by Zoe Dawson
“I fell. It was an unfortunate accident, but I’m fine.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. How is your summer so far?”
“It’s been pretty eventful for me and my two friends.” I explained briefly, for obvious reasons omitting the part about Aubree killing Damian Langston.
“Oh, my, it has been eventful. And you’re going back to modeling in September?”
“Yes, I have several decisions to make. I’ve been asked to host a TV show called Runway My Way. My momma wants me to enter the Miss Louisiana pageant, but I’m not sure what I want to do.”
“Well, you could do any of those things, I’m sure. But you could also make different decisions and change the course of your life. Everyone has that power, and you’re only nineteen, my dear.”
We pulled up to a curb and stopped. The door opened while I was still considering her words. I hadn’t ever thought about making different decisions. But I realized she was right. I could.
The structure was small and, once we were inside, quite cramped. There were several children sitting at tables drawing or painting.
A woman looked up, and when she saw Maizy, she bustled over and hugged her. “Oh, I was hoping you’d be stopping by. Thank you for the paints. We are always in need of supplies. Hello there,” she said, holding out her hand. I shook it.
“This is River Pearl Sutton, a good friend of mine. I’m hoping she’ll take an interest in the school. This is Laurel Jeffries.”
“Oh, how wonderful.” She turned to the children and started signing. One by one the children stopped what they were doing and watched her, then they looked at me. I could only wave, since I wasn’t fluent in sign language. They all smiled at me. One little boy motioned me over, and I walked to his table and sat down. He indicated the pad in front of him, and I saw he’d drawn a surprisingly good rendition of two lions engaged in battle.
“This is Bobby Shuler. He loves lions, and he can read lips, so you can talk to him and he’ll do his best to communicate.”
I nodded and said, “This is very good.”
He beamed at me and flipped over the page, indicating the pad again. “You want me to draw?” I asked.
He nodded. I accepted the pad and picked up a pencil. He watched me avidly as I started with a lion’s mane. As the drawing came to life, the smile on his face grew. He pulled paints toward us, and when I was finished, he picked up a paintbrush, offered one to me, and we worked on the picture together. He was very talented for one so young, but my talent had manifested early, too. But I wasn’t as lucky as Bobby. My momma discouraged my pursuit of art.
When we were finished, he beamed. I stood to leave, but before I could take a step, he handed me the picture and hugged me around the waist.
My heart rolled over and I ruffled his shock of dark hair. Crouching down so I was level with him. I said, “Thank you very much. I’ll frame our picture and hang it on my wall.”
He nodded and smiled so wide I had to smile back, thoroughly charmed.
Later back in the limo, Maizy said, “What do you think of the school, River Pearl?”
“I’d like to be involved,” I said.
She looked quite pleased with herself, and I laughed when she pulled a book off the seat next to her. It was a how-to-sign instruction book. She slipped her arm through mine.
On the way home, I dropped the picture at the framers. Once home, I avoided my momma, who fortunately was in the kitchen talking to the cook. I could hear her giving instructions. I slipped up to my room and made a beeline for the boxes I’d brought home from Evie’s, setting the signing book on my night table.
Getting a fresh pad of paper, I started to read the letters, ready to take notes.
January 20, 1851
My beloved Amy,
I don’t know how much longer I can hold off from seeing you. It’s been weeks while you talk to your daddy. I still think it would have been better if I had done the honors. I’ve finished the general store and have now begun to stock it. Please write word of your daddy’s feelings regarding me.
I will do everything in my power to make you happy, my beautiful Amy. No woman has ever touched me as deeply as you have. I am in your power and my life and my heart is in your sweet hands.
Love,
Duel
Before getting through about half of them, I was hooked on their love story. There wasn’t anything about the payroll murders. But their story melted my heart. He’d been rebuffed by her family, but he’d persisted. Worked so hard to build a business, a general store, and it had flourished. I was so touched by his promises to provide for her. It was like reading a book, and I couldn’t wait to get through the rest of the letters. I jotted down some notes of things to include in my speech.
Carefully putting the letters back the way I had found them, I slipped them back in the box. It was getting late. But before I turned off the light, I practiced the sign for thank you, until I was pretty sure I got it right. Now I would be able to sign to Bobby next time I saw him.
After I turned off the light and lay down I tried not to think about Brax.
But it was futile.
#
Braxton
Two days later and no contact from River. I’d thought she might show up again at Outlaws, but she hadn’t. She was probably still mad at me, and it suited me fine. I’d had two full days of cooking and was now sitting on my deck. The music still rolled around in my head.
I sighed. I should stop playing the song. All it did was make me feel worse.
But then I remembered how perfect she’d felt against me, her hot pink panties, her sweet, sassy mouth, and I got all hot and bothered again, along with another raging hard-on.
I went back inside and closed and locked the door. Setting the fiddle back in its stand, I decided to shower.
I turned the water on without bothering to warm it and stepped under the spray. Icy water shocked my overheated body. I gritted my teeth against an unmanly squeal and endured it, hoping it would help and praying I could keep all the crap I hadn’t let myself feel bottled up behind the closed and locked door.
But it was no use. I changed the temperature to hot and washed. Once dry, I pulled on a fresh shirt, briefs, and my dark jeans. I didn’t bother with my hair. I pulled on my motorcycle boots and did up the buckles. Out in the garage I punched the opener and grabbed an extra helmet.
Straddling my Fat Boy, I turned the engine over and backed it out with quick steps, opening up the throttle the second I hit the main road. The bayou whizzed past me while my chest tightened with thoughts of her. I let my mind go and imagined getting what I wanted from her, what I needed from her, and I broke into a sweat. All the women I had ever done ceased to exist. They had all been substitutes for her anyway. Something I had never consciously admitted until this moment.
When I spied the big white columns of her house and rode along the allee, the big oaks rushing past looking like sentinels, I wondered if I had gone completely insane. When I pulled up, she was sitting on the porch, a pad of paper on her lap. Jake was in the rocker beside her reading a book.
She was already rising when I pulled up and idled there. Turning my head, I flipped up the visor and stared at her.
Jake was halfway down the stairs, and I was ready to kickstand this hog and go bodily remove her if she didn’t trot her sweet, hot ass down those steps.
“Jake!” she shouted and was up and running while Jake stalked closer, looking ready to rumble. I didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t here to see him.
River got in front of him and pressed a hand to his chest. Her hair swung against her back in a long braid.
I heard her hiss, “Wait here.”
Still carrying her sketch pad, she marched toward me with a sass that broadcast she meant business. But like I’d told her in the attic, I liked her sass.
“You have a lot of nerve showing up here!”
“Get on.”
“No!”
“River, get your ass on th
e bike. I can explain.”
“You are nothing but a bastard and I won’t let you hurt me again! You can go straight to hell, Braxton.”
“I’ll go after you get on the goddamned bike.”
“I’m not interested in being second to anyone or anything!”
“River,” Jake said, his voice tight.
“Stay out of it, Jake. I mean it.”
The front porch window curtain twitched, but also didn’t care about who was watching. “I want to show you something.”
“I bet you do!” She folded her arms. “You are out of your mind if you think you can stand me up and then come over here and order me around. I’m not going to be treated like this and you can kiss my ass if you think I’m going to let you. Why did you even say you would have dinner with me when you were going over to her house to screw?”
I pinched between my eyes and growled, “River Pearl,” my voice strained. “Please get on the bike!”
She stiffened and gaped at me, her jaw dropping open.
She blew out a breath, turned to look at Jake. “He said please,” she squeaked.
“River,” he said with a warning.
She flipped open my saddle bag, tucked in the sketch pad, and slammed the helmet on her head. She settled behind me and slipped her arms around my waist.
“Tighter,” I ordered and she complied.
Jake started forward, but I flipped him off before I gunned the throttle and shot out of River’s driveway.
After hitting the black top, we rode for about a mile, then turned off into the bayou. Five minutes later I braked and set the kickstand with my boot heel.
River got off and pulled off the helmet, glaring at me. She slammed it down on the seat. “What is so important you have to drag me out here?”
I took off my helmet and grabbed her hand, dragging her after me.
“This had better be important. I’m still mad at you for standing me up at dinner. It was an asshole move, you asshole.”
I didn’t say anything, just hauled her after me. When she stumbled and pulled against my hand, I turned and scooped her up over my shoulder.
“So help me God, Braxton, I am going to wallop you.”
“Yeah, sure, honey pie.”
As soon as I got to where I wanted to be, I pulled her from my shoulder and set her down. She swung at me and I grabbed her hand.
She huffed, “You are the most exasperating, contrary, irritating, jerk I have ever had the displeasure of knowing.”
I got in her face and said, low and desperate, “You are the most self-possessed prick tease I have ever had the sheer, unadulterated pleasure of meetin’. You drive me crazy every time I get close to you.”
Finally her mouth snapped shut. She staggered back against the tree, as though I had just revealed my innermost thoughts. What the hell? I would never understand women, and I certainly would never understand her.
“Well, hot damn, that is at least something,” she said, folding her arms across her chest, telling me she might have finally heard me, but she was far from convinced to forgive me. And, kee-rist. Why did I want her to? The answer was simple. I was a complete idiot.
“Here I was thinking I didn’t affect you at all.”
“I’m good at covering it up. I’ve had a lot of practice,” I grumbled.
“Well, you are wasting your time. I am sick of this…crap. I guarantee I will not play second fiddle to her.”
“In the interest of clearing the air, I did stand you up. I did screw Becky—”
“Don’t torture me, Braxton,” she said breathlessly, her voice full of the pain I had caused. “Please…don’t.”
I couldn’t do this to her anymore. To us. But I had to be clear how far I was willing to go. “I screwed her and—”
She tried to go around me. But I caged her in. She tried to duck under my arms, but I grabbed her around the waist and brought her back. “—then broke it off with her,” I finished.
Her hot gray eyes, dimmed by the ash of her anger, glared at me until the words sank in. Then her face blanked. “You what?”
“Broke it off with her. I want you, but I have one stipulation I’m not sure you can agree to.”
“What is it?”
“This is short term, because you’re going back to New York, right? Back to your modeling career. You don’t and won’t have any expectation of anything else.”
“You want us to have an affair only.”
No. It wasn’t what I wanted, and I was scared shitless. I might be promising something which was going to hurt like a bitch at the end of it. But not having her, even for a short period, was simply beyond me anymore. We were both out of high school, adults, attracted to each other, and wanted to take the next step. Fuck, I’d wanted her forever, but not only in a physical way. Maybe, just maybe I could get her out of my system.
“Braxton?”
I gritted my teeth and lied through them. “Yes, an affair.”
“Just sex? That’s all.”
“Yes. Just sex.”
She gazed up at me, her gray eyes unreadable.
“You trying to make this easy for me or for you?”
I sighed and cupped her chin, running my thumb along her creamy skin. “Me, of course. I don’t do relationships.”
“I was so sure you didn’t even like me.”
“I want to get one thing straight between us. I never hated you or wasn’t interested in you. It was complicated, River. I was resisting you in the only boneheaded male way I could think of. By being a complete jerk.”
“That’s it? This whole thing has been about not wanting a relationship, nothing to do with your reputation?”
I looked away from her. If I told her the truth, would she try to talk me out of it? I decided it was best she believed I was a man-whore. My ma married into the Outlaw name, and she’d lost whatever status she’d had even before the marriage. She’d become just one of those good-for-nothing, murdering, thieving Outlaws. My ma was much, much more. My brothers and I were much, much more. I didn’t tell River Pearl any of this, because I was worried she would try to worm her way around it. But I had sworn an oath when I was ten, sworn I would never form any permanent attachments outside my ma and brothers.
Her hair drifted, glinting in the waning summer sun. Everything about her drove me mad. I'd brought her here to the tree where they'd hanged my ancestor to show her where my past began. A sick knot tightened in my gut. We came from a long line of Outlaws...well they were outlaws. Even my own daddy was branded a thief.
She was River Pearl Sutton. Golden girl and descendent of the town's lauded founder, Colonel Beauregard Sutton. The Civil War hero who built Suttontowne. I was descended from a man who murdered Confederate soldiers for their payroll of gold.
I stepped closer and she looked up at me with a guileless gaze. I studied her features. The late summer sunlight illuminated her eyes to a fathomless shade of gray. The cool gray of river rock and running water. Staring at River had been something I hadn't permitted myself till now. The direct sun was getting hotter…or was it merely her effect on me?
Hot, heat, fire.
“Why did you bring me all the way out here?”
I crowded her back, but she stood her ground, giving me a direct look. If it wasn't for the pulse beating in her throat with quick throbs, I wouldn't have been able to tell she felt any tension at all. She was so confident, so collected, so...my mind twisted up into chaos whenever I was close to River, and this time was no different.
“This is where they hanged Duel Outlaw without due process, without a trial, without even a night in jail.” I looked up at the branch directly above us. I lowered my voice. “His feet would have been right above your head, kicking and struggling.”
Her eyes cut to the upper branches. The rope they'd used was long gone, but the place where it had been wrapped had left an ugly blemish on the limb. She blanched.
She returned her sweet gaze to me and draped her arms loosely over my sh
oulders. I closed my eyes briefly at her touch. My hands flexed, but I kept them at my sides, no matter how much I wanted to touch her...simply let go and touch her.
“I think there’s more. What is it, Brax?”
“Why are you doing this speech about your ancestor and mine being friends? It's a hellava way to celebrate your Founder's Day. Don’t give me some crap about finding out who Duel was. You looking to piss off your daddy?”
She leaned closer to me, her height allowing her to lean in to whisper in my ear without me having to move a muscle. Her breath was hot against my moist skin. “You think I have an ulterior motive?”
There were many ways to make me perspire. Living in the bayou, being in my kitchen when I was cooking, and playing fiddle when I was jamming. But there was only one thing…one freaking thing that made me sweat. Her.
“Yes,” I said. “I think you have a secret agenda.”
“Maybe I do, Brax. Maybe it’s you I want to get to know.”
“Even knowing it’s impossible?”
“Because of who we are?”
“Fuck, yeah, plus you don’t live here anymore. You’ve moved on into a career which will keep you far away from Suttontowne.”
“Maybe I’m curious about you. Tell me right now you don’t feel the same way I do. That you don’t want to explore what it would be like…”
My throat tightened up and I wanted to lie to her. I could end it right here and right now. All my posturing, my carefully laid plan, my vow, were nothing but smoke and mirrors, and she knew it. “I want it.” The words came out of my mouth in a heated, strangled rush.
She sighed and pressed her satiny cheek against mine. “I want to know what it feels like to have your willing mouth on mine, participating, caressing, and passionate, taking me like I know you want to. Maybe that's what I want. My dirty little secret.”
My heart lurched and I went rock-hard. Everywhere. Just when I thought I was invincible, she came and crashed into me. I pressed her against the tree, and my head dipped down to meet my utter doom.
