Crazy Little Thing Called Love (30 page)

“You are so damn pretty.” He hooked his hands
behind her knees and pulled her close to his mouth so he could
taste her.

“Zach please.”

He licked her and tasted her sweet beauty.
She tasted so good. She always tasted so good. He licked her and
sucked her and listened to her moan and watched her writhe against
his mouth. She begged for more and he liked it so much when she
begged that he gave in and slipped a finger inside her and then
two.

“Oh God, Zach. Yes. Please.” She moaned. “Oh
more, Zach, more.”

He grinned against her. He really liked it
when she moaned his name. He liked it even more when she screamed
his name as an intense orgasm stole through her body. Her hips
jerked upwards to gain more and her eyes rolled back on a whimper.
The sweet taste of her orgasm coated his tongue and he groaned in
response.

It was still too fast. It was still too out
of control. He listened to her breathy moans and knew he was too
far gone and didn’t care.

“Oh Zach, oh, that was…” She gulped in a
breath of fresh air and shivered, “Perfect. You’re so perfect.”

“I was just thinking the same thing about you
baby-doll.” He moved up her body and he positioned her over his
throbbing erection.

He wanted her like this. He wanted to feel
her heat and wetness, wanted to feel skin against skin. That was
how it should be, naked and together. He wanted it so much his
hands shook.

“Zach?” She whispered his name and he met her
big blue eyes that glowed with as much need as he felt. “I need you
inside me, please.”

Yeah. Yeah he needed to be inside her too. He
wanted her just like this but he couldn’t take it. He beat back the
insanely crazy urge. He couldn’t.

“Fuck.” He had to move away from her to get a
condom from the back pocket of his jeans. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He
tore it open with his teeth and rolled it on as he moved back to
her. He grabbed her hips, aligned her on the edge of the bed and
plunged into her in one brutal push.

Bluebell arched against him and cried out.
Her muscles tightened around him at the invasion. She felt so good.
He had no idea how many more times he’d get to have her like this
but the not knowing drove him insane. She could be gone soon, could
end this now that her father was gone, she could be gone soon too
and he needed her too much.

Nobody else would ever take her place in his
bed. He might try to replace her but he knew nobody would ever be
good enough. Nobody turned him on like Bluebell, nobody made him
crazy like Bluebell. Bluebell with her cock tease games and
craziness was what he wanted. She was perfect.

He thrust into her hard and fast. He watched
her pretty face react to him. She bit her lip to stifle her cries.
Her hands clenched and unclenched. Her back arched, her breasts
bounced. He watched, knowing he was the one filling her with what
she needed. He was the one making her cry out. He was the one
slipping inside her slick body and making her feel pleasure instead
of pain.

“Zach.” His whispered name on her lips was
too much.

She was too perfect. She was too beautiful.
So beautiful something tight clenched in his chest that he’d never
felt before and it made him slow his pace. Suddenly it wasn’t
enough just to screw her. He’d already screwed her seven ways from
Sunday. He’d screwed her on a table and in a car and in a hardware
store. He wanted something more this time.

He easily gathered her in his arms and lifted
her higher on the bed so he could rise over her. In this position
he could kiss her. In this position he could feel her skin, damp
against his as the friction between them built. She wrapped her
arms around him, pulled him close and the pain in his chest
subsided. He was surrounded by Bluebell, absorbed by Bluebell and
nothing had ever felt so right.

“Oh baby… baby, baby baby.” He muttered as he
kissed her neck, dragged his lips over her smooth skin that was so
hot it nearly burned him up.

Her nails dug into his ass as she tried to
pull him deeper. She squeezed tighter around him as she locked her
legs around his hips. She moaned, a quiet breathy moan that told
him she was just as close as he was. Heat and liquid fire scorched
through him and he had to shift a little higher on her body. She
whimpered in response.

“Come for me baby. I want to feel you come
again.” He whispered against her lips.

“Oh Zach, please…” She sobbed and arched into
him at the same time his balls drew up in anticipation.

He wasn’t going to last much longer. He
couldn’t hold on. She was too hot, too tight, too soft and too
perfect. He couldn’t stop, couldn’t…

“Blue.” He groaned as his climax rushed
forward.

Bluebell screamed, his name, and her body
stiffened and trembled beneath him. Her sex pulsed all around him,
dragging him deeper, pulling him tight as he came inside her. He
filled her up, stayed with her until the final shiver and then
pulled her tight against him like he’d never let her go.

The next few days were a blur, a fog of
activity and dull pain. Blue stumbled through the motions of
living. She got through it a day at a time, sometimes an hour at a
time, other times by the minute.

She went to see her father at the funeral
home. Arlene and Bobby had taken care of the arrangements. They’d
been the steady adults in the situation just as they’d always been
and she was reduced to the errant child that’d run away when things
got hard just like she always did. But she hadn’t run far enough
this time and she’d gone back too soon.

She moved through the room at the funeral
home like a ghost. The room was too sterile, too whitewashed. Her
father looked out of place in a room like this. He’d been built for
dusty bunkhouses and barns. The only other place he’d ever looked
so abnormal had been the main house of the Oaks.

“Oh Daddy…” She whispered as she saw him
lying in the casket.

He was too still, just as he’d been when she
went to see if he was awake for dinner and realized the machines in
his bedroom had stopped beeping. His eyes were closed. His chest
didn’t move. He’d look cold and alone. He’d looked gone. He’d left
her just when she was starting to understand him.

Tears slid silently down her cheeks. She
closed her eyes and shoved them back down. She wiped them away with
the back of her hand.

“Sorry Daddy.” She apologized, “I know
cowgirls don’t cry. I’ll do better.”

She suppressed the tears and kissed his
forehead as he’d kissed her so many times. Even in her grief she
knew they’d never have fixed everything if they had more time.
They’d made a lot of mistakes, the both of them. He hadn’t been a
perfect father but she hadn’t been a perfect daughter either. Their
relationship had never come easy but she’d loved him.

She’d loved him like a little girl always
loved her daddy. She’d loved him with every ounce of emotion her
body could muster. Loving him and losing him filled her with a
deep, soul-crushing pain.

He’d done the best he could. She knew that
now. He’d given up his hopes and dreams for the love of a beautiful
woman and he’d lost her too soon. He’d tried to do right by her
mama, she could see that now. She’d never understand him completely
but he’d given her a little bit of insight and for that much she’d
always be thankful.

“I love you Daddy.” She said her goodbye and
then she walked away.

She barely managed to get out of bed in the
mornings. She didn’t remember eating though surely Arlene made sure
she did. Her life was a blur of different faces and people as
condolences were offered and stories of Lyle Carter were told. A
steady stream of people filled Montgomery Oaks, dropping off
casseroles and making sure she was okay.

She wasn’t okay. She wasn’t sure she’d ever
be okay again. She was an orphan. She was a twenty-eight year old
orphan so she went through the motions.

She saw the lawyers and learned that she was
a trust fund baby after all. Her mother had left a large amount of
money in a trust for her and for her future unborn children. She’d
never known that it existed. She also learned that as the sole
Montgomery left in existence ownership of the Montgomery Oaks
passed to her. And finally she understood what her father had meant
when he said he wouldn’t leave her the ranch and let it weigh her
down.

He’d had papers drawn up to sell the ranch.
It ached and burned in her blood to hate him for it but she did it
anyway. She loved him, knew why he’d done it, but at the same time
she knew he’d had no right. The land was hers. She was the last of
the Montgomery’s. It was up to her to keep it or sell it. The
weight, the burden was hers to bear alone now. She’d always assumed
inheriting the ranch would feel like a death sentence so it was a
stunning revelation to feel devoted to keeping it in her
family.

Somewhere along the way, the past few months
of caring for her father and living on the ranch, something inside
her had changed. Or maybe it had been there all along and she’d
been too stubborn and proud to see it. Either way, there was no
using running from the truth any more. She was the heir to the Oaks
and it was her only tie to the parents she’d never truly known. She
couldn’t walk away from it any more than she could lose her accent
or change her name.

The lawyer gave her a letter from her father.
It had obviously been written before she came home for Molly’s
wedding. She had no idea how long the lawyer had held onto it.

“Bluebell – I know you’re probably upset I
didn’t tell you I was sick but I only did it to protect you.
Everything I’ve ever done has been for you. I loved your mama and I
love you sweet girl. Live your life your way with your own rules
and don’t ever let anybody take what’s yours. I wasn’t always the
best daddy to you but you turned out just fine despite me. Don’t
let them put makeup on me and keep the casket closed, no need
giving the good people of Fate anything else to gossip about. Love
Daddy.”

She did as he asked. No makeup. Closed
casket. She burned the papers to sell the ranch. Nobody was taking
what was hers, not even him.

Every day, through the fog of grief and the
bustle of activity, she was hyper aware that Zach was there. His
big, strong presence by her side was welcome and appreciated. He
stayed with her through the worst of it, was always just an arms
length away and caught her when she fell into the pit of
misery.

He was there when she needed him most which
was at night. When everyone else packed up and went home and she
was alone, he was there. When the quiet of the house and the
darkness of grief threatened to swallow her whole he came to her.
He came and pressed his big body against hers. His heat soaked up
the cold shivers of loneliness. He held her together through the
dark hours and when the morning light shone in he was always gone.
A nice memory, a nice distraction, exactly what she needed.

It was sweet of him to be there for her but
she didn’t read too much into it. She couldn’t let herself believe
it was anything more than his instinct to protect. He was a big
brother, a guardian; it was just in his nature in a way that had
never been in her daddy.

No matter how thoughtful he was he wasn’t her
boyfriend. He was her friend with benefits guy. That’s all. She
clung tight to reality where he didn’t do relationships and he was
just temporary. If she let herself believe it was anything more
she’d have been in real deep trouble so she did what she always
did. She kept moving and prayed when she came out the other side of
her grief she’d know what to do next.

For the second time in not quite three months
Bluebell stood at the front of the Fate First Baptist Church but
this time she wasn’t wearing an ugly tangerine dress. She’d donned
a simple black sheath for her father’s funeral. Her blonde hair was
twisted at the back of her neck in a classic bun. She’d put on her
makeup and her game face and not a tear escaped as she gave her
eulogy.

There was nobody else to give it. She was the
last of the Montgomery’s. She was the last of the Carter’s. Her
grandparents had passed when she was just a little girl not long
after her mother. For as long as anybody in Fate could remember it
had just been Lyle and Bluebell and now her daddy was gone too.

She buried him in his boots and nicest pearl
snap shirt. He’d have scowled if she tried to dress him up and make
him something he wasn’t so she didn’t. Her sole fanciful addition
had been a bouquet of bluebell’s she’d gathered from the field
behind the main house of the ranch. The little girl in her needed
him to take a part of her to the other side with him for when he
found her mama.

The church was packed to the rafters. Aisle
upon aisle of ranch hands and friends filled up. Men that’d worked
with Lyle over the years came from as far away as San Antonio and
Tulsa. Arlene cried from the front row and Bobby held her close.
Blue ignored them all as she spoke about the man that had been her
only family.

She spoke of the father that had taught her
to shoot a gun and keep her chin up. She spoke of the man that had
loved Liza Beth Montgomery something fierce. She spoke of the man
that’d loved fast cars but drove an old Ford truck that had never
seen a mud hole it feared.

After the funeral the main house at
Montgomery Oaks was open for mourners to congregate and gossip.
Casseroles lined every hard surface of the kitchen. The giant
dining room table brimmed with people and sweet tea. The topic of
the day was that Bluebell was no doubt too busy counting her
inheritance to offer up any real tears for the father that’d loved
her. Blue kept herself busy thanking them all for coming and
accepting their condolences. No doubt she’d still miss somebody and
her snubbing of them would be the hottest gossip the following
day.