Lori Wilde - [Cupid, Texas 02]

by All Out of Love

  Don’t rise to the bait. Think of Dad. “I’m only trying to help.”

  “No, you’re trying to play the big shot.”

  Pierce forced his muscles to unclench. “Obviously you need a break. Why don’t you go home and—”

  “Why don’t you stop telling me what to do?”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hollister?”

  Simultaneously, he and Malcolm glanced over to see the medication nurse standing there. She gave a tenuous smile, and extended a pen and notepad toward Pierce. “I know it’s probably inappropriate of me to ask,” she said, “but could I trouble you for your autograph? My little boy is a huge fan.”

  The response was so automatic, it took Pierce only a second to find his grin and set it to stun. “Why surely, darlin’, no trouble at all. What’s your boy’s name?”

  “Sammy.” She was dancing around on the tips of her toes, her hands clutched in front of her.

  “Some things never change.” Malcolm snorted and went back into their father’s room.

  The nurse cast a glance at his departing brother. “Is he mad about something?”

  “Other than the fact that he wasn’t born first?”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “Sibling rivalry.”

  He scribbled a short note to Sammy, signed his name, and gave the pad and pen back to her.

  She thanked him profusely. “Well, I better get back to work,” she said, walking backward toward her medication cart.

  “You better watch—” Pierce tried to warn her, but she rammed her butt into the cart before he got the words out.

  “Oops.” She plastered her hand over her mouth and blushed.

  A gaggle of other nurses were peering around the corner of the nurses’ station, all giving him the eye.

  Pierce suddenly felt allergic to his own skin. He had to get out of here. Clear his mind. Think about what to do about his father without stepping all over Malcolm’s toes.

  To his left, a green exit sign mounted over the door to the stairway beckoned.

  To his right lay a herd of salivating women in blue scrubs.

  Ah hell. Pierce pulled his Stetson down over his forehead and took the easy way out.

  LACE STOOD BESIDE her ten-year-old Corolla—okay, the model bordered on being a cliché, but what could be a more fitting car for a botanist?—which had been her first and only car, in the parking lot of Cupid General, pawing through the contents of her oversized handbag, searching for her car keys. She shoved aside the rubber-banded letters she’d been given to answer, dug past her wallet, a magnifying glass, a hori-hori sheathed in a leather pouch, a handful of Ziploc bags for collecting plant specimens, and a tube of sunscreen.

  “Flytrap,” she muttered her favorite faux curse word. Where were her keys? She needed to get back to the gardens. Jeff Davis Elementary was busing in third graders on a field trip at three.

  She leafed through the side pockets—a tube of Carmex, her glasses case, a folded ten-dollar bill, an iPod with ear buds attached, cell phone, and a small tin of cinnamon Altoids.

  But no keys.

  Sighing, she shouldered her bag and patted down her pockets. There were some clippings from the red yucca stuck in her front shirt pocket, but other than that, her pockets were empty.

  “Organic fertilizer,” she muttered the botanist version of a swearword. She must have left the keys in Aunt Delia’s room. She was going to have to go past that smug little candy striper a fourth time. Bracing herself for another smart-aleck comment about Pierce Hollister ruining her brain, she started to head for the hospital entrance, but something compelled her to shade her eyes from the sun with the edge of her hand, and peek past the tint of the driver’s side window.

  Yep. The keys were dangling from the ignition.

  And, of course, the doors were locked.

  She groaned and got out her cell phone. She was just about to text Zoey to see if she could swing by Lace’s house and bring the spare key, when a brown Ford King Ranch extended cab pickup truck did a U-turn in the middle of the road, drove into the hospital parking lot, and pulled to a stop in front of her.

  Her stomach took a roller-coaster ride up into her throat, before plummeting back down to her feet. Without even glancing up, she knew who it was.

  “Car trouble?”

  She did not want to look at him, but then again not meeting his gaze would make it seem like he affected her. He did not affect her. Not in the least. So she raised her head and locked on to those gorgeous, green-flecked brown eyes that once upon a time had kept her awake at night.

  His mouth turned up into a heart-stopping grin.

  Her stomach switched rides, sliding from the roller coaster to Tilt-A-Whirl. “Under control,” she said smoothly.

  “You sure?” He cut the pickup’s engine, opened the door, and swung to the ground.

  Go away! “Positive.”

  “I don’t mind giving you a hand.”

  I mind. “I’m good.”

  He stepped closer, rested his palm on the hood of her Corolla, and leaned in. “What’s the trouble?”

  Even though she’d met his eyes, she’d managed to steer clear of truly looking at him, but now with him crowding her personal space she couldn’t avoid it any longer.

  It was the first time she’d seen him in the flesh in twelve years, and there was a big difference between watching him fling a football on television and being here with him up close and personal. Inevitable really. Bound to happen. Once she’d decided to make Cupid her permanent home, deep down, she’d known at some point this moment would come.

  For a brief time after graduation, she’d considered not moving back for this very reason. She’d even been offered a job working for the Smithsonian. But the only thing she’d ever wanted was to run the Cupid Botanical Gardens and spend her life studying the mesmerizing plants of the Trans-Pecos region.

  Her roots ran deep in this arid soil, and family was important to her, in spite of the fact that her parents, numerous cousins, aunts, and uncles could be a royal pain in the butt as often as not. In the end, she simply could not allow some ridiculous incident that had happened when she was fourteen dictate the trajectory of her life.

  Even so, the moment that Lace had dreaded for over a decade was finally here.

  It was now.

  In spite of being braced for it, she was unprepared for the full effect of Pierce Hollister. The good-looking boy had morphed into a strikingly handsome man. He moved with athletic grace, all loose-limbed and easy, while at the same time his muscles coiled tight with potent masculine power.

  He had a straw Stetson cocked back on his head and the sleeves of a blue and white Western-style cowboy shirt rolled up to reveal muscular forearms. Thick curly hair, the same honey gold color of pronghorns, was cut close on the sides, but longer on top. He’d grown into the nose that had once been a little too big for his face, although now it crooked a bit to the left, giving him a thoroughly rakish air. Or maybe it was the wicked grin.

  Either way, Paul Newman in Hud had nothing on him in either the looks or the rascal department.

  From a distance, he might be mistaken for an ordinary cowboy—he’d never shaken off that lanky, West Texas gait—but up close, he smelled like sophistication. Lace’s nose twitched as she identified the rich notes that composed his cologne. Freshly printed money, suede, rosemary, and a hint of something lighter, frivolous—Amaryllidacese, the narcissus flower.

  His nails were clipped short and buffed, the cuticles pushed neatly back, making Lace’s own garden-roughened hands look pretty ratty in comparison. She thrust her hands behind her back.

  “How’s Jay?” he asked.

  She almost told him, but an impish impulse took hold of her and she bit off her answer and instead asked, “You know my brother?”

  He startled, looked confused.

  Ha! Gotcha.

  “Lace, it’s me. Pierce.”

  The sound of her name vibrating off his tongue was almost her undoing. His voice was d
eep. Deeper than she remembered, and he put added emphasis on the “la” sound, scraping the tip of his tongue over his palate, ending with a solid lay down against the back of his lower teeth on “ace.” The way he said “Lace” made it seem like the sweetest word in Webster’s Dictionary and caused her to think far too much about the mechanics of his mouth and tongue.

  His smile quickly slipped back. “Aw, you tease. You’re yanking my chain.”

  She glanced over at him, almost lost her bravado in the face of those brown eyes as rich and tempting as pecan pralines, but managed to bluff her way through it. “Your ego simply can’t believe that someone doesn’t recognize the great Pierce Hollister?”

  “Not someone,” he said. “You.”

  He said “you” like he was saying “sex.” Slick technique he’d no doubt perfected to ignite the panties of his multitudinous groupies. Well, her panties were staying ice-cold, thank you very much.

  Pierce cocked his head, studied her attentively. So attentively, in fact, that it made her itchy. She scratched the back of her hand. The man was a paradox—at once slick and sophisticated but at the same time, down-home country, with a magnetically rugged edge that no amount of urban living could polish.

  “It was fun catching up,” she said, and wriggled her fingers at him.

  He kept standing there.

  What the hell did he want from her? “Good-bye.”

  “Bye.” He didn’t move.

  Neither did she, because where was she going to go? He was blocking her way.

  “You’re a lot different from how I remembered you,” he said.

  “You’re not.”

  “You were so quiet and sweet.”

  Quiet yes, because she stuttered. Sweet? Shows how much he really knew her. “I was fourteen.”

  “You don’t stutter anymore.”

  “You ever see The King’s Speech? It was like that.”

  “You cursed your stutter away?”

  Yes indeed, by cursing him and Mary Alice. “Among other techniques.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be. I didn’t cure cancer.”

  “Dad’s sick,” he blurted. “I’m scared he might have cancer.”

  Oh man, why did she have such a tendency to stick her foot in her mouth? Downside of conquering her stutter, she opened her big trap too often. “I’m so sorry to hear about your dad.”

  He pulled a palm down his face. “I don’t know why I said that. It’s not your problem.”

  She wished he hadn’t said it either. It made him vulnerable and human. How could she hold a hard-line stance when he was standing there looking all vulnerable and human? “Jay just started the last year of his residency at Johns Hopkins,” she said. “You might want to call him about your dad.”

  “He’s a heart surgeon.”

  “He’s also a friend.”

  “We really haven’t been all that close since …” He hesitated. “We went off to separate colleges.”

  That wasn’t the big wedge that had been driven between her brother and his best friend and they both knew it. Lace shifted her weight. “I’ll keep your father in my thoughts.”

  “Thanks.” He didn’t make a move to leave.

  Lace massaged her forehead. How to get rid of him without being flat-out rude? That option had been sealed off when he’d told her about his father.

  “Ah,” Pierce said.

  Ah what?

  He was looking through the windshield of her car. “You locked yourself out.”

  “It happens.”

  His grin reappeared, bright and perky as ever. “A lot?”

  “Enough.”

  “Still a daydreamer, huh?”

  “Listen,” she said. “I’ll have a busload of field-tripping third graders showing up on my front door at three—”

  “Gotcha.” He winked. “You need in there fast. Hang on.”

  Great. Now he was determined to help.

  He spun on his heel, hustled over to his pickup, rummaged around in the big shiny silver toolbox in the bed of the truck, and returned with a slim jim.

  “You keep a tool for breaking into cars in your toolbox? How very gangster of you.”

  He flashed those straight white teeth again. “Not at all. I keep it for damsels in distress.”

  She whacked herself on the side of her head with a palm. “Duh. Should have known.”

  “Make way.” He came toward her.

  She slipped back, but couldn’t really go anywhere, hemmed in by the Lincoln to her left and a yew hedge behind the cars. Twelve years ago if she’d found herself in this close proximity to him, she would have drooped like a tropical orchid in the Chihuahuan Desert. But now, she was tough as a purple sage.

  Bring on the heat. She could withstand it.

  His scent circled her. He focused on the car, the muscles in his arm flexing as he worked. In under a minute, he had the door unlocked and gestured with a flourish. “Your chariot, Princess.”

  Oh, she could see why women melted at his feet. All the more reason not to. “Thanks,” she said tightly.

  “You’re welcome. Drive safe.” He saluted her, ambled back to his truck.

  She took a deep breath, and went to turn the key.

  Except it was already turned—in the wrong direction. Not only had she left the key in the ignition, but also she’d mistakenly turned it to the accessory position.

  “Please let it start, please let it start,” she prayed. She closed her eyes, and twisted the key to the start position.

  Click.

  Then nothing.

  Chapter 4

  Dormancy: the phase of temporary growth cessation in plants under harsh environmental situations.

  PIERCE knocked on her window.

  She rolled it down.

  “Need a jump?”

  Yes, it was corny, but he couldn’t resist. One look into those gorgeous blue eyes and he instinctively shifted into full seduction mode. The thing was she fascinated the hell out of him. On the surface she looked so prim and proper with that wavy, jet black hair, creamy white skin, and bookish glasses perched on her nose, but the lush curves of her body blew prim and proper all to Hades.

  She’d always been a beauty, although he’d never allowed himself to really notice. For one thing, she was four years younger, and when you were eighteen those four years were a huge divide. Plus she was his best friend’s younger sister and strictly off-limits. It was an unwritten guy rule. No poaching friends’ sisters. But, hallelujah, he was certainly noticing now.

  Lace heaved a long-suffering sigh. “My car needs a battery boost, yes. Do you mind?”

  Wow. Way to make a guy feel like a balloon in a cactus patch and yet, he couldn’t seem to stop with the innuendo. “I’d love to give you a spark.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “That made me sound like a douche.”

  “I’m sure it’s a deeply ingrained habit,” she said. “No need to go changing your personality on my account.”

  Zing! It was habit. Living up to the playboy quarterback image. No woman had ever seemed to mind his sexual banter before. In fact, the shtick normally worked like a charm, but it only seemed to irritate Lace.

  He patted her windowsill. “Be right back.”

  “Clearly, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Man, she truly disliked him. Whatever happened to the lovestruck teen who had written that letter to Cupid?

  He moved his truck into position so he could give her battery a boost and retrieved his jumper cables from underneath the seat. He might have expected her to be embarrassed since this was the first time they’d seen each other in twelve years or be her usual shy self and not want to speak to him. This snarky wit was new.

  But while the change in her caught him off guard, he kind of liked it.

  Maybe she had a boyfriend. Maybe that was the deal. Possibly even a fiancé or husband?

  A hollow sensation settled in Pierce’s sto
mach. Jay hadn’t said she was married. Surely he would have said something if Lace had gotten married. Then again, Jay never brought up her name with him.

  Hell, Hollister, why do you care?

  He didn’t. It might explain the mystery of her bad attitude, but the first thing he did when he got back to her window was look at her left hand.

  No ring.

  He smiled.

  “What is it?” Lace asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing.”

  She made a toggling motion with her index finger. “Could we get this show on the road?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He tipped his hat.

  She muttered something under her breath. Man, what had happened to that sweet girl who used to follow him and Jay around like a puppy? Puppy grew up and cut a few teeth. She was giving him a run for his money.

  Grinning, Pierce set about giving her a jumpstart. Once he got everything hooked and ready to go, he called around the hood of her car, “Go ahead and crank it.”

  The Corolla engine immediately turned over.

  He disconnected the cables, shut the hood, and ambled back to her open window. From where he was standing, he could see right down the neckline of her shirt. The scoop of her white brassiere cupped those plump beautiful breasts. Bullet-hot images of what she would look like out of that shirt burned his brain and he squirmed thinking about her. Once, back in the day when he was hanging out with Jay, he’d spent the night at the Bettingfields’ and gotten up early, Lace had come slipping out of the bathroom wrapped in nothing but a fluffy pink towel, an identical pink towel wrapped around her head. He’d been behind her, but made a decision not to notice, until she reached up to secure the towel at her head that had started to unravel, and the other towel slipped off. His jaw unhinged. In one smooth move, she’d grabbed the towel, secured it around her body, and went on to her bedroom. She didn’t see him, but he never forgot that glimpse, and now that he had an unobstructed view of her cleavage, it got to him worse than all the bare naked women who’d ever occupied his bed.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “No thanks needed, but I wouldn’t mind a home-cooked meal.”