The last thing I wanted was a man to complicate my life. I came to that conclusion, on the commuter flight between Phoenix and Helena, Montana, because my best friend Lucy and I had been discussing the topic, online and via our Black-Berrys, for days. Maybe the fact that I was bound to encounter Tristan McCullough during my brief sojourn in my hometown of Parable had something to do with the decision.
Tristan and I had a history, one of those angst-filled summer romances between high school graduation and college. Sure, it had been over for ten years, but I still felt bruised whenever I thought of him, which was more often than I should have, even with all that time to insulate me from the experience.
My few romantic encounters in between had done nothing to dissuade me from my original opinion.
Resolved: Men lie. They cheat—usually with your roommate, your best friend, or somebody you’re going to have to face at the office every day. They forget birthdays, dump you the day of the big date, and leave the toilet seat up.
Who needed it? I had B.O.B., after all. My battery-operated boyfriend.
Just as I was thinking those thoughts, my purse tumbled out of the overhead compartment and hit me on the head. I should have realized that the universe was putting me on notice. Cosmic e-mail. Subject: Pay attention, Gayle.
Hastily, avoiding the flight attendant’s tolerant glance, which I knew would be disapproving because I’d asked for extra peanuts during the flight and gotten up to use the rest room when the seat belt sign was on, I shoved the bag under the seat in front of mine. Then I gripped the arms of 4B as the aircraft gave an apocalyptic shudder and nose-dived for the landing strip.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
The plane bumped to the ground, and I would have sworn before a hostile jury that the thing was about to flip from wingtip to wingtip before crumpling into a fiery ball.
My stomach surged into my throat, and I pictured smoldering wreckage on the six o’clock news in Phoenix, even heard the voice-over. “Recently fired paralegal, Gayle Hayes, perished today in a plane crash outside the small Montana town of Parable. She was twenty-seven, a hard-won size 6 with two hundred dollars’ worth of highlights in her shoulder-length brown hair, and was accompanied by her long-standing boyfriend, Bob—”
As if my untimely and tragic death would rate a sound bite. And as if I’d brought Bob along on this trip. All I would have needed to complete my humiliation, on top of losing my job and having to make an appearance in Parable, was for some security guard to search my suitcase and wave my vibrator in the air.
But, hey, when you think you’re about to die, you need somebody, even if he’s made of pink plastic and runs on four ‘C’ batteries.
When it became apparent that the Grim Reaper was otherwise occupied, I lifted the lids and took a look around. The flight attendant, who was old enough to have served cocktails on Wright Brothers Air, smiled thinly. Like I said, we hadn’t exactly bonded.
Despite my aversion to flying, I sat there wondering if they’d let me go home if I simply refused to get off the plane.
The cabin door whooshed open, and my fellow passengers—half a dozen in all—rose from their seats, gathered their belongings, and clogged the aisle at the front of the airplane. I’d scrutinized them—surreptitiously, of course—during the flight, in case I recognized somebody, but none of them were familiar, which was a relief.
Before the Tristan fiasco, I’d been ordinary, studious Gayle Hayes, daughter of Josie Hayes, manager and part owner of the Bucking Bronco Tavern. After our dramatic breakup, Tristan was still the golden boy, the insider, but I was Typhoid Mary. He’d grown up in Parable, as had his father and grandfather. His family had land and money, and in ranch country, or anywhere else, that adds up to credibility. I, on the other hand, had blown into town with my recently divorced mother, when I was thirteen, and remained an unknown quantity. I didn’t miss the latest stepfather—he was one in a long line—and I loved Mom deeply.
I just didn’t want to be like her, that was all. I wanted to go to college, marry one man, and raise a flock of kids. It might not be politically correct to admit it, but I wasn’t really interested in a career.
When the Tristan-and-me thing bit the dust, I pulled my savings out of the bank and caught the first bus out of town.
Mom had long since moved on from Parable, but she still had a financial interest in the Bronco, and the other partners wanted to sell. I’m a paralegal, not a lawyer, but my mother saw that as a technicality. She’d hooked up with a new boyfriend—not the kind that requires batteries—and as of that moment, she was somewhere in New Mexico, on the back of a Harley. A week ago, on the same day I was notified that I’d been downsized, she called me from a borrowed cell phone and talked me into representing her at the negotiations.
In a weak moment, I’d agreed. She overnighted me an airline ticket and her power of attorney, and wired travel expenses into my checking account, and here I was—back in Parable, Montana, the place I’d sworn I would never think about, let alone visit, again.
“Miss?” The flight attendant’s voice jolted me back to the present. From the expression on her face, I would be carried off bodily if I didn’t disembark on my own. I unsnapped my seat belt, hauled my purse out from under 3B, and deplaned with as much dignity as I could summon.
I had forgotten why they call Montana the Big Sky Country. It’s like being under a vast, inverted bowl of the purest blue, stretching from horizon to horizon.
The airport at Helena was small, and the land around the city is relatively flat, but the trees and mountains were visible in the distance, and I felt a little quiver of nostalgia as I took it all in. Living in Phoenix for the decade since I’d fled, working my way through vocational school and making a life for myself, I’d had plenty of occasion to miss the terrain, but I hadn’t consciously allowed myself the indulgence.
I made my way carefully down the steps to the tarmac, and crossed to the entrance, trailing well behind the other passengers. Mom had arranged for a rental car, so all I had to do was pick up my suitcase at the baggage claim, sign the appropriate papers at Avis, and boogie for Parable.
I stopped at a McDonald’s on the way through town, since I hadn’t had breakfast and twenty-six peanuts don’t count as nourishment. Frankly, I would have preferred a stiff drink, but you can’t get arrested for driving under the influence of French fries and a Big Mac.
I switched on the radio, in a futile effort to keep memories of Tristan at bay, and the first thing I heard was Our Song.
I switched it off again.
My cell phone rang, inside my purse, and I fumbled for it.
It was Lucy.
“Where are you?” she demanded.
I pushed the speaker button on the phone, so I could finish my fries and still keep one hand on the wheel. “In the trunk of a car,” I answered. “I’ve been kidnapped by the mob. Think I should kick out one of the taillights and wave my hand through the hole?”
Lucy hesitated. “Smart-ass,” she said. “Where are you really?”
I sighed. Lucy is my best friend, and I love her, but she’s the mistress of rhetorical questions. We met at school in Phoenix, but now she’s a clerk in an actuary’s office, in Santa Barbara. I guess they pay her to second-guess everything. “On my way to Parable. You know, that place we’ve been talking about via BlackBerry?”
“Oh,” said Lucy.
I folded another fry into my mouth, gum-stick style. “Do you have some reason for calling?” I prompted. I didn’t mean to sound impatient, but I probably did. My brain kept racing ahead to Parable, wondering how long it would take to get my business done and leave.
Lucy perked right up. “Yes,” she said. “The law firm across the hall from our offices is hiring paralegals. You can get an application online.”
I softened. It wasn’t Lucy’s fault, after all, that I had to go back to Parable and maybe come face to face with Tristan. I was jobless, and she was trying to help. “Thanks, Luce,” I said. “I’ll look into it when I have access to a computer. Right now, I’m in a rental car.”
“I’ll forward the application,” she replied.
“Thanks,” I repeated. The familiar road was winding higher and higher into the timber country. I rolled the window partway down, to take in the green smell of pine and fir trees.
“I wish I could be there to lend moral support,” Lucy said.
“Me, too,” I sighed. She didn’t know about the Tristan debacle. Yes, she was my closest friend, but the subject was too painful to broach, even with her. Only my mother knew, and she probably thought I was over it.
Lucy’s voice brightened. “Maybe you’ll meet a cowboy.”
I felt the word “cowboy” like a punch to the solar plexus. Tristan was a cowboy. And he’d gotten on his metaphorical horse and trampled my heart to a pulp. “Maybe,” I said, to throw her a bone.
“Boss alert,” Lucy whispered, apparently picking up an authority figure on the radar. “I’d better get back to my charts.”
“Good idea,” I said, relieved, and disconnected. I tossed the phone back into my purse.
I passed a couple of ranches, and a gas station with bears and fish and horses on display in the parking lot, the kind carved out of a tree stump with a chain saw. Yep, I was getting close to Parable.
I braced myself. Two more bends in the road.
On the first bend, I almost crashed into a deer.
On the second bend, I braked within two feet of a loaded cattle truck, jackknifed in the middle of the highway. I had already suspected that fate wasn’t on my side. I knew it for a fact when Tristan McCullough stormed around one end of the semi-trailer, ready for a fight.
My heart surged up into my sinuses and got stuck there.
The decade since I’d seen him last had hardened his frame and chiseled his features, at least his mouth and lower jaw. I couldn’t see the upper part of his face because of the shadow cast by the brim of his beat-up cowboy hat.
What does Tristan look like? Take Brad Pitt and multiply by a factor of ten, and you’ve got a rough idea.
“Didn’t you see the flares?” he demanded, in that one quivering moment before he recognized me. “How fast were you going, anyway?” It clicked, and he stiffened, stopped in his tracks, a few feet from my car door.
“No, I didn’t see any flares,” I said, and I must have sounded lame, as well as defensive. “And I don’t think I was speeding.” My voice echoed in my head.
He recovered quickly, but that was Tristan. While I was pining, he’d probably been dating rodeo groupies, cocktail waitresses, and tourists. While I was waiting tables to get through school, he was winning fancy belt buckles for the school team and getting straight A’s at the University of Montana without wasting time on such pedantic matters as studying and earning a living. “Back around the bend and put your flashers on. Otherwise, this situation might get a whole lot worse.”
I just sat there.
“Hello?” he snarled.
I still didn’t move.
Tristan opened the door of the rental and leaned in. “Get out of the car, Gayle,” he said. “I’ll do the rest.”
My knees were watery, but I unsnapped the seat belt and de-carred. Four stumpy French fries fell off my lap, in seeming slow motion. It’s strange, the things you notice when the earth topples off its axis.
Tristan climbed behind the wheel and backed the compact around the bend. When he returned, I was still standing in the road, listening to the cattle bawl inside the truck trailer. I felt like joining them.
“Are they hurt?” I asked.
“The cattle?” Tristan countered. “No. Just annoyed.” He did that cowboy thing, taking off his hat, putting it on again in almost the same motion. “What are you doing here?”
For a moment, I was stumped for an answer. His eyes were so blue. His butternut hair still too long. Everything inside me seized up into a fetal ball.
“Gayle?” he prompted, none too kindly.
“The Bucking Bronco is up for sale, as you probably know. My mom sent me to protect her interests.”
The azure gaze drifted over me, slowly and thoughtfully, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. “I see,” he drawled, and it sounded like more than an acknowledgement of my reasons for returning to Parable, as if he’d developed x-ray vision and could see the lace panties and matching bra under my linen slacks and white cotton blouse. My blood heated, and my nipples went hard. When we were together, Tristan had had a way of undressing me with his eyes, and he hadn’t lost the knack.
I flushed. “How long until you get this truck out of the way?” I asked. “I’d like to get my business done and get out of here.”
“I’ll just bet you would,” he said, and a corner of his mouth quirked up in an insolent ghost of a grin. He leaned in, and I felt his breath against my face. More heat. “You’re real good at running away.”
My temper flared. “Whatever,” I snapped. If he wanted to make the whole thing my fault, fine. I wouldn’t try to change his mind.
His gaze glided to my left hand, then back to my face. “No wedding ring,” he said. “I figured you would have married some poor sucker, out of spite. Maybe even had a couple of kids.”
“Well,” I said, “you figured wrong.”
“No boyfriend?” There was a note of disbelief in his voice, as though he thought I couldn’t go five minutes without a man, let alone ten years.
I straightened my spine. The pitiable state of my love life was nobody’s business, least of all Tristan McCullough’s. “I’m in a committed relationship,” I said. “His name is Bob.”
Tristan’s mouth twitched. “Bob,” he repeated.
“He’s in electronics,” I said.
Something sparked in Tristan’s eyes—humor, I thought—and I hoped he hadn’t guessed that Bob was a vibrator.
Get a grip, I told myself. Tristan might have known where all my erotic zones were, but he wasn’t psychic.
Feeling bolder, now that I knew I wouldn’t spontaneously combust just by being in Tristan’s presence—provided he didn’t touch me, that is—I cast a disgusted glance toward the trailer, full of unhappy cows. “So, how long did you say it will take to get this truck off the road?”
“You already asked me that.”
“Yes, but you didn’t answer.”
He looked irritated. “I called for some help. There’s a wrecker on the way. Guess you’re just going to have to be patient.”
I approached the trailer—the cattle smelled even worse than they sounded—and noticed that a set of double wheels at the front had slipped partway into the ditch. Beyond it was a drop-off of several hundred feet.
My stomach quivered. “I really hope they don’t all decide to stand on one side of the trailer,” I said.
Tristan was right beside me. He looked pale under his rancher’s tan. “Me, too,” he said.
“What happened? I thought you were this great driver.”
He scowled, did the hat thing again. Before he had to answer, we heard revving engines on the other side of the truck. We ducked between the trailer and the cab and watched as a wrecker and about fourteen pickup trucks rolled up.
An older man—I recognized him immediately as Tristan’s grandfather—leaped out of a beat-up vehicle and hurried toward us. “We gotta get those cows out of that rig before they trample each other,” he called. He squinted at me, but quickly lost interest. Story of my life. Sometimes, I think I’m invisible. “Jim and Roy are up on the ridge road, unloading the horses. We’re gonna need ’em to keep the cattle from scattering all over the county.”
Tristan nodded, and I looked up, trying to locate the aforementioned ridge road. High above, I saw two long horse trailers, pulled by more pickup trucks, perched on what looked like an impossibly narrow strip of land. I counted two riders and some dozen horses making their careful way down the hillside.
“What’s she doing here?” the wrecker guy asked Tristan, after cocking a thumb at me.
I didn’t hear Tristan’s answer over all the ruckus. Oh, well. I probably wouldn’t have liked it anyway.
“Get out of the way,” Tristan told me, as he and the guys from the flotilla of pickup trucks up ahead got ready to unload the cattle. I retreated a ways, and watched as he climbed onto the back of the semi-trailer, threw the heavy steel bolts that held the doors closed, and climbed inside.
An image came to my mind, of the whole shebang rolling over the cliff, with Tristan inside, and I almost threw up the twenty-six peanuts, along with the Big Mac and the fries.
The horsemen arrived, and several of the men on the ground immediately mounted up. Tristan threw down a ramp from inside.
“Watch out them cattle don’t trample you!” the grandfather called. He’d gone back to his truck for a lasso, and he looked ready to rope.
Over the uproar, I distinctly heard Tristan laugh.
A couple of cows came down the ramp, looking surprised to find themselves on a mountain road. The noise increased as the animals came down the metal ramp. The trailer rocked with the shifting weight, and the wheels slipped slightly.
“Easy!” Grampa yelled.
“I’m doing the best I can, old man!” Tristan yelled back.
The trailer was big. Just the same, I would never have guessed it could hold that many cattle. They just kept coming, like the critters bailing out of Noah’s Ark after the flood, except that they didn’t travel two by two.
Before long, the road was choked with them. There was dust, and a lot of cowboys on horseback, yelling “Hyaww!” I concentrated on staying out of the way, and wished I hadn’t worn linen pants and a white blouse. On the other hand, how do you dress for something like that?
Tristan came down the ramp, at long last, and I let out my breath.
He wasn’t going to plunge to his death in a cattle truck.
I found a tree stump and sat down on it.
I lost track of Tristan in all the fuss. The cattle were trying to get away, fanning out over the road, trying to climb the hillside, even heading for the steep drop on the other side of the road. The cowboys yelled and whistled and rode in every direction.
All of a sudden, Tristan was right in front of me, mounted on a big bay gelding. A grin flashed on his dusty face. “Come on,” he said, leaning down to offer me a hand. “I’ll take you into town. It’ll be a while before the road’s clear.”
I cupped my hands around my mouth to be heard over the din. “What about my car?”
“One of the men will bring it to you later.”
I hadn’t ridden a horse since the summer of my American Cowboy, but I knew I’d get trampled if I tried to walk through the milling herd. I went to stand up, but my butt was stuck to the stump.
Tristan threw back his head and laughed.
“What?” I shouted, mortified and still struggling.
“Pitch,” he said. “You might have to take off your pants.”
“In your dreams,” I retorted, and struggled some more, with equal futility.
Grinning, Tristan swung down out of the saddle, took a grip on the waistband of my slacks at either side, and wrenched me to my feet. I felt the linen tear away at the back, and my derriere blowing in the breeze. If I’d had my purse, I’d have used it to cover myself, but it was still in the rental car.
My predicament struck Tristan as funny, of course. While I was trying to hold my pants together, he hurled me bodily onto the horse, and mounted behind me. That stirred some visceral memories, ones I would have preferred to ignore, but it was difficult, under the circumstances.
“I need my purse,” I said.
“Later,” he replied, close to my ear.
“And my suitcase.” I’m nothing if not persistent.
“Like I’m going to ride into town with a suitcase,” Tristan said. “It could spook Samson.”
“Why can’t we just borrow one of these trucks?”
“We’ve got a horse.” I guess he considered that a reasonable answer.
Tears of frustration burned behind my eyes. I’d hoped to slip in and out of Parable unnoticed. Now, I’d be arriving on horseback, with the back of my pants torn away. Shades of Lady Godiva.
“Hold on,” Tristan said, sending another hot shiver through my system as the words brushed, warm and husky, past my ear.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. When he steered that horse down into the ditch—one false step and we’d have been in free fall, Tristan, the gelding, and me—I gripped the saddle horn with both hands and held on for dear life. I would have closed my eyes, but between clinging for dear life and controlling my bladder, I’d exhausted my physical resources.
We bumped up on the other side of the trailer and, once we were clear of the pickup trucks, Tristan nudged the horse into a trot.
I bounced ignobly against a part of his anatomy I would have preferred not to think about, and by that time I’d given up on trying to hold the seat of my slacks together. He was rock-hard under those faded jeans of his, and I sincerely hoped he was suffering as grievously as I was.
Parable hadn’t changed much since I’d left, except for the addition of a huge discount store at one end of town. People honked and waved as we rode down the main drag, and Tristan, the show-off, occasionally tipped his hat.
We passed the Bucking Bronco Tavern, now closed, with its windows boarded up, and I felt a pang of nostalgia. Mom and I weren’t real close, but I couldn’t help remembering happy times in our little apartment behind the bar, with its linoleum floors and shabby furniture. My tiny bedroom was butt up against the back wall of the tavern, and I used to go to sleep to the click of pool balls and the wail of the jukebox. I felt safe, knowing my mother was close by, even if she was refereeing brawls, topping off draft beers, and flirting for tips.
Behind the stores, huge pines jutted toward the supersized sky, and I caught glimmers of Preacher Lake. In the winter, Parable looks like a vintage postcard. In fact, it’s so 1950s that I half expected to blink and see everything in black and white.
I had reservations at the Lakeside Motel, since that was the only hostelry in town, besides Mamie Sweet’s Bed and Breakfast. Mom wouldn’t have booked me a room there, since she and Mamie had once had a hair-pulling match over a farm implement salesman from Billings. Turned out he was married anyway, but as far as I knew, the feud was still on.
Tristan brought the horse to a stop in front of the Lakeside, with nary a mention of the B&B, another sign that Mom and Mamie had never had that Hallmark moment. He dismounted and reached up to help me down.
I didn’t want to flash downtown Parable, but my choices were limited. As soon as I was on the ground, I closed the gap in my slacks. Tristan grinned as I backed toward the motel office, my face the same raspberry shade as my lace underpants.
The woman behind the registration desk was a stranger, but from the way she looked me over, she one, knew who I was, and two, had heard an unflattering version of my hasty departure on the four o’clock bus.
I bit my lower lip.
“You must be Gayle,” she said. She was tall and thin, with short dark hair. I pegged her for one of those people who live on granola and will risk their lives to protect owls and old-growth timber.
I nodded. I had no purse, and no luggage. I’d just ridden into town on a horse, and I was trying to hold my clothing together. I didn’t feel talkative.
Suddenly, she smiled and put out a hand in greeting. “Natalie Beeks,” she said. “Welcome to the Lakeside.” She ruffled through some papers and slapped a form down on the counter, along with one of those giveaway pens that run out of ink when you write the third item on a grocery list. “You’re in Room 7. It overlooks the lake.”
After glancing back over my shoulder to make sure no one was about to step into the office and get a good look at Victoria’s Secret, I took a risk and signed the form. “My stuff will be arriving shortly,” I said, in an offhand attempt to sound normal.
“Sure,” Nancy said. Then she frowned. “What happened to your pants?”
She’d probably seen me on the front of Tristan’s horse, and I didn’t want her jumping to any conclusions. “I—sat in something,” I said.
She nodded sagely, as though people in her immediate circle of friends sat in things all the time. Maybe they did. Country life can be messy. “I could lend you something,” she offered.
I flushed with relief, claiming the key to Room 7 with my free hand. “I would really appreciate that,” I said. There was no telling how long it would be before my car was delivered, along with the suitcase.
“Hold on a second.” Nancy left the desk, and disappeared into a back room. I heard her feet pounding on a set of stairs, and she returned, handing me a pair of black polyester shorts, just as a minivan pulled into the gravel parking lot out front.
I practically snatched them out of her hand. “Thanks.”
A husband, a wife, and four little kids in swimming suits got out of the van, stampeding for the front door. I eased to one side, careful to keep my butt toward the wall. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Nancy grin.
“Heck of a mess out on the highway,” the husband announced, as he stepped over the threshold. He was balding, clad in plaid Bermuda shorts and a muscle shirt. The effect of the outfit was brave but unfortunate. “Cattle all over the place. We had to wait at least twenty minutes before the road was clear.”
“Where’s the pool?” one of the kids yelled. All four of them looked ready to thumb their noses and jump in.
Their mother, a harried-looking woman in a saggy sundress, brushed mouse-brown bangs back from her forehead. “There isn’t a pool,” she told the children, eyeing me curiously as I sidestepped it toward the door, still keeping my back to the wall. “You can swim in the lake.”
“Excuse me,” I said, and edged past her to make a break for it, the borrowed shorts clutched in one hand.
Room 7 was around back, with the promised view of the lake, but I didn’t bother to admire the scenery until I’d slammed the door behind me, peeled off my ruined slacks, and wriggled into the shorts.
Only then did I take a look around. Tile floors, plain double bed, lamps with wooden bases carved to resemble the chain-saw bears I’d seen in the gas station parking lot. There was a battered dresser along one wall, holding up a TV that still had a channel dial. The bathroom was roughly the size of a phone booth, but it was clean, and that was all that mattered. I wouldn’t be in Parable long. Sit in on the negotiations, sign the papers, and I’d be out of there.
I splashed my face with cold water and held my hair up off my neck for a few seconds, wishing for a rubber band.
Going to the window, I pulled the cord and the drapes swished open to reveal the lake, sparkling with June sunlight. There was a long dock, and I could see the four little kids from the office jumping into the shallow end, with shouts of glee, while their mother watched attentively.
I felt a twinge of yearning. The Bronco backed up to the lake, too, and Mom and I used to skinny-dip back there on Sunday nights, when the tavern was closed and the faithful were all at evening services.
I was tempted to call her, just to let her know I’d arrived, but I decided against it. There would be a charge for using the phone in the room, and my budget was severely limited; better to wait until my stuff arrived and I could use my cell. I had unlimited minutes, after all, and besides, she probably wouldn’t hear the ring over the roar of the Harley engine. My mother, the biker chick.
The lake was really calling to me by then. I would have loved to wander down to the dock, kick off my sandals, and dangle my feet in that blue, blue water, but I couldn’t bring myself to intrude on the swimming party. Anyway, I figured being at the fringe of that happy little family would have made me feel lonelier, instead of lifting my spirits.
I was sitting on the end of my double bed, leafing through an outdated issue of Field & Stream, when the telephone jangled and nearly scared me out of my skin.
“Hello?” I said uncertainly.
“Just thought I’d let you know your car is here,” Nancy told me. “It’s parked in the lot, and I have the keys here in the office.”
I thanked her and rushed to reclaim my suitcase and purse.
When I got back to the room, I took a shower, scrubbing the pitch off my backside, and put on clean jeans and a tank top. My cell phone, nestled in the bottom of my bag, was on its last legs, making an irritating bleep-bleep sound.
I turned it off, plugged it in for a charge, and peered out the window again. The minivan family was still in the water. The dad had joined them by then, but the mom still sat on the dock, smiling and shading her eyes with one hand.
I grabbed my purse, locked up the room, and stopped by the office to return Nancy’s shorts. I suppose I should have washed them first, but that seemed a little over the top, considering I’d worn them for half an hour at the outside.
Leaving the rental car in the lot, I set out on foot for the Bucking Bronco. I was hoping for a peek inside, though I don’t know what I expected to see.
Passing cars slowed, so the driver and passengers could gawk, as I walked toward the tavern. Strangers always get noticed in towns like Parable—if I could be considered a stranger. Most likely, people remembered me as the poor girl who thought someone like Tristan McCullough could really be interested in her.
I waved cheerfully and picked up my pace.
Reaching the Bronco, I noted, without surprise, that the front doors were padlocked. I tried looking through the cracks between the boards covering the windows, but to no avail. I went around back, hoping for better luck.
Here, there were no boards and no padlocks. I turned to scan the sparkling lake for watching boaters, but there were none to be seen, so I tried the door.
It creaked open, and I stopped on the threshold. I thought I heard music, soft and distant. The jukebox? Impossible. The Bronco had been closed for several years, according to Mom, and the electricity must have been shut off long ago.
Still, my breath quickened. I stood still, listening. Yes, there was music. And the familiar click of pool balls.
Ghosts? The only people who would have haunted the Bronco were Mom and I, and we weren’t dead.
I stepped inside, hesitantly, my heart hammering. I wasn’t scared, exactly, but something out of the ordinary was definitely going on. My curiosity won out over good sense, and I followed the sounds, swimming through a swell of memories as I passed through the little apartment. Mom at the stove, stirring a canned supper and humming a Dolly Parton song. Me, curled up on the ancient sofa, studying.
The door between the apartment and the bar stood open.
The music brought tears to my eyes. Tristan and I used to dance under the stars to the song that was playing. For a moment, I was transported back to our favorite spot, high on a ridge overlooking his family’s ranch, with that old, sentimental tune pouring out of the CD player in Tristan’s truck. I felt his arms around me. I remembered how he’d lay me down so gently in the tall, sweet-scented grass, and make love to me until I lost myself.
I took another step, even though everything inside me screamed, Run!
There was a portable boombox on the dusty bar, and Tristan stood next to the pool table, leaning on his cue stick. He was wearing the same dusty clothes he’d had on before, and his hat rested on one of the bar stools.
“I knew you’d show up,” he said.
My throat felt tight and raw. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t have gotten the words out even if I had.
He hung the cue stick on the wall rack and walked toward me.
I was frozen in place, temporarily speechless, just the way I’d been on the road outside of town an hour or so earlier.
Tristan pushed a button on the boombox, and our song began to play. “Dance with me,” he said, and pulled me into his arms.
I stumbled along with him. He used the pad of one thumb to brush away my tears.
I finally found my voice. “I didn’t see your horse outside,” I said.
He laughed. For all that he’d been herding cattle, he smelled of laundry detergent and that green grass we used to lie down in, together. “Gramps took him back to the ranch,” he said. “I walked over here from the office. Left my truck there.”
“How did you know I’d come here?”
“Easy,” he said. “This was home. I knew you couldn’t stay away.” He kissed me, a light, nibbling, tasting kiss.
I should have resisted, but the best I could do was ask, “What do you want?”
“We have some unfinished business, you and I,” he said, and caught my right earlobe lightly between his teeth.
A thrill of need went through me. “We don’t,” I argued, but weakly.
I felt the edge of the pool table pressing against my rear end. That was nothing compared to what was pressing against my front. “You cheated on me,” I murmured.
He kissed me again, deeply this time, with tongue. The floor of the tavern seemed to pitch to one side, like the deck of a ship too small for the waves it was riding.
“You cheated on me,” he countered.
We’d had that argument just before I left Parable, ten years before, but the circumstances had changed. There had been a lot of yelling then, and I’d thrown things.
Tristan slid a hand up under my tank top, and I didn’t stop him. I don’t know why. I just didn’t. I groaned inside.
He pushed my bra up, cupped my breast, chafing the nipple with the side of his thumb, and kissed me once more.
I am not a loose woman, but you’d never have known it by the way I responded to Tristan’s kisses and the way he caressed my breast. I was wet between the legs, and I could already feel myself opening to take him inside, even though I had no intention of letting him get into my jeans.
He unsnapped them, pushed the zipper down, then tugged my tank top down to bare my breast. When he took my nipple into his mouth, I cried out, buried my hands in his hair, and held him close.
I felt his chuckle of triumph reverberate through my breast, but I still didn’t stop him. Just a minute more, I remember thinking. Just a minute more, and then I’ll push him away and slap his face for him.
“Oh, God,” I said instead.
He hooked a thumb in the waistband of my jeans and panties and pulled them down, in one move. Without releasing my breast, he hoisted me onto the pool table, eased me back onto the felt top, and reached inside to find my sweet spot.
I gasped his name.
He pushed up my top, and my bra, took his time enjoying my breasts.
My vision blurred. Just a minute more . . .
“Remember how it was with us?” Tristan asked throatily, kissing my belly now. My jeans and panties were around my ankles by then. “Remember?”
I’d tried to shut the memory out of my mind for ten years, but I remembered, all right. At a cellular level.
Tristan stopped long enough to pull off my shoes and toss my pants aside. Then he was nibbling at my navel again, and I felt his fingers glide inside me.
I wish I could blame him, but I was the one who lifted my heels to the edge of the pool table and parted my legs.
I held my breath, waiting. There was a debate going on inside my head.
Tell him to stop.
Just a minute more . . .
The debate was nothing, compared to the riot in my senses. The weather was mild, but my skin burned as the passion grew.
Tristan parted me, took me into his mouth.
I moaned.
He teased me with the tip of his tongue. Made me beg.
He sucked again, then went back to flicking at me.
I bucked on that old pool table, and when he knew I was ready to come, he slipped both hands under my buttocks, raised me high, and ate me until I exploded. I had one orgasm, then another, deeper and harder. I lost count before he finally eased me down onto the felt again, and even though I was dazed with satisfaction, I knew it wasn’t over.
I sensed that he was unbuttoning his jeans, unwrapping a condom, putting it on.
He moved sleekly into me, and that was when I caught fire again. He’d worked me over so well that I wouldn’t have thought I had another orgasm in me, but I did.
Tristan put his hands behind my shoulders and lifted me up, so I was sitting on him. I wrapped my bare legs around his hips and held on tight. I knew from experience that this ride would be wilder than anything the rodeo had to offer.
“God, you feel good,” Tristan rasped, kissing me again. “So good.”
He raised me, then lowered me slowly along his shaft. I gave a sob, tilted my head back, and closed my eyes.
“Look at me,” he said.
I was under a spell by then, rummy with need. I did as he asked.
I had three more orgasms before Tristan laid me down again, on the pool table, and thrust hard, one, twice, a third time. We came together, me sobbing and clinging, drenched in perspiration, Tristan with his head flung back like a stallion taking a mare. He gave a muffled shout, and stiffened against me, driving deeper than ever.
When it was over, he braced both hands against the side of the table, on either side of my hips, breathing heavily.
“Is it like that with Bob?” he asked.
That was when I slapped him, hard.
He stepped back, grinning, but the look in his eyes was hard. He handed me my jeans and panties and stepped back, after pulling me to my feet. I scrambled into my clothes, jammed on my shoes. I wanted to slap him again, but a part of me was ashamed of doing it once, let alone a second time. I’m not a violent person, and I don’t believe in hitting people.
“You bastard,” I said. Then I fled, across the tavern, through the apartment, out into the backyard, letting the screen door slam hard behind me. The lake was right there, shimmering with azure blue beauty, and I wanted to drown myself in it.
Behind me, the door hinges squeaked.
“Gayle.” Tristan’s voice. I knew without looking that he was in the doorway.
I wasn’t planning to turn around, but I did. Hadn’t planned on letting an old boyfriend screw me on a pool table, either. Did that, too.
Tristan was leaning against the door jamb, just as I’d imagined, rumple-haired and too damned attractive, even then. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I stared at him. I’d expected something else, I don’t know what. Mockery, maybe. More seduction. But certainly not an apology.
“I shouldn’t have mentioned your boyfriend.”
I almost defended Bob, before I remembered he was a vibrator. “You proved you could still make me lose control. Let’s leave it at that, okay.”
“Is he going to be mad?”
I suddenly saw the humor in the situation, even though I knew there were fresh tears on my face. “There’ll be a buzz,” I said.
Tristan looked confused, which was fine by me. “You’re planning to tell him?”
I nodded. I was on a roll. “He’ll be rigid about it.”
“Did it ever occur to you that he might not be the right man for you, if it was that easy to get hot with me?”
So much for nonviolence. I would have slapped him again if he hadn’t been well out of reach. “Maybe it’s not a great relationship,” I said, “but at least Bob doesn’t cheat on me.”
Tristan shoved a hand through his hair, and his jawline hardened. But, then, he wasn’t in on the joke. “No, but you cheat on him. Some things never change.”
I tightened my fists. “No,” I snapped. “Some things never do.”
With that, I headed for the rocky beach that runs along the edge of the lake. I was both relieved and disappointed that Tristan didn’t follow.
The motel was a half-mile hike, but I was so distracted that I hardly noticed. Fortunately, the Fun Family had left the swimming area, so I didn’t have to worry about anybody seeing me with my hair messed up and my eyes puffy from crying furious tears.
I pulled my key from the hip pocket of my jeans, let myself into the room, and immediately took another shower.
I wanted to hibernate, but the Big Mac had worn off, and I knew the Lakeside didn’t offer room service. I dressed carefully in the only other set of clothes I had, besides the prim business suit I planned to wear to the meeting with the other owners of the Bronco and the new buyers, a cotton sundress. I’d briefly scanned the papers, and knew the gathering was scheduled for ten the next morning; I would worry about the where part later.
Determined to restore some semblance of dignity, I put on makeup, styled my hair, and left the motel again.
There was still only one restaurant in Parable, a hole-in-the-wall diner on Main Street, across from the library. I had to pause on the sidewalk out front and brace myself to go in.
I was the girl who had done Tristan McCullough wrong, and I knew the locals remembered. By now, some of them might even know that I’d just done a pool-table mambo with the golden boy, though I didn’t think Tristan would stoop so low as to screw and tell. Just the same, I’d be lucky if they didn’t throw me out bodily.
I was starved, and the only other place I could get food was the supermarket. That would mean going back to the motel for my rental car, shopping for cold cuts and chips, and huddling in my room to eat.
No way I had the strength to do all that.
I needed protein. Immediately.
So I forced myself to go in.
The diner hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d been there. Red vinyl booths, a long counter, a revolving pie case. There was no hostess, and all the tables were full.
I took a stool at the counter and reached for a menu. I could feel people staring at me, but I pretended I had the restaurant to myself. Oh, I was a cool one, all right. Unless you counted a tendency to boink Tristan McCullough on a pool table with little or no provocation.
“Help you, honey?”
I looked up from the menu and met the kindly eyes of an aging waitress. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I didn’t recognize her name, even when I read it off the little tag on her uniform.
Florence.
“I’ll take the meat loaf special,” I said, looking neither to the left nor right. “And a diet cola. Large.”
“Comin’ right up,” Florence assured me, and smiled again.
I relaxed a little. At least there was one person in Parable who didn’t think I ought to be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail. Make that two—Nancy Beeks, over at the Lakeside, had been friendly enough.
The little bell over the door tinkled as someone entered, and the diner chatter died an instant death. I knew without turning around that Tristan had just walked in, because every nerve in my body leaped to instinctual attention.
Damn him. He wasn’t going to leave me alone. He’d gotten past my well-maintained defenses without breaking a sweat. He’d made love to me in an empty tavern. What more did he have to prove?
He took the stool next to mine, reached casually for a menu. He’d showered, too, I saw out of the corner of my eye, and put on fresh clothes—Levi’s and a blue chambray shirt. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, without looking my way.
“Like it’s a surprise,” I retorted.
Florence set my diet cola down, along with clean silverware. “That special will be ready in a minute, sweetie,” she told me, before turning her attention to Tristan. “Hey, there, handsome. You stepping out on me, all slicked up like that?” she teased.
To my satisfaction, color pulsed in Tristan’s neck. “Would I do that to you, Flo?”
She laughed. “Probably,” she said. “Who’s the lucky gal?”
“You wouldn’t know her,” he replied, smooth as could be. “The meat loaf sounds good. I’ll have that, and a chocolate milk shake.”
Flo glanced at me, then looked at Tristan again. Somehow, she’d connected the dots. She smiled broadly and went off to give the order to the fry cook.
“How long are you going to be in town?” Tristan still wasn’t looking at me, but I figured he wasn’t asking the customer on the other side of him. The man had the look of a long-time resident.
“As long as it takes to finalize the sale of the Bronco,” I answered, because I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone until I did. Tristan was a hard man to ignore. The reference to the tavern made me squirm, though, because I couldn’t help remembering how many orgasms I’d had, and how fiercely intense they’d been. I hadn’t exactly kept them to myself.
“Shouldn’t be long,” he said, still staring straight ahead, as if he’d taken a deep interest in the milk shake machine, already churning up his order. “The other owners are eager to sell, and the buyer is ready to make out a check.”
“Good,” I replied, and took a sip of my diet cola. At the moment, I wished it would turn into a double martini. I could have used the anesthetic effect.
He turned his stool ever so slightly in my direction, but there was still no eye contact. Like everybody in the diner didn’t know we were talking. “I suppose you’ve talked to Bob by now,” he said.
Bob was in my dresser drawer, under four pairs of panties. “Of course,” I said lightly. “Bob and I are honest with each other.”
“Right. By now, he’s probably on his way here to punch me in the mouth.”
“Bob isn’t that sort of man.” Bob, of course, wasn’t any sort of man.
“I’d do it, if I were him.”
I smiled to myself, though I was shaken, and there was that peculiar tightening in the pit of my stomach again. “He’s not the violent type,” I said.
Flo set my plate of meat loaf down in front of me. Hunger had driven me to that diner, but now I had no appetite at all. Because I knew Tristan and everybody else in the place would make something of it if I paid my bill and left without taking a bite, I picked up my fork.
“And I am?” Tristan asked tersely.
“You said it yourself,” I replied, with a lightness I didn’t feel. I put a piece of meat loaf into my mouth, chewed and swallowed, before going on. “If you were in Bob’s place, you’d punch him in the mouth.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“I told you,” I answered smoothly. “He’s in electronics. Mostly, though, he just concentrates on keeping me happy.”
“I’ll just bet he does.”
I wanted to laugh. I ate more meat loaf instead.
Tristan looked annoyed. His voice was an edgy whisper. “What kind of man doesn’t mind when somebody else boinks his woman?”
“Bob gets a charge out of things like that,” I said. It wasn’t the complete truth. I didn’t have to plug him into the wall like I did my cell phone. He ran on Duracells.
“I can’t believe you’d settle for a man like that,” Tristan snarled. He glowered at Flo when she brought his milk shake and silverware, and she retreated quickly, though she was grinning a little. “Don’t you have any pride?”
The meat loaf turned to cardboard, and stuck in my throat. I took a gulp of cola to avert any necessity of the Heimlich maneuver. “Funny you should ask,” I replied quietly, “after what just happened at the Bronco.”
At last, Tristan turned far enough to face me. He looked straight into my eyes. “You don’t love this Bob bozo,” he said bluntly. “If you did—”
At my panicked look, he stopped. For all I knew, the people on both sides of us were listening to every word we said.
Flo came back with his meat loaf, but he pulled some bills out of his Levi pocket and tossed them on the counter without even looking at her or the food. “Come on,” he said. Then he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the diner.
I dug in my heels when we hit the sidewalk. “I wanted to finish my dinner,” I lied.
“I’ll fix you an omelet at my place,” he said. There was a big, shiny SUV parked at the curb. He opened the passenger door and practically tossed me inside.
“I am not going to your place,” I told him. But I didn’t try to escape, either. Not that I could have. He was blocking my way. “What we did at the Bronco was a lapse of judgment on my part. It’s over, and I’d just as soon forget it.”
“We need to talk.”
“Why? We had sex, it was good, and now it’s history. What is there to talk about?” Was this me talking? Miss Traditional Love and Marriage, hoping for a husband, two point two children and a dog?
Tristan stepped back, slammed the car door, stormed around to the other side, and got in. His right temple was throbbing.
“Maybe that’s all it means to you,” he bit out, jamming the rig into gear and screeching away from the curb, “but to me, it was more than sex. Way more.”
My mouth dropped open. We were hovering on the brink of something I’d fantasized about, with and without Bob—or were we? Maybe I was out there alone, like always, and Tristan was leading me on. It didn’t take a software wizard to work out that he wanted more sex.
“Like what?” I said.
He turned onto a side street, and brought the SUV to a stop in front of a two-story house I used to dream about living in, as a kid. It was white, with green shutters on the windows and a fenced, grassy yard. There were flowerbeds, too, all blooming.
And the sign swinging by the gate read, “Tristan McCullough, Attorney at Law.”
“Never mind like what,” he snapped, while I was still getting over the fact that he was a lawyer. “Things didn’t end right between us, and I’m not letting this go till we talk it out!”
I was a beat or two behind. Last I’d heard, Tristan was planning to major in Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. Instead, he’d gone on to law school.
Sheesh. A lot can happen in ten years.
I’d been into survival. He’d been making something of his life.
The contrast hurt, big-time. I sat there in the passenger seat like a lump, staring at the sign.
Tristan shut off the engine, thrust out a sigh, and turned to face me squarely. His blue eyes were narrow, and shooting little golden sparks.
“Impressed?” he asked bitterly.
I flinched. “What?”
“Isn’t that why you left Parable? Because you thought I’d turn out to be a saddle bum, following the rodeo?”
“I thought,” I said evenly, “that you would work on the ranch. Family tradition, and all that.”
He sighed again, rubbed his chin with one hand. He’d showered and changed clothes between the Bronco and the diner, but he hadn’t shaved. An attractive stubble was beginning to gleam on the lower part of his face.
“I keep getting this wrong,” he muttered, sounding almost despondent. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, or to himself.
I wanted to cry, for a variety of reasons, both simple and complicated, but I smiled instead. “It’s okay, Tristan,” I heard myself say. My voice came out sounding gentle, and a little raw. “We never did get along. Let’s just agree to disagree, as they say, and get on with our lives.”
“As I recall, we got along just fine,” he said. I could tell he didn’t want to smile back, but he did. “Until one of us said something, anyway.”
I laughed, but my sinuses were clogged with tears I wouldn’t shed until I was alone in Room 7, with a lake view. “Right.”
“How’s Josie?”
The question took me off guard. “Fine,” I said.
“She was a kick.”
“Still is,” I said lightly. “She’s into bikers these days.”
Tristan brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers, and I had the usual cattle-prod reaction, though I think I hid it pretty well. “Got to be better than Bob,” he said.
I felt a flash of guilt. “Listen, about Bob—”
Tristan raised an eyebrow, waiting.
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t bring myself to admit that Bob was a vibrator. It was too pathetic. “Forget it,” I said.
“Like hell,” Tristan replied.
A stray thought broadsided me, out of nowhere. Tristan was a lawyer, and most likely the only one in Parable, given the size of the place. Which probably meant he was involved in the negotiations for the Bucking Bronco.
“Who’s buying the tavern?” I asked.
It was his turn to look blank, though he recovered quickly. “A bunch of investors from California. Real estate types. They’re putting in a restaurant and a marina, and building a golf course across the lake.”
“Damn,” I muttered.
“What do you care?” he asked.
“You’re representing them, and my mother knew it.”
“Well, yeah,” Tristan said, in a puzzled, so-what tone of voice.
“She knew I would have done anything to avoid seeing you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Well, it’s true. You broke my heart!”
“That’s not the way I remember it,” Tristan said.
I unfastened my seat belt, got out of the SUV, and started for the Lakeside Motel. By now, my phone would be charged. I intended to dial my mother’s number and hit redial until she answered, if it took all night.
I had a few things to say to her. We were about to have a Dr. Phil moment, Mom and I.
Tristan caught up in a few strides. “Where are you going?”
“None of your damn business.”
“I did not break your heart,” he insisted.
“Whatever,” I answered, because I knew it would piss him off, and if he got mad enough, he’d leave me alone.
He caught hold of my arm and turned me around to face him. “Damn it, Gayle, I’m not letting you walk away again. Not without an explanation.”
“An explanation for what?” I demanded, wrenching free.
Tristan looked up and down the street. Except for one guy mowing his lawn, we might have been alone on an abandoned movie set. Pleasantville, USA. “You know damned well what!”
I did know, regrettably. I’d been holding the memories at bay ever since I got on the first plane in Phoenix—even before that, in fact—but now the dam broke and it all flooded back, in Technicolor and Dolby sound.
I’d gone to the post office, that bright summer morning a decade ago, to pick up the mail. There was a letter from the University of Montana—I’d been accepted, on a partial scholarship.
My feet didn’t touch the ground all the way back to the Bronco.
Mom stood behind the bar, humming that Garth Brooks song about having friends in low places and polishing glasses. The place was empty, except for the two of us, since it was only about 9:30, and the place didn’t open until 10.
I waved the letter, almost incoherent with excitement. I was going to college!
Mom had looked up, smiling, when I banged through the door from the apartment, but as she caught on, the smile fell away. She went a little pale, under her perfect makeup, and as I handed her the letter, I noticed that her lower lip wobbled.
She read it. “You can’t go,” she said.
“But there’s a scholarship—and I can work—”
Best of all, I’d be near Tristan. He’d been accepted weeks ago, courted by the coach of the rodeo team. For him, it was a full ride, in more ways than one.
Mom shook her head, and her eyes gleamed suspiciously. I’d never seen her cry before, so I discounted the possibility. “Even with the scholarship and a minimum-wage job, there wouldn’t be enough money.”
For years, she’d been telling me to study, so I could get into college. She’d even hinted that my dad, a man I didn’t remember, would help out when the time came. Granted, he hadn’t paid child support, but he usually sent a card at Christmas, with a twenty-dollar bill inside. Back then, that was my idea of fatherly devotion, I guess.
“Maybe Dad—”
“He’s got another family, Gayle. Two kids in college.”
“You never said—”
“He was married,” Mom told me, for the first time. “I was the other woman. He made a lot of promises, but he wasn’t interested in keeping them, and I doubt if that’s changed. Twenty dollars at Christmas is one thing, and four years of college are another. It would be a tough thing to explain to the wife.”
The disappointment ran deep, and it was more than not being able to go to college. “You led me to believe he was going to help,” I whispered, stricken.
“I thought I could come up with the money, between then and now,” Mom said. She looked worse than I felt, but I can’t say I was sympathetic. “I wanted you to think he cared.”
I turned on my heel and fled.
“Gayle!” Mom called after me. “Come back!”
But I didn’t go back. I needed to find Tristan. Tell him what had happened. And I’d found him, all right. He was standing in front of the feed and grain, with his arms around Miss Wild West Montana of 1995.
I came back to the here and now with a soul-jarring crash, glaring up at Tristan, who was watching me curiously. He’d probably guessed that I’d just had an out-of-body experience. “You were making out with a rodeo queen!” I cried.
Tristan looked startled. “What the hell—?”
“The day I left Parable,” I burst out. “I came looking for you, to tell you I couldn’t go to college like we planned, and there you were, climbing all over some other girl in broad daylight!”
“That’s why you left? Your letter said you met somebody else—”
“I lied, okay? I wanted to get back at you for cheating on me!”
“I wasn’t cheating on you.”
“I saw you with Miss Rodeo!”
“You saw me with an old friend. Cindy Robbins. We went to kindergarten together. The vet had just put her horse down, and she was pretty shook up.”
It was just ridiculous enough to be true.
I really got mad then. Mad at myself, not Tristan. I’d been upset, that long ago day, because I’d just learned my dad was a married man and my mother was his lover, and because I wasn’t going to college. I hadn’t stopped to think, or to ask questions. Instead, I’d gone to the bank, withdrawn my paltry savings, dashed off a brief, vengeful letter to Tristan, explaining my passion for a made-up guy, and caught the four o’clock bus out of town, without so much as packing a suitcase, let alone saying good-bye to my mother.
Rash, yes. But I was only seventeen, and once I’d made my dramatic exit, my pride wouldn’t let me go home.
“Hey,” Tristan said, with a gruff tenderness that undid me even further. “You okay?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m not okay.”
“There wasn’t any other guy, was there?”
I shook my head.
He grinned. I was falling apart, on the street, and he grinned.
“Bob’s not a guy, either,” I said.
“What?” Tristan did the thumb thing again, wiping away my tears.
“He’s a vibrator.”
Tristan threw back his head and laughed, then he pulled me close, right there in front of God and everybody. “Hallelujah,” he whispered, and squeezed me even more tightly.
He walked me back to the Lakeside Motel, and I might have invited him in, if the minivan family hadn’t been there, swimming again. They smiled and waved, like we were old friends.
“Later,” Tristan said, and kissed me lightly.
With that, he walked away, leaving me standing there with my room key in one hand, feeling like a fool.
I finally let myself in, locked the door, and took a cold shower.
When I got out, I wrapped myself in a towel, turned on my cell phone, and dialed my mother’s number. I was expecting the usual redial marathon, but she answered on the second ring. I heard a motorcycle engine purring in the background.
“Hello?”
“Mom? It’s me. Gayle.”
She chuckled. “I remember you,” she said. “Are you in Parable?”
“Yes, and you set me up.”
“Sure did,” she replied, without a glimmer of guilt. “The meeting’s tomorrow, at Tristan’s office. Ten o’clock.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“If you’d bothered to read the documents, you would have known from the first.”
“It was a sneaky thing to do!”
“I’m a mother. I get to do sneaky things. It’s in the contract.”
I paused. My mother is no June Cleaver, but I love her.
“How are you?” I asked, after a couple of breaths. My voice had gone soft.
“Happy. How about you?”
“Beginning to think it’s possible.”
“That’s progress,” Mom said, and I knew she was smiling.
The Harley engine began to rev. Biker impatience.
“Gotta go,” Mom told me. “I love you, kiddo.”
“I love you, too,” I said, but she had already disconnected.
I shut off the phone, curled up in a fetal position in the middle of the bed, and dropped off to sleep.
When I woke up, it was dark and somebody was rapping on my door.
I dragged myself up from a drugged slumber, rubbing my eyes. “Who is it?”
“Guess.” Tristan’s voice.
I hesitated, then padded over and opened the door. “What do you want?”
He grinned. “Hot, slick, sweaty sex—among other things.” His eyes drifted over my towel-draped body, and something sparked in them. He let out a low whistle. “Lake’s all ours,” he drawled. “Wanna go skinny-dipping?”
My nipples hardened, and my skin went all goose-bumpy.
“Yep,” I said.
He scooped me up, just like that, and headed for the lake, leaving my room door wide open. I scanned the windows of the motel as he carried me along the dock, glad to see they were all dark.
I’m all for hot, slick, sweaty sex, but I’m no exhibitionist.
The lake was black velvet, and splashed with starlight, but the moon was in hiding. Tristan set me on my feet, pulled off the towel, and admired me for a few moments before shedding his own clothes.
Then he took my hand, and we jumped into the water together.
When we both surfaced, we kissed. The whole lake rose to a simmer.
He led me deeper into the shadows, where the water was shallow, over smooth sand, and laid me down.
We kissed again, and Tristan parted my legs, let me feel his erection. This time, there was no condom. He slid down far enough to taste my breasts, slick with lake water, and I squirmed with anticipation.
I knew he’d make me wait, and I was right.
He turned onto his back, half on the beach and half in the water, and arranged me for the first of several mustache rides. Each time I came, I came harder, and he put a hand over my mouth so the whole world wouldn’t know what we were doing.
Finally, weak with satisfaction, I went down on him in earnest.
He gave himself up to me, but at the edge of climax, he stopped me, hauled me back up onto his chest, rolled me under him. He entered me, but only partially, and the muscles in his shoulders and back quivered under my hands as he strained to hold himself in check.
I lifted my head and caught his right earlobe between my teeth, and he broke. The thrust was so deep and so powerful that it took my breath away.
I’d thought I was exhausted, spent, with nothing more to give, but he soon proved me wrong. Half a dozen strokes, each one harder than the last, and I was coming apart again. That was when he let himself go.
I don’t know how long we laid there, with the lake tide splashing over us, but we finally got out of the water, as new and naked as if we’d just been created. Tristan tossed me the towel, and pulled on his jeans. We slipped into my room without a word, made love again under a hot shower, and banged the headboard against the wall twice more before we both fell asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, he was gone, but there was a note on his pillow.
“My office. Ten o’clock sharp. After the meeting, expect another mustache ride.”
Heat washed through me. The man certainly had style.
I skipped breakfast, too excited to eat, and at ten straight up, I was knocking on Tristan’s office door. The buyers and other owners had already arrived, and were seated around the conference table. Tristan looked downright edible in his slick three-piece suit, and even though he was all business, his eyes promised sweet mayhem the moment we were alone.
The crotch of my pantyhose felt damp.
The negotiations went smoothly, and when the deposit checks were passed around, I glanced down and noticed my own name on the pay line, instead of Mom’s.
“There’s been a mistake,” I told Tristan, in a baffled whisper.
“No mistake,” he whispered back. “Josie signed the whole shooting match over to you.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
The meeting concluded amiably, and in good time. Everybody shook hands and left. Everybody but Tristan and me, that is.
Tristan loosened his tie.
I quivered in some very vulnerable places.
“Ever made love on a conference table?” he asked. He locked the door and pulled the shades.
“Not recently,” I admitted.
“Not even with Bob?”
I laughed. “Not even with Bob.”
Tristan took the check out of my hand, damp from my clutching it, and drew me close. He felt so strong, and so warm. “If you plan on having your way with me,” he said, “you’re going to have to make a concession first.”
“What kind of concession?”
“Agree to stay in Parable.”
I loosened his tie further, undid the top button of his shirt. “What’s in it for me?” I teased. I thought I knew what his answer would be—after all, it was burning against my abdomen, practically scorching through our clothes—but he surprised me.
“A wedding ring,” he said.
I tried to step back, but he pulled me close again.
“It seems a little soon—” I protested, but my heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out from behind my Wonder bra.
“I’ve been waiting ten years,” he answered. “I don’t think it’s all that soon.” He caught my face in his hands. “I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ve loved you every day in between. The engagement can be as long or as short as you want, but I’m not letting you go.”
My vision blurred. My throat was so constricted that I had to squeeze out my “Yes.”
“Yes, you’ll marry me?”
I nodded. The words still felt like a major risk, but they were true, so I said them. “I love you, Tristan.”
He gave me a leisurely, knee-melting kiss. “Time we celebrated,” he said.
I took the lead. Forget foreplay. I wanted him inside me.
I unfastened his belt and opened his pants and took his shaft, already hot and hard, in my hand. And suddenly, I laughed.
Tristan blinked. Laughter and penises don’t mix, I guess.
“I was just thinking of Bob,” I explained.
He groaned as I began to work him with long, slow strokes. “Great,” he growled. “I’ve got a hard-on like a concrete post, and you’re comparing me to a vibrator.”
I teased him a little more, making a circle with the pad of my thumb. “Ummm,” I said, easing him into one of the fancy leather chairs surrounding the conference table and kneeling between his legs.
“Oh, God,” he rasped.
“Payback time,” I said.
He moaned my name.
I got down to business, so to speak.
Tristan took it as long as he dared, then pulled me astraddle of his lap, hiked up my skirt, ripped my pantyhose apart, and slammed into me. I was coming before the second thrust.
That’s the thing about a flesh-and-blood man.
They never need batteries.