rub me through the thin fabric of my panties.
I returned the favor in kind, realizing that he didn’t have anything on underneath his pajama pants, rubbing and stroking the deliciously thick, hard bulge there. For what felt like ages, we just laid there, touching each other, teasing each other, until finally I couldn’t stand it anymore—I wanted to feel him inside me, and I was pretty sure I might die if I didn’t feel him inside of me. I hooked my fingers in the waistband of his pajamas and pulled them down over his hips, looking up at Rhett’s face.
“Main event?” I couldn’t even form the whole sentence for what I wanted, but Rhett knew what I meant right away.
He pulled my panties down and they disappeared somewhere—I didn’t care where—and then his hips shifted against mine and I shivered at the feeling of his hot, hard cock pressed against my wetness. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and Rhett reached down, guiding himself up against my slick folds, and then—finally—he thrust into me slowly, filling me up inch by inch.
It had been ages since I’d been with anyone; I couldn’t even remember when I’d had sex last, and Rhett felt so deliciously thick—almost, but not quite too big for me—that I almost climaxed right then. He stopped right when our hips were flush, our bodies as pressed together as they could possibly be, and kissed me again. We began to move at the same time, me twisting my hips back and Rhett pulling out, and then both of us pushing our bodies together, falling into a rhythm that seemed as easy as breathing. Our hands moved over each other, touching and teasing, and it was like I wanted to commit every line and contour of Rhett’s body to memory by touch, and like he wanted to see just how many spots on my body he could reach with his lips, all at the same time.
We kept going, moving faster and faster, and in the dark privacy of the barn loft there was no indication there was anyone else in the world. I moaned against Rhett’s shoulder, I moaned out loud as he thrust deeper and faster and harder into me, holding me exactly where he wanted me, brushing up against my pleasure center every third or fourth thrust. I felt the tension mounting and mounting deep down between my hips until it was almost unbearable, and then all at once it snapped, and wave after wave of pleasure washed through me, making me cry out from how good it felt.
I barely even noticed when Rhett hit his own climax, still moving inside of me, and we clung to each other as we rode through it, both of us moving until neither of us could, until we were both completely spent. We collapsed back against the blankets, panting for breath, barely separated from each other, and I trembled at the feeling of the aftershocks still murmuring through my body, trying to recover—trying to get back the ability to think.
I somehow managed to catch my breath after a while, and came back to myself to see Rhett looking down at me, almost musingly.
I giggled. “God, that was amazing.”
“It was,” Rhett agreed. “I have to say, I’m glad you’re going to be living closer soon—I don’t think I could let something that good happen and never have it happen again.”
I felt my heart stutter in my chest, and my stomach lurched. Rhett thought I was moving to the town. I’d spent the whole day—and the day before—lying to him about my intentions, and I had to think that if he knew I wasn’t going to be moving to Mustang Ridge, he might not have had sex with me.
“I’m actually not going to be moving here,” I said quietly.
Rhett frowned. “Did the work today make you not want to? You can get a job in town—that’s not a problem,” he said. “Or...did something come up? Was that what the phone call was about before?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t meet his gaze. “I was never going to move here,” I admitted. “My dad...he owns a real estate development company, and we came here the other day to get plans for the town, maps of the territory.”
“What do you mean?”
I closed my eyes, hearing the pain in Rhett’s voice, the surprise.
“We came to do some scouting for a development project,” I said. “I work for my dad. When you offered to give me a tour…” I opened my eyes, but I still couldn’t look at Rhett’s face. “He thought—we thought—that it would be best to get a look at t
he town from the perspective of a local, so it was kind of perfect.”
“You...you’re just here to scout for a development project? What kind of development project?”
I bit my bottom lip. “A major retailer—I can’t reveal the name—wants to put a location here,” I explained. “We’re supposed to get the land, facilitate the planning, things like that.”
I was finally able to dare a look at Rhett. His face—a face that had become dear to me—was now twisted in anger.
“You used me,” he said, and I couldn’t help cringing at the mixture of anger and pain on his face. “You fucking used me. You lied to me.”
He got up and for one second I lost that safe feeling I’d had, as he looked around angrily for his clothes.
“I didn’t mean to,” I said weakly.
He looked at me, and shook his head. “You don’t even get it.”
He pulled on his clothes and tossed my nightgown and panties at me, landing them on the pile of blankets next to me.
“I should lock you out of the house, make you drive home like that.” He shook his head again. “But I don’t want you getting hurt on the road.” He turned his back on me and started towards the ladder. “Blow out the lamp when you come down. I don’t need to wake up to a barn fire.”
Chapter Eight
Rhett
I woke up the morning after my little tryst with Emily, still upset at her. How could she have done that? How could she have lied to my face that way? I got dressed, wondering if she’d left already—if I were her, I probably would have—and went downstairs to find my mother in the kitchen, working on breakfast. Emily was there with her.
My irritation rose up again at her gall, but I realized that Mom was laying it on thick, that she was doing the thing she always does whenever someone stays the night—trying to convince them to stay longer.
“Really, it’s no trouble at all, Emily,” Mom said, moving about the kitchen and occasionally looking at the woman I’d learned the truth about the night before.
