by Diane Roth
Greg's college roommate, Rand Hamilton and his lady, Rachel had also joined them for the wedding. Greg noted that it was the first time he'd ever seen his friend truly happy. They were packing at this moment for an afternoon flight out, but Cara and Greg would stay for a full ten days of honeymoon happiness.
And delirious happiness is exactly what Cara felt, her hand rubbing softly up and down across the serrated muscles of her husband's abdomen. It seemed as though the world had finally righted itself, and she couldn't imagine being happier or more at peace. She hadn't a care in the world right now. The breeze cooled them, the shade offering protection from the Caribbean sun, and a profound lethargy held her in its powerful grip. She didn't ever want to move from this exact spot.
"You'd better quit that rubbin' around on my stomach, or it's gonna to get you in trouble," Greg told her, taking hold of the tempting hand and bringing it to his lips for a soft kiss.
"Not afraid," she said quietly, too sleepy to put more energy into it.
He rolled over to face her, pulling her closer and tangling his legs with hers. The movement made her fuss and grumble, but she never opened her eyes, just pouted.
"What are you fussing about?"
"I was comfortable, thank you." She still didn't open her eyes. "And I'm sleepy." She snuggled in closer to his chest and pressed a kiss there.
His hands now did some wandering of their own over the dip in her back, the swell of her bottom, covered only by a string bikini. "Why are you sleepy? You've been so lazy," he said, chuckling at her.
"It happens," she said, her voice slightly muffled between them. "It was a lot worse with Ryan than with Maddie. With him, I could have slept the whole nine months."
His hands stopped abruptly, his whole body suddenly filled with a tension that hadn't been there before, but he said nothing.
After a moment of letting that sink in, Cara tilted her head back and opened her eyes to find him staring intensely at her, an expression brimming with emotion on his handsome face. She smiled at him timidly.
"Are you freakin' kiddin' me?" he asked.
She shook her head. "Nope. Took the test this morning."
Now his eyes closed and he released a breath he'd obviously been holding. "Oh, my God."
She tucked herself back into the shelter of his chest and allowed him some time to decide how he felt. It was the least she could offer. She'd had a couple of weeks to get used to the idea herself.
Slowly, she felt him relax some and he pressed a kiss on the top of her head, his arms hugging her all the tighter.
"Are you okay?" she asked, not certain she wanted to hear his answer.
"Yeah, just completely astounded," he admitted. "We're pretty old to be starting all that. Hell, we've got one starting college in the fall."
She nodded against his chest, loving the ownership he had in her kids. "Yes, and she'll have a little sister or brother to meet when she comes home for Christmas break."
He started chuckling, a slow rumble in the beginning, but as she looked up at him and grinned, he threw his head back, and the chuckle grew until it was a full belly laugh that made Cara laugh, too, and drew the attention of Etta and Barbara, as well.
"Hey ... y'all need to settle down over there, or get a room, you hear?" Etta warned them.
"Hush, Etta," Cara called, laughing still. Greg quieted and found her mouth with his for a soulful kiss that made her simmer.
"Humph. That ain't no way to speak to a guest, now is it," she yammered on, but they completely ignored her, wrapped up in their own bliss.
~The End~
Biography
Diane Roth is a native Texan, a Pediatric Nurse, a wife, mother, and grandmother, who has been writing Romance for the past twenty years. Thankfully, her husband, a man who has inspired every single one of her heroes to one degree or another, recognized early on that her writing behooved him, and he has always loved to cook. It's been a match made in Heaven for thirty-five years now.
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Watch for future releases in the Texas Wildfire Series including Wayward Son, Ren and Callie's story, scheduled for release in December 2013, and Rand and Rachel's story, title TBA, coming in 2014.
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Wayward Son
Coming December 2013
Excerpt
Wayward Son
by
Diane Roth
If there was anything Callie Cameron dreaded more than change, she'd be hard pressed to name it. She recognized it was a very narrow minded way to look at life, but that was just too bad. Change bought packing a whole set of the unknown. And the unknown brought the wearisome task of wrestling it all into a neatly packaged, conforming, controlled, predictable entity. It generally took her six months or more to manage that. At least it did with bosses. Other things took a lifetime, and Callie hadn't quite mastered some of those categories. But bosses, she could manage. This one shouldn't prove any more difficult than the three before him, she figured. She was, however, growing weary of the task of breaking in new Plant Managers or Chief Operating Officers or whatever Corporate might decide to call them this quarter. Italia Carpet and Tile Distribution Center outside Sweet Springs, Texas seemed to be the corporate revolving door for mid-level executives ... a place to make it or break it, do or die, and Callie had helped more than her share of deadbeats and do-gooders move right along to their eventual destination on the career ladder. It made no difference to her which way they went as long as they stayed out of her way and let her run the place like she always had.
She'd spent the whole day cleaning out the executive office in preparation for the new arrival. She rubbed at the back of her gritty neck and wondered what she might scrounge up for dinner as she drove the winding highway home well after dark Tuesday evening. She hadn't intended to stay so late. Finding time for a deep clean of the place was a rare thing, and once she'd gotten started, there didn't seem to be a stopping place. She'd spent the last two days at it, and at this point, would almost fall into bed hungry rather than try to cook something.
She rounded a particularly sharp turn in the road and pulled up short at the sight of a car in the ditch. One headlight illuminated the figure of a man standing near the front of the vehicle surveying the damage, and the other headlight shone crazily into the night sky with a cockeyed beam full of smoke and dust.
Callie pulled over so her lights shone on the disabled car, parked, and got out of her pick up.
"Anyone hurt?" she asked, approaching the man.
He turned to look at her, panic all over his features. "Yeah. This deer is in pretty bad shape, I think," he said.
Callie rounded the front of his smashed up, expensive, red foreign car and found a nice ten point buck laying on the grass dead as a doornail. Callie lifted his head by the velvety rack, then lowered it back to the grass. "That's a nice ten pointer you bagged. And, yeah, I'd say he was in pretty bad shape," she muttered.
The man looked even more stricken. "Well, do something for him."
Callie laughed. "And what would you have me do?"
"I don't know. Can you do CPR on a deer?" he asked, frustration and urgency coloring his words.
"Only on Grey's Anatomy," she said. She tried to see into the interior of the car, but the headlight in her eyes prevented it. "Anyone else in the car with you?"
"No," he said absently, then came a little closer to the deer and nudged at his flank with the toe of a very nice, stupidly expensive Italian leather driving loafer. "Is he really dead? Are you sure?"
"I'm certain. You'd be nicely impaled by now if he
weren't."
His expression indicated he believed that possibility fully as he took a step or two backward.
"Is your car drivable?"
"Hell, no. When I hit him, I blew both front tires, and I think the radiator is gone, too. Smells that way, anyway," he said, and continued to mess with his cell phone.
Callie nodded. "Better call a tow truck."
He raised his phone and shook it at her. "How am I supposed to do that when I can't get a freakin' signal in the middle of this god-forsaken nowhere?"
Callie raised an eyebrow at him and fished her own phone out of her back pocket. "You just have to have the right carrier out here." She scrolled through her contacts.
"Oh, and you just happen to know the tow truck number by heart, right?" he asked sarcastically.
She eyed him a little more suspiciously, his increasing volume and anger beginning to make her uncomfortable. "Not exactly. But I do have his number in my contact list."
"You get a kickback on all the tows you call in?" he asked, his smart ass tone of voice really grating on her.
"Only the ones involving ass wipes who drive too fast and wear prissy footwear," she said, giving him a little sass back. She got an answer on the other end of the line before the jerk could reply. "Hey, Manny ... it's Callie. I came up on a guy who's hit a deer out here on 281, right after the cemetery. His car's going to need a tow. Both front tires are blown." She listened while Manny repeated their location. "That's right," she told him. "Just past the Emory place." Manny asked her about the condition of the deer. "Dead, but I'll ask the guy about it. Sure thing, Manny." She disconnected.
"Manny's coming. It'll take him about twenty minutes, I guess, to get here."
The man just looked at her dispassionately. "These shoes are not prissy," he said, taking her so by surprise she had to stifle a laugh. That was his most pressing issue?
"Dude, those shoes are prissy enough to get your ass kicked around these parts," she said and gave up trying to hide her amusement.
It didn't sit well with him. "Lady, these shoes cost more than your sorry old pickup," he said, his eyes narrowed into little slits.
"Guess that's the high cost of an ass-kickin' these days. Sucks to be you," she said and turned to go, done wasting her time trying to help the ungrateful jerk.
"What the hell? You're just going to leave me here?" he yelled, incredulous at her lack of good Samaritanism.
"Sure am." She yanked open the door to her pickup with a screech of rusty hinges, then climbed in with another squeak of worn out shock absorbers.
"And if the tow guy doesn't show up?" he yelled, clearly beyond irritated with her.
She started her truck and pulled back on to the road slowly, stopping just as she came even with his car. "Then I think you're gonna get your money's worth out of those prissy shoes," she said with a smile.
"Oh, for the love of--," he said, turning away and driving both hands into his hair. Suddenly he turned back to face her. "And the deer?"
"Oh, yeah ... the deer. Manny asked if he could have him for the freezer," she said. "I almost forgot to ask you."
"You have got to be kidding me," he said, then in frustration, kicked up the sand at the edge of the road with those expensive loafers and let loose a string of cuss words that would have blistered a sailor's tongue.
Callie just chuckled and drove off, feeling not one ounce of regret for leaving the spoiled brat to his predicament.
She might have been a little more regretful had she known she'd meet this man again, and the tables would be turned decidedly in his favor.
Wayward Son excerpt
Copyright© 2013 T.D.L. Rothrock
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
Biography
Excerpt
