A Knight In Cowboy Boots (32 page)

“I’m not trying to be mean. It’s just not going to work for us. It’s like— it’s like ripping off a band-aid, Daisy. If I’m too nice to him, it’ll just be worse in the end.”

“Well, it’s sure making him grouchy. He’s been crazy about you from the beginning, you know. He worked real hard to track you down.”

“That doesn’t change … What do you mean, he tracked me down?”

“He got Carly at the insurance company where I work to run your plates, so he could find you.”

Maddie sat up in the dark. “He did what?”

Daisy’s voice dwindled. “He traced your plates?”

“From here? From Jefferson?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t answer me with a question, Daisy. This is important. Did the trace come from Jefferson?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Damn!” Maddie threw back the covers. “Damn, damn, damn.” She deposited Jesse into Daisy’s bed. “Take care of him while I go kick your busy-body brother’s ass.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

He was at the kitchen table, his back to her, having a late beer with Sol and his father.

“You son of a bitch!” Maddie said from the doorway.

Zach twisted, saw her, then skidded his chair across the floor to face her more directly. His eyes raked down to the legs her nightshirt left exposed. Maddie knew she should care that his father might think, but at the moment, she was too mad.

“You talking to me?”

“You bet your ass I’m talking to you! You ran my plates.”

“So?”

“So Derek’s here.” Maddie hated how her voice shook. “You led him
here
.”

“How would me running your plates lead him here?”

“He’s been harassing my aunt about where her car is since I left. His father’s the damned state Attorney General. He probably knew the second those plates were run.”

“That was weeks ago. If he knew about the plates, how come he ain’t showed up before this?”

“Maybe he figured it wasn’t worth checking on. That I was just driving through and got pulled over. But it focused him on Texas. Somehow he narrowed it down to Galveston. Even to where I worked. But you started it. You and your damned nosiness. Why the hell did you do that?”

“Why?” Zach’s face flushed as he stood to face her. “That takes a lot of nerve to ask. You wasn’t anything you was pretending to be. Your job app said you was from Oregon, but there you were, driving a car with Wyoming plates. Hell, you were a mystery from the first night I met you. Most women don’t go around shooting men they’ve just been kissing!”

Mad as she was, Maddie didn’t miss the sharpened interest on Sol’s and Jeb’s faces.

“That’s not the point. You had no right checking up on me!”

“Educational as all this is,” Jeb interjected calmly, “it don’t matter what he done or why he done it. Can’t be changed now anyhow. What matters is that Derek didn’t find you in Galveston, so he probably done decided Jefferson was worth a look-see. If that’s so, he’s round somewheres and’ll be showing up here tomorrow night.”

Jeb pointed at the chair next to the one Zach had vacated. “Sit down, Maddie. You, too, Zachariah.”

Reluctantly, they sat, side-by-side, like two kids called into the principal’s office for fighting on the playground.

“There’s more damned sparks flying between y’all than you get from downed power lines. Now it ain’t nobody’s business but your own what’s got your backs up, but whether you wanna be or not, y’all are back on for the dance. If we’re gonna pull this off, you can’t be snarling at each other tomorrow night. You gotta look like two people who can’t hardly keep their hands to their selves. Sounds like maybe that ain’t been too much of a problem in the past, but if you can’t do it tomorrow night, this ain’t gonna work.”

Jeb let silence fall. His eyes shifted from one to the other, waiting for a response. When he didn’t get it, he said, “If you can’t do it, you need to tell me now.”

Beside her, Zach took a deep breath. He looked sideways at Maddie. “I’ll do whatever I need to.”

“Good. Maddie?”

She returned Zach’s look. There was a challenge in his eyes. Could she meet him halfway? She tore her gaze away to look at his father.

“I don’t know. And not because I’m mad at Zach. Even if I wasn’t pretending, knowing Derek will be there watching us … I don’t know if I can act like I’m not terrified.”

“You gotta trust Zach. He’ll be the one beside you the whole night.” When Maddie didn’t answer, Jeb stood up. “Maybe y’all need to sit here until you work out how you’re gonna manage it. Get comfortable with each other again. We’ll leave you to it.”

With that, Jeb went upstairs and Sol went home to his trailer.

They sat there in uncomfortable silence, Zach staring at his hands where they were cupped on the table. Finally, Maddie said, “If we’re going to pull this off, you’ve got to stop looking so sad around me.”

“I don’t know if I can. I ain’t much of an actor.”

“It’s no different from when you pretended as a kid.”

“It’s a lot different. When I was a kid, no matter how impossible, I still thought I could somehow be whatever I was pretending …”

Even through the residue of her anger, Maddie couldn’t contain her curiosity. “What did you pretend to be?”

Zach shrugged, his mind clearly not on his answer. “A rodeo star. An astronaut. An Indian tracker—” His brow creased in thought. Maddie waited silently for him to work out whatever it was.

He met her eyes. “Do you trust me?”

Without hesitation, Maddie nodded.

Zach took her hand as he pushed his chair back. “C’mon.” They took the Lincoln the half mile to Sol’s trailer.

The night air was chilly against her bare legs as they stood on the steps outside Sol’s, waiting for him to answer Zach’s knock. Only a faint light shone from the window. A gap in the curtains revealed that it emanated from the hood over the stove. Maddie wanted to cross her arms over her chest to hide the way her erect nipples poked at her nightshirt, but Zach wouldn’t release her hand.

Sol opened the door bare-chested and barefoot, his only clothing a worn pair of jeans. Zach tossed him the keys to the Lincoln as he stepped past his brother. “Get lost, would ya?”

Maddie trailed Zach inside, grateful to be out of the night air. Zach hadn’t said why they were there, but she knew what being alone with him would lead to. Her heart beat a little faster.

“What? You need my trailer to talk out your … oh.” Sol sat in a tired-looking easy chair to pull on the socks draped over the chair’s arm. “How long should I be gone?”

Zach looked sideways at Maddie. “We got a lotta things to work out. Guess you might as well get you a motel room.”

“How come you don’t do that yourselves instead of us playing musical chairs?”

“You crazy?” Zach shook his head emphatically. “Uh-uh. Ain’t nobody gonna be telling Mamma I checked into a motel to have relations before the wedding.”

“But it’s okay if I check into one.” Sol reached for his boots.

Zach shrugged. “As long as you ain’t got anyone with you, what’s to tell?”

Sol looked at Maddie. “You good with this?”

They both waited for her answer. She took a deep breath. This was her chance to say no. To say what a bad idea this was. But her skin remembered how his hands felt when he touched her, and she didn’t want to think she might never feel that again. She answered Sol on the exhale. “I’m fine with it.”

“Okay, then. There’s clean sheets in the hall closet. Be sure to change the bed when you’re done.”

“We’ll be changing it before, too,” Zach said.

Sol pulled on his shirt but didn’t button it. “Smart move.” He paused in the middle of closing the door behind him. “There’s condoms in the nightstand. Don’t use them all.”

Maddie and Zach stood apart as the Lincoln’s lights swept the room as Sol backed out.

“Does Sol give up his place for you often?” Maddie asked, not really caring but needing to break the silence.

“Never needed to ask him before. I’m a grown man. I generally date women who don’t live with their parents anymore.”

“You live with your parents,” Maddie pointed out.

“So I do,” Zach acknowledged. “Seeings as you don’t have your own place here, I guess it’s lucky for me the folks gave this to Sol when he married Georgia.” He pulled fresh sheets out of the hall closet and beckoned Maddie into the bedroom.

His face blushed bright red as he picked up several piles of Sol’s clothes and threw them into the closet. “Sol’s a slob.” He stripped the old sheets from the bed and threw them in the closet on top of Sol’s clothes.

“Ever lived in a trailer?” Zach asked as they made the bed together.

“No.”

“Me neither. But I’ve slept on the couch here. It’s kinda cool when it rains, listening to it hit the roof.”

When the sheets were on, Zach came around to Maddie’s side of the bed. He tilted her face back between his hands and gazed into her eyes. The tender passion in his face stirred a matching emotion in her. Slowly, he lowered his lips to hers.

“You’re trembling,” he whispered between kisses.

“I’m nervous.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

The longer they kissed, the more demanding the kisses became.

“Did we change those sheets for a reason?” Maddie finally asked.

“Is that your way of saying please?” he murmured against her lips.

“If that’s what you’re waiting for …”

He lifted her nightshirt over her head then pressed her against him and kissed her again.

Her bare skin registered the rough textures of his work shirt and jeans as masculine and erotic. Maddie’s nervousness disappeared in a wave of desire. She started unbuttoning his shirt. He thumbed her panties over her hips.

The bed springs squeaked in protest as he laid her down under him.

“Take your clothes off, Zach.”

“Not yet.”

“Zach!”

“Nope. I don’t wanna rush this.”

“For not wanting to rush, you got my clothes off fast enough.”

Zach snorted as he nuzzled her neck. “A night shirt and panties. Not much of a challenge.”

He stopped the conversation by sliding down until he could take one of her nipples in his mouth. He thumbed the other one, forcing it into a hard peak. An electrical charge sizzled through her. Maddie’s back arched, pushing her nipple deeper into his warm mouth. It had been only a week since they’d been together but it seemed like months since he’d touched her.

His mouth surrendered her nipple as he worked his way down. It tickled when he stopped to explore her navel. Maddie curled around him, giggling and pushing him away. He grinned and proceeded south.

Maddie gasped when his mouth settled between her legs. He licked and sucked and pushed his tongue inside her until she could barely breathe. Enjoyable as it was, her body knew there was more and better to be had from him. Her hips lifted, wanting more, wanting deeper. Desire drove her to the edge of tears.

“Give me … please … Zach …”

He chuckled against her flesh. The vibration drove hot spikes of desire through her. She bucked under him.

“Okay. Just coz you said please so pretty,” Zach teased.

He got off the bed, shucked his clothes in record time, and got a condom from Sol’s nightstand.

*

Zach stopped for a moment to look down at Maddie. She was so beautiful, with her hair spread across the pillow in disarray and her eyes glazed with desire.

Instinct had driven him to bring her there. Instinct had said he needed this to get past the wall they’d erected between them. To give him something to hang on to so he could pretend that, when she looked at him, it was really him she saw and not Vince’s ghost.

He wanted her so badly at this moment he ached from it. But it wasn’t going to be enough. It might breach their emotional distance, but it wouldn’t resolve his basic insecurities. He felt his jaw set. He had to make her see him. Somehow he would make her acknowledge him in a moment when she couldn’t lie, even subconsciously.