He stood there, staring at her, his gaze occasionally drifting to his kitchen. “I could fix you something to eat,” he suggested. “And there’s leftover birthday cake.”
Tempting but not as tempting as the man still standing way too close to her. “It’s probably not a good idea to rain check something like this,” she mumbled.
He smiled, making that heat fire up even more. Of course, at this point just his breathing was doing that. So, Sophie tried a different angle.
“Tell me it can’t work between us,” she said.
“It can’t work between us.” He didn’t hesitate, either, and it didn’t seem like lip service.
Since the fire was still there, she tried again. “If we’re together as lovers, it could mess up your life,” Sophie added.
“It could mess up my life.” Again, no hesitation.
There it was. She had her answer. It couldn’t work and it would create a big festering mess. Since she already had one of those in her life what with the business and her brothers’ problems, she didn’t need another one.
Sophie fluttered her fingers to the door. “It’s probably time for me to go.”
Clay moved finally. But it wasn’t to free her from his waist-grip. Nope. He snapped her back to him, and the kiss caught her sound of surprise. It wasn’t an especially pleasing sound, more like a mix between a gasp and a grunt, but Clay went with it, and Sophie soon found herself in the middle of next week again.
Which wasn’t a good thing.
She wanted to remind him about the no-condom, no-pill dilemma, but it was hard to talk while being French-kissed. And she could no longer breathe. Her breath was somewhere in the vicinity of her kneecaps.
“Let’s fix this,” Clay said.
At least that’s what she thought he said, but Sophie had to admit he could have just as easily cited the preamble to the constitution. She was in the fire-hot, me-want mode, and that mode skyrocketed when Clay unzipped her jeans and slid his hand right into her panties.
Sophie gasped again and managed to break the kiss. “I don’t think this is going to fix anything.”
But she was so very, very wrong.
Clay kissed her again. Not her mouth but her neck. He located the most sensitive spot in that region of her body and went after it. His fingers, however, found the most sensitive spot of all.
He slipped his fingers through the slick heat and touched, and touched and touched. All the while, he kept up those maddening neck kisses while his left hand cupped her butt and held her in place.
It was a sweet assault on multiple erogenous zones. It was also a mind-blowing, leg-melting one. If Clay hadn’t kept her pinned between him and the wall, she would have slid straight to the floor.
Instead, she slid straight into a fast, hard climax.
She’d had climaxes before, of course, but nothing like this. Maybe because she’d gone so long without one. Maybe because Clay knew exactly what he was doing. Either way, Sophie made some nonsensical sounds. Moans and whimpers. But most of all, she just let the pleasure blast her into the middle of next year.
The climax rippled through her, making it to her kneecaps and toes, and she held on to Clay while he stroked the last of the climatic ripples. He gave her every bit of orgasmic fun that he could have possibly given her, considering that his erection was still behind his zipper, and then he pressed his forehead against hers.
He was out of breath, too, and practically panting when he finally looked at her.
“Excuse me,” he ground out, his voice as strained as his expression. “But I need to take a cold shower now.”
* * *
ACTUALLY, CLAY NEEDED more than a shower. He needed a hammer so he could hit himself in the head. That might knock some sense into him.
Might soften up his dick, too, though he wasn’t holding out much hope in that area.
His dick wanted Sophie, but since it wasn’t going to get her, then it would likely just stay hard as punishment. The heart might want what the heart wants, but the dick was, well, a dick, when it didn’t get off.
While he dried off from his shower and got dressed, Clay tried to figure out how to handle this. It would be easier if he immediately took Sophie home, but that felt a little like a variation of love ’em and leave ’em. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t actually “loved her” in that way. Didn’t matter that taking her home would be the safer option. Because there was still the factor of her crappy day. She probably needed a little TLC. Too bad, though, that his dick was offering him a dirty version of how to dole out that tender loving care.
Clay mentally prepared himself in case he found Sophie in a puddle of tears. Thankfully there weren’t any tears. She was seated at his kitchen island, eating some of his birthday cake. Not an itty-bitty slice, either. This was a sugar-coma-sized portion. And she was drinking a beer with it.
She looked up at him, their gazes connecting for a second before Clay looked away. But he saw enough of her to know there were no tears. She even smiled. And the third thing he noticed: she was fucking beautiful.
His dick wanted to take that last part literally.
“Say, do you know you’ve got a dirty egg in a plastic bag in your fridge?” she asked. It certainly wasn’t the question he was expecting, but it was better than her mentioning what had happened against the wall.
“Vita sent me those. They’re chicken repellant. And it’s not dirt you’re seeing. I’m pretty sure it’s shit, and that’s why the bag is sealed.”
She made a face.
“Don’t worry. It didn’t touch the cake.” He cut himself a slice, grabbed a beer and took the seat opposite her. There was a chair right next to her, but that didn’t seem a smart choice especially coming on the heels of the other unsmart choice he’d made—to put his hand in her panties.
“The cake’s really good,” she went on. “According to the label on the box, it’s from the bakery over in Spring Hill. The one that Logan McCord’s wife owns. Have you met the McCord brothers yet?”
Clay actually welcomed the conversation. It was normal. Safe. Nonsexual. “I’ve met Lucky, the bull rider. He was in town on business once, and I ran into him at the café.”
For just a second her smile turned a little dreamy or something. “Yes, he was here doing business with Garrett. We buy our livestock from the McCords.” She shrugged. “Half the state buys livestock from them. Garrett would like to get to the point where the other half buys them from us.”
Clay had known that Garrett was expanding, but he hadn’t realized that Sophie’s brother had plans to go that big. “Wouldn’t you need more land for that?”
She nodded, had a sip of beer before she answered. “As I already mentioned, our cousins—Lawson and his brothers—own the land directly north of us, but they’re not likely to sell to anyone, especially us. The town’s to the west so we can’t expand in that direction, and Vita’s and your land are to the south.”
“I’m not selling,” Clay quickly told her.
“That’s what I figured. So, that leaves the land near you. Hermie Winters owns it, and while he might sell to us, that leaves the problem with Z.T.’s old house. It would put it right smack-dab in the middle of what we’d need for pasture, and we can’t tear it down or move it.”
“Terms of the will?”
“Historic site. Of course, there are worse things than having a really ugly house surrounded by cows so in the end that’s our best option.”
He couldn’t tell if she was pleased about that or not. Of course, now that she was CEO of Granger Western, Garrett could put all his efforts into making the ranch the way he wanted.
“Enough of cow and land talk. Happy birthday to us.” She ate another bite of cake, smiled again, then looked away. He didn’t want to tell her that the blue icing on the cake was now stuck
to her teeth. Also didn’t want to admit to himself that it looked kind of cute.
Hell.
First, he’d thought of her as fucking beautiful and now as cute. Yeah, he wasn’t in any kind of trouble here.
“That’s the first hand job I’ve ever gotten,” Sophie continued. Her voice was practically a whisper, and she didn’t look at him. Instead, she had her attention nailed to dragging her fork through the icing. “There’s a lot to be said for it.”
Yeah, two words came to mind—hard dick.
“You didn’t have to do it, you know,” she added.
“Wasn’t exactly planned.” Though he had needed to do something in that moment or he would have exploded. It relieved a little of the pressure cooker heat to have at least one of them come.
“All the fun for me without the risk of getting pregnant.” She paused. “But it couldn’t have been much fun for you. I probably should have joined you in the shower.”
His dick heard that, got all excited. But Clay shook his head. “Eating cake was the wiser choice.” He should just let it drop. He didn’t, though, because there was still an air of stupidity around him. “No hand jobs in high school?”
He instantly regretted the question. Because she’d dated Brantley back in those days. Clay really didn’t want to hear any sex details about Sophie and his brother-in-law.
She shook her head. “Mila and I had this pact-thing of waiting until we got married. That didn’t last for me, obviously. When I was eighteen, Brantley and I broke up, and I lost my virginity to...someone else. Mila, however, has stuck to that pact.”
Apparently, she’d reached enough of a sugar high because Sophie pushed the plate with the rest of her cake aside. “How about you? Any hand jobs in your past?”
Even though she didn’t say it, Clay thought she might be asking if he wanted a hand job in the near future. Like right now. While his dick liked that idea, Clay knew he had to play the common sense card here.
“One or two.” A lie. It was probably closer to six hundred since his high school girlfriend had favored that along with a few blow jobs. No way would he elaborate on his answer, though, so he changed the subject. “Speaking of Mila, how is she?”
“Upset because of what Tate did. Also upset because she thinks Roman’s mad at her because maybe she said something to Tate to make him think that she would actually drive him to his mother. Also upset because we walked in on...whatever the heck it was we walked in on. I asked her if she wanted some company tonight, but she said she wanted to watch some movies alone and then crash.”
That brought out the cop in him. “You don’t think she’s meeting another stranger for some fantasy role-play, do you? And you need to tell her to stop leaving a key in her verbena.”
“I did fuss at her about the key. And no, she’s not seeing anyone tonight. Actually, that whole fantasy thing might be on permanent hold. Though Mila would rather eat glass than admit it, she tends to turn hermit and mope after she’s seen Roman. She’s always had a thing for him.”
Well, that was something the gossips hadn’t mentioned yet. Probably because it seemed so far-fetched. Sophie’s brother and her best friend were about as mismatched as could be, though Roman probably had had some experience in taking a woman’s virginity. But there was a problem when that lover was thirty like Mila. Sex like that almost always came with a commitment, and Roman didn’t look like the commitment type.
“This is nice,” Sophie said, looking at him.
He knew that look. It was rife with sexual overtones. Clay wasn’t sure what to say or do about it, and he didn’t have to decide. That’s because his landline phone rang, the sound shooting through the house. And it wasn’t a pleasant sound, either, since it was a loud, old-fashioned ringtone. Thankfully, it was just two rings. That’s the way he had it set before the answering machine kicked in, and he heard his own recorded greeting. A warm and fuzzy welcome, it wasn’t.
“Chief McKinnon here. Leave a message after the beep only if you haven’t been able to reach me at the station. And only if it’s really important that you speak to me.”
Clay frowned and wasted a couple of seconds, hoping it wasn’t a neighbor calling about some trivial problem, which it usually was, but it didn’t take much time beyond those seconds for his gut to tighten. A conditioned response because sometimes it wasn’t his neighbors who called on that line.
He practically jumped out of his seat to hurry around the island so he could get to it. But he was too late. He heard the caller. And the message left for him.
“Killer.”
There was no mistaking the bitterness in that voice. The pain.
“My God,” Sophie said. “Do you get prank calls like that often?”
“It’s not a prank call,” he said before he could stop himself.
Clay wished he had stopped speaking, wished he could undo the last minute of his life. Hell, undo this whole evening.
Sophie shook her head, and he could tell that she was about to start a string of questions that he didn’t want to answer. Besides, the flashbacks were there, and if he had to look into Sophie’s eyes right now, he’d see her.
He’d see Delaney.
And everything that he’d done to her.
“Is it something you want to talk about?” Sophie finally asked.
The answer was easy. “No.” And the next part was easy, too. He had to get her out of there so he could try to corral this tangled nightmare. “Come on. I need to drive you home and have one of Freddie’s boys bring your horse to you later. All of this was a big mistake.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
CLAY DUG HIS pen into the report so hard that he tore the paper and broke the pen. He threw the pen in the trash. Missed. And then he kicked the wire mesh can. It flew across the floor, smacking into the wall with a thud. It didn’t feel good exactly, but that was asking a lot of a can kick.
Shit.
He’d made a mess of things. First, by what he did to Sophie and then his reaction to the phone call. He had been trained to handle stressful situations, but all that training flew out the window with just a handful of words.
It’s not a prank call.
Followed by the even wiser gem of: All of this was a big mistake.
Not exactly something a woman wanted to hear after semisex. Definitely not a “call me soon.” And Sophie hadn’t called.
It’d been a week since that’d happened, and he had heard nothing from her.
Of course, in addition to his words, he had given her the silent treatment when he’d driven her home. That had been necessary, though. Clay had barely been hanging on by a thread, and he hadn’t wanted to say or do anything else that would have triggered a full-fledged flashback. No way in hell did he want Sophie to see that.
No way in hell, though, did he want to continue on like this.
He took out the note from his wallet. It was the number of the caller. Clay knew the person. Knew him well, actually. The worst of enemies sometimes started off the best of friends, and that’s what had happened in this case. Clay took a deep breath, ready to make the call and ask for a meeting. It wouldn’t solve everything, but it would be a start, and maybe a start would be good enough to get the calls or pink envelopes to stop.
Maybe.
He’d pressed in the first two numbers, but before he could finish, there was a knock at the door. “Chief, you got some visitors,” Reena called out.
She didn’t wait for him to respond; the door opened, and Clay was more than surprised by who he saw standing there. April, Mila, Arlo and Vita.
“Is this some kind of intervention?” he grumbled.
Reena chuckled, but Clay was serious. He couldn’t imagine why these four had shown up at the same time.
“I didn’t know she was here,” April said, sparing Mi
la a glance.
Apparently, his sister didn’t like Mila because she was Sophie’s friend. April’s cool glance, however, didn’t land on Vita. Perhaps like most of the town, April didn’t want to risk pissing the woman off. Not because she feared any real retribution but because Vita could be a pest.
“And I didn’t know she would be here,” Mila countered, but she was looking at her mother. “You’d better not have brought any curses or potions with you,” Mila added to her in a whisper. Apparently, Mila wasn’t as concerned as others about a potential pissing off.
“I had to see the chief,” her mother simply said.
“Well so do I.” Arlo that time. “And it’s important. I need to speak to him in private.”
Clay debated how to handle this. Arlo was likely there on business, and while he didn’t like putting anything ahead of an investigation, it was best not to leave his sister with Sophie’s best friend and a gypsy. He motioned for April to come in.
“We won’t be long,” he assured the others.
April shut the door in their faces, went to him and kissed him on the cheek. “I just came from my OB appointment and wanted to stop by. Three months along now.” She proudly patted her stomach.
“And?” he prompted when she didn’t add anything.
“And Brantley and I want you to come to dinner tomorrow night.”
Clay didn’t have to be a cop to be instantly suspicious. “Are you planning some kind of intervention?”
She huffed. “Why do you keep asking that? Do you need an intervention?”
Yeah. But he didn’t want one. Besides, there probably wasn’t a cure to get Sophie off his mind.
However, April might think there was.
“Is this some kind of blind date arrangement?” he pressed.
Bingo. He could tell from his sister’s huff that he was spot-on. “You didn’t use that dating service we got you for your birthday so I want you to meet Brantley’s paralegal.”
“No.”
But April just kept on. “She’s beautiful, smart, and it’s been ages since you’ve had a real date. Plus, it would stop those rumors about Sophie and you seeing each other.”
Those Texas Nights Page 15
