Never the Cowboy's Lover

by Amelia Wilde

  Luke and I have spent many an afternoon here going through the genealogical records. So it feels right to me, in some strange way, that I should make contact with the sister I didn’t know here as opposed to anywhere else.

  Luke lets the door close behind him. It latches with a soft click suitable for a library. “You ready?”

  “No?”

  He chuckles. “Want me to dial?”

  “No.” I pull the slip of paper from my wallet. Maya gave it to me last week and since then I have run my fingers over it so many times that the paper has gone soft and the pencil marks are haloed with smudges.

  “Julie May.” Luke softens his prompt by rubbing a quick circle in the small of my back.

  “Okay, okay, okay.” I lift my phone.

  And dial.

  I expect it to go to voicemail. No one answers their phones anymore. But on the third ring, a woman’s voice answers with a cheery, “Hello?”

  I press my hand flat to the table. Luke immediately lifts it and gives it a squeeze. I feel better immediately. “Is this Laura?”

  “Speaking. Who is this?”

  I take a deep breath. “My name is Julie May Collins.” My tongue feels too thick in my mouth. “I’m your sister.”

  Everything seems very far away. Laura’s voice on the other end of the phone is happy but wary as she agrees to a visit. Luke holds my hand tighter and tighter, until the tips of my fingers go white, but I don’t want him to let go. I need him to hold me because the next thing out of Laura’s mouth makes everything zoom in very, very close.

  “You found me,” she says. “Does that mean you’ve talked to mom?”

  “Mom? You know where she is?”

  “I do. Don’t you?”

  Luke

  Julie May’s eyes swim with tears, her chin quivering, and she stands up abruptly to pace the room. It’s a small study room, the one we use when we need to makes jokes while we work, but there are no jokes to be made about this situation. Her nerves radiate off her and fill up the whole room.

  “I didn’t think I’d meet my mom, Luke.” She puts both hands on her cheeks and rubs like she can get rid of the high color there. “A sister...and now my mom? I mean, my birth mom. I don’t know what to call her. I don’t know what to say.” She shakes her hands by her sides and for an instant she’s nine years old again, getting nervous to go onstage at the spelling bee. I can still see her rounded cheeks and the high ponytail she wore that year. She had a hundred of those hair ties with bright plastic beads at the ends, and that day they were rainbow colored with sparkles—her favorite ones, though she wouldn’t admit it out loud. “What am I going to do?”

  “Well, you’re not gonna go by yourself. I’m coming with you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” Her gaze hits the floor at the same time my heart does. No wonder she doesn’t want me to come along. I didn’t act very gentlemanly last time. But then those summer-green eyes come back up to meet mine. “Unless you want to.”

  “It’s like a quest.” I stand up from my seat at the table and open the door for her. We’re done with the call, so we should get out of here in case somebody else needs the room. Nobody else ever needs the room but being so close to her is still driving me crazy, despite the fact that it’s not right to feel any kind of way about Julie May except affectionate in a best-friend away. “I started the quest with you, and I’m going to see it through. Unless you kick me off the team, like when Frodo kicked Sam off.”

  “Frodo didn’t kick Sam off,” she muses. “The Fellowship broke up. They all went their separate ways because Frodo wanted to—” She finally sees the look I’m giving her and slaps me on the arm. “Read a book once in a while, Luke Bliss. It’ll help you get your metaphors straight.”

  “Maybe I will.” Outside the library we’re met with fresh air that has snow at its edges. How’d summer get so short? How did fall? Just yesterday we were in senior English together, and I was riding on Julie May’s coattails as usual. “You let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.” Julie May hops in her truck and drives off. Why didn’t I go with her? Oh, because we’re not together. It’s just hot kisses that we’re never gonna talk about again. Right?

  I think about that kiss—god, I love the feel of her against me—all the way back to the ranch, where I find Austin and Brooke making out on the front porch.

  “That’s disgusting,” I shout at them from my car and slam the door shut behind me. “You two have several rooms.”

  Brooke laughs and gives me a big wave. She used to be so pissed with everything in her life, and now...well, now she’s still pissed about some things, but mostly she’s a lot happier. “Hey, Luke. We’ll get out of your way.”

  “We’ll be back in your way whenever I want,” Austin says as I come up onto the porch. Brooke’s gone, running off toward what used to be her own ranch. “You ready for the cider press tomorrow? We’re gonna need all hands on deck.”

  Oh, shit. That’s the highlight of this fall at the Ranch. Brooke and Austin had their cider idea at about the same time they moved in together. We’ve been waiting on the shipment of apples, which arrived yesterday. I helped unload them from the truck. I rub the back of my neck. “Maybe Miller can help you find somebody to help.”

  Austin narrows his blue eyes. My brother has always been able to see right through me, and it’s not helping in this instance. “Aren’t your hands going to be free?”

  “I’ve gotta go. Julie May—well, she found more relatives. Girl needs backup.”

  A short laugh escapes from Austin. “What are you going to do, follow her in with your hunting rifle? I don’t know if that would make the best impression.”

  My face is hotter than the damn sun. “It’s a new situation, Austin. It’s better if she doesn’t have to walk in alone.”

  “So? Everybody loves Julie May. You’re not her only friend,” he says slyly.

  “I’m her best friend,” I shoot back. “And I already said I’d go with her. So I can’t help with the cider tomorrow. You’re gonna have to crush apples all by your lonesome.”

  Austin takes a step back and crosses his arms over his chest. I hate when he does that. It means he’s thinking, and whatever he’s thinking about, he’s gonna figure out. I don’t need any commentary from the guy who’s shacking up with his own worst enemy, thank you very much. “You sure that’s all it is?”

  “All what is?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Are you in love with her or not?”

  “Jesus, Austin.”

  “Well, are you?”

  The breeze picks up again, cooling the back of my neck but doing nothing for the flustered furnace that’s become my guts. The fact that it’s come to this—that Austin’s asking these kinds of questions—is all my fault. What the hell was I thinking?

  “I’ve got things to do,” I tell Austin. “I’ll talk to Miller about the cider stuff.” The screen door comes open easily in my hand, but the front door sticks. Come on. Not in this moment. Not when I’m so pissed at Austin. And myself.

  “You need help with that door?”

  It finally swings open. “I’m good,” I call over my shoulder.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Austin says, but he doesn’t follow me inside.

  11

  My sister is standing in front of me.

  I know her in an instant. I don’t even have to confirm we have the right house, because the woman on the porch is so clearly related to me.

  Even from down on the driveway I can see she has my eyes. Her face is wider, more heart-shaped, but we share the same narrow chin.

  Looking at my sister is like looking at my reflection distorted in a funhouse mirror. I can see myself in there, and the similarities make the differences jarring. Exciting. I can’t wait to hug her and compare the size of our hands. Is she a finger waggler too?

  I lift my hand and hesitantly wave my fingers.

  My sister doesn’t lift hers in
response. She crosses her arms, almost hugging herself. “So you’re Julie May?”

  She sounds disappointed. No—worse. She sounds angry. My shoulders must have sagged because Luke’s hand immediately presses to the small of my back. “Want me…?” he murmurs, not needing to finish the question before I nod. Yes, of course I want him to smooth this over. This isn’t how I’d pictured it in my head at all and I’m afraid if I open my mouth right now, my voice will crack and I’ll start sobbing.

  He swings into action as only he can. “Ma’am, it’s so good to meet you. I’m Luke Bliss and this here is Julie May Collins. We only found out about you last week, so it’s sure a pleasure to be standing in front of you now.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she says faintly. She allows Luke to take her hand, but when he shakes it, her arm flops up and down bonelessly, like a fish. “Did y’all come far?”

  “Not far at all,” I venture. I throw this line out hopefully, hoping she’ll catch it and run with it. As I lay awake last night unable to sleep, I imagined her being flummoxed by how close we lived to each other. “As I live and breathe!” my dream sister yelped. “All this time we were practically neighbors!”

  My real sister does nothing like this. She gives us both a tight, pained smile, then sighs like she’s being asked to stay late at work. “I s’pose y’all had better come in.”

  This is not the welcome I wanted, but maybe she just needs to warm up to me. Once the evening wears on, I’m sure we’ll get closer and closer.

  That’s not what happens. If anything, things only get worse the longer we stay in Laura’s house. She barely makes eye contact, greeting every attempt at a joke with pursed, angry lips.

  I try to ask her questions about her upbringing, but she stonewalls me at every turn. My questions are met with shrugs, or outright disagreement. “No, there aren’t,” she snaps at one point when Luke brings up whether there might be more of us out there, more siblings to find and reunite.

  By bedtime I feel hollowed out inside. I desperately want to go home, but I get the feeling declining Laura’s grudging hospitality would only make her hate me more. So I exude my thanks over the tiny, dusty bed shoved against the wall in what is clearly her exercise room and don’t even bother to ask where the heck Luke will sleep.

  “I’ll take the couch,” Luke whispers to me once Laura has snippily gone off to bed.

  “Really?”

  He touches my face. “You need some time to process.” His voice sounds harder than it usually does. He turns and scowls in the direction Laura disappeared and mutters something about a bug crawling up her butt. I laugh, a short, helpless thing, and he kisses my forehead. “Just…try to sleep.”

  But I can’t. I lie down in the tiny bed and stare at the swirls of plaster on the walls. Family was all I ever wanted. I could picture it so perfectly in my head. But dreams are not reality, and reality is starting to crash down.

  As are my tears.

  The first one slips loose, tracking silently down my cheek, but the second it falls, it’s like a dam bursting. I roll to my side and bury my face in the dusty pillowcase that smells of mothballs and try to stifle my sobs, but a broken cry shakes loose before I can catch it.

  I hear footsteps in the hallway and freeze. It must be Laura, or her still unseen husband moving about. I don’t want them to hear me crying. That would only make this worse.

  But it’s not them. The door squeaks on its hinges. “Jules?” Luke whispers in the dark.

  My heart lifts. I lean over and switch on the light.

  Then catch my breath.

  He’s rubbing his eyes. His hair is already sticking up crazily, like it was waiting for nighttime to let loose.

  But the thing that makes me feel a little faint is that he’s not wearing a shirt. I let my eyes roam across the broad planes of his chest and suddenly I want nothing more than to be crushed under its weight. I need him. I need him so badly that I ache inside. I want to cling to him and run my tongue along his sternum and feel his skin pebble under my lips.

  “Come in.” It comes out like a plea.

  “You’re crying.” He doesn’t ask, so I don’t have to lie. I wipe at my eyes and sit up.

  He comes over immediately and sits down on the bed. He pulls me close to his warm chest and I breath in his scent, his wonderful, warm Lukeness.

  Is this desire new? Or have I really loved him my whole life and just not known it until now?

  “Do you remember Maya’s house? That morning?” I whisper against his chest.

  His abs hitch and tighten. “’Course I do.”

  I turn my face up to his. “You shouldn’t have stopped.”

  His eyes go wide. He looks at the door with a frightened expression.

  I grip his chin and turn his face back to mine. “Fuck her,” I say feelingly.

  He startles and buries his face in my neck, stifling his laugh. I wrap my arms around his shaking shoulders until they still and he turns his lips to my ear.

  “You’ve always been gorgeous,” he whispers. “But that might have been the hottest thing you’ve ever done. Hell yea, Julie May, fuck her.”

  “Fuck her,” I repeat. “And please. Fuck me.”

  He runs his finger up my arm, making me shiver. “Well,” he says. “Okay. But only because you asked so nicely.”

  He bends his lips to my arm, kissing a trail along the path his finger just drew. I shiver again as my insides melt. I thread my fingers into his short, thick hair and give an impatient tug.

  He obediently meets my mouth with his. I sigh against his lips, parting them eagerly and allowing him to invade my mouth. He tastes like how he smells, warm and familiar and deeply sexy, and I devour him.

  He kisses me until my knees shake, then lowers me down onto the bed. I gasp when he gives my pajamas bottoms a swift tug, making the seams pop. “I like those,” I protest as he yanks them down.

  “I’ll buy you new ones,” he rasps. His eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen. He looks from my face down to the place between my legs a few times, as if he can’t believe they belong to the same person.

  I know how he feels, because I am tugging his boxers down, and when his cock springs free I have to take a moment to process that it’s attached to Luke. It’s Luke’s cock that’s hot and thick in my hand and getting harder by the second as I stroke him up and down.

  He groans and stills my hand. “Stop. I love it but you’re getting me too worked up. And there’s something I’ve always wanted to know.”

  “What?” I ask.

  He slides his hand between my legs and smiles at me. “How you taste.”

  “Oh,” I gasp as his tongue finds my center. I fall back on the bed, hardly daring to believe that this is happening, that Luke is doing this to me, and more than that, that he’s so—holy fuck!—good at it. He buries his face in me, nuzzling greedily before sucking and lapping and the sensation is so incredible that I grip the sheets to keep from crying out.

  “Don’t,” he orders. “Don’t hold back.”

  “I’m loud.”

  “Good. Be loud. Scream for me, Jules.”

  “Jesus…Christ.” I grit my teeth but he’s doing something that floods my body and turns my limbs to jello. I fling my hand out and grab the pillow, smashing it into my face at the last moment before the orgasm catches me and I scream out his name.

  The mattress sinks down. I throw the pillow back in time to catch the glorious sight of Luke Bliss kneeling between my legs and sliding his cock down my center before positioning himself at my entrance. “Jules.” He groans my name in my ear. I shudder and then sigh as he sinks into me.

  And for the first time today, I feel complete.

  12

  Luke

  It’s time to untangle ourselves from one another before I’m ready. Am I ever gonna be ready to let go of Julie May? Probably not. But we can’t wait forever to get this day started. Given how things went yesterday, we’re going to need a while to get ourselves on good
footing. And damn it, I will not leave until we’re on good footing.

  Okay, I’ll leave if we’re on real bad footing in the next few hours. Julie May and Laura are still figuring each other out. No need to keep them locked up together if a little space might be good. Not that anyone’s locked up here. I need some coffee before I think any more about it. My plan is to fire up a pot in the kitchen and offer Julie May some. Not much beyond that.

  Only Laura’s beaten me to it. The last of the coffee drips into the pot as I come into the kitchen and she looks up from where she’s leaning against the counter. Morning sunlight gives her a halo, but her expression is more suspicious than angelic. Suspicious of what? She’s the one who made Julie May upset last night, not me. Jules is a bright spot of sunshine. You don’t have to do anything to get along with her other than accept her charm, and Laura...

  “Mornin’.” I nod my head toward the coffee pot. “Is that for anybody, or should I make a new pot?”

  She crosses her arms over her chest. “Up to you. You can have some if you want some.”

  “Wouldn’t want to be rude. Maybe you drink the whole pot. If you do, say so now, because I need caffeine.” I add a smile to tell her I’m joking, but Laura’s smile is fleeting.

  “All right.”

  I give her a look. For Julie May’s sister, she’s awful closed off. And yes, I have the benefit of knowing Julie May her entire life, but what is up with this woman?

  She turns around then, getting a single mug down from a narrow cupboard above the sink and to the right. Laura fills her cup, adds milk and sugar, and steps out of the way. The silence is getting to me. We don’t have much time, me and Julie May, and I don’t want her to think that coming here was a mistake. Hell, maybe it was a mistake. But I don’t want it to have been.