A Memory
Izzy
I WAS ON the back porch pulling on my wellies the next morning when the door to the house opened.
I looked up and saw my sister standing there with bed hair, in her jammies, looking both just woken up and still tired, with an expression on her face that I was sure I wore the night she arrived and the morning after when I’d looked at her.
“Hey,” she said gently.
“Hey,” I replied strongly.
“You okay?” she asked.
No.
No, I was not okay.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
Her hand came up and in it was my phone.
“He’s calling again,” she said.
She’d turned the ringer back on.
I wished she hadn’t done that.
I didn’t even look at the phone.
“I’m going out to feed the horses and let them loose. I didn’t get to muck their stalls yesterday morning so I’ll come back in, make you guys breakfast, change, but then I have to go back out and do that.”
“I’ll help you when you do.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I will,” she stated firmly.
“Someone has to look after Brooks,” I reminded her.
“He can hang in a stable. Kids for millennia have been hanging around horses and eating dirt and whatever and they survived. Plus his favorite place on earth is with his mom and his Auntie Izzy, so that’s where he’s gonna be.”
I shrugged, bent to my boots and finished putting them on, saying, “If it’s okay with you, it’s okay with me.”
I started toward the screen door of the back porch when she called my name.
I turned to her.
“You should talk to him,” she urged quietly.
Not going to happen.
She liked him. A brief conversation on a picnic blanket and she’d liked him.
This was unsurprising.
He was Johnny.
I nodded, muttered, “Maybe later,” and took off out the screen door.
I headed to the stables trying not to think about the fact that Johnny had called when we were in the car on the way home from the festival yesterday. And we’d headed home from the festival approximately ten point eight seconds after he’d hauled ass after Shandra.
Worse, we’d packed up and hightailed it out under the kind and sympathetic eyes of the many spectators to the reunion of Johnny and Shandra, a reunion that was mere minutes after he’d been cuddling on a picnic blanket with me.
A reunion where he’d raced after her, not looking back.
I didn’t take the call because I knew why he was calling.
He was Johnny. He was sweet. He was a gentleman. In the throes of the situation, he could forget me. But he’d see to me when it hit him what he’d done, and he’d be as kindhearted about it as he could when he explained the way things needed to be.
But I didn’t need that.
I knew where I stood even before that happened.
It was nice and all, but unnecessary.
I had to admit, the text that came in seconds after I didn’t answer his call was a surprise.
I also had to admit the repeated calls and texts, none of which I took or looked at, were a surprise too.
However, after I’d phoned Deanna and Charlie and lied through my teeth that I was hungover, couldn’t hack the crowd, noise, smells and heat and we’d headed home so we wouldn’t meet them when they hit the festival later as planned, I’d turned my ringer off so I wouldn’t have the constant reminder that I’d been smart not to let myself think I could have Johnny.
But knowing now without any doubt I couldn’t have Johnny still hurt way, way, way more than it should.
Addie had tried once to coax me to pick up the phone and talk to him. But when I refused, she let it go. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you, our mother taught us the old proverb and she’d done it frequently. Addie lived that, as I did too.
I hit my stables, went through the gate, latched it behind me and set about feeding my horses.
I was dog-tired. I’d slept even less the night before. Still hungover but mostly sick to my stomach about what had happened, not to mention the whole town (well, some of it) witnessing it. Thinking it was not (exactly) what it was. Not knowing I hadn’t let myself get in too deep (though, if I was honest, I had). Thinking I was just another one who’d fallen hard then gotten burned in the aftermath of Johnny and Shandra.
The last one, but still.
I’d be the object of compassion, I was sure. And that would not be fun, seeing as it would serve as a reminder of what had happened whenever I’d hit Macy’s Flower Shop or the grocery store, or if I ever (which I probably wouldn’t, at least for a while) hit Home again.
But I’d endure.
I’d get through it.
I’d get over it.
And I’d carry on.
Like my mom, in the many and varied ways life could bring me to my knees, I was just going to get back up and keep going.
Mostly because I had no choice.
After I fed my babies, I decided to check supplies of feed and hay. I always carefully calculated the needs of both, because I bought in bulk due to the discount I could get and also bought them both at the same time due to the fact the feed store delivered at a flat rate no matter how much you ordered.
I was low on feed but had plenty of hay.
I could stack extra outside and put a tarp around it, use it first so I didn’t have to haul it in and put in the hay room only to haul it back out again for the horses.
After closing the door on the hay room, I turned to go to Serengeti to see if she was finished eating and ready to head out to her paddock and stopped dead.
Johnny was standing inside the closed gate, his eyes locked to me.
This could not happen and it could not happen for a number or reasons.
First, I couldn’t deal with it. Not then. I needed at least a whole day, more like a hundred of them.
Second, this wasn’t fair. I knew he wanted to do right by me, let me down easy, explain his head was messed up and that was why he was leading me on, try to make me understand in order to make himself feel better while doing it.
But it was my thought in this particular scenario that I got to pick the time that would happen, if it happened at all.
And last, in a fit of heartbroken stupidity I refused to allow myself to dwell on considering it had only been three dinners, two breakfasts, several phone and text conversations but not years of togetherness and a path of broken promises, I’d gone to bed wearing the T-shirt he’d given me.
Therefore right then I was standing before him wearing that tee, an old, threadbare pair of men’s pajama bottoms that I’d cut off at the knees and pulled on to go to the stables, and my wellies.
My hair was a mess.
And I knew I had to look fatigued and perhaps was wearing my heart on my (actually his) sleeve.
So this wasn’t just too soon and unfair.
It was a disaster.
I tore my eyes from him, immediately started moving to the tack room for reasons unknown since I didn’t have to go to the tack room, I had to go to Serengeti, doing this shaking my head and talking.
“You don’t have to do this, Johnny.”
I sensed him on the move but didn’t look at him.
“Izzy, I need you to listen to me.”
I kept shaking my head at the same time averting it. “It’s okay. I get it. You know I get it. You don’t have to do this.”
“Iz, baby, stop for a second and listen to me.”
I hit the door to the tack room, stopped and twisted only slightly to allow myself to look at his chest, a view I had because he’d gotten close.
He had a new tee on today, blue that had a faded American flag all in white on the front.
It was fabulous.
“Honestly, it’s okay. I’m fine. I expected that to happen,” I told him, though I didn’t expect to have to witness it.
“What to happen?” he asked.
I ignored that.
“And I’m still good with Mist coming here, if you are. I’ll go get him though and take care of him. It won’t be hard. Don’t worry. Just text me the address. I know someone who’ll let me use their horse trailer and Charlie has a truck that can haul.”
“Iz—”
“Thanks for coming, Johnny.” I started to open the door to the tack room. “It was sweet.” I lifted my eyes to his bearded chin and wanted to kick myself because my voice was starting to sound husky when I finished, “Be happy.”
I was going to disappear through the door but I didn’t.
The door that I’d opened nary three inches was slammed shut in front of me, and then I was turned around with a hand on my upper arm and I found myself backed up against the wooden wall to the tack room with a hand in my belly.
I looked up at Johnny.
He was angry.
I felt my wounded heart start beating rapidly.
“Need you to shut up, baby, and listen to me,” he growled.
“You really don’t have to do this,” I whispered.
“You really do have to shut up,” he returned sharply.
I stared into his angry eyes.
He was telling me to shut up.
And he was angry.
He was invading my land, my stables, my space with the driving bent to do the right thing and not thinking how I might feel, and he was getting angry that I wouldn’t let him.
And that made me angry.
“Don’t tell me to shut up,” I snapped.
“Izzy, I’ll repeat one more time, you need to listen to me.”
I got up on my toes to put my face in his and retorted, “I don’t need to do anything.”
“Right,” he bit off.
Then his hand was no longer in my belly.
It was an arm wrapped around my waist, his other hand became fingers bunching my hair tight in his grip, and his mouth slammed down on mine.
He kissed me.
I went still for a second in shock before I tried to push at his hold.
My hands encountered broad, strong shoulders and that was it.
I wasn’t Izzy.
I wasn’t in my stables.
I wasn’t angry at Johnny.
I wasn’t heartsore from him either.
My sister wasn’t up at my house with my nephew dealing with whatever it was she was dealing with at the same time having a mind to what was happening with me.
Shandra Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Was didn’t exist.
She’d never even been born.
I was something else, somewhere else, something foreign entirely.
But he was Johnny.
Johnny holding me and kissing me.
And I had become pure need.
I opened my mouth, his tongue slid inside with a groan that drove the burning hunger deeper into my flesh, the marrow of my bones, straight to my soul, and I couldn’t have stopped myself from acting on it if I’d tried.
My hands left his shoulders and went to the drawstring on my bottoms. I pulled it and the baggy material fell to my ankles.
I then went for his belt.
He broke the kiss, lifted his head and looked deep into my eyes.
Then he made a noise, that muted roar of his that now wasn’t angry or frustrated, but ravening.
If I wasn’t already drenched between my legs, that would have done it.
But instead, it made me sopping.
I worked his belt as he lifted my shirt and hooked a thumb in the side of my panties, his other hand reaching behind him.
He pulled my panties down to low on my hip, the nail of his thumb digging into my flesh, the feel of that reverberating right up my pussy, as he pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.
I got his belt undone and went for the button.
I heard his wallet plop to the dirt before he put the edge of a wrapped condom between his clenched teeth and brushed my hands aside.
I focused on my panties, tearing them farther down and shimmying them until they fell to rest with my bottoms at my ankles.
Johnny dragged his jeans over his ass and the condom disappeared from his teeth.
Within seconds, his hands were at my ass, mine were to his shoulders, and I jumped up.
He kept hold, securing me aloft, taking a step in, pinning me to the wall.
Then he was inside.
I gasped.
He groaned.
And through all of this our eyes stayed bonded.
He started moving and I rounded his hips with my legs, using my calves and heels to dig in, giving me leverage, undulating into his strokes. My hands moved, one clasping hard at the back of his neck, one clenching tight into the thick waves of his hair.
He rounded my bottom with an arm, and his other hand bunched my hair tight against the back of my neck.
His labored breaths clashed with my wisping ones as he stared into my eyes and rode me.
There was nothing while he did.
Nothing for me in the whole world but his eyes and his cock and his hold tight on me and all the amazing, beautiful, wondrous things he was making me feel.
My wispy breaths came faster, whimpers eking through and his grunts started to sound as his thrusts grew in strength and velocity.
My hand at the back of his neck slid around and I caught him rough at its side when all I was feeling, all he was giving me made me start moaning.
“You there?” he grunted.
My arms shot around him, circling his head, yanking it to me, stuffing his face in my neck, and I cried out loudly and bucked in his arms when a climax, exquisite in its purity and intensity and the magnificence of its beauty, tore through me.
“You’re there,” I vaguely heard him whisper before he beat into me faster and rougher, and seconds later I heard and felt the rumble of his long, deep groan against my neck.
He slid in and stayed in, tremors shuddering through his long body, and through them he held me pinned to the wall, impaled on his cock.
I held his head in my arms, face shoved in my neck, my legs tight around his hips.
In Johnny Gamble’s arms. Connected to him. The only place I felt safe. The only place I felt right. The only place I felt free to be whatever me I wanted to be.
And then the world came crashing in.
I’d just fucked another woman’s man.
I was so mortified and utterly horrified that I’d done this, it didn’t even occur to me he’d fucked another woman being some woman’s man.
It was just me.
Me doing the wrong thing. Me hurting a sister. Not even thinking of the consequences. Me taking what wasn’t mine.
I unlocked my arms from around his head and put them to his shoulders.
“Let me go.”
“Izzy,” he whispered against my neck.
I turned my head to the side, away from him, not able to deal with this, not even able to be in my own skin.
It was dirty. Wrong. Revolting.
“That wasn’t right.”
“Baby—”
“Let me go.”
His lips found my ear. “Spätzchen, you need to listen to me.”
“That wasn’t right. You’re not mine. You’re hers.”
His body grew solid all around me. “What?”
“You ran after her.”
“I ran after my dog.”
I blinked at the dirt-floored corridor between the stalls.
He touched his lips to my earlobe and then kept them there, saying gently, “I knew you’d think that but I couldn’t correct you when you wouldn’t answer the fucking phone.”
Slowly, I turned my head his way, and slowly he lifted his to look into my eyes.
“You . . . ran after . . . your dog?”
“Ranger’s home,” he stated.
I blinked up at him.
He gently slid me off his cock and I took the hint, unhooking my legs from his hips. He set me to my feet but held me close, still pinned to the wall until he knew I was steady on them.
He moved away only enough to hitch up his jeans and then he bent and grabbed my panties.
I automatically lifted a hand to take them but he didn’t offer them to me.
He shoved them in his jeans pocket.
My lips parted.
He bent back and grabbed my pajama bottoms. He shook them to get the dirt off, his brows drew together as he gave them a look, then he handed them to me.
Brushing Johnny repeatedly because he stayed in my space, I put them on.
I was tying the drawstring when he said, “Trash.”
It was a statement that formed a question.
“Tack room.”
That was my answer.
He took my hand and shifted us to the tack room, opening the door. He walked with his jeans undone, dragging me with him.
He then treated me to the intimacy of him disposing of a spent condom in my trash.
There was something about this, something huge, something powerful. A shift in our relationship where the veil was pulled down and it was no longer about guarding important secrets until you knew they were safe to share or just getting to know each other a little better.
It was about fitting into each other’s lives.
He righted his jeans and belt then looked into the room.
“Jesus,” he murmured.
I looked into the room.
The tack was mounted on two opposite walls in a fashion that wasn’t only organized and orderly, but attractive. The narrow floor space between had a clean, oval, braided rug on it. In the two back corners, at angles to each other, were two armchairs. A faded chintz one I got in a yard sale for two dollars. And a fabulous, mahogany leather club chair I bought at an estate auction for twenty-five. The light fixture was tin, antique, beat up and fabulous and cost me a buck fifty at an antique store, and a margarita night plus my guacamole for a girlfriend who was an electrician to rewire it.
On the back wall there were four precisely placed pictures, two on either side of a big window, and I’d paid a small fortune to have each one of them professionally framed in the exact same frame.
All of them with huge mats surrounding cheap, drugstore produced snapshot pictures of the day Mom took Addie and me to a state park and we rode horses on a trail. One picture of Mom and Addie. One of Mom and me. And two of all three of us together, standing in front of a horse, smiling, goofing and looking happy.
“Trust you to have a tack room that’s nicer than most folks’ living room,” Johnny muttered.
I looked from the room to him.
“Johnny.”
He looked to me, said firmly, “Right,” then grabbed my hand and dragged me to the leather club chair.
He sat in it.
Then he sat me in it, that being me in his lap.
“Caught up with her and my dog,” he began without preamble.
I sat in his lap, and unsure I wanted to, unsure of anything, I listened.
“Since I wanted my dog back, told her we needed to find a private place to talk. She wanted the mill. I agreed to the mill because that way I could just let Ranger in his new home when we were done and I didn’t want to drag shit out by discussing where we were going to discuss shit. She followed me there in her car. I called you on the way there.” His expression turned annoyed. “You didn’t answer.”
“Um . . .” I muttered.
“Needless to say, when I got there and told her I wanted my dog back, this did not go over well. I’d told her we weren’t going back, what’s done is done, but apparently that didn’t get through. Me saying I wanted her to return Ranger made it get through. She was upset and I couldn’t just tell her to get gone but leave my dog. I did find times to call and text you during her being upset. But again, you didn’t answer.”
“Uh . . .” I mumbled.
“Things degenerated, because she couldn’t miss me trying to call and text you so she wanted to know about you, and since I wasn’t giving her a shot, she jumped to conclusions about Brooks bein’ our kid. Assuring her that didn’t happen but not assuring her that you and I weren’t what she assumed we were didn’t go over very well either. When it came out that it had only been a few weeks and she’d actually called right after we met each other, things degenerated further with a lot of her asking what ifs about if she’d just called a couple of days earlier. And again, it didn’t go over very well when I said what if was moot since I found someone, the connection we have runs deep, we’re both intent on exploring it and I was all in for that happening.”
I stared at him, no longer feeling unsure about listening.
I was listening hard to every word he said.
He kept saying them.
“It would have ended there and I would have come to you, except folks talk, and they were talking, so by the time Margot and Dave got to the festival, what happened on that picnic blanket with the three of us was running rampant. Margot got in a snit, Shandra isn’t Dave’s favorite person either, so they decided to load back up in their car, show at the mill and give Shandra a few pieces of their minds.”
“Oh boy,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Margot laid into her and the result was mincemeat. She ground her to a pulp. I’d tried to be as cool with her as I could, but in that situation there is no way she’d think I was being cool. So Shandra had already taken a few lickings from me, and with Margot wading in she became a mess.”
“Yikes,” I murmured, beginning to feel sorry for Shandra.
I hoped Margot never was moved to make mincemeat of me because I figured she had a talent with that.
“Yeah,” he again agreed. “But Margot wasn’t done, because she jumped to conclusions about the fact Shandra and me were at the mill and she had a few things to say to me too. About Shandra and about you. Shandra hearing from Margot the depths of the wreckage of me she left behind meant she got it in her head that she might be the only one to salvage them, and even shredded she gave that a go. Me and Margo disabusing her of this considering you’d entered the picture and did it with staying power was insult to injury. She lost it, took off, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and most the night looking for her to make sure in her state she didn’t wrap herself around a tree while alternately trying to get you on the phone. I found her late, got her back to her folks safely, left her there and decided to sort you out this morning. You being you led us to straightening shit out the way we straightened it out, which, spätzchen, I’m not complaining since what we did against that wall was hot as fuck. And here we are.”
There we were.
That seemed very definite coming from Johnny, and all he had to say was illuminating and, if I allowed it to be, hopeful.
But even if I was right where I was, I didn’t know where we were.
“Where are we?” I asked.
His brows shot together and again they turned from manly and attractive to downright sinister.
Then he looked around my tack room, to me, both his arms curled around me and did it tight so he could give me a firm shake, and he asked, “Where the fuck do you think we are?”
I didn’t know.
That was why I asked.
But I made a guess.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” I told him carefully.
“Do what?” he asked angrily.
“Come after her. I don’t want to be—”
“Don’t fuckin’ say it,” he growled.
I closed my mouth.
“She was three years ago, Eliza. I loved her. That fact doesn’t change. I loved her and she wrecked me when she left because that was how much I loved her. I’m not going to apologize for that or deny it or walk on eggshells with you about it while we figure out what we got and why it’s so fuckin’ good and so fuckin’ intense and so fuckin’ everything.”
I blinked at him again.
He thought we were . . .
Everything?
He carried on speaking.
“I’d think you’d want that. I’d think you’d wanna know the man in your life could feel that deep for the woman he decided to spend the rest of his life with. But with her, that didn’t happen. She left. I wasn’t Sleeping Beauty, unconscious and unmoving, waiting for her to return. Life happens and it happened. I met you. She’s a memory that’s bittersweet and now back in my sphere, and unfortunately since you’ve taken firm residence in my sphere, yours. But the fact remains, she’s a memory.”
“She’s beautiful,” I told him something he was sure to know.
“So?” he asked.
“I . . . well, she dresses like you. You guys . . . you two . . .” I swallowed and finished, “Fit.”
“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “Her rocker-cowgirl gig is hot. Always was. But I’m not fucking her. I’m fucking a girl who wears a dress that reminds me how much I like her tits with that neckline, baby, which isn’t hot. It’s smokin’. A dress that has fuckin’ birds on it and still, it’s so sexy I took one look at it and wanted the skirt around your waist, or better yet, the whole dress lying on the floor by a bed, my bed, your bed, I don’t care. But just saying, this isn’t the way it’s gonna be where I gotta reassure you that I’m with you because I wanna be with you and I’m not with her because of history. I’m not with her because I wanna be with you.”
I withdrew without physically withdrawing, and I knew by the irritable look Johnny gave me (or the more irritable look) he felt it.
Still, I couldn’t help it.
“So you wanna fuck me,” I said, and I couldn’t keep the injury out of my tone.
“Well, yeah,” he bit out. “You’re the best lay, bar none, Iz, I’ve ever had. No one even comes close. You’re not on a higher level. You’re reinventing the highest level.”
Well that was a kind of compliment.
“I also want more of your guac,” he decreed. “And I wake up every day now at fuckin’ five in the morning because I can’t keep sleeping knowing you’re out here,” he threw out an arm to indicate the stables, “taking care of these horses all by yourself. I go to bed at night, every night, Eliza, jacking my junk thinking of you and wondering if you’re touching yourself thinking of me. Except that night after The Star. I didn’t sleep that first wink, not able to get it out of my head you’re alone out here and some fuckwit is messing with you. I cannot tell you how relieved I was to hear your sister was with you. For you, because I know you love her, and because you’re not alone out here with no one to look after you.”
I sat still on his lap in his arms staring at him and forgetting how to breathe.
Johnny didn’t forget.
He took a breath and kept at me.
“I spent a lot of time the last two weeks bein’ pissed at Shandra, not because she took off on me but because she called and fucked things up before I could take you camping. And I spent a lot of time wondering if you got your peonies and tee and wondering if I should have done that at all or if it made things worse and needing to talk to you about it. So, to end, I spent a lot of time just thinking about you and yeah, some of it was thinking about what I wanted to do to you to make you come, but the rest of it wasn’t.”
“So, you like me,” I whispered breathily.
He scowled at me like he wanted to strangle me then his head dropped to the back of the chair and he stared at the ceiling.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I muttered.
His arms tightened around me so tight, they curled my thighs into my torso so I was a little ball of Izzy tucked tight against his chest as his head came back up and he clipped, “Yeah, I fuckin’ like you.”
“Okeydokey,” I mumbled.
“I know your sister is here but I wanna spend time with you today and then I want you comin’ back to the mill with me to spend the night.”
“She’s in a rough spot, Johnny, and she’s always had the mammoth share of taking care of Brooks.”
Something closed down in his face I didn’t quite understand but that wasn’t the reason I said my next.
I said my next because I wasn’t finished speaking.
“But she’ll get it. She tried to get me to talk to you so she’ll be, uh . . . glad things are where they, um . . . are. Though, I’ll need to be with her tomorrow. Every diaper change I do with Brooks, I swear, after I’m done she wants to kiss me.”
Whatever clouded his features cleared, he nestled me closer and he asked, “You got tomorrow off?”
I nodded.
“Your sister and Brooks can come over to the mill and I’ll grill for you.”
“That’d be sweet,” I said on a smile.
He looked to my smile then his eyes wandered down farther and his arms loosened.
“I . . . well, liked the tee, uh . . . obviously,” I shared. “And also the peonies,” I added.
His gaze came back to me.
“The bottoms?” he asked.
“Sorry?” I asked back.
“Whose are those?”
Uh-oh.
“Uh . . .”
He gave me another shake and said a warning, “Iz.”
“They’re not Kent’s,” I felt it safe to share.
“So whose are they?”
I could tell him I had a man’s pair of pajama bottoms because I found them comfy.
But that would be a lie.
“The guy before the guy before Kent.”
“Okay. Then you can wear ’em back to the house but after that, lose them, Izzy. And by that I mean I’d prefer you burn them but chucking them in the trash works.”
I stared at him again.
He took in my stare and stated, “Right, we’re doin’ this so no more fucking around. I’m that guy. I got a sense of the type of woman you are, it’d be hard not to. You made all this. You keep all this like it is. You dress like you dress. You got it together. You can take care of yourself and a lot more than that. You’re smart, sharp, successful and independent. I like all that or I wouldn’t be here. I’m still that guy and you gotta know that. And part of that guy is being a guy where his woman doesn’t wear another guy’s pajama bottoms, even if that guy is history. You want some, I’ll dig out some of my own, give them to you and have at it. But those are gone. Now, you got a problem with that?”
“Not really.”
He relaxed all around me, muttering, “Good.”
“Can I say something?” I asked.
“Can I ask why you’d ask if you could say something?” he asked back.
I felt my mouth quirk before I got serious.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that yesterday, honey. It sounded like a rough day and I feel bad that I made it rougher by not talking to you.”
His face got soft and it also got closer to mine.
“It was messed up all around,” he stated. “Now it isn’t. Thanks for saying that, spätzchen, but it’s done and we’re moving on. You with me?”
I nodded then asked, “Are you going to give me back my panties?”
“Hell no,” he answered.
I felt my brows draw together. “Why?”
“Babe, do you have even a little clue how hot it is, you sitting in my lap after we fucked like we fucked and I know you’re not wearing panties because I got them in my pocket?”
I squirmed in his lap.
His face then got something else entirely when he growled, “Yeah.”
It took a second for us both to have our moment before his lips hitched and I should have prepared but I didn’t.
So when he said, “You thought I’d bagged on you and you went to sleep in my tee?”
My eyes narrowed on him.
That got me a white flash in his beard.
I tried to push off, mumbling, “I need to make breakfast and then muck stalls.”
His arms tightened again and he returned, “You can make breakfast, babe. For three. I’ll muck the stalls.”
I stopped pushing against him. “I can muck my own stalls, Johnny.”
“No doubt. Just that today your sister is here and so am I, so I’m gonna muck the stalls and you’re gonna spend time with your sister. Then you’re gonna feed me. After that, I’m gonna go home, shower and come back. We’ll spend the day together and after dinner, I’ll take you home with me so I can fuck you without you worried about anyone hearing and I’ll bring you back in the morning. I’ll go out and get shit to grill and you guys can meet me at the mill. We got a plan?”
I forgot my pique because I liked that plan so much I just smiled at him and agreed, “We have a plan.”
Johnny’s face changed back to what it had been before, my body responded to the change and then I was shoulders to the arm of the chair and he was making out with me.
When he lifted his head, he said, “Soon’s your sister leaves, date night and you wear that dress you wore to the festival because I didn’t get near enough of it, spätzchen.”
“’Kay,” I breathed.
He knifed out of the seat, taking me with him and putting me on my feet.
Feet he looked at as he draped his arm around my shoulders.
Feet he was still looking at when he muttered, “I cannot believe I fucked you in those boots.”
Heat rose in my cheeks.
His arm angled down and his hand cupped my bottom as he rolled me into him and stared down at me, grinning.
“You sliding my finger inside you, baby, was seriously hot but you dropping drawers after half a kiss was seriously fucking hotter.”
And now I could actually feel the pink get more pink in my cheeks.
“Can we not do audible replays?” I requested.
“Why not?” he teased.
“It was—”
“Hot.”
“Yes and also—”
“As fuck.”
I slapped his arm. “Johnny.”
He brought his lips to mine. “Okay, spätzchen, I’ll just do mental replays.”
I glared at him even as I melted into him.
He kissed me again. It turned into a short make-out session. Then he guided me with his arm around my shoulders to the door, through it and pushed me gently toward the gate.
“Breakfast,” he ordered.
“Okeydokey,” I replied.
I headed out the gate and latching it, looked back to see Johnny was already to Serengeti, getting her ready to let her outside to roam.
I didn’t think about how much I liked that visual.
I didn’t think about how much had just happened and how huge it all was.
I didn’t think about the fact that life might have just changed in major ways and just how much possibility now lay before me, all of it embodied by Johnny.
I went to my house, slid my boots off outside the door (and I did this grinning) and I walked in.
My dogs bounded to me.
My nephew sat in a high chair by the island with a bib on and my sister bent over him, shoving baby cereal in his mouth.
Her head turned to me.
“You might have seen that Johnny pulled up and—” I started.
She straightened.
Brooks screeched when his food got farther away.
Addie spoke.
“Yeah. He came to the door. I told him you were in the stables. He didn’t say a word, turned on his kickass boot and stalked to the stables. And to say the man can stalk is to say the man can stalk. I watched with what I will admit was avid fascination until he disappeared around the corner and I couldn’t watch anymore. He seemed pissed and worried. I went with the worried at first then I got worried about the pissed. So I went out to make sure everything was okay. And just to say, you getting drilled by a hot guy against a wall in a stable is something I cannot ever unsee.”
My entire chest depressed.
“Though,” she bent back over Brooks and shoved more cereal in his mouth, “after my eyeballs stopped burning, objectively I could see it was seriously hot and I’m glad for you.”
“He’s mucking out the stalls and spending the day with us,” I said quietly.
She turned her head to me again.
“Good,” she said strongly.
“It wasn’t the woman. It was his dog,” I told her.
“You got until he gets done in the stable to fill me in on all this stuff you wouldn’t talk about last night and you kept from me the night before. But just to say, it wasn’t lost on me how into you he was. It was just lost on you, until he drilled you against the wall in the stable. Still, I wanna know all the dirt, so get cracking on breakfast, Iz, and spill.”
“Do you think he’ll want pancakes or eggs?” I thought for a second and added more options, “Or waffles or French toast?”
“When I turned on the ringer of your phone this morning, I saw he’d texted twelve times and phoned eleven. I think that man would eat sawdust, it was you serving it up to him.”
Twelve texts.
Eleven calls.
So fuckin’ good and so fuckin’ intense and so fuckin’ everything.
It seemed Addie might be right.
I smiled at her.
She rolled her eyes. “Spare me the post-coital bliss, cook and fill me in. Man like that will have two stables mucked out in less than twenty minutes.”
This might be true.
So I got cracking (I picked pancakes).
And I filled my sister in on what was happening.
But I couldn’t quite beat back or even hide my bliss.
Johnny
Johnny got out of the shower and reached to grab a towel.
When he did, his eyes fell on the jar by the tub.
It had been sitting there so long he didn’t even see it anymore.
But he saw it then.
He rubbed his hair, gave his body a cursory wipe and then wrapped the towel around his hips.
He secured it and went to the jar.
Ranger got up from lying on the rug in front of one of the sinks and came to him.
Johnny grabbed the jar but bent with his free hand to give his dog’s head a scratch.
He then walked with his dog at his heels to the kitchen. He opened the cabinet that hid the trash bin and tossed the jar in.
He closed the cabinet and bent fully to his dog.
Grabbing his head, he asked, “Wanna go to Izzy’s with me?”
Ranger tried to lick his face.
Johnny smiled at him. “I’ll give her a call. See if Dempsey and Swirl are good with company.”
He rubbed Ranger’s head and moved back to the bathroom to his jeans on the floor. He dug his phone out, called Iz and was not surprised with her answer.
So he pulled a comb through his hair, put on deodorant, clean shorts, jeans and tee, tugged socks and his boots on and he grabbed his wallet, phone and keys.
Then he and Ranger headed out the door to his truck in order to get back to Izzy.