A Long Goodbye (8 page)

She sat closer to me in my truck then on the ride here. I was not about to complain. “Where we going?” She glanced around as I pealed out of the lot, kicking up the dirt beneath the tire wheels. I pulled into another parking lot, and then turned to her. “Be right back.” I quickly ran inside the liquor store on the corner of the street, grabbed a fifth of Comfort, and hauled ass back to my truck.

She eyed me briefly when I jumped back in and handed off the brown bag. “Umm, Woody, getting drunk isn’t on my bucket list. I kind of had that one nailed down in college.”

“No one said anything about getting drunk. We’re finding some back ass country dirt road, we’re gonna lay down in the back of my truck, drink a little, and you are going to tell me how I can help you with that list.” She didn’t say anything, she just continued to stare at me like I had lost my damn mind somewhere back on the dance floor. “What?” I asked noticing she was suddenly real quiet.

“You want to help me?”

“Yeah,” I said, unsure of why she seemed so surprised as I started to back up and out of the lot.

“Why, Woody?”

I slammed the truck back in park, grabbed her hand before lifting it to my mouth and pressing a small kiss to her knuckles. “Grace, I just want to see it. Let me see you find yourself.” When she smiled, I knew she was allowing it, even without her telling me.

After twenty minutes of driving away from the city lights, I made my way off the ramp to finally find what I was looking for. My foot pressed down a little harder, Tim McGraw blasted out of my speakers, and the dirt was kicking up behind my truck as we veered off the highway. Ashton had her head tipped back, singing the words to ‘Southern Girl’ as we made our way down some country road putting me one step closer to getting what I wanted, but shouldn’t take. And I knew this. What I was doing was stupid, something I’d probably regret tomorrow or a month from now, but hell if I gave a shit. I wanted to love this girl tonight with everything I had. Hoping like hell she was on the same page, I pulled under a big ol’ tree and placed my truck into park.

CHAPTER 11

ASHTON

I was not stupid and I really hoped he didn’t think I was. Part of me believed him when he asked to watch me find myself, but now I was thinking he wanted to see something else. Most likely me in my birthday suit. I took a deep breath before I turned to him. “What are we doing out here?”

“C’mon,” he said, pulling the brown bag from my hand. Before I was even out my side of the door, I could feel the truck move from him jumping up into the bed of it. Slowly, I made my way to the back to find him digging in a big old black bin to see him pull out a sleeping bag. He turned and smiled, unzipping it then placing it down on the bed, kicking off his boots and leaving them on the tailgate of his truck. I followed suit, since I was starting to find this whole seduction thing kind of sexy.

He patted the spot next to him as he propped himself up against that black bin he pulled the sleeping bag out of. Just as I was sitting, he pulled the bottle out and twisted off the cap. He took a long swig, and then handed it off to me. I took a small sip, before giving it back to him. “What is all this?”

“I told you. You have how many days left until you need to head home?”

“Eleven total.”

“All right, how ‘bout this. Each day for the next eleven days you pick one or two things on your list and we do them together.”

“But Lu and I are heading to Miami soon. Maybe we could get one or two in before I go?”

He took another pull on the bottle, then gave it to me but didn’t say anything. “How come you’re not wearing your glasses tonight?” I asked.

“I got nothing to hide tonight.”

“And you were hiding before?”

“Maybe.”

“From what?”

“It’s just something I picked up in the military, Grace. It’s nothing.”

“Will you tell me about your scar?” I asked as my finger softly and slowly ran down the length of it. It started on his forehead and went down to the top of his cheekbone, but its color was almost the same shade as his skin. Something about it gave him more character than he believed he had.

“It’s hard to talk about. You’ll have to understand if I’m not ready.”

“Will you tell me someday?” I asked hoping to God he would.

“Maybe.” Was all that he said.

I took another slow sip of the Southern Comfort. It was going down a lot smoother than it had before. I decided to change the subject since I’d seemed to depress him some with my question. “Tomorrow, will you take me on one of these dirt roads when I’m not drinking, so I can kick up some dust of my own? It’s on my list.”

He looked over at me grinning. “You never drove on an old dirt road?”

I shrugged. “Well, yeah, but I was never driving. I don’t want to race anyone; I just want to do it.”

“If that’s what you want, you have my word that I’ll take you. Tell me something else about you?” he asked.

“I won runner-up in the Teen Miss South Carolina pageant back when I was fifteen.”

“I bet you did.”

“I could have won, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t. My grandmamma wanted me to do it, so I did it for her. After she passed I stopped entering beauty contests. I just didn’t think it was for me. I liked the philanthropy part, but that was it.”

“You were close to her?”

“Yeah, I was. She was everything to me. She raised me alongside my Daddy for the first few years. I even called her mama until I was six and they finally convinced me she wasn’t my mother.”

Woody pulled me into his side, putting his arm over my shoulders. “I wish I knew you back then,” he told me and for some reason I think he really meant it. Woody tipped his head back slightly after taking another swig. “Damn, the stars are something tonight, aren’t they?” Only instead of looking up, I kept my gaze on him. “Yeah, they sure are.” As the minutes ticked by, I kept waiting for him to put some fancy moves on me, or at least to find out what it felt like to kiss him. It seemed like hours, but it could’ve only been minutes when he handed the bottle off to me again.

I took it and as I was sipping some, Woody slinked down until he was flat on his back. “Any chance sleeping under the stars is on that list of yours?”

It was now.

“As a matter of fact it is.” I swallowed the lump in my throat knowing how long it’d been since I slept next to a man. A man that I wanted more than anything to touch me, hold me, kiss me, and do things that might even be a little embarrassing in the morning.

I lay back next to him, but lifted up some when he stuck his arm underneath me, curling my body to his. I thought this was it. It was happening, but he just closed his eyes.

“Hey, Woody?” I whispered.

“Yeah, Grace.”

“Are you gonna kiss me or not?”

He chuckled softly, and then the next thing I knew his finger was tracing my lips for several long seconds as I held my breath waiting for him to answer. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

I sat straight up like a bolt of lightning hit me. “Why not?”

He did a quick ab crunch to meet me, taking my hands in his. “Damn it, Grace, I want you so bad, I do, but in eleven days you’re going home to your daddy and that boy he wants you with. I had every intention of being with you tonight, but I don’t know if I can let you go if I start something with you. It’s taking everything in my will power to hold myself back.”

I harrumphed, but he just pulled me back down until we were back to me being curled up next to him. I couldn’t believe this. Could girls get blue balls, or maybe the equivalent of it? The next half hour Woody made small circles on my back as we talked. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I did something wrong, or that I wasn’t pretty enough, or my body was too fat for his liking. But somewhere between all those thoughts, Woody leaned down softly taking my lips to his, before a simple, “Good night, Grace.”

CHAPTER 12

DANE

It had taken me an entire hour to get the balls up to kiss her good night. And it was barely a kiss. It wasn’t the kind I really wanted to give her, or the one she deserved. When she flat out asked me, I swear my cock stood at full staff, my heart felt such a sense of calm that I could barely understand it.

I wanted her, but could I really have her? I knew I could’ve easily had my way with her last night, but she held me back without even knowing it. She seemed so innocent and I was so afraid of hurting her. In reality, she was a paycheck. She was a job that would be over when her trip was over, and then we would have to be over. I convinced myself not touching her was good for both of us, even though I hated myself for it.

She was still sleeping in my arms as the sun started to rise and all I could think of were honeysuckles. When she finally opened up those eyes, she looked at me nervously, like she just got caught with her pants down or something. I smiled down at her, staring at those perfect lips. And told her what I was thinking. “You smell like my childhood.”

The tension came away from her as she wrapped her arm back around me. “What are you talking about?”

“When I was a little boy, I played baseball, and the field we played on had all these chain link fences around the perimeter, and they were all covered in vines with these little flowers. I can remember it like yesterday plucking them off and sucking all that sweet nectar out of them. That’s what you remind me of. You smell like the honeysuckle I used to love when I was growing up.”

I couldn’t see her expression as I told her this since she had tucked her head under my chin. I heard a small sigh escape her mouth, but then she propped herself up on her elbow with her hand holding up her head. “It’s tomorrow. You promised to take me driving.”

“How ‘bout we head back, shower, and we’ll meet back at the lobby around noon. I have some things I need to take care of first. Besides, maybe Lu would like to come along.”

“I’ll ask her.”

Driving back, I took the long way to keep her beside me a little longer. I noticed that when she didn’t like a song when it came on, she scrunched up her nose, and then fiddled with the buttons until she found something she liked. Normally, I’d find this kind of thing annoying, having her go through thirty stations in under twenty seconds. But I let her do her thing. It was kind of cute watching her bop around, humming to the music.

As we pulled up, I hopped out first to help her down, letting my hands rest on her hips. I left my truck running trying to get her to go in first so she didn’t realize I was right next door to her. “Aren’t you coming in?”

“Nah, coffee sucks here. I’m going to go find a Quickie Stop and grab one.”

She lifted my sunglasses up but kept a soft grip on them. “I’ll see you at noon, right? You’re not skipping town, or anything?”

I knew why she pulled them up. I told her why I wore them and apparently, Miss Ashton thought she could read me now. I stared back at her. “I promise you, I will be here every step of the way.”

She bit down on the edge of her bottom lip, appraising me for a minute, and then flashed her pearly whites. “Bye, Woody.” With that, she stepped up on the tips of her toes and kissed me quickly. “I had a great time.” Once she was inside, I headed out looking for an inexpensive cup of coffee, and to clear my head.

Back at my room, I dialed Jason at the homestead. He answered straight away. “Dane, how’s the job going?”

“Hello to you too, brother. It’s going fine.”

“What’s the little princess been up to?”

“Ah, you know little dancing, little drinking. Other than that not much.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man. She and Lu are laying low. But, umm, change of plans. It seems they want to take in a little more than Nashville on this little trip of theirs.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Miami…”

He cut me off, “are you fucking shitting me?”

I sighed into the phone, running my hand through my hair. “No. I’m not shitting you.”

“Fuck! Her old man is going to be pissed when I report in tomorrow.”

“Jay, man, no! You can’t tell him a thing. I promised this girl two weeks of fun without her daddy watching over her.”

“You fucking did what?”

“I had to blow my cover.”

“Dude…you’re a former fucking Ranger and you blew your cover in under two damn days. What the fuck? This isn’t like you. I promised him that you’d be discreet.”

“Look they were getting harassed by some assholes, one of them slipped Lu something, I stepped in and helped out.”

“All right I understand that, but why didn’t you back the fuck off after?”

The million-dollar question that even I couldn’t answer.

“Fuck!” I screamed into the phone. “I don’t know why.”

“I swear to Christ if you fuck this job up anymore I’m taking over and you’re coming home to deal with the other cases.”

“What’s the big deal anyway? She just wants to have some fun. I’m letting her have it.”

“Keep me posted, Dane. And back the fuck off. Wait a minute, how are you explaining Miami to her?”

“I’m playing nicely into her hands. She trusts me.”

“Dane, I need a favor from you and I need you to swear to me that you aren’t getting involved with her, because you have no idea of the shit that I’m dealing with at home.”

I contemplated lying to him, but I didn’t want to. What the fuck did I want? So I did the best I could. “I promise you I will try to keep my distance sexually, but why do I need to? It’s not like she’s going to run home and tell her father. After two weeks, I’ll be out of her life-no harm, no foul.”

“When was the last time you gave a woman the time of day?”

“It’s been a while,” I admitted.

“Exactly. Call me tomorrow. I’ll tell Winslow there’s nothing new.”

“Thanks, Jay.” After hearing him hang up, I jumped in the shower to get ready for some four wheeling that I was looking forward to a hell of a lot more than I should’ve been.

CHAPTER 13

ASHTON

Woody was waiting for me in the hotel lobby with a smile so big it made me stop in my tracks. I swore looking around every girl was watching him propped up against the concierge desk looking sinful in his tight jeans. The funny thing about Woody was he had not one single clue in that massively gorgeous head of his just how good-looking he was. I could see him thinking when he caught me noticing his scar. And I hated knowing he thought it took something away from him, when really it added more to him.