AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You too.” She sauntered from the bathroom, waving to me over her shoulder.
I shoved the clothes that I’d worn since Chicago into a yellow bag with the overly happy beaver on it and shouldered Georgie’s carrier that looked like a designer handbag.
“Get ready. It’s a zoo out there,” I murmured to my dog as we left the relative calm of the bathroom for the fifty-thousand-square-foot gas station.
Humanity of every age, race, and creed thronged the aisles, buying beef jerky, sodas, and beaver-emblazoned merchandise. It was like Black Friday at the outlet mall. This place was more Walmart than a convenience store—everything was bigger in Texas. And no, that wasn’t a joke about Atley’s package... but it could have been.
On an endcap, a collection of tchotchkes all decorated with Texas bluebonnets drew my eye. A rack of semi-sheer scarves stood next to a stack of bluebonnet mugs. The flower print had some of the same blue as my simple sundress. Hickey problem solved. I tugged one free and headed for the checkout counter, stopping to grab an oversized diet Coke and two bags of beef jerky on the way.
When I started the rental minivan, my cell phone informed me it was thirty-seven miles to Elmer. I wrinkled my nose. Only my brother moves to a town with a name like Elmer. Georgie sat in his car seat, the AC vent blowing ripples through his long white hair just how he liked. I pulled out of the gas station and got back on my journey.
The Texas Hill Country in midsummer was an unrelenting, undulating, brown landscape. Everything looked crispy and ready to catch fire. On the local radio station, the DJ excitedly read the weather report declaring a cool front for the week, with temps dipping under one hundred degrees for the first time in nearly a month.
I’d left the main highway some miles back. The two-lane Farm to Market Road dipped and twisted through the rural scenery of small homes, cattle ranches, and twisted oak trees. In the spring, when the land recovered from the oppressive heat, I assumed it would be gorgeous. Texas was a jarring contrast to the Chicago skyline and its backdrop of Lake Michigan’s icy blue waters.
Had packing up all my worldly possessions and coming here been a bad idea? There hadn’t been a grocery store or Starbucks since I left the highway. I gnawed on more beef jerky and chased it with a long pull from the soda. The salty, sweet dried meat and bubbly soda warred with the knot of uncertainty in my belly.
The last time I saw my brother was Thanksgiving in Peoria at our parents’ house. He was the overachiever in our family. Career focused, he’d built a billion-dollar company by his mid-thirties. But this past fall, the ever-burning fire to succeed seemed to have dimmed. The ambition that had been his dominant personality trait had withered to emptiness. Midlife crisis, my mom had whispered to my dad when Wilson hadn’t been in the room. I pretended not to notice both the conversation between my parents and the change in my brother.
Ha! If Wilson this Fall had been a midlife crisis, I was a full-blown category-five midlife disaster. That was why I’d fled. Mom had wanted to fix me and damn it, I was old enough to do it myself. In Texas. Living in my brother’s guest house.
Shit, I was a disaster. And I needed to pee. I shook my empty cup, rattling the ice in the bottom. Maybe the extra-large diet soda had been a poor choice. There weren’t any happy beaver gas stations out here.
I stomped down the gas pedal and the minivan rocketed forward. When a girl’s got to go, she’s got to go.
Chapter 6
Atley
Cami:SOSbringtheATV with trailer to the house. Please.
I reread the text message; it felt incomplete. Cami, unlike me, was one to use fifty words when three would have worked. Something for the big Fourth of July party must have gone off the rails, and the ATV and trailer were her solution.
As long as she and Wilson weren’t expecting much from me, normally I’d be happy to help. Driving the ATV to the house would tap my remaining energy reserves. I was running on empty.
Thankfully, my flight into San Antonio had been uneventful, but the traffic had sucked, making the drive to Elmer twice as long. And when I arrived, I’d had to transfer the bull semen to the freezer. Not a big deal, but it kept me from grabbing a nap. And once a few of the ranch hands knew I’d returned, every one of them had something to talk to me about, from a horse with a stocked up leg to a new kind of weed taking over a hayfield.
But I wouldn’t trade a good night’s sleep for one second of the time I spent between Rae’s thighs. A slow satisfied smile curved my lips as I put my leg over the ATV, turned the key, and headed for my boss’s house.
I’d trade almost anything for sex, like last night. Hell, I’d be hard-pressed to name any other woman I’d had such explosive chemistry with. Rae and I had been beyond combustible. A night I’d never forget.
Parking the ATV in the ranch house’s drive, I eyed an unfamiliar silver minivan and made my way up the front steps. The low murmur of voices told me there was already a crowd inside, so I tried to slip in quietly. I didn’t have the energy for people today. No way in hell I’d go to the big Fourth of July BBQ. My bed was my next destination.
I tucked my sunglasses in my shirt front and plucked my hat off my head. In the kitchen, Cami, Jethro, and a woman from the house-hunting TV show I’d met when they shot an episode here at Blue Star all sipped beers. Wilson had his back to me, an arm around a woman with chin-length brown hair so much like Rae’s that tingles of recognition crawled up the back of my neck.
“Yip, yip!” A high-pitched bark and the clatter of small dog nails on tile pulled my gaze from the mystery woman’s back. But I already knew.
Son of a bitch. What were the odds? Why was she here?
I kneeled to pet Georgie, wishing I had more time to process everything.
The crash of Rae’s beer bottle shattering on the slate floor reverberated through me like a seismic wave.
“Hello again, darling.” I zeroed in on her, devouring every detail from the scarf that covered the mark I’d left on her neck to the tall shoes with delicate ribbons that tied around her slender ankles.
Like clouds racing across the sky before a storm, a hundred expressions flashed over her face. I couldn’t read any of them. But the whole room heard her say, “Fuck.”
Well, it did accurately explain how we knew each other. But I was pretty sure she’d not intended to clarify our relationship with the expletive.
And so it begins…
