Belonging to Bandera (6 page)

Her wink riled him. “Lady, I can handle anything you’ve got.”

They stared at each other. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, and startled.

“I didn’t mean that exactly the way it sounded,” he said, worried that he might have tossed out a challenge that didn’t seem very gentlemanly.

“That’s too bad,” she said. “There for a moment, I thought you might be the man of my dreams.”

Well, Holly was mistaken, Bandera thought irritably. He would never be the man of any woman’s dreams.

“I’m going to nap,” he said, aware that his tone was surly. “Follow the map, and try not to engage in any mishaps. Tell me when we get where we’re going.”

“Maybe we should go back the way we came.”

He hesitated. “That doesn’t sound right. One should never go backward. Only forward. I want to go forward to find Mason. You want to go forward to find yourself.”

“No,” Holly said, “I don’t need to find myself. I already know who and what I am. Don’t confuse me with my almost-marriage. I nearly married a man who didn’t know who he was, though he saved me by skipping out on me.”

Bandera grunted. “I see nothing heroic in your ex’s actions.”

“Well, that’s you. I’m merely grateful. I am an optimist.”

That was clear to see. The woman had optimistic written all over her. “I shouldn’t ask this, but why do you not see me as the man of your dreams anymore?”

“Oh. You obviously haven’t figured yourself out yet. I need someone stable.” She smiled at him kindly, as if she were speaking to a less intelligent being. “Two stable people make a stable life together. You see how much trouble Mimi and Mason are having. One of them isn’t stable.”

“Mason,” he said with a growl. “Though we always thought it was Mimi.”

Holly nodded wisely. “I suspect instability of some nature runs in your family.”

“It doesn’t!” he protested—then drew a deep breath. Of course it did. He and his brothers were a manic table of numbers that couldn’t be graphed. Random elements preferring the unknown.

“Even if we do have some moments—like every normal family—that aren’t quite stable, it doesn’t mean we’re not a good family.”

“Of course not. It just means one or more of you don’t know who you are.”

This girl was really starting to bug him. “Yeah, well.” Bandera took a swig of his beer. “A little instability, indecisiveness and unexplained randomness is good for you.”

“You’re worried, aren’t you?”

“About what?” He looked at her from under his hat, trying to disguise the fact that he admired the way she was handling the truck.

“You’re worried you’re going to end up like your brother Mason. Caught in a weird life.”

“No,” he lied.

“I think I am ‘the weird’ for you. You kissed
me
first, you know. But I want you to know you don’t have anything to worry about. I’m not looking for a man.”

Bandera turned his face to the window. “You should. You’re a nice girl. You have lots of spunk. I like spunk in a woman.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that.” She reached over and patted his hand. “But it’s okay. You’ve been very kind to give me a ride. And I like you thinking you’re going to show me another side of life.”

“Did I say that?”

“Yes. You said you would expose me to randomness and some other nonsense, which you apparently feel I need. I’m willing.” She smiled at him. “What girl wouldn’t want to ride with a sexy cowboy? I should be at home with my parents, and yet here I am with you. I have a lot in common with Mason, riding away from my obligations.”

Bandera sat up. “You’re making me nervous.”

She laughed.

“Look, if we’re going to be traveling buddies, you have to not do that.”

“Do what?” she asked.

“Talk in circles. You have to settle down. A man can take only so much of that stuff.”

She removed her hand from his, smiling. “You’re all right, for an anal-retentive cowboy. Tough on the outside, pillowy soft around the heart.”

He scowled. “Holly, you are baiting the wrong bull.”

But she was right. He was enjoying having her around. Even if it alarmed him that she thought she knew him.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know I’m safe with you.”

“No, you’re not.” He thought about that for a few seconds, remembering their time in the balloon. “Although I’m not certain why you’re not safe. I think it has to do with your lips.”

“My lips?”

“Yeah. They fit mine very well. I think that’s a bad sign. You’re definitely not safe.”

“Oh.” She looked at him for a second. “Well, maybe they didn’t fit as good as you remembered.”

He thought they probably fit better. “Pull over.”

“Here?”

“Just to the shoulder. Put on the hazard lights.”

“I hardly think it’s needed. We’re the only car I’ve seen in probably ten minutes.” But she flipped the
flashing lights on, stopping the truck on the shoulder. “Now what?”

“Kiss me.”

She blinked. “You had me pull over so you could command a kiss?”

“Yes.” He pointed to her lips. “I want to know if those—” he touched a finger gently to the soft velvet of her mouth “—are as matched to mine as I thought they were.”

“There’s no such thing as matching mouths,” she protested. “People are not puzzles.”

“You are and I am, and these are the pieces that may or may not fit.”

It was all nonsense, but he had to know, Bandera thought, bringing her to him with strong hands. His lips touched hers, then claimed them—but the best part was she kissed him back.

Nothing had ever felt better in his life. “You’re scaring me real bad,” he said huskily before kissing her faster, harder. “And I don’t scare easy.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, closing her eyes as he kissed her mouth, her chin, her neck.

“You fit me,” he said, “and yet you nearly married a poor excuse of a man. You should be ashamed.”

“But he asked, and I thought I loved him.” She pulled back slightly to look at Bandera. “Even if I loved you, you would never ask.”

He didn’t want to go into what he would or
wouldn’t do, so he touched the sequins on her pretty top. “Never say yes to someone who isn’t a perfect fit.”

“I never said yes at all. Except to the marriage proposal,” she said, her eyes lustrous in the waning light.

“You would say yes to me.”

She laughed. “You keep thinking that, cowboy.” Flipping off the hazard lights, she pulled back onto the road. “Saying no kept me out of a lot of trouble. What if I’d say yes and become pregnant?”

She stared at him, no longer smiling, before looking fixedly back at the road.

“Well, you and I wouldn’t be kissing,” he said matter-of-factly. “But suppose you met The One. And you let yourself get all bugged out. You’d be too nervous to say yes and then he’d go off on his white steed and you’d have missed the handsome prince.”

She thought about that. “I thought I had The One. And now I’m kissing you.” She flipped the radio to a country and western station, sighing. “I chose Bach and Handel for my wedding music.”

“That was your first mistake. What’s wrong with Willie?”

She turned her head to stare at him. “Willie Nelson for a wedding march?”

“Or at least a groom-warmer.”

“Groom-warmer?”

“Well, they probably pipe some kind of music in
to keep the groom calm. I’d want Willie. Waylon. And the boys.”

She groaned. “My wedding was going to be very elegant.”

“And yet it got messy. That’s because you didn’t plan it right, with the correct groom. Was Chuck a cowboy?”

“No.”

“Ever ridden a horse?”

“No.”

“Did you have a piñata in the backyard for the kiddies to swing at?”

“At a wedding?” Holly asked.

“And were the guests drinking beer and wine, or those fancy things with plastic swords floating around in them, usually piercing an olive as big as a golf ball? I want more beverage and less plastic decorations in my cup.”

She smiled. “We were serving wine, mainly. Champagne, water, tea.”

“Was there a petting zoo for the children?”

“It was a
wedding,
Bandera.”

“Well, at least a pony for pony rides,” he amended.

“Look,” she said, “you seem awfully fixated on children. Do you have any?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully, staring at his beer bottle, “but I’m getting real envious of my brothers who do.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just realized it as we were strategizing about what went wrong with your wedding.”

“The only thing that went wrong was the groom.”

“No, the planning was all wrong. It was too sterile.”

“Elegant.”

“It lacked pizzazz and fire. Smokin’ hot lads and passionate smart ladies.” He sighed. “You’re hung up on the wrong things in life.”

She waved a hand at him. “Go on. I’m dying to hear.”

“A woman makes a man feel like a man by noticing how he looks, even when he’s wearing his boxers and reading the newspaper in bed. She tells him he’s handsome and she gets him a cup of coffee. In public, she holds his arm and occasionally smiles sweetly up at him. This can be the best part of a man’s day.”

Holly blinked, and he saw a frown begin to gather between her brows. It made him smile. Baiting her was so easy.

“That sounds so…chauvinistic,” she protested.

“But I like it,” he said. “Go ahead. Try it.”

“No, thank you.”

He laughed, pushing his hat down over his face and leaning back to relax. “Wake me when you get to Wichita. We’ll need to turn around there.”

“Turn around? You’re not making me drive all the way there just to turn around while you sleep!”

“Turn around there,” he said slowly. “Somewhere around there, we’ll need to get on the road to Hawk’s.”

“Oh. Well, why don’t you speak more clearly?”

“I’ve been trying,” he said. “It seems we don’t fit together anywhere but our lips.”

A
ND THAT WAS THAT
, Holly realized as he dozed off. As a wedding planner, she’d recoiled from everything he’d suggested for such an event. The way he saw his nuptials wasn’t her kind of happily-ever-after.

Willie, Waylon and the boys? She shivered. No woman wanted that.

She’d wanted the traditional fairy tale, complete with white gown and moon-white roses. The dream come true. “I tried too hard,” she muttered.

“S’okay,” he muttered in his sleep.

She sighed. It wasn’t okay. She was going to have to grow and change if she wasn’t going to make more dumb mistakes in her life. “Wedding planning is not my forte,” she said. “I’m going to change my life.”

“S’okay,” he repeated.

She wanted to reach over and smack him out of his peaceful snoozing. It was not okay to discover that everything you thought was, wasn’t.

Funny how this cowboy was making her old life seem so predictable—and maybe just a bit empty.

“It’s not okay, and I can’t dream those dreams any longer,” she said, but this time he didn’t answer.

M
IMI TOOK A DEEP BREATH
as she stared at the phone. Bandera had been uncomfortable. She knew the Jeffersons too well. There were very few secrets between people who had grown up together. And he’d definitely been unwilling to get into a long conversation about Mason’s whereabouts.

From Last, Mimi had learned that Mason was on another road trip to find out about his past. She understood his drive. Much of her behavior today was influenced by her mom, who’d chosen a search for the bright lights of Hollywood over being married to a small-town sheriff and raising a daughter.

Mimi intended to be a very different kind of mother. She looked at her daughter, smiling as she slept in her new bed. When they’d made the move away from the ranch to the small town house in Union Junction, Mimi had bought Nanette a big-girl bed. Mason had hauled it to the house and put it together for her. Lovingly, the two of them had made the bed, with Nanette dancing around excitedly. Mason had painted the walls of Nanette’s room a soft shell-pink, and he’d laid on the bed pretty unicorn pillows he’d ordered from a catalog.

Mimi’s eyes had teared up as the three of them ate dinner that night. And she’d come to a realization: it
was time to be that very different mother she wanted so much to be. A good mother. A loving mother.

A mother who cared enough to be strong for her daughter.

She sat down on her daughter’s bed, gently touching her child’s face. Why had she never been able to tell Mason how she felt about him? Because they were more comfortable being best friends rather than dealing with what she really felt for him.

But avoiding her feelings was what had gotten her to this moment, she knew. She had never wanted to lose Mason—what she had of him—and so she’d hidden her true emotions. “When your grandfather got so sick and nearly died,” she whispered to her daughter, “I married a man Dad liked and trusted so he could see me happy. I desperately wanted to give him a grandchild.” Gently, she touched the blond strands of hair that curled around her daughter’s ear. “I wouldn’t change a thing I did. And maybe that’s wrong. But you,” she said softly, “you are the angel my heart dreamed of. And you’re
his
angel, too. Mason loves you so much.”

Tears stung her eyes, tears of regret and false hope. When she’d married Brian and ran away from her broken heart, a heart that loved but was not loved in return, she’d only hoped to make her father happy.

Life had a way of making the repercussions of some decisions linger a long time.

Now her father was almost fully recovered from a liver ailment he had not been expected to survive. The doctors said that her loving care had probably turned the tide during the nearly three and a half years it had attacked him. He would never be the strong, tough-as-bricks sheriff he’d been, but neither was he an invalid at death’s door. Now that they’d moved to town, and Mimi had run for sheriff herself, he had a ton of visitors coming in, mostly older gentlemen wanting a game of checkers or a bit of gossip or a chat about the old days. An occasional widow came by, too, bearing sweets she’d baked for him.

Her dad loved being the center of attention. Before his illness, he’d always been too busy with the ranch and his job to enjoy life.

Nanette murmured in her sleep, a contented snuffle as she changed her breathing pattern. Mason liked to hold her and read her to sleep. A lot of Winnie-the-Pooh, which Nanette insisted on, and then Mason would read some outdated classical Greek philosopher or even a Bible story. It depended upon his mood. By then, Nanette had had her Winnie, and she was in Mason’s arms, and she didn’t care what Euclidian, Pythagorean, or biblical construct Uncle Mason was trying to introduce her to.