“I think you’re probably right.”
“You threw a wet blanket on their fun. Carol and the rest of the ladies blew it off, but I could tell that Carol was very disappointed, sad even, that you wouldn’t participate in her party.”
Carol was disappointed? Sad? Was he right about that? She would have hated for Carol to feel that way.
“What should I have done? Gone with them even though I knew I’d have an awful time?”
“My point is that you assumed you’d have an awful time. Maybe you would have laughed and had the time of your life. Maybe you would have put the first dollar in the dancer’s bikini briefs.”
She grunted. “I doubt that.”
“Well, you’ll never know, will you?”
She remained silent, although she was ready to blast him. Where did the cowboy get the nerve to criticize her? Just because he was a party reptile and she wasn’t didn’t mean that she was a failure.
Just another example of how they are so different.
“Remember Rose’s christening?” he asked.
“How could I forget? You hauled in a keg of beer and a box of cigars. All the men sat around drinking and smoking those smelly things and watching football.”
“We smoked outside, so we didn’t bother anyone.”
“And you all were drinking like the world was ending,” she said. “It was a christening party, for heaven’s sake! Carol had planned a nice gathering inside the house.”
“It was a nice gathering, and we did come inside.”
“At halftime,” she reminded him. “To eat. That’s all. It would have been nice if we all could have sat and—”
“Talked each other to death?”
“Yes. I mean...no. All the guests could have had a nice conversation—together. Instead, it was like two separate parties—the women in the living room and the men on the patio.”
“And you think that was my fault?”
“Absolutely.”
“Because I brought the keg and the cigars.”
“Correct.” Now he was understanding her.
“But the Steelers were playing the Ravens that day,” he said.
She let out an unladylike grunt. Sully was just trying to get her riled even more, and she walked right into it.
“You know, you could have passed up that wine in a box and joined us in a brew. Some of the women snuck out, including Carol, and pumped herself a beer. She even took a puff on Rick’s cigar.” He chuckled. “Now that’s a real woman!” He glanced at her, then quickly turned back to look at the road. “But you never came out to the patio.”
She turned to him, feeling like she had to stick up for herself. “It was Latour!” She was so frustrated that was all she could think of to say.
“Huh?”
“The wine. I brought Latour. And it wasn’t in a box.”
“Oh, fancy stuff.”
“Forget it, Sully. Just forget it!” She was just about to head for bed when she turned back. “You know, we have nothing in common except Rose. We’re as different as... Let me put this in terms you might understand...as different as a bull and a chicken. Carol and Rick were wrong in picking the two of us.”
“They were wrong in dying,” he muttered.
“Drive to the parking lot of the Fort Lauderdale arena,” she said slowly. “We’ll stay there. However, as soon as I feel that things are getting out of hand for Rose—and for myself—we are out of there.”
“Yes, Colonel.” He saluted. “Oh, sorry, Lisa. I thought I was talking to my father for a moment.”
Her mouth went dry. Was she really that bossy?
She was just about to call him something unflattering but decided against sinking to his level.
She took a deep breath and tried to explain how she felt. “I have a very serious job, Sully. I am responsible for the lives of hundreds of people every time I fly. They have families and loved ones, and I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t have time for what you think is fun.”
“Then what would you do for fun?” he asked.
Good question. She hadn’t thought about that recently, but she’d had an old dream from before she got her pilot’s license. “Ballroom dancing lessons.”
She prepared herself for a big laugh from him.
“Ballroom dancing, huh?” he asked but didn’t laugh. “So what’s stopping you?”
Someone to dance with, she thought. She had never had the time to date. All she did was study. In high school, in college and in flight school she drove herself to be the smartest, the best, the brightest. She wouldn’t settle for anything less. On the rare occasion when someone had dared to ask her out, they never asked her again. Either her studiousness or her seriousness drove them away.
In flight school, she was given several nicknames: Ice Princess, Ice Pilot and Frigid Phillips—her personal favorite.
“Lisa?”
“What?”
“Did we just have a fight?”
“It sure seemed like a fight.”
“From now on, could you just let me finish a sentence?” he asked gently. “We could have avoided all of this.”
She took a deep breath. “I think we got some things off our chest—things that needed to be said.”
“Maybe.”
“It just shows how different we are,” Lisa pointed out.
“Yeah.”
“But I promise to let you finish a sentence.” She laughed.
Sully snapped his fingers. “One more thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you ever realize how much you are like my parents? Kind of rigid, inflexible, aloof—”
“How about stopping there?” she asked.
“Hey, you didn’t let me finish my sentence!” He laughed. “You promised.”
“Sully, since you started this topic of conversation, did you ever realize how much you are like my parents? Kind of unconventional, a maverick, a free spirit with no roots, a—” She stopped to take a breath. “Aren’t you going to stop me?”
“Hell, no. I like what you said about me. Thanks for the compliments.”
“You’re just...impossible!”
“Thanks again!”
She smiled. She couldn’t help herself; when Sully wasn’t drinking, womanizing or otherwise being a jerk, he could be fun.
He was also insightful. She’d never realized that they were like each other’s parents until he’d pointed it out. They were rebels in their own different ways.
From what she knew about the Sullivans from Carol and by her own observations, she had to admit that he was probably right. She hated to admit it, but she was kind of similar to them.
Merciful heavens!
Maybe she did need some fun in her life. All she did was fly and sleep, preferably not at the same time.
Ha! She’d made a joke.
Maybe...just maybe...Sully was waking up a part of her that had been buried too long: her sense of humor.
“Sweet dreams,” Sully said.
“If you’d let me drive this thing, I could take a turn.”
“You stick to planes. I’ll drive my rig.”
“Good night, then.”
She walked the six steps to check on Rose. She was still sleeping, as peaceful and as beautiful as an angel.
“I don’t know how this is going to work, Rose, but it has to. We have to get along, your uncle Sully and me.” She brushed a curl of soft brown hair from her niece’s forehead. “For you, sweet girl. For you.”
* * *
Sully was grateful for the silence. He had a lot on his mind: how to raise Rose, how to get along with Lisa, the current bull riding in Fort Lauderdale, how he could work the rest of the circuit, the Finals in Vegas and a
partridge in a pear tree.
He hoped that there wouldn’t be anything in the arena camping area that would cause Lisa to climb back onto her high horse.
Once in a while, he wished she’d let her hair down.
They hadn’t been in each other’s company very much—only when Rick and Carol had a major event. Like Rick’s bachelor’s party that he’d arranged. Everyone was still talking about that wild bash. He’d rented a suite at a large hotel in Albany, and they’d partied all night long.
He remembered Lisa tearing him apart the next morning. He’d had a doozy of a hangover, and he’d made the mistake of opening the door of the suite.
He’d had to walk over Rick and several more snoring bodies to get to the door.
He’d looked through the peephole. Lisa.
What a mistake it had been to open the door for her.
She wouldn’t stop yelling at him. Through the boozy haze of his brain, he gathered that he and Rick had overslept and were supposed to be at some kind of Jack and Jill shower that Lisa had arranged at the same hotel’s outdoor patio.
“Rick was supposed to be there at eleven-hundred hours,” she yelled, pointing to her watch.
She always yelled and pointed to her watch.
“Quiet, please,” he remembered saying to Lisa. “I’ll get Rick there. Just stop talking.”
Lisa finally left, and he got Rick on his feet, walked him into the shower, clothes and all, and turned the cold water on. Then Sully made coffee, wrapped Rick’s hand around the cup and made him take a drink.
“I want to die,” Rick said, slumped against a shower wall. “Just let me die.”
“No can do, bro. You have a shower—the gift kind of shower—to attend with your beloved fiancée downstairs. If I don’t get you to it, I’ll be the one who’s dead.”
Sully had finally delivered Rick to the patio, looking presentable and almost lifelike. Carol had smiled and took Rick’s hand, and they disappeared into the crowd.
Unfortunately, Lisa then appeared. She’d looked him over, from his scuffed boots to his dusty black cowboy hat. In between, he wore beat-up, but clean, jeans and a new long-sleeved chambray shirt with the PBR logo. He’d just slipped it out of the plastic wrap.
He had glanced at the crowd. Even their yuppie garden-party attire couldn’t have embarrassed him enough to put on a golf shirt and a pair of khaki pants, even if he owned them.
Besides, Brett Sullivan didn’t get embarrassed.
He’d supposed that Lisa Phillips looked nice enough with a white dress with colorful flowers all over it. It was cinched at the waist with a gold belt and then flared out, making her legs look...well, really good. Her hair was twisted up, but wispy curls of blond hair had escaped and framed her face in gold. Whenever they’d met before, he’d noticed that she wasn’t bad-looking but, man, she was the ultimate snob.
How could Carol and Lisa be sisters when Carol was so laid-back, sweet and normal?
Lisa had stared a hole through him with her dark green eyes. “I suppose I should thank you for getting Rick here, but if you men could tell time, I wouldn’t have had to go to your hotel room.”
Just what he’d needed—a lecture from Miss Perfect. Her words had been loud and noisy and shot right to his throbbing head.
“Shh,” he said with his index finger over his mouth. “Why are you shouting?”
“I’m not shouting,” she had said, then added under her breath, “I haven’t met a man yet who could hold his liquor.”
With a toss of her head, she’d turned and headed for his mother. He’d watched as she walked away from him, her white high heels making a clacking sound on the cement.
“Hmm...nice legs,” he’d mumbled, looking around for coffee.
That was then. Now he was with Miss Perfect in a motor home headed for bull riding in Fort Lauderdale. With them was Rick and Carol’s three-year-old daughter. He couldn’t even think ahead to what was in store for him or them.
Damn! He wondered if they should have told the lawyer that they were traveling. Mr. Randolph had said he would make some unannounced visits. It might look to him like they’d all just picked up and left.
“Sully?”
He jumped, jarred out of his thoughts, as Lisa approached the front seat.
“I thought you were sleeping.”
“I tried, but I didn’t want to leave you alone here. You have to be tired, too. You’ve been driving since we left Sleepy Sheep Campground.”
“Riding on the PBR circuit, I’m used to driving around the clock. Sometimes I drive across country alone, but sometimes I pick up some other riders along the way, and we take turns driving.”
She wore black stretchy pants and a red tank top. Her feet were bare, but he noticed that her toenail color matched her tank top. She looked as cute as a newborn calf, although if he said that out loud, she’d have a fit.
She slipped into the passenger’s seat and crossed her legs. He’d just been thinking of those legs, and wished he could see more of them.
“I told you several times that I’d drive. Why won’t you let me?”
He shrugged. “I’d rather you take care of Rose.”
“You need to take care of Rose, too.”
“I do. Don’t I take her on my walk arounds?”
“Yes. You do. But what about the daily stuff? You should be getting her washed and dressed, making sure she brushes her teeth and then doing it all in reverse at night. In between, there’s keeping her busy and out of trouble and harm’s way. And you always have to teach her—academics, rules for proper living, how to get along in society, societal norms, all kinds of things.”
Rules? Society? Norms? For heaven’s sake, it sounded like prison.
“I want Rose to have an easy, laid-back life. No pressure. Relaxed. Childhood should be fun.”
Lisa took a deep breath. “Kids need discipline, responsibility, rules and stability.”
“Kids need two things—fun and love.”
“That’s part of it, but they need so much more.”
“And they need education so they can learn and find friends. But I still consider that love and fun,” he conceded.
“But there’s discipline in school, and rules and stability,” Lisa insisted.
“Or Rose can be homeschooled. We can do that. We can take her on trips in the RV. She can learn so much by visiting places and talking to people,” he said.
“Talking to strangers?” she asked, the shock evident in her voice.
“They wouldn’t be strangers for long. Besides, we’ll be with her.”
“You sound like my parents, Sully.” She crossed her arms, and he heard her breathing heavily. It almost sounded like she was trying not to cry. “We have to talk more about this. I didn’t expect that we’d be this far apart on how to raise Rose.”
He did. He’d known it since Rick and Carol had asked them both to be guardians. Of course, he’d never thought it’d happen in a million years.
Damn that slick road, that car they drove, the weather, the bridge and whatever the hell else he could throw in.
“Do you think that we can come to an agreement?” she asked.
“It might take a team of lawyers or maybe even the Supreme Court to make us agree, and even then we’d probably choose to go to prison rather than give in.” He chuckled.
“But I thought we agreed to try because we love Rose.”
“Yes, we love Rose.”
“See? We have a good start!”
Maybe he was tired, after all, or maybe it was because Lisa thought about him enough to skip sleep and talk to him as he drove, but he had to agree.
“I’m going to promise to do my best to compromise with you, Lisa.”
“I’ll let you finish your sentences.” She
chuckled. “And let’s try not to fight in the process.”
Sully thought of their earlier fight, if you’d call it that. He’d call it verbal sparring. Neither of them got ugly, but they got plenty of things on the table in record time. He was a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. He didn’t like tiptoeing around important matters.
Lisa was pushy and overbearing and always wanted her own way, and...oh hell, she had great legs.
“Not fight? That I can’t promise.”
Chapter Five
“Lisa?”
She heard her name being called. The voice sounded vaguely familiar and very distant.
“Hey, Lisa! Wake up. We’re in Fort Lauderdale, and we’re pulling into the parking lot. You might want to disappear into the back and put some clothes on.”
The sun was peeking under her eyelids, and she didn’t want to open them.
“Hmm?”
“At least straighten up a bit,” Sully said, and she could hear the teasing in his low, sexy voice. “I mean, I like the eye candy, but this is one big window and there are a lot of people around already. It looks like we’re just in time for breakfast.”
She opened her eyes a bit and looked down. She was slumped in the seat, and her tank top was—oh, dear—off center and her left breast was one centimeter shy of being completely exposed.
When she looked out, she saw dozens of people sitting at picnic tables and lined up at a buffet.
Quickly she fixed her top, grateful that Sully had slowed down. As fast as her numb legs would carry her, she twisted out of the seat and headed for the back.
Rose was just awakening from her sleep and she began to whimper.
“Mommy?”
Rose sat up in bed, thumb in her mouth. Tears ran down her face.
“It’s Aunt Lisa, sweetie.” She reached for a roll of paper towels behind her. Pulling off one, she dabbed at Lisa’s cheeks. “Shh...you’re okay.”
“Uncle Sully?”
Lisa pointed. “He’s right up there parking the motor home.” Lisa made a face and put her finger over her lips. “Oops...I goofed. Uncle Sully calls this big thing his ‘rig.’ Uncle Sully is parking his rig.”
Rose giggled, and that was just the reaction Lisa was hoping for.
Lassoed Into Marriage Page 5
