9 Ways to Fall in Love

by Caroline Clemmons

  The panties fell down and caught on her boot tops. She was as trapped as if she were tied with a rope. Panic exploded inside her. Her heart began a tattoo, like a snare drum in a parade. She had never felt so paralyzed, torn between wanting him and not trusting him. And fearing someone might walk up on them. "Dalton. We can't do this. People are all over the place."

  He lifted her foot and slid first one leg of the flimsy bikini over her boot, then the other. She grabbed for it but missed. He got to his feet, stuffing the panties into his jeans pocket. "Let's get in the truck," he said huskily.

  "Oh, no. Nada. We can't do this. Give me back my—"

  "Shh, shh. Baby, it's okay. It's dark out here. Nobody can see us. Just get in the truck."

  She was so rattled she couldn't think. How could he affect her this way? She hefted herself up onto the running board, believing he would go around to the driver's side. And they would talk. And she would convince him how wrongheaded this was. Instead of walking around, he somehow slid under her and somehow his hands were under her skirt caressing her bare bottom again. "This is crazy," she said, her voice quivering. "We can't do this."

  But even as she protested, she was helping him arrange her knees astraddle his lap. She felt her bare genitals open wide and the very idea sent an explosion of heat to the heart of her sex, and all she could think about was feeling his touch there where she wanted it. She settled onto his lap. He was hard and the rough denim of his starched jeans rasped her tender flesh. Another wave of pure lust shot through her.

  "Lift up a little," he whispered on a heavy breath.

  Unable to tell him no, she complied. His fingers came between them and began to slowly stroke her. She was so wet, and his thick fingers knew just where to travel.

  "You're shaking, darlin'," he said softly as he deftly moved his fingers. "Take it easy."

  She closed her eyes and drew a shuddery breath. God, she wanted this. She wanted more of everything that had occurred in his bed Monday night. But most of all, she wanted him.

  "See?" he whispered. "It's okay. Nobody's watching.... Lift up a little more, sweetheart."

  This is worse than teenagers, her Good Girl persona screeched, but she had stopped listening to that side of herself. Though her right knee was trapped between the seat and the console, she braced her hands against his shoulders and somehow rose slightly on her knees.

  Just the little extra space allowed two of his fingers to slip inside her while his thumb fit perfectly into a place that destroyed all of her will. "Oh," she squeaked.

  "Feel good?" he whispered, moving his Fingers and thumb. His other hand slid under her top and his fingers found her nipple.

  Ohgodohgodohgod. That weird tightening in her belly flared and demanded satisfaction. Her neck bent forward, her eyes squeezed shut. Her deep muscles began to flex against his fingers.

  "Good?"

  "No," she whimpered.

  "Liar."

  His fingers worked, and their breathing filled the pickup cab with heavy, humid air. She could come. She was on the edge. Just a few more seconds. She clenched her teeth to hold back the animal noises she now knew he could draw from her.

  "Go ahead," he whispered. "Let it happen." His free hand cupped her neck and pulled her toward his mouth.

  Just then the crunch of footsteps on gravel came alarmingly near and a couple walked up to the pickup parked beside them. She sank to Dalton's lap, his fingers still inside her.

  "Evening, folks," the stranger said, bleeping his pickup door.

  Dalton buzzed down the window. "Evening," he said in a normal voice, while she sat there shaking worse than a scared rabbit.

  "Good jukebox, huh?"

  "Yeah. We like it."

  "Not as good as the band," the woman said.

  The two strangers continued a conversation about the music as they climbed into the pickup on their respective sides. As soon as they backed out, Joanna lunged for the door latch and clumsily freed herself before Dalton could stop her. She scrambled out of the pickup, at the same time adjusting her clothing.

  "We shouldn't be doing this," she said, breathless and backing away from the door on shaking knees. "I mean it. I'm not doing this."

  He didn't try to stop her. He just sat there on the passenger seat, his boot heels hooked on the threshold, his elbows braced on his knees. The overhead light shone on his face, revealing a scowl and eyes boring into her.

  When she reached the bumper, she turned, broke into a run and didn't look back to see if he was behind her.

  Inside the building's entry, she halted, gasping for breath. Her heart pounded. She was shaking like a wet dog on a cold day. She adjusted her clothing again and straightened her hair. Her cheeks felt warm, her body felt hot.

  Oh, crap. Dalton still had her panties, and she was wet and slick between her thighs. When she had regained a modicum of composure a few seconds later, she skirted the far side of the tables and made her way to the ladies' room.

  After she had washed and dried herself, she returned to the table and her Hatlow friends, her insides still trembling.

  "Where the hell have you been?" Shari asked. "They already sang 'Happy Birthday' and everything."

  "Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were ready to sing. I went out for a breath of air. It's hot in here." She glanced furtively over her shoulder to see if Dalton had come back inside, but she saw no sign of him.

  She called on deep resources and fortified herself. Somehow she had to endure the remainder of the evening. Several guys, both some she knew and some she didn't, asked her to dance. She had never danced in a public place with any man while not wearing underwear. She felt both terrified and erotic at the same time. Shari kept saying things like, "What's wrong with you?" and "I must be drunk because you're acting funny."

  At convenient opportunities, she strained her sight watching for Dalton, but she didn't see him again. To her dismay, she was disappointed.

  Chapter 24

  At eleven o'clock, after Shari climbed onto the wooden bench seat at their table and started to accompany the jukebox in a loud voice, Jay announced it was time for his wife to go home. Joanna was so grateful, she volunteered to drive.

  "I'm okay to drive," Jay said, grinning and helping Shari into her jacket. "I wasn't about to drink much. I gotta work tomorrow. And I knew Shari was gonna get shit-faced and need taking care of."

  Joanna didn't insist. This was the nature of Shari and Jay's relationship. They looked out for each other. She suspected that if today hadn't been Shari's birthday, Jay would have been just as happy to sit at home in his recliner in front of TV, but Shari had had a party in her mind for weeks.

  Outside, Shari flopped into the backseat of Huddleston's Well Servicing crew cab truck, curled into a fetal position and fell sound asleep.

  "Sit up front and talk to me," Jay said to Joanna. "It's a lonesome sixty miles from here to Hatlow."

  Soon they were on the highway headed east. "Don't know where ol' Dalton disappeared to," Jay said. "I didn't see him leave."

  Joanna wondered, too, but didn't comment.

  "I enjoyed visiting with him," Jay said. "But he's changed from the way he used to be."

  "How?" Joanna asked, interested now in what Jay had to say about a man who, to Joanna, was an enigma.

  "He was always tough, but now he's hard. And kind of edgy. You can't tell what he's thinking."

  Indeed. Joanna had been trying to read Dalton's challenging personality from the moment she met him. Monday night's conversation over dinner and the pictures on his computer came back to her. She remembered the grim expression on his face when they had looked at the shots he had made of the bombing victims in Iraq. "I suppose he's influenced by the places he's been and the things he's done. And he was in the marines."

  "It's more than that. Dalton Parker was tough before he ever got to the marines. I'll tell you a story about him that says it all. When I was fifteen, I was the only freshman that made the A team. I was taking all kinds of
shit from the upperclassmen, but Dalton always stopped it. He was a starter and all the other guys listened to him.

  "One time in the locker room, we were suitin' up to work out. When Dalton took off his shirt, he had half a dozen big purple marks on his back and arms. I have never had anything wrong with me that looked as sore as his back looked.

  "Coach saw him and went over and asked him, 'What happened to you, Dalton?' But Dalton never gave an answer. He just shook his head and stared into his locker and went on with what he was doing. Then Coach said, 'You don't need to suit up today. Just take it easy.' Dalton said, 'No. I'll work out like everybody else.' And that was all there was to it."

  Joanna thought of what she had learned of Dalton in her encounters with him. Though he must have been no more than seventeen when Jay was a freshman, Dalton's stoic response was no surprise. A lump formed in her throat. She had to swallow it to hold back tears. "Did he work out?"

  "Sure did. Just like there was nothing wrong. I'll never forget it. None of us never said nothin' to him and he never said nothin' to us neither. But after that, I looked at him with different eyes. 'Course, the other fellas had seen it before, and so had Coach. I found out later Earl had whipped him with a belt and that wasn't the first time. I don't know what he done to deserve a beatin' like that. Knowin' Earl's reputation, prob'ly not much. After that, I wondered how many times ol' Dalton come out and played when he was hurt without saying a word about it."

  "I've heard my mom say how mean Earl Cherry was to Dalton and Lane both," Joanna said.

  "But there was a difference, Joanna. Daddy says Earl Cherry's responsible for the mess of a man Lane grew up to be. And he wasn't talking about bad genes. Earl's meanness broke Lane. And Lane just folded up inside hisself and got lost in boozin' and bull bustin'. One of the reasons he was such a good bull rider was 'cause he just didn't give a shit about nothin'. But Daddy says Earl never broke Dalton. If anything, it was the other way around. That's what I mean about Dalton being tough.

  "He could've played college ball," Jay went on. "Hell, he might've been good enough to've played pro someday. He had the talent, had the brains, had the balls. And as for will, I guess you'd have to kill him to outdo him. It must be that Comanche blood."

  Joanna had always discounted those kinds of remarks about the Parker family's "Comanche blood." How could that be a factor? Dalton, Lane and their mother's ancestral "blood" was diluted by generations. But she looked across the console, wondering whether Jay's assessment of Dalton's personality could be accurate. And if it were, how deeply would a mere woman have to touch him to find his soul?

  "Why do you think he didn't go ahead and play college ball?" she asked.

  "I don't know for sure. Everybody talks about it being Earl and Clova's fault, but I think, deep down, Dalton, pure and simple, didn't want to. He wanted to do what he did. That was something I always admired about him, even when we was kids. He always did what he wanted to. It was one of the things that made him different from the rest of us."

  They rode a few more miles in dark silence, the dash lights casting the pickup cab in a low glow. Jay hadn't even turned on the radio.

  "Have you ever whipped your boys?" Joanna asked, though she was certain she would have known if he had.

  He snorted. "I've never laid a hand on those boys. And God knows they've needed it a time or two. I just couldn't do it. And if I did, Shari would take after me with a butcher knife."

  An anger sprang into Joanna. Why hadn't Clova taken after Dalton's stepfather with a butcher knife?

  Jay went on to tell stories from schooldays about football games played and girls dated. Joanna listened, but her mind was on Dalton and what he had said in front of his computer monitor Monday evening: When I was a kid, I thought I had it rough. After I left home, and eventually the States, I found out what rough was. There's a lot of sadistic lunatics out there. Some of them are running countries. Compared to them, Earl Cherry was a creampuff.

  Though she had barely known Dalton as a teenager, now she, too, recognized the change Jay saw in him.

  Jay dropped her off at home a little before midnight. She washed her face, removed her clothing and slipped into her old pink chenille robe. Then she keyed on the TV to catch tomorrow's weather report, all the while wondering if she could reach Alicia early tomorrow morning and persuade her to be responsible for the eggs one more day.

  After tonight in the Silver Spur's parking lot, she would find it more difficult than ever to face Dalton. His very presence turned her into a different person. Lord, when would he go home?

  And if he didn't go soon, what was she going to do? She had to take care of her hens and the eggs. She already worried what catastrophe being absent only two days had wrought.

  Stress always made her hungry, so she went to the kitchen for ice cream. And that's where she was when her doorbell chimed. Feeling a small drop in her stomach, she glanced at the oven clock. No one came to her house at this hour. She switched off the kitchen light, went to the door, peered through the peephole and saw a man standing on the little square porch.

  Dalton. Who else? A little dance of joy erupted within her.

  He knocked then. She opened the door a crack and peered through. "What is it?"

  "Brought you a beer." He held up a six-pack of something.

  "I don't want any. It's late. I'm going to bed."

  "We need to talk."

  "I already fell for that in the parking lot."

  "Joanna, c'mon, let me in."

  She pressed her forehead to the door's edge as the erotic episode in the front seat of Clova's pickup barged into her mind. It seemed unreal that just a few hours ago, his fingers had been inside her. Lust and her good sense were still waging a battle within her.

  Get over it, she told herself. Just because you've already slept with him doesn't mean you have to again. "I'll let you in here only if you promise Monday night or the parking lot won't happen again."

  "I said talk."

  Conscious that she was naked beneath her robe, she retied it tightly, then opened the door and stood back for him to enter.

  "Fridge?" he said and held up the six-pack of Coors longnecks. She could see two empty slots in the carton. "You're still drinking? And you're driving?"

  "I'm not drunk." He started for the kitchen as if he had been in her house before.

  She followed him and clicked on the overhead light, brilliantly lighting the kitchen. She stood with her hip leaning against the counter, her arms crossed under her breasts. "I hope you brought back my underwear. Those panties go with a matching bra."

  He popped the top on a bottle and offered it to her with a grin. "Souvenir."

  "Of what? Nothing memorable happened."

  "No?"

  He offered the beer to her again and against her better judgment, she took it. "It's the middle of the night. Why don't you just go home and go to bed?"

  He looked around. "So this is your house? Mom said you own it."

  "Well, me and a mortgage company."

  He stepped to the doorway leading out of the kitchen and looked across the dining room to where her TV was on in the living room. "Law and Order, huh? I watch that sometimes."

  She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. "It's a rerun."

  He looked back at her for a few seconds, then walked over, took the beer from her hand and set it, along with his, on the counter. "Joanna." He braced a hand on the counter, his eyes homing in on hers. His raspy voice came low and softly. "Something's happening between us, Joanna. We need to come to terms with it."

  "And from your point of view, coming to terms would be what, hopping into bed again?"

  "Maybe. That's one way to ease the tension."

  “That’s what you said Monday night.” She stepped back, putting space between them. "You know what? I can think of a hundred ways to ease tension. If nothing else, there's always a cold shower."

  One corner of his mouth tipped into a smile. Or maybe it was a smirk. "Is th
at what you did when you got home tonight?"

  She turned her body away from him, but she couldn't turn her eyes from his. "No."

  "It's only a temporary fix anyway. You know, you left me in a helluva shape out there in that parking lot."

  This encounter was headed in a direction she dared not go. She closed her eyes and arched her brow. "Dalton, please. Go home."

  He stepped in front of her, and from out of nowhere, moisture blurred her sight. Dammit, she was no match for him. A tear escaped one eye and trailed down her cheek.

  He placed a knuckle under her chin and lifted it. "Don't cry," he said softly. He wiped her damp cheek with his big rough thumb. "I won't hurt you. I couldn’t."

  That wasn't true. When she was in his company her brain went to lunch and left her defenseless. He could, and probably would, crush her and leave her as easily as he could crush a paper cup and throw it in the trash.

  His hand grasped her arm and drew her to him. Weak-willed dummy that she was, she let herself be drawn. As his mouth moved closer, she looked into his face. "When I said you could come in, you promised you wouldn't do this."

  Their gazes held for long seconds. "Tell me to stop and mean it," he said, "and I will. If it's what you really want."

  What she really wanted? God help her, what she wanted was him, and she was thrilled he wanted her, if for only a short time. She remained mute, paralyzed, unable to deny him, or herself, anything.

  His lips touched hers in the gentlest of sipping kisses. She responded in kind, not minding, even savoring, the yeasty taste of beer. When his lips lifted from hers, slick devil that he was, he tugged at the belt around her waist. It easily came undone, leaving her robe hanging open.

  They both watched him part the robe’s panels. His fingertips brushed her skin and sent a frisson up her spine. His eyes, fierce and dark with desire, locked on the exposed slice of her nude body. Her nipples had grown rigid, a pulse beat in her belly. The tacit urgency that thrummed around them almost sucked the air from the space between them.

  "See?" he said softly. "You're glad I came by. I wouldn't have if I'd thought you'd turn me away."