4
THEY WERE LIKE two teenagers sneaking out of their room, hoping no one would catch them. On bare feet, they raced side by side along the balcony to the stairs. While Tanner played lookout, Jules skipped down to the first floor as quickly as she could. At the bottom of the steps, she glanced around the corner before beckoning Tanner to join her.
They could barely suppress their giggles. Jules had to give it to Tanner—he definitely had the spy thing down. That was, right up to the part where he pressed her against the wall and carefully glanced around the corner. She couldn’t remember the last time she enjoyed herself this much. Of course, it helped that he was bare-chested because she wore his shirt. The button-down left her legs open to the evening breeze. But she admired the way the muscles along his neck and shoulders stretched during the action. The pressure of his body against hers wasn’t bad either.
Playful or not, the way he caged her in made her feel—oddly—safe.
At the snack machine, she danced from foot to foot as they studied the various options available. Tanner pulled out his wallet and then said, “I don’t suppose you brought yours with you, did you?”
Glancing at him sideways, Jules raised both eyebrows and placed a hand on her hip. “You don’t suppose I brought my what with me?”
“You have this thing about buying your own drinks, so I wasn’t sure if that extended to snacks.” The devilish grin on his face provoked another set of giggles from her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep the sound from escaping. The snack machine wasn’t that far from the rooms.
“Of course,” he continued, a roguish gleam in his eyes. “I could be persuaded to buy the lady some snacks, but I don’t want her to think I mean anything by it.”
Still amused, Jules smacked him. “Keep it up and I’ll pay you back when we get to the room.”
Clapping a light hand against her bottom, which was bare underneath his shirt, made his gaze grow intense. “Don’t you dare . . . ever wear panties again. He cupped her bottom more firmly, then rubbed the spot he’d smacked with a gentle caress. “This was not something I considered when we left the room.”
“What? Me not wearing panties?” But it wasn’t her he was looking at so much as the wall next to the vending machine. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no.” She poked him with each syllable. As much fun as she had on the dance floor and back patio she did draw the line at serious public displays of affection—most notably those involving her naked butt being ground against anything as uncomfortable as brick siding. Talk about chafing.
Tanner gave her another sly smile, then said, “All right, let me guess here—you’re an airy, baked chips kind of girl.”
“Versus a what? A red licorice girl? Or a chocolate toffee girl? Or a popcorn kind of girl?”
“Well, I was thinking chips rather than popcorn, but you know, I can see you going on the popcorn route. Popcorn says spontaneous, might combust, definitely comes apart under little pressure . . . Am I getting warm?”
Popcorn was the new seduction technique. “Definitely warm. I think you’ve sold me on the popcorn metaphor, because I definitely don’t want to just lay there.” She waited to see if he caught the innuendo, when he did, his snort followed by a deep chuckle cracked her up all over again. Two could play this game. “Okay, my turn.”
“That’s what she said.” He gave her a little elbow nudge, and she groaned.
“We’re not twelve.”
“Speak for yourself. You’re like every fantasy my twelve-year-old self imagined come true.”
Yeah, okay, she could give him that one. It was sweet and flattering and had her face burning. Not dissuaded from her earlier thought though, she gave him a nudge with her hip and resumed studying the vending machine options. “I see you as more of a power bar kind of guy. You have that killer physique, which probably requires watching all the carbs, or at least minimizing them to healthy ones. So you’re gonna go for the granola bar and maybe a diet soda if you don’t just grab a bottle of water.”
“Hell no,” he groaned. “Woman, I’m more of a gooey peanut butter guy, you know, sticky and impossible to get rid of from the roof of your mouth.”
“You just had to make it dirty. . . .”
“Have you never eaten peanut butter before? That stuff definitely sticks to the roof of your mouth, no dirty mind required. But what were you thinking about?” His eyes continued to dance, laughter twinkling within them. She couldn’t remember the last time she had so much fun in front of a vending machine. They debated, compared, and finally settled on their options.
Tanner withdrew a few bills from his wallet as she picked popcorn, licorice, and a regular Coke. After her comment regarding the diet drink, she didn’t think he would let her get away with ordering one herself. He went with the peanut butter cups and the peanut butter–stuffed hard candies and a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips to go with a large lemonade.
Carrying all their treasures back to the room, she stared, askance at his choice of chips. “I don’t know who you think you’re kissing after you eat those.”
“Who says I can’t kiss and eat at the same time? “
“I didn’t say while you were eating, I said after.”
His hand cut down to her bottom as they got to the door and he gave her a light pinch. “I know what you’re saying. I was just mentioning I plan to use your body as the plate . . .”
Surprise quickly followed by nervous laughter, she wagged a finger at him and danced into the room. “Oh, no, sir. Those things crunch—and that could pinch.”
“I’m telling you, Jules, a dirty mind like that is a terrible thing to waste, and you do such a great job of not wasting it.”
Still laughing, she flung herself down on the bed and tossed him her bag of popcorn. “I don’t suppose you would heat that up for me, would you?”
After getting the popcorn set up in the microwave, he hit the button to get it going before crossing over to the bed. Flipping her over, he began nibbling a path of kisses from her throat down to the V where his shirt opened. Freeing the buttons as he went, he murmured, “I’ve got two minutes to see if I can make you pop before the corn . . .”
Awash in pleasure, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t have any trouble succeeding.
When they came up for air, she sprawled across the bed, munching on popcorn and drinking the soda while he set up his meal across her back. Acting as the table was probably the weirdest position she’d ever been in, but it seemed to work for them. They’d been talking for hours about everything from long car rides to family vacations to fishing.
“You’ve never been fishing?” Disbelief filled his voice.
“I don’t see what’s so hard to believe about that.” She started to roll over in order to look at him, but he clapped a hand on her butt to keep her still. Grunting, she curled her leg and pointed her toes toward him. “Fishing is not like the end-all-be-all of existence. It’s just sitting on a boat in the middle of the lake—or worse, sitting on the shore with the mud and mosquitoes—where you take wiggly little worms that never did anything to you and stick them on a hook, then cast the hook out into the water to sucker some wiggly fish into biting.”
“Well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it described quite like that, but fishing is one of God’s greatest gifts. You get to just be, then at the end of the day—fresh fish for dinner.”
“You think that’s a lot of fun? What have you been doing that you think fishing is a lot of fun? What we did tonight at the Silver Dollar was fun.”
“No, that was entertaining. What we did here tonight—now that, I will grant you, was a lot of fun.” He sounded very certain on the last point, and it was hard to argue with him when she continued to soak up pleasure from his attention.
“Still, we had a good time at the dance hall.” She refused to be shy about how they met or why she ended up in his bed. “In fact, if I hadn’t had such a good time dancing with you, we probably would never have come back here for this fun.”
He seemed to consider it a moment as he swiped a piece of her popcorn, then paid for it by feeding her a peanut butter cup. She’d never been so grateful to not have a nut allergy. “Fair enough. We had a great time dancing, and then we had an even better time when we got back here because we danced.”
“I like a guy who’s flexible.” She sighed, satisfied with scoring the point. “But really, fishing? You don’t have any other hobbies? Rebuilding cars? Model airplanes? Horseback riding? Knitting?” Really, she was spitballing there.
“Knitting?” Yeah, she probably deserved the look he gave her because she could almost feel the skepticism boring into the back of her brain when he added, “My grandma taught me to do a very nice, you know, purl-stitch thing, and I did a whole row of them for her when I was seven.”
If she lived to be one hundred years old she would never forget a gruff male voice telling her he could do a knit-purl-stitches thing and sound damn proud of it. Doing her absolute damnedest not to laugh at him however, she simply said, “I like a guy who is good with his grandma. We should always be gracious to our elders.”
“Well on that, Miss Jules, we agree.” He sighed, then sprawled next to her, casually picking at his peanut butter cups. It took a minute to realize that he’d actually drawn the outline of her back in peanut butter cups and hard candies. In addition to nibbling on his sweet treats, he paused to lick the chocolate he left on her skin.
“Should we discuss how unsanitary this is?” Because, as a veterinarian, she probably should at least pay homage to the idea of medicine and cleanliness.
“Nope, that takes all the fun out of it.” Of course, when he traced his tongue in a circle against her shoulder blade, she had to admit it was pretty fun.
Fighting the sensation to get back on track, she exhaled a shuddering breath and said, “We’ve established fishing is not something we have in common, but we both like dancing.”
“Well, my dear, like is a fairly strong word. I can dance.”
“You were having fun out there! I saw your face.”
“I was having fun with you, Jules. Dancing is one of those things that I can take or leave. I don’t get to do enough of it to say it’s something I enjoy.”
Where had Tanner been? He hadn’t done a lot of things lately. “Fine, so you liked the dancing because it was with me, and I like dancing and you happened to be there: ergo, what we have in common.”
“I hear even a broken clock is right twice a day, so I’ll accept that logic.”
“You’re being mean.” She enjoyed admonishing him, and she enjoyed just talking to him even more. “But since that feels really good, I will let you be mean to me this one time.”
“Does it now?” He returned to tracing a pattern along her spine with his tongue, and it was just enough contact to create a shivery feeling all over her skin. Delicious.
“Very, and extremely distracting because I forgot what we were talking about.”
“Broken clocks.”
Suppressing the internal chuckle at his conversational left turn, she asked, “Why were we talking about broken clocks? What a weird thing. I don’t think I have any broken clocks. Actually, come to think of it, I don’t own any clock-clocks. I use my phone for everything. My uncle had this really great cuckoo clock when I was a kid, but I played with it one time too many because I was trying to fix the bird inside and I kinda broke it.”
His laughter against her back made her groan. Then he said, “Do I want to know what you were trying to do?”
“Well, I thought it had a broken wing, because when it came out, you could see one wing but not the other. I didn’t know that was the design of the clock. So I . . .” Was she really telling him this embarrassing story from when she was five? “I set this trap for when the clock chimed and the bird popped out of the clock, so I could grab the bird to fix its wing and then let it go again. Don’t say it”—she turned her head and waved a finger at him because he had stopped kissing her and just stared at her with the most incredulous look on his face—“I get exactly how stupid it sounds. Please note that, for the record, I was five.”
“Very well then, continue, please.” It was a real struggle for him to get the words out past the laughter squeezing in between the syllables.
“Anyway.” She elongated the word. “I set my trap, which meant I had to sneak the ladder in from the garage, then climb up to where the clock hung several feet off the ground. I waited because I knew when the bird was going to pop out, and as soon as it appeared I grabbed it. But when I tried to pull it off its little perch, well, the whole clock came off the wall, and I fell off the ladder, crashed into the table, and knocked over the curio cabinet. I broke all of my aunt’s fancy dishes. But I did get the bird.”
He made no pretense of holding back his amusement this time. His laughter shook the bed. She tried not to fume at how long it took him to get himself under control. Finally, he wheezed out a breath and flopped onto his back to stare at the ceiling, a hint of tears at the corner of his eye. “I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in years. How did you survive?”
“Well, when I explained to my uncle why I was trying to catch the bird, he kind of had your reaction. He was mad about the dishes, but mostly because my aunt was going to be upset. But she took it better than either of you, so for the next six months or so, my uncle and I hunted at every flea market from San Antonio to Dallas to find dishes like she’d had in her set. “
“And the bird? Did it make it?”
“Yes, the bird was fine. The clock . . . not so much.” She joined him this time when he chuckled. “Okay, so you’ve heard my embarrassing five-year-old story. You tell me one about you.”
“You shared that story, sweetheart.” The twitching of his lips betrayed his serious mien. He was still amused. “I didn’t ask for anything personal.”
“I know you didn’t, but on the other hand, fair is fair, and well, maybe I’ll let you eat those chips if you share.”
“Don’t think I didn’t hear the word if.”
So close.
“All right,” he began, proving he did believe in fair. “I have one for you. My dad was away a lot when I was a kid, so I spent most of my time with my granddad. I’ve got a little brother and little sister, but they’re a lot younger than I am; by the time I was around eight, they were toddlers and kinda boring. So there’s me and my granddad, and we’re doing some fence work one day, because, well, when fences are broken you have to fix them.” He glanced to her as if to make sure she understood and Jules nodded. Repairing broken fences happened in the daily life of ranchers and farmers, so it really didn’t need an explanation.
“Anyway, my job was replacing bent or broken nails in downed boards, but Grandpa wanted to teach me how to get a nail in properly without breaking my thumb. He showed me the best places to put the nails through the two-by-four, and what angle to put them in at. He also had me make an L shape out of my thumb and forefinger, stressing about how I should never hit inside the L—it was safer that way. Anyway, he gets all set up after making me mime everything, then he swings the hammer back and hits himself in the head.”
“Ouch.” Jules grimaced. “That’s not funny. That’s horribly painful.”
“It wasn’t funny per se, but if you knew how exact my granddad could be—it was kinda funny. Twenty minutes explaining to me how to not hit my thumb with a hammer and then he proceeded to hit himself in the head. The really funny part was that I thought he’d done it on purpose. He was sitting on his ass, not cursing or anything, and had this kind of dazed look—which I thought was for effect.”
The genuine fondness lighting his voice made her smile, even if she winced in sympathy pain for his poor grandfather.
“Grandpa didn’t say anything. He stood up slowly, then put his fingers to his head, and that’s when I saw the blood. Then he says to me, ‘Son, you don’t want to do that either.’ ” Tanner imitated a deep, cantankerous voice. “ ‘Now, I got to teach you something else today. Go grab a couple of bricks from the back of the truck, and get my keys.’ ”
Oh Lord, she could almost see what was coming.
“So I go and I get the things Grandpa said, and then he tells me to tie the bricks to the bottoms of my feet with the shoelaces so I can reach the brake and accelerator pedals of his truck. Then he climbs up into the passenger seat and has me drive all the way into town so he could see the doctor about his concussion. But here’s the catch—he passed out before he told me how to stop.”
Enraptured, Jules gave a little shiver. Eight years old and driving a truck into town—poor Tanner. “How to stop? You mean, brake?”
“No, I mean put the car in park so that the truck would stay put. I got all the way up to the clinic and had to yell for help, even hitting the horn to get attention.”
“Funny, amusing, a little bit embarrassing, but you know—you saved your grandpa. You were a hero, and I broke a stupid clock.” Jules wiggled to dump the last couple of peanut butter hard candies off her hip, so she could sit up and spread her arms. “We’re like light-years apart in the funny here. Don’t you have some crazy story about hitting on the homecoming queen and accidentally squirting water on your pants at the worst possible moment?”
“That’s not funny! You have a very strange definition of funny.”
They stared at each other, him in masculine horror and she in stubbornness until she crossed her eyes and they both laughed. “All right, so sense of humor might have some conflicts.”
“We can solve this,” he said, very matter-of-fact. “Benny Hill or Monty Python?”
“Who’s Benny Hill?”
He clapped a hand to his eyes and groaned. “Doctor Who or Star Trek?”
“I said I was looking for things we have in common, not checking out your nerd card.” Though she managed to say it with a straight face, she waited for him to part his fingers and stare at her before she held up her fingers in the universal live-long-and-prosper sign.
“Yes,” he said with a fist pump of triumph. “Now we talk the tough nuts—Cowboys or Texans?”
“Is that a trick question?” And so they talked for hours, until they were both tired. He fell asleep before she did, drifting off while she listed the merits of one of her favorite films. They’d diverged there—he was really behind on his movie trivia. It was a little after two in the morning, Dr. Tierney’s text said he had an emergency in Big Falls. So much for sleeping in, now she had to be up at five. With a sigh, she glanced at his relaxed face and smiled. He really was cute.
Setting her phone to vibrate and an alarm for five, she curled up next to him and fell asleep.
At the first buzz of the phone she rolled over and forced herself up and into her clothes. He didn’t twitch, not even a little bit the whole time she moved around the hotel room. After a lot of night shifts at the big-animal hospital in Silver Springs, she knew better than to tiptoe. Most prey animals did better if they could identify what moved around them, and Tanner didn’t seem much different—though she seriously doubted he’d ever been prey.
She almost regretted not giving him her phone number, but she did have a rule. He was a one-night stand. No matter how much fun they had, she did not give her number to a one-night stand.
If he really wanted to see her again he’d show back up over at the Silver Dollar and they’d run into each other there. Besides, he’d been passing through. Dressed, she left him a note, Thanks. XO Jules.
It wasn’t really personal, but it would have to do. After letting herself out, she closed the door softly. She had to get to the ranch. She had a lot of cattle shots to do, and the last thing she wanted was to wake him. He had looked like he could use the sleep.
Walking back to the honky-tonk, she enjoyed the relative privacy of the pre-dawn hour. Very little stirred in town at five fifteen in the morning. The diner would open soon and the feed store at six, but she would be in her Jeep and long gone before anyone noticed she’d spent the night in town.
It wasn’t so unusual. She didn’t always get to stay in Durango Point overnight, but it had happened now and then. Still, better not to have to explain or listen to the rumors, or have Miss Millie tell her she would pray for her at church.
Once she was on the state road heading out of town, she cranked up the music. She may have gotten only three hours of sleep, but she hadn’t felt this good in a long time.