by Lori Wilde
He was terrified that Red had gone off his meds and was in the grips of full-blown, post-traumatic stress flashbacks. After the Mayday message, Red had not answered any of Dade’s calls or texts. Tough as he was on the outside, his buddy was as emotionally fragile as an eight-year-old.
Dade had to be careful. He couldn’t afford to assume it was simply PTSD. What if Red had stumbled across something or found himself in some other kind of trouble? He was here to retrace his buddy’s steps. The best way to do that was to ease himself into the community and see what he could find out.
First his junkie parents, and then the foster care system, had taught him that trusting people was a damn dumb thing to do, so his plan was to keep his connection to Red a secret until he got the lay of the land and figured out where his buddy had gone.
Which was another reason he was particularly disturbed by his overwhelming reaction to the woman on the bicycle. It simply wasn’t smart.
There she was again, clogging up his mind—that pretty oval face, big blue eyes, and full pink lips. He imagined she smelled like honeysuckle. When he and Red were kids, they used to pluck the white blooms from the honeysuckle vines that grew up the wooden privacy fence of their foster home, break them open, and suck out the drop of sweet nectar.
Kissing her would be like that.
Honeysuckle woman, that’s how he thought of her now.
For Chrissakes, Vega, knock it off. If she’s even real, she’s way out of your reach for so many more reasons than you can count.
He might as well wish for the Hope Diamond. He was as equally likely to possess it. Dade pulled a palm down his face, winced at the prickle. He hadn’t shaved since the previous day and he haired up fast thanks to his father’s Hispanic blood, Satan rest the bastard’s soul.
“Screw it,” he muttered, and wrestled into the T-shirt he’d stripped off while working on his motorcycle.
The trip through the desert and up the Davis Mountains had messed with the Harley’s timing and he’d had to disassemble the gas tank to get to the timing belt. The job had taken over an hour and he’d been putting the chopper back together when she’d ridden past.
He’d stopped underneath the security lamps in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot because it had still been dark when he’d started the job. Dade packed up his tools, stuffed them in the compartment underneath the seat, and wondered what honeysuckle woman’s name was.
Forget her already.
He strapped on his helmet, slung his leg over the machine, reached down to turn on the check valve. Instantly, fuel poured from the tank, soaking the leg of his pants in gasoline.
Dammit!
In his stunned enchantment with the woman on the bicycle, he’d neglected to reattach the hose.
All Out of Love
Millie Greenwood High School, Cupid, Texas, May 25, 2001
Dear Cupid,
I am crazy in love with my older brother’s best friend, Pierce Hollister! You should see him in his gym shorts when he’s out on the football field running sprints. Omigod, he’s got the most amazing thighs. Of course that’s nothing compared to the way his butt looks in Wranglers. Be still my pounding heart!
And his eyes! Brown with intriguing green flecks.
He made direct eye contact with me once. It was a moment I will never, ever forget until my dying day. I’d dropped my books in the crowded hallway and I was fumbling to pick them up when suddenly, out of nowhere, I see a pair of black cowboy boots and a hand reaching out to help me.
I looked up and it was him!
I got tingly all over and honest to God, I thought I was going to die right there on the spot! This is no ordinary boy. He’s the quarterback of the football team! He dates cheerleaders! His daddy owns the biggest ranch in Jeff Davis County and here he was helping me!
And I’m nobody. I’m pudgy (Mama calls me fluffy) and I wear glasses and I stutter. I’ve had speech therapy, but I still can’t speak without stammering and that is in a relaxed atmosphere. Believe me there was nothing relaxed about this. Every muscle in my body was tuned as tight as the strings on a concert violin and I couldn’t have said a word if my life depended on it.
His eyes met mine and he smiled.
Smiled! At me!
“Here you go,” he said, handing me my biology book (it had to be biology, didn’t it?), and our knuckles brushed. I don’t know how I kept from bursting into flames. “Have a nice day, Lace.”
And then he was gone, leaving his heavenly sunshine and leather scent lingering behind, as I stared after him with my mouth gaping open.
Pierce Hollister had smiled and touched my hand and said eight whole words. To me!
I have no chance with him. I know that. He’s a senior. I’m a freshman. He’s handsome as a movie star. Way out of my league. He’s filet mignon and I’m day-old bread. Okay, so I am a direct descendant of Millie Greenwood, but so are practically half the people in this town. It’s not a unique claim to fame.
It’s silly of me to wish and pine, I know. But Cupid, I just can’t stop thinking about him, no matter how much I try. Every night before I go to sleep, I imagine what it would feel like if he were holding me tight against his muscled chest, our hearts beating in perfect time together. Beating as if we were one.
That’s why I’m writing to you, Cupid. I’m miserable with love for him. I want him to love me back so badly that I can barely breathe. Please, Cupid, please let Pierce Hollister fall in love with me. I know I’ll have to wait for him. I am only fourteen after all and he’s got a girlfriend and a football scholarship to the University of Texas, but one day? Someday? Please!
Yours in total despair,
Hopelessly Tongue-Tied
Lace Bettingfield stood frozen in freshman homeroom, half in the doorway, half out of it, with her backpack slung over one shoulder.
Seated in front of her were seventeen students, and every single one of them was reading the current issue of the school newspaper, the Cupid Chronicle.
Ominously, hairs on the nape of her neck stood up.
The fact that everyone was reading—including the stoners and the jocks—was odd enough, but when they all looked up at her with what seemed to be perfectly choreographed smirks, Lace’s stomach took the express elevator to her Skechers.
In a split second, her gaze darted to the student nearest her. It was Toby Mercer, her biology lab partner.
Toby was six-foot-six and weighed the same as Lace, a hundred and sixty-two pounds; on him the weight was gaunt, on her it was zaftig. He possessed strawberry blond hair and skin so pale it had earned him the nickname Casper way back in kindergarten. She’d known him her entire life. His family lived just down the block from hers. She’d comforted him when kids had picked on him. They’d attended each other’s birthday parties. They’d dissected frogs together.
But right now, Toby was looking at her all narrow-eyed and smug, like she was a dilapidated barn and he was a wrecking ball.
She flicked her eyes from Toby’s face to the paper he held in his hand, and there it was.
Dear Cupid,
I am crazy in love with Pierce Hollister!
It was the letter she’d written to Cupid, her private letter that had never been meant for anyone’s eyes but her own, printed on the front page of the school newspaper!
Her letter. Front page. Declaring her love for Pierce.
How? How had this happened?
Unlike the tourists who came to Cupid, wrote letters to the Roman god of love, and deposited their letters in the special letter box in the botanical gardens (expecting them to be answered by the town’s volunteers and published in the weekly Cupid Chamber of Commerce circular), Lace had never intended for anyone to see this letter.
She’d written it in study hall three days earlier as she gazed out the window, watching the football team practice. She’d carefully folded the letter and tucked it into the side pocket of her notebook with every intention of burning it in the patio chiminea that weekend when her pare
nts were out of town at a cutting horse event.
Reality hit her like a fist to the face.
Mary Alice.
Mary Alice Fant, her second cousin, who was also the editor of the Cupid Chronicle. Pierce had recently dumped her for the head cheerleader, Jenny Angus. Two nights ago, Mary Alice and her parents had come over to Lace’s house for dinner, and at one point, Lace had caught Mary Alice snooping around in her bedroom.
Oh God!
Now everyone knew about her secret crush. Her life was ruined. Nausea splashed scalding bile into her throat. Her entire body flushed hot as August in the Chihuahuan Desert.
One heartbeat later, and the class erupted into a feeding frenzy.
“Do you imagine she calls out Pierce’s name when she’s touching herself?” sniggered Booth Randal, a smart-assed stoner who spent the bulk of his time in detention.
“P … Pa … Pa … Pa … Pierce,” another boy stuttered in a fake falsetto, “Yo … yo … yo … you … ma … ma … make me so hot.”
Moaning and breathing heavily, the two boys pretended to kiss and fondle each other, while the other students hurled derisive catcalls like stones.
“Poor me,” wailed Tasha Stuart, whose mother worked in the teller cage next to Lace’s mom at Cupid National Bank. “I’m sooo in love with the most popular boy in school and he doesn’t know I exist.”
“Who knows,” someone else called out. “She might stand a chance. Pierce could be a closet chubby chaser.”
“Na … na … na … not unless she can sta … sta … stop stutt … stutt … stuttering.” Toby stabbed her in the back.
“Yeah, who wants a girl whose tongue is hopelessly tied?”
“One day. Someday.”
“Please, Cupid, please, please, please.”
The words slapped her harder than any physical blow. She knew these people. Was related to some of them. Had thought many of them were her friends, but they’d turned on her like hyenas.
The only one who looked at her with anything other than ridicule was Pierce’s younger brother, Malcolm. He slunk down in his seat, pulled his collar up, sank his chin to his chest, and kept his eyes trained on his hands folded atop his desk. He was embarrassed for her humiliation.
Blindly, Lace spun on her heels, and almost crashed into the teacher, Mr. Namon.
He put up his palms, “Whoa, slow down, what’s going on, Miss Bettingfield?”
Head ducked, Lace shoved past him and fled down the corridor.
But there was no sanctuary here.
The hallways were lined with students, several of them holding copies of the Cupid Chronicle. Some laughed. Some pointed. Some made lewd gestures. Some threw out more catcalls. A goth girl was slyly singing “Crush,” a song about a stalker.
Everyone was going to think she was a stalker.
“Hey, Tongue-Tied, drop thirty pounds and maybe you can land your dream man.”
“Reality check. No guy like Pierce could ever love someone like you.”
“Yes, he touched your hand, but I heard he washed it off in Lysol afterward.”
Lace plastered her hands over her ears, willed herself not to cry, but it was too late, tears were already streaming hotly down her cheeks.
Nightmare. It was a living nightmare.
And just as in a nightmare everything moved in slow motion. It felt as if she was trying to run through knee-deep mud. Her lungs squeezed tight. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it was going to beat right out of her chest.
Good. If her heart beat out of her chest she would die.
It seemed to take hours to traverse that hallway. She kept her head down, didn’t once make eye contact with anyone. She was headed for the exit, desperate to find a place to lick her wounds.
The morning sun glinted against the metal bar in the middle of the exit door. Almost there. Salvation was just a few steps away. She rushed forward, her legs breaking through the slow-motion morass.
Her hand hit the bar and she gave a hard shove.
But fate, that vicious bitch, wasn’t done with her yet.
The door smacked into something solid. Someone was coming in at the same time she was trying to get out. Trapped. She was trapped. No exit. Knock ’em down if you have to. Just get the hell out of here.
She raised her head and found herself staring into Pierce Hollister’s brown eyes.
Her heart literally stopped and a whimper escaped her lips.
For Mary Alice to print her letter in the school paper was a horrible betrayal. The bullying by classmates she thought she knew was unbearable. Breaking down and crying in front of everyone was humiliating, but nothing that had happened to her that morning was as bad as what was written across Pierce’s handsome face.
Utter, abject pity.
About the Author
LORI WILDE is the New York Times bestselling author of more than forty-five books. A former RITA® finalist, Lori has received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Holt Medallion, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice, and numerous other honors. Lori teaches Romance Writing Secrets via the Internet through colleges and universities worldwide at www.ed2g.com. She lives in Weatherford, Texas, with her husband and a wide assortment of pets.
Contact Lori via her home page at www.loriwilde.com.
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By Lori Wilde
All Out of Love
Love at First Sight
A Cowboy for Christmas
The Cowboy and the Princess
The Cowboy Takes a Bride
The Welcome Home Garden Club
The First Love Cookie Club
The True Love Quilting Club
The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club
Available from Avon Impulse
One True Love
THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CHRONICLES
Carrie
Raylene
Christine
Give in to your impulses …
Read on for a sneak peek at five brand-new
e-book original tales of romance from Avon Books.
Available now wherever e-books are sold.
STEALING HOME
A DIAMONDS AND DUGOUTS NOVEL
By Jennifer Seasons
LUCKY LIKE US
BOOK TWO: THE HUNTED SERIES
By Jennifer Ryan
STUCK ON YOU
By Cheryl Harper
THE RIGHT BRIDE
BOOK THREE: THE HUNTED SERIES
By Jennifer Ryan
LACHLAN’S BRIDE
HIGHLAND LAIRDS TRILOGY
By Kathleen Harrington
An Excerpt from
STEALING HOME
A DIAMONDS AND DUGOUTS NOVEL
by Jennifer Seasons
When Lorelei Littleton steals Mark Cutter’s good luck charm, all the pro ball player can think is how good she looked … and how bad she’ll pay. Thrust into a contest of wills, they’ll both discover that while revenge may be a dish best served cold, when it comes to passion, the hotter the better!
Raising his glass, Mark smiled and said, “To the rodeo. May you ride your bronc well.”
Color tinged Lorelei’s cheeks as they tapped their glasses. But her eyes remained on his while he took a long pull of smooth aged whiskey.
Then she spoke, her voice low. “I’ll make your head spin, cowboy. That I promise.”
That surprised a laugh out of him, even as heat began to pool heavy in his groin. “I’ll drink to that.” And he did. He lifted the glass and drained it, suddenly anxious to get on to the next stage. A drop of liquid shimmered on her full bottom lip, and it beckoned him. Reaching an arm out, Mark pulled her close and leaned down. With his eyes on hers, he slowly licked the drop off, his tongue teasing her pouty mouth until she released a soft moan.
Arousal coursed through him at the provocative sound. Pulling her more fully against him, Mark deepened the kiss. Her lush little body fi
t perfectly against him, and her lips melted under the heat of his. He slid a hand up her back and fisted the dark, thick mass of her long hair. He loved the feel of the cool, silky strands against his skin.
He wanted more.
Tugging gently, Mark encouraged her mouth to open for him. When it did, his tongue slid inside and tasted, explored the exotic flavor of her. Hunger spiked inside him, and he took the kiss deeper. Hotter. She whimpered into his mouth and dug her fingers into his hair, pulled. Her body began pushing against his, restless and searching.
Mark felt like he’d been tossed into an incinerator when he pushed a thigh between her long, shapely legs and discovered the heat there. He groaned and rubbed his thigh against her, feeling her tremble in response.
Suddenly she broke the kiss and pushed out of his arms. Her breathing was ragged, her lips red and swollen from his kiss. Confusion and desire mixed like a heady concoction in his blood, but before he could say anything, she turned and began walking toward the hallway to his bedroom.
At the entrance she stopped and beckoned to him. “Come and get me, catcher.”
So she wanted to play, did she? Hell yeah. Games were his life.
Mark toed off his shoes as he yanked his sweater over his head and tossed it on the floor. He began working the button of his fly and strode after her. He was a little unsteady on his feet, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to catch her. When he entered his room, he found her by the bed. She’d turned on the bedside lamp, and the light illuminated every gorgeous inch of her curvaceous body.
He started toward her, but she shook her head. “I want you to sit on the bed.”
Mark walked to her anyway and gave her a deep, hungry kiss before he sat on the edge of the bed. He wondered what she had in store for him and felt his gut tighten in anticipation. “Are you going to put on a show for me?” God, it’d be so hot if she did.
