Chapter 24
Daisy
Daisy woke in another unfamiliar bed, a ceiling fan rotating with a low-grade, constant squeak above her, and she rolled onto her side and hugged her knees. Yesterday had been such an unexpected gift that she’d crashed as soon as she’d gotten to this room and then spent eight hours dreaming in vivid, brilliant colors. She couldn’t remember them all now, but there had been cacti and buffalos, paintbrushes that were trees, a sunset that was the warmest crocheted blanket, and Duncan McCoy.
In all of her dreams, wound through the images and through every cell of her body and heart and mind, was Duncan McCoy.
Standing together at the Grand Canyon had transcended friendship and transcended love, her heart exploding with love for just… everything.
She had never been so aware of her body and its place in relation to the ground under her or a body beside hers, and she’d felt like she would fly apart into a million pieces of happiness without his arm around her so tight, so present in a way that no one else ever had been.
But this morning, once she’d gotten ready and jogged down the pitted concrete walk and stairs of the motel to the Shelby, the fairytale tarnished. Maybe the beauty of the Grand Canyon had overwhelmed her, and that joy and awe had spilled out of her and caught Dunk up in it. Daisy had been in love with him not so long ago, and he was still the same funny, sweet, loyal man, as lovable now as he’d been then. So of course she had loved him dearly during that timeless moment at the Grand Canyon.
“You ready for our super long day of driving?” Dunk asked, grinning way too cheerfully considering it wasn’t even seven in the morning.
“Shut up and drive,” she grumbled.
A minute later, Dunk put on Rihanna’s “Shut Up and Drive” and slowly amped up the volume, whistling innocently, until Daisy cracked up.
“There,” he said with satisfaction as he pulled into a gas station and hopped out of the Shelby to pump the gas. “Now all you need is coffee.”
“What snacks do you want today?” Daisy asked as she headed for the convenience store in the gas station.
Dunk called out his choice of snacks and flavor of sports drink for that day, which was going to be about twelve hours of driving to help make up for their detours the first few days. Daisy paid for everything, including a big cup of iced coffee, and was back just as Dunk leapt over the driver’s side door and slid into the seat.
After their long get-to-know-you-better game and the intensity of the Grand Canyon yesterday, Daisy was wrung out. So when Rihanna turned out to be just the first song in Dunk’s Shut Up and Drive Playlist, she reclined her seat a little and propped her chin in the heel of her palm.
The landscape here was so familiar to her from the photography and landscape classes she’d taken over the years. But it was so different when the dust blew and coated her tongue, when the heat was almost a weight on her skin, pressing into it, and holding her tight.
The hours drifted by; they stopped for lunch at a steakhouse, drove for a while, pulled off at a rest stop and played some Frisbee to stretch their bodies, drove and drove and drove until they finally got to Amarillo.
Everyone heard a lot of things about Texas, and Amarillo just… felt like Texas should feel to Daisy, from the moment they parked at the motel she’d booked earlier in the day. They separated to shower, sweaty after the thirteen hours in the convertible, and Daisy smoothed on aloe where she’d burned across the bridge of her nose, the back of her neck and in a stripe along the neckline of her shirt.
Their plan was to go to a good old-fashioned country and western bar and grill, eat giant amounts of barbeque, drink a lot of beer, and do some line dancing. So Daisy shook out a sleeveless blouse the color of kiwis and tucked it loosely into a denim A-line skirt that ended a couple inches above her knees. She didn’t add any jewelry or more make-up than mascara and lip gloss, not wanting Dunk to think she’d dressed up or something.
Still, when she met him in the hallway a few minutes later, his eyes skimmed over her in quick appreciation and then he held out his bent arm to her. “Ma’am,” he greeted her, thickening his drawl and trying to imitate some sort of Texan cowboy, “you look mighty fine tonight.”
“You too,” she said, and while she’d intended it to be some sort of over-the-top breathless Marilyn Monroe thing for some silly reason, it came out soft and shy.
She felt the hitch in his step before he smoothed it out.
The bar was only a couple of blocks away and Daisy enjoyed the evening air, energized at the idea of some drinks and dancing.
When they went inside, the saloon they’d chosen at the motel clerk’s suggestion was clogged with people at the bar, tables, and dance floor, barbeque sauce and tequila ripe in the air. If it had been twenty years ago, Daisy knew it would’ve been almost blue from all the cigarette smoke.
The hostess, wearing a romper so tiny and short it was practically a bathing suit, purred and flirted and petted at Dunk during the incredibly long trek through the huge restaurant to their table. Dunk engaged, of course, he’d never flat-out ignore a woman; but Daisy was aware of her smug, bitchy look at the hostess when she strutted off in a huff.
“Oh damn, Daisy Rhys, I know what we’re doing tonight,” Dunk told her, wide-eyed.
Before she could ask, he cupped her chin in one of his big hands and turned her head until she saw it.
“No way in hell,” she said immediately.
“What! Daisy! It’s a mechanical bull.”
“You’ll kill yourself up there,” Daisy cried.
“Yeah, right,” Dunk scoffed, his pride offended by the very suggestion, she could see it by the way he narrowed his eyes. “You might bruise your pretty tailbone or show the whole place your goodies, so, no bull for you.”
She gaped unattractively and then snickered, “Goodies?”
Sniffing, Dunk lifted his chin. “It’s polite, but complementary, okay?”
That got another snicker out of her. “Okay. But if you try to ride that bull, you’re going to wind up with your twig and berries squished.”
Dunk half stood up and wrestled his wallet out of his back pocket, flipped it open, and pulled out all of the cash in it. “Thirty—no, forty-four bucks say you’re wrong,” Dunk dared, slapping the bills down.
One of Daisy’s brows lifted almost smugly. “I’ll take that action.”
“Yeah you will,” Dunk replied, then ducked his head a little as if he hadn’t meant to fire back with the innuendo.
They ordered drinks and appetizers, Dunk dragging his chair a quarter of the way around the table to get a better view of the bull.
Once they were both a bunch of drinks in and finished eating, they went over to the rough-hewn wooden fence that surrounded the mechanical bull. The floor inside the ‘pen’ was covered in padded gymnastics mats and the people ranged around it leaned on the fence, drinking and betting.
Dunk put his name on the list and then they made friends with the guys standing next to them, shaking hands and exchanging names.
“Dunk,” the guy running the bull called out.
Dunk whooped and ran around.
“That your man, honey?” one of the guys asked her.
“Used to be,” Daisy said, offering him a genuine, but not too big smile, knowing its brightness was always taken as interest by men.
“Alright, then,” the cowboy replied with a smile, then settled his cowboy hat on Daisy’s head, tilting the brim way up so that the oversized hat wouldn’t block her vision.
When she could see again, laughing, one hand hovering in case the hat slid off, she caught Dunk staring at her intently while he, theoretically, listened to the rules and suggestions about riding the bull.
She leaned on the fence and gave him her cockiest smile.
The bell rang and the bull started to buck.
Dunk had a good grip and a great understanding of how to move his body in counterpoint to attacks and sudden movements.
But none of that mattered at all, because he’d never ridden a bull before and Daisy wagered that he’d never been on a bucking horse, because he went flying after only a few seconds. He landed with a loud curse, the crowd cheering him on, a few women whistling when he rolled onto his back to catch his breath, his shirt riding up to show off that vee.
He curled up, those abs flexing so beautifully before his shirt dropped back over his belt. He looked over Daisy again, his eyes twinkling as he came over, grabbing the top rail of the fence and clearing it like a hurdle in one smooth bunch and flex of his muscles.
“You’re a cowgirl now?” he asked lightly, flicking the brim.
“Yup,” she replied with a big wink.
He shook his head and sighed at the guys they’d been hanging out with. “You know, I left you boys in charge of an artist,” he teased.
“Cowgirls can be artists, why not?” one of the men laughed.
“Painting pictures with their lassos?” Daisy asked, laughing.
“And catching cowboys,” another offered easily with a wink.
“Lots of them are queens with sashes too—County Fair Queens,” the first man, whose hat Daisy still wore precariously, drawled. “You look like you might have a few of those sashes or maybe a few pageant crowns.”
Before Daisy could come up with a response, Dunk stepped closer to her, his chest brushing her shoulder blade and her French braid. “She never needed to win anything to prove she’s the prettiest girl in town,” he said.
Being flirted with felt good, but hearing Dunk state, plainly and unapologetically, that she was the prettiest girl in Maybelle… That was the thing that made Daisy flush and hold back a pleased smile.
“Thank you, Dunk,” she said softly, daring to press her shoulder back into the solid, thick slabs of his torso muscles.
His hand brushed the side of her hip and lay there, barely grazing her skirt over her hip. “No need to thank me for the truth, Princess,” he murmured, then reached up and deliberately took off the cowboy hat and handed it back to the other man, who accepted it and, with a shrug, moved off with his friends.
Dunk never looked away from Daisy, his hand still at her hip, and Daisy’s heart began to race. No one had ever called her princess like that before. He’d used it as if it really were an honorific showing nothing but respect and admiration, instead of diminishing her femininity or power. If she strained her imagination, she could hear it lit up by something like love, like darlin had while they were dating.
“Do you want to dance?” she blurted out.
She gestured vaguely at the dance floor, where people were doing line dances to music that was more pop country than classic country.
“Okay,” he said, that big hand settling on her hip to lead her gently around the fence and onto the dance floor.
She shivered when he let go of her, as if she were colder without the heat of his touch, but met his eyes and beamed as they started to dance.
She’d forgotten how good at dancing he was, when he wasn’t trying to make her laugh with terrible, cheesy dance moves. He found the rhythm easily and while he didn’t work his hips the way she did, he didn’t just shuffle side to side or bob his head like most guys she knew either.
This, Daisy thought, was the perfect balance point between the overwhelming euphoria of being with him at the Grand Canyon and the chilling doubts of meeting him at the Shelby that morning. His happiness enveloped both of both of them, her happiness pouring out of her to mix with his, making her feel like she was in a shimmering cocoon. The attraction was there too, of course, but it was a constant simmer, something that didn’t make her pant with urgency.
It felt inevitable that they would come together again, that they would interlock bodies and hearts and lives again, only better than the first time.
But before she could jump off that cliff, she bounced up and down when one of her new favorite songs, Lady Antebellum’s “You Look Good” came on.
She clapped and then started rolling her body as the horns and the drums kicked in, singing along. She held out one hand to Dunk and he took it, bringing her palm to his chest and dropping his hands back to her hips. She tossed her head back and laughed, bubbling over, and then snagged the aviators tucked in the neck of his shirt and slid them on herself, mugging for him as the chorus rocked the dance floor.
His eyes blazed and he tugged her closer, his belt buckle scraping her ribs lightly because of their height difference, but it only served to remind her how big and strong he was.
Maybe she’d had more beer to drink than she thought, because she was floating on air, anchored by his hands and the look in his eyes.
“Daisy Rhys,” he declared hoarsely, stopping her hips, “you can tease me all you want, but… if you keep this up, then it’s game on, woman.”
Daisy scrounged up enough presence of mind to suck in a breath and admit, “I don’t think I can handle that kind of game right now, Dunk.”
That had him shuddering against her. “And I don’t think I’d win that kind of game right now,” he admitted right back.
Then he carefully let her go and stepped back, and after a second of smoldering, the smoke cleared from his eyes and he shook himself as if he was just breaking the surface after a big jump into a lake.
“Time out, then, darlin’,” he said, grinning.
“Okay,” she agreed with a soft, stunned laugh.
She reached automatically for his hand, but he twitched away.
Shocked, she looked up at him sharply, but he just winked. “I’ll resume play if you touch me now. Give me a minute to cool down.”
She watched, her lips parted and aching for his, while he went back over to the mechanical bull, put his name down again, and struck up a conversation with some other people waiting for their turns.
She wanted to go over there, to drag him back up the street to their motel, to go into one of their rooms together. But since she still didn’t know if she wanted to make love or just have some lust-crazed sex, she didn’t.
She took a deep breath, shook off the fairy dust haze of attraction that was clinging to her, and went back to dancing, toning it down to a PG rating. Some men tried to dance with her, but she gently shifted away, the thought of another man so close to her, let alone touching her, wrong.
It was a while before she saw Dunk again, but he walked—no, he limped—onto the dance floor and look down at her, utterly chagrined.
“You owe me forty-four dollars, your twig and berries totally got squished!” she half-accused, half-bragged, hands landing on her hips.
“Well, they are low-hanging fruit,” he quipped, winking.
“Dunk,” Daisy tsk-tsked, shaking her head slowly, “only a man would think that that’s a boast.”
He went to pretend to stagger back like she’d knifed him in the heart, but instead he winced and his shoulder curled in a little. “I’m not going to lie, I’m in fucking pain here, Daisy. I need an ice pack. I gotta lie down. Do you want to stay? I could get a bag of frozen peas from the kitchen here and sit down if you wanted to keep dancing and having fun.”
With a sigh, Daisy touched the edge of Dunk’s jaw. “Don’t be silly,” she chastised him gently. “Can you walk or do you want to get a cab?”
“I can walk,” he said.
Then he gently took her hand, tangling their fingers together, and they left the restaurant and walked to their motel.
“You know,” Daisy chuckled, “this is the first time that I haven’t had to concentrate on walking fast so I could keep up with your long legs.”
“Really?” he asked with a wince as they stepped down a curb to cross a street. “Why didn’t you ask me to slow down? I like a good amble as much as the next tall guy.”
“I never really noticed,” she said with a shrug.
“We both do that, don’t we?” he observed quietly as they went into the motel and around the indoor pool towards their rooms. “Accommodate the people we love, our family and friends? Even if it’s less than perfect for us, or if it would be so easy for the people we love to accommodate us?”
Daisy’s heart clenched, thinking of their break up fight.
She unlocked her room, then pulled him in to sit on the bed with him.
“I try to notice,” she told him quietly. “I bent more than I should’ve with Tyler. Since then, I’ve tried to be firmer. It’s part of why I got a ‘grown-up job’ and stopped wearing so many frilly floral sundresses that make me look… cute. I want people to take me seriously, to see me as an equal, not some princess. To consider my needs equal to theirs.”
He scrubbed one hand down his face then through his hair.
When he looked back at her, he looked guilty and upset. “Is that what you were doing when I… when I wanted you to make more time for me?”
Daisy’s face crumpled and she nodded, her eyes falling to her lap.
“Oh darlin’,” he murmured, brushing his fingertips over her chin before gently lifting it, his eyes bright with regret. His mouth twisted in an almost sardonic smile. “Me, too,” he confessed, his fingers warm and comforting as they spread to cup her cheek. “You know I’m easy-going, and I… well, before, I let women come and go, I was happy when they were happy, happy with whatever they wanted. They called and I—”
“Came?” Daisy whispered.
His regretful expression splintered into a wicked grin.
He lowered his mouth towards hers, shifting his weight, but then he froze and gasped, “Holy shit, my balls.”
Daisy jerked back in surprise, her hands flying to his waist to hold him still even as her head hung forward as she bit her lip. She tried, she tried like hell to stop herself from laughing, but… Giggles burst past her lips.
“I will get you back for this,” he gritted out.
He got gingerly to his feet and undid his belt and fly, then cursed a blue streak while he worked his jeans down his thick thighs. They dropped to wrinkle like a sad accordion around his calves and he stared down at them mournfully.
Daisy’s breathing shook with more giggles that she really tried to suppress. She gave up, her hands covering her face as she practically wailed with laughter, “You can’t bend over, can you?”
She sank to her knees, knowing it was awful of her, and put his hand on her shoulder to keep his balance while he lifted one foot at a time just high enough for her to work off his jeans.
“I’m so confused right now,” he bemoaned the state of his life. “We were having this heart-to-heart and I wanted to kiss you, so of course I started to get a semi, but my balls feel like I got nailed with a football without a cup on and it hurts like holy fucking hell, and now you’re trying to kill me, on your knees—”
His dick, just a few inches from her face behind his briefs, twitched.
He whimpered.
“I’m so sorry,” she wheezed. “Come on, lie down. I’ll go get some ice from the ice machine—I think I saw one near the vending machines.”
“This is the least manly moment of my life, Daisy,” he complained.
“A lot less romantic in real life than in your books when the hero is shot saving the heroine, huh?” she couldn’t help but tease.
“Way to make me feel like a total baby. Just kick a man when he’s down.”
Daisy laughed and stood up, retrieving her key card, and tossed a prim look over her shoulder at him. “I told you not to ride the bull.”
He shuffled around the bed and then lay down on his side, making another pitiful noise. He waved one hand at her. “Just leave me here to die in peace.”
She grinned at him, since he’d closed his eyes, and snuck her phone out of her purse, quickly snapping a few pictures of him.
“Was that your camera?” he demanded in horror.
“You bet your sweet ass it was,” she told him, then ran out of the room.
When she found the ice machine, she filled one of the plastic bags and then leaned against the wall, shaking her head and chuckling softly.
Dunk McCoy was ridiculous, and she loved him like crazy.