She shook her head, but the laugh had left something open inside her that hadn’t been there before, something softer and less managed, and I looked at her and thought about tomorrow night. Her last night here on the ranch.
“There’s a barn dance tomorrow evening. Lucinda does it the last night. String lights, live music.” I looked at her. “Come with me.”
“I’m not a good dancer,” she said immediately.
“I didn’t ask if you were a good dancer.”
“I’m telling you preemptively. I have the rhythm of a concussed giraffe.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Slade. I’m serious about the giraffe.”
“So am I about the dance.”
I stood and held my hand out, and she looked at it the way she looked at everything I offered—measuring, deciding—and then she took it, and I pulled her to her feet. I didn’t let go. I used the momentum to pull her against my chest, feeling thesoft, heavy weight of her breasts pressing into me. She was close and warm and looking up at me as we stood there with the creek moving beside us and a brilliant blue Texas sky overhead.
A perfect day.
“Fine, but the giraffe is your problem.”
“Whatever gets you in my arms, City Girl.”
She took her hand back, stepping out of my space with what sounded like a sigh of regret. She picked up her boots and her unread book and looked at me with that look that told me she was still deciding what to do with me.
I had the answer for her.
She pointed a finger at me as if in warning. I caught her hand to mine and walked her up the bank. Barefoot through the Texas grass.
Tomorrow night couldn’t come soon enough.
CHAPTER NINE
Jamie
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Not the barn version of him, though God knew that lived in my head with startling clarity. The creek version. The one who’d sat beside me in the shade of a dozen pine trees with his hat on his knee and told me about the years of group homes and foster care like a man who wasn’t looking for sympathy.
I’d told him the truth about my last relationship. He had not been a nice man. He’d let me know in very subtle ways that I wasn’t exactly how he wanted me to be. I’d let it go on longer than I should have, looking for something. For someone, if I were honest with myself.
Maybe that was what resonated so deeply in me with Slade. We both wanted that something we’ve never had. I felt like I’d seen something real—something he didn’t hand out freely and had handed to me anyway, there by the creek, without making a production of it.
I’d never felt anything like what I’d felt with Slade Everett’s hand between my thighs and his mouth on mine. I caught myself smiling at my own reflection.
Stop.
My reflection did not stop.
I was dressed in a short-skirted dress that flowed past my curves like a Texas breeze, light and barely there. It dipped low enough in the front to show off the swell of my breasts, and the skirt hit mid-thigh, leaving my legs completely bare. I’d almost left it at home, but Paige had insisted. Just as she’d insisted I needed the pretty pink boots, which totally went with the dress.
She’d also insisted Ibig girl upand let the cowboy have his way with me.
His full, uncensored, way with me.
Tonight, I had put on a little more makeup and washed and curled my hair. Something I rarely did anymore. I twirled around in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, and smiled as my dress billowed around me.
I hadn’t felt this nervous in a very long time. Certainly not since I’d learned to keep my expectations sensible and my wanting quiet and my heart in a place where it wouldn’t get broken.
