J. P.?
“Try to stay out of trouble,” Jack said to her as he turned to go. “Next time someone might not be around to save you from doing something stupid, like going after a man who weighs twice what you do.”
She put her bad hand on his arm to stop him. He was right. “Thanks, Jack. If you hadn’t stepped in, something really bad could have happened.” She shook her head. Maybe he didn’t hate her as much as he wanted her to think. “When I saw him shove my sister . . . I don’t even remember how it happened, but I just lost my mind and went after him.”
“Don’t make too much of it, Daisy.” So much for feeling special. “You could have been anyone.” His gaze dropped to her hand on his arm.
“Since I’m not just anyone, you should let me thank you properly,” she offered in the hopes that perhaps they could now relate to each other on friendlier terms, and she could talk to him about Nathan.
One corner of his mouth slid up as his gaze moved to her breasts, up her chin, to her mouth. He wasn’t fooled by her offer and was purposely trying to annoy her. “What did you have in mind?”
“Not what you have in mind.”
From within the shadow of his hat, he finally looked into her eyes. “What then?”
“Lunch.”
“Not interested.”
“Dinner.”
“No, ma’am.” He stepped off the curb and said over his shoulder, “Come on, Buddy.”
Daisy watched him move across the parking lot to a classic black Mustang parked at one of the gas pumps. Two razor-sharp creases ran down the back of his shirt and were tucked into the waistband of his Levi’s. He wasn’t wearing a belt, and his wallet made a bulge in his back pocket. Buddy followed and Daisy turned to her sister. The red welt on Lily’s cheek had started to fade.
“Are you okay?” Daisy asked as Lily moved toward her.
“I’m okay.” She reached for the Dr. Pepper and took a long drink. “I think I’m going crazy.”
Really? “Maybe a little.”
The two of them moved to Lily’s Taurus and got inside. Lily spoke as she buckled her seat belt. “I’m sorry about what I said about Steven. You’re right. I was being an insensitive bitch.”
“I think I said you were a brat.”
“I know you did. Let’s go home.”
Daisy started the car. “How long do you think it will take for Mom to find out?”
“Not long,” Lily sighed. “She’ll probably try to ground us.”
Through the rearview mirror, she watched Jack’s Mustang pull out of the parking lot.
“Daisy?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. You were really something going after Ronnie like that.”
“Don’t thank me, just promise you’ll stop stalking him and Kelly the skank.”
“Okay.” She took a drink of her cup. “Did you see her butt, though?”
“It was huge.”
“And flabby.”
“Yeah, and you’re a lot cuter and have better hair.”
Lily smiled. “And breath.”
Daisy chuckled. “Yeah.”
When they got back to their mother’s house, Lily grabbed Pippen and lay down on the couch with him. She turned on a Blue’s Clues video and nestled her nose in his little mullet. “Love you, Pippy,” she said. Without taking his eyes from the television, he raised his face and kissed his mother’s chin.
“Did you get the job?” Louella asked from the kitchen, where she was baking cookies and filling the house with the smell of peanut butter.
“They said they’d call,” Lily answered, hiding her smile behind her son’s head.
“Chicken,” Daisy whispered.
Lily was a mess, no doubt about it. Daisy had three days before she needed to return to her life in Seattle. Nathan’s last day of school was today, and she needed to call him and ask how it went.
She had a lot to do. She had three days to help straighten out her sister’s life, give Steven’s letter to Jack and tell him he had a son. Then she could return home and get on with her life. She and Nathan could lie around on a beach somewhere, soaking up rays. She’d drink piña coladas while he watched girls in bikinis. Heaven for both of them.
But right now, all she wanted was to take a shower, put ice on her hand, and take a nap. Her adrenaline spent, she was tired and achy, but if not for Jack, she was positive she would be feeling a lot more achy right about now. Going after Ronnie like that hadn’t been real smart, but she hadn’t thought at all. She’d just reacted to him pushing Lily to the ground.
I think it’s more likely that he’d kick yours. Then I’d have to step in and knock the shit out of him for laying a hand on you, Jack had said. He’d also said he would have come to the rescue of any woman. He’d told her not to make too much out of it.
But now as she thought back with a clearer head, she doubted he would have held just any woman a little bit longer than was absolutely necessary. Not like he’d held her, tight against his hard chest. And she really doubted he would have brushed just any woman’s hand with his thumb. She also doubted he’d even known he was doing it.
She’d been so focused on everything else around her, she hadn’t realized that Jack’s touch had been a little more personal, lingered a second longer than just a Good Samaritan helping out any ol’ woman.
She realized it now, and just the memory of his touch made her catch her breath. Her mother called out to her as she moved up the stairs to her bedroom. “Okay,” she called back, then shut the door behind her. She leaned against it as a hot little tug pulled at her abdomen and between her thighs. The warmth of it spread across her flesh and her breasts grew heavy with it. She hadn’t felt anything like this in a long time, but she knew what it was. Lust. Pent up sexual desire. Years of it pulling at her.
She closed her eyes. Maybe she’d imagined Jack’s touch. Maybe it was all in her head, but she hadn’t imagined how good it was to feel a solid healthy man again. So good to feel protected. So good to feel his chest against her back and his arm around her waist. God help her, she missed that feeling. Missed it so much that she’d wanted to melt into Jack. She wondered what he’d have done if she’d turned and kissed the side of his neck. Run her tongue up his throat and her hands all over the muscles of his chest. Naked, like he’d been in his kitchen that first night. Half naked with his jeans hanging low on his hips so she could slide her palms over his flat abdomen and sink to her knees as she pressed her face into his button fly.
Daisy’s lids flew open. Jack was the last man on the planet she should be fantasizing about licking and touching. The last man on the plant who should make her think of sex.
It’s been a long time, is all, she told herself as she pushed away from the door. She opened a drawer and pulled out a pair of bikini panties and her bra. She was thirty-three, and before Steven’s illness, they’d had a very active sex life. Daisy liked sex and she missed it. She supposed it had only been a matter of time before her desire for intimacy returned. It was just too bad it had returned right now. Today. And it was really too bad Jack had been the trigger. For so many obvious reasons, sex between her and Jack was out of the question.
Daisy walked from her room to the bathroom down the hall. But sex between her and someone other than Jack might be a possibility. She’d only been with two different men her whole life, maybe it was time to experiment. She had two and a half days now before she returned to Seattle. Maybe it was time to live it up before she returned home and was a mom again. Maybe she should add “get laid” to her to-do list.
A little stab of guilt poked her conscience. Steven was dead, so why did it feel like she was contemplating cheating on her husband? She didn’t know, but there it was. Right in front of her, and she knew that her guilt would probably keep her from actually doing it with anyone.
Too bad, because she probably would have liked some no-strings-attached sex. The kind where you just grab someone, do it, and never see them again.
S
he turned on the bathtub and held her hand under the running water. But maybe if she just did it, she wouldn’t feel guilty anymore. Maybe it was like losing her virginity all over again. The first time was the most difficult. After that, it got a whole lot easier. A whole lot funner, too.
Of course she didn’t have a candidate. Maybe she should pick up some guy at a bar. Someone who looked like Hugh Jackman or that one guy in the Diet Coke commercial. No, those men reminded her too much of Jack. She should pick someone totally different. Someone like Viggo Mortensen or Brad Pitt. No, Matthew McConaughey.
Oh yeah.
But it would never be Jack. Never. That would be really really bad.
Or, a little voice inside her head whispered, it would be really, really good. As she dropped her shorts and pulled her T-shirt over her head, she was afraid that if she wasn’t careful, the little voice in her head was going to get her into big, big trouble.
Chapter 8
Most weekend nights, Slim Clem’s packed ’em in from as far away as Amarillo and Dalhart. The live band played country, loud country, with an occasional southern-rock oldy thrown in. The big dance floors were always crowded, and the mechanical bulls were always running, taking on all comers with a pocket full of cash. Three different bars poured a continuous stream of icy beer, straight shots, or fruity drinks with paper umbrellas.
All manner of stuffed mammals and reptiles peered through glass eyes from built-in platforms high on the walls. If the Road Kill Bar was a taxidermist’s dream, Slim Clem’s was his wet dream. Although why anyone would proudly display a hog-nosed skunk was anyone’s guess.
Within the dim bar, Wranglers, Rockies and Lees ruled. Worn tight and in every imaginable color by women stuffed into fringed cowgirl blouses with horses appliquéd on the back. T-shirts with conches and feathers, the bottoms shredded to look like fringe, were also a big favorite as well as prairie skirts with big ruffles or jacard dresses with sweetheart collars. Hair ranged from Texas big, teased and sprayed within an inch of its life—hat head—or hair so long and straight it hung to the waist or the backs of the knees.
The men preferred Wranglers or Levi’s in blue or black, some so tight a person had to wonder where they’d packed their goods. While there were men who wore starched cowboy shirts with racing flames or American flags on them, T-shirts were the hands-down favorite. Most advertised beer and John Deere tractors, while others had a different message. The ubiquitous “Don’t mess with Texas” was out in full force, while “Yeah, I’m drunk, but you’re still ugly,” competed with the ever hopeful “Let’s get Nekid.”
Cowboy boots kept time with the band, and belt buckles big enough to be considered lethal weapons flashed beneath the dance floor’s multicolored lights.
Daisy had never been inside Slim Clem’s. When she’d lived in Lovett before, she’d been too young. But she’d heard about it. Everybody had heard about it, and she figured it was about time she experienced it for herself.
That Friday afternoon, Lily got a job at the deli counter in Albertsons, and the two of them decided to celebrate at Slim’s. Daisy hadn’t really brought anything to wear to a honky-tonk, but in the back of her closet, she dug out her old cowboy boots. She shoved her feet into them, and while a little tight, they still fit. Her junior year in high school, she’d saved for several months to buy the red boots with the white heart inserts. Lucky for her, cowboy boots were never out of style in Texas.
In the box with her yearbooks, she pulled out her daddy’s belt with the big silver buckle he’d won at the Top ’O Texas rodeo a few short months before a bull had stomped and killed him.
She put on her white cotton tank dress that closed down her breasts with eight little snaps, and she wrapped her daddy’s rodeo belt around her hips. The name Rowdy was tooled into the brown leather in back. The buckle was heavy and hung down a little, but she thought she looked ready for a cowboy bar.
She rolled her hair on big curlers and stuck big hoops in her ears. She outlined her eyes with black liner, put on her shiniest red lipstick, and decided that she looked cowgirl chic.
Lily dressed for the bar in tight jeans and a pink blouse she tied just below her breasts so that her navel ring showed. Her makeup was heavier than Daisy’s; and when she kissed Pippen goodbye on her mother’s porch, she left big pink lip prints on his cheek.
On the way to Slim Clem’s, Lily laughed and joked and seemed ready to get on with her life. Daisy was ready too. Tomorrow she was going to tell Jack about Nathan, and this time nothing would stop her. Not her own fear, not a kid’s birthday party, and not even a half-naked woman in his house. She was leaving Sunday afternoon, and she had to tell him tomorrow. There was no other choice.
It was after nine when they walked into the bar. The band was singing Brooks and Dunn’s “My Maria” as they paid their five-dollar cover charge. While the band hit the high notes of the song, Daisy and Lily made their way through the crowd to the closest bar and ordered two Lone Stars from the tap. Daisy paid for the first round, and the two of them lucked out and found a table near the dance floor. They sat in chairs next to each other and their conversation turned to a critique of the people around them.
“Get a load of that guy over there in the beige cowboy shirt and hat,” Lily said next to Daisy’s ear. Since that described quite a few of the men in the bar, she had to point with her glass. “He’s got on jeans so tight, he must have been poured in ’em wet.”
The cowboy in question was tall and lean and looked tough and hard enough to wrestle steers. “‘Wrangler butts drive us nuts,’” Daisy recited through a smile and raised her beer to her lips.
“Yes, they do,” Lily agreed. Daisy couldn’t recall the last time she’d been out with the girls; she’d forgotten how much she missed it. How much she needed to relax and laugh. Most of all, she was pleasantly surprised at how much she enjoyed being with her sister. The two of them laughed and scored the parade of male butts two-stepping and boot-scooting across the floor in front of them. Lily pointed to a guy in a pair of Roper’s, and Daisy bent her head to one side. She had to admit, it took a very nice butt to look good in Roper’s. Daisy gave him an eight, Lily a ten, they compromised on a nine.
“Did you see Ralph Fiennes’s naked ass in Red Dragon?” Lily asked.
Daisy shook her head. “I don’t really like to watch scary movies now that I live alone.”
“Well, fast forward over the scary parts. You have to rent the video just to see Ralph’s ass. He is definitely fine.”
Daisy took a drink from her beer. “I saw him in Maid in Manhattan. The movie sucked, but he looked good.”
“There’s a minus six,” Lily said as she pointed her glass at a man in a pair of denim bib overalls and a tank top. “The movie sucked because of J.Lo. They should have cast someone else.” Lily smiled. “Like me.”
Daisy felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to look up past a T-shirt that said HOLD MY BEER WHILE I KISS YOUR GIRLFRIEND and into the face of Tucker Gooch. She’d graduated high school with Tucker. His mother, Luda Mae, had taught Home Ec at Lovett high. Tucker had often been sent to her room to sit out his punishment for some misdeed, like getting caught making out in the girls’ bathroom.
Daisy stood, and from what she could see of him now, his dark hair was quite thin on top, but his eyes still shined with mischief and his mouth was curved into an irresistible smile.
“Hello, Tucker. How are you?”
He gave her a big hug. “I’m good.” He held her a little tight, but his hands didn’t roam down her back to her behind like they used to. “Come dance with me,” he said.
She looked at Lily. “Do you mind?”
Lily shook her head, and Daisy followed Tucker out onto the dance floor. The band struck up Toby Keith’s, “Who’s Your Daddy?” and Tucker lead her in the two-step. Before his illness, she and Steven had danced in a few clubs around Seattle. For several beats of the drum and slides of the steel guitar, she was afraid she’d forgotten how to dance. B
ut dancing to country was in her blood, and she took to it again quicker than a chicken on a Cheeto. As Tucker spun her and moved with her across the floor, she felt another part of herself slide into place. The part of her that could relax and laugh and have fun.
At least for tonight.
Jack grabbed his beer from the bar, then raised the bottle of Pearl to his lips. Over the bottom of the bottle, his gaze came to rest on the dance floor across the bar and the flash of white. He’d noticed Daisy the second she and Lily walked in the door. Not that he’d been looking, but those two women were hard to miss. They didn’t quite fit in at Slim Clem’s. Like two eclairs in a meat-and-potatoes crowd, and Jack was certain there were more than a few men in the bar thinking about eating dessert before dinner.
He lowered the bottle and shoved his free hand up to his knuckles in the front pocket of his Levi’s. He returned his gaze to Gina Brown, who stood in front of him talking about the mechanical bulls in back. Apparently, since she was here so much, Slim’s had offered her a job giving riding lessons on the weekends.
“The gal I taught this afternoon was about sixty-five,” she said. “I put her up on Thunder and . . .”
Jack didn’t give a rat’s about Thunder. What he wanted to know was if his “worst nightmare” had known he would be here. He wouldn’t put it past her, but if she thought he was going to get all chatty with her, she was doomed to disappointment. Usually, Jack preferred bars that were a little less crowded than Slim’s, but it was Buddy Calhoun’s last night in town, and Buddy had talked him into coming to the bar. At the moment Buddy was taking his chances with one of the bulls in the back room. Personally, Jack didn’t understand the appeal of getting thrown from a machine into a bunch of thick pads on the floor. He’d always figured that if you wanted to ride a bull, you should climb up onto a real one and take your chances.
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