Crazy Little Thing Called Love (7 page)

“We could talk now.” She offered.

She watched him pick up his tea with a shaky
hand and tried to breathe. What if something was really wrong? He
didn’t look well. He wasn’t acting like his normal self. She needed
to know what was going on.

“No.”

She hadn’t realized she was holding her
breathe until he spoke and she felt like she’d combusted like a
popped balloon, “But…”

“No. It’ll hold until Sunday.” He shook his
head and changed the subject in typical avoidance behavior,
“Where’s this dinner at tonight?”

“Sullivan’s.”

“Nice restaurant. They serve a good
T-bone.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve been there since
high school.”

“I heard Molly met her man over at the
university.”

“Yeah. At Tech.”

“Good for her. Be sure to give her my
congratulations.”

“I will.”

“She was always a nice girl.”

“Yeah, she was.”

Small talk. They were back to the grind of
small talk. He brought up something important then shut her out
just like he always did. There was no point worrying about it. If
he said it would hold until Sunday odds were it would hold. If
there was one thing Lyle Carter was good at it was running his
ranch. She’d just have to stop worrying, get through dinner, the
wedding and then she’d figure it out on Sunday.

Blue sipped her beer and avoided looking
directly at anyone. Her head hurt, not a migraine but a dull,
pounding behind her eyes that had started up the second she set
foot in Sullivan’s for the rehearsal dinner and was only getting
worse now that they’d gone next door to Sully’s for the joint
bachelor/bachelorette party she hadn’t known anything about. She
wished she could just slip out the back door and go home but Molly
had insisted on drinks so she was playing along for now.

Now being the operative word because she
wasn’t sure how much more she could take. Dinner had been bad
enough. Just as she’d feared nearly everyone else in the bridal
party was happily part of a couple and they’d all brought their
significant others with them and a few had even brought their
children.

The icing on the cake though was the surprise
that the groomsman that would be escorting her down the aisle the
next day was none other than Woody Hopkins, her eleventh grade
boyfriend. He’d changed little since they parted ways except that
his formerly muscular football player frame was softer and rounder
and his hairline had begun to recede as though it was scared of his
forehead. He asked that they not harbor hard feelings for the time
she keyed his car in high school and she’d agreed even though he’d
totally deserved it for lying that he’d gone all the way with her
in the backseat.

Still, it hadn’t been all bad. Molly’s
parents had beamed and gushed over her fiancé. For a second she’d
figured it probably had something to do with the fact the guy was
from a very old, very wealthy oil family from down near Odessa but
she’d dismissed that as her own jealousy rearing its ugly head.
Molly seemed absolutely blissful and Blue was old and alone and
evading questions about why she didn’t have a man of her own.

Yes, those questions had come time and again.
It wasn’t so bad from Molly or even Molly’s mother. They genuinely
seemed to care if she ever found a husband and if she was happy.
When the questions started coming from Molly’s cousins who’d all
married before the ripe old age of 22 she’d begun to drink.

She’d never wanted to get married that young.
She couldn’t even imagine marrying her high school sweetheart the
way so many of her classmates had. Just the idea of spending her
life with a guy like Woody Hopkins was enough to turn her stomach.
She’d never gotten serious with anyone until she was away at
college that first year.

Duck Tucker had been her very first love. His
real name was Doug but he always went by Duck. She couldn’t quite
remember why now, not that it mattered.

Duck had been handsome, the type of true-blue
boy her beauty queen mother would have adored. He was all Texan
with his sandy blonde hair, blue eyes and pearly whites. He played
football and he’d scored the winning touchdown against Oklahoma
which had sealed the deal that he’d win not just the game but her
heart as well. She gave him her virginity to go along with it.

Looking back on the year she spent with him,
it was easy to see he was one of the truly good guys. He was
probably one of the last of a dying breed of gentlemen who could be
tough but also sweet. And she’d broken his heart and never looked
back.

Oh she’d loved him for a time of course, but
she’d been eighteen and full of wanderlust. She hadn’t wanted
forever. She’d wanted to be free and she’d left him and then
followed it up by leaving her first college to travel the country
for a few months. She’d wanted more than Duck had offered, more
than Texas had offered; she just wasn’t sure what more there was
now that she’d spent ten years out there.

Duck on the other hand was probably living
the life he’d always known he wanted. He was probably married to
one of those perky cheerleaders with two and a half kids, an SUV
and going to work in the mayor’s office of some po-dunk town not
dissimilar from Fate. He was probably perfectly comfortable and
content.

Blue sipped her beer and ignored Molly waving
at her to join the other girls on the dance floor. No way was she
doing a line dance to a song that referred to women’s asses as
“bodonkadonks.” She ordered another beer from the passing waitress,
knowing she’d have to up the ante if she was going to hang in
there.

After Duck she’d had a string of boyfriends,
mostly forgettable faces with more forgettable names. She
remembered Glenn the guitarist and Dale the drummer. Then there’d
been Brad the biker and Paul the future politician. The one thing
they’d all had in common was that they were emotionally unavailable
and she’d tried unsuccessfully to make them love her.

Her psych professor at one of her colleges
told her that she had daddy issues. She’d rolled her eyes and
dropped the class. It wasn’t like she needed a PHD to come up with
that logic.

Early on each and every one of them had
broken her heart in one way or another. Oh she’d been crazy about
them all at one point in the relationship or another so that
inevitably when she realized they were never going to return her
devotion and it ended, she’d felt like everything inside her
shattered and would never fit back together. It had taken her a
long time to see that loving blindly got your nowhere and no
one.

She didn’t hand her heart out so easily
anymore. It had taken enough blows over the years. It was easier to
play the game and get out while the going was still good. Knowing
the difference in men who stood a chance of hurting her and men she
was actually interested in but wouldn’t was a line she tread
delicately. Most of the time she stayed on the right side of it.
Most of the time was the responsible way to go.

The waitress returned with her new beer and
she finished off the old one before taking a sip and letting the
chill burn her throat. Yeah, that helped to loosen her headache
just a little. She watched Molly trade off the girls to rub against
her soon to be husband and grimaced. Staying on the responsible
side of the line meant she might someday find a nice guy to
marry.

That’s what she was supposed to want
right?

So why then did all of the nice, responsible
men have to suck so much in the sack? Her last few relationships,
if they could be called that, had all been duds. Not from the
get-go, at first they seemed perfect. They were handsome and
successful. They had manners and treated her well. But the minute
the relationship progressed to the bedroom she quickly found out
what was lacking.

She tried to stick it out. Sometimes a little
instruction could help. Technique could be learned after all.
Breeding was innate.

But a girl could only take so much and
eventually she got tired of their misdirection and her lack of
desire and kicked them to the curb. She could buy her own nice
dinners and go to the movies with her friends. She needed a man to
kiss her senseless and give her orgasms.

Simple really or so it should have been.

A good-looking man slid into the chair beside
her and broke into her depressing thoughts. Thick, shaggy dark
brown hair fell over his forehead. Below that a pair of clear blue
eyes peered at her and if she wasn’t mistaken they were dancing
with mischief. A smooth smile rose up his face revealing a matching
set of dimples on his baby-smooth face. She was certain she knew
that pretty face from somewhere and tilted her head to meet his
eyes.

“Well hello there Bluebell.” He greeted her
with a dark drawl that she’d have bet money usually got the girls
out of their panties in a matter of minutes.

“Hello.”

“You don’t remember me do you?” He chuckled
and the sound was so familiar that her gut instantly clenched. She
knew that sound but not because she remembered it coming from him.
No, she’d heard it earlier in the day, on the side of the road.
Recognition mingled with some really old memories and settled over
the gut instinct.

“Riley. Riley West.” She guessed.

“You do remember me.” His grin verged on smug
for a split-second, “I told my brother you would. We were in the
same class in school. I asked you to the homecoming dance sophomore
year.”

She tried not to let her eyes dart around the
room in search of said brother to see if it was the one that made
her stomach twist and instead smiled politely, “And I said no.”

“Gave me my first broken heart.”

“Oh I’m sure it healed.” She laughed as he
clutched his chest.

“You’re just as pretty as you were in high
school, prettier maybe.”

She tried not to roll her eyes, “Thanks.”

He was cute, really cute even. She’d have
been a liar to say she wouldn’t have looked at him twice. Those
West brothers obviously had some very good genetic material hidden
beneath those ridiculously alluring faces. But the one in front of
her didn’t send her body into gratuitous heat waves the way the man
that’d changed her tire for her despite the fact she’d accused him
of being a serial killer did.

“I heard you were in town for Molly’s
wedding.”

“Yeah, I drove in earlier today for the
rehearsal dinner. We just finished up and Molly wanted to get some
drinks so here I am.”

“Zach told me he ran into you on the side of
the highway. Said your little sports car had a flat. Lucky he was
there I suppose.”

“Yes, lucky…” She nodded, “He was really
helpful. I definitely owe him one for stopping.”

“I’m sure he’d love to let you buy him a
beer.” Riley’s head popped up so fast she didn’t have time to slap
her hand across his mouth, though she would have if she’d been
quicker, “Hey! Zach! Come over here!”

Blue blinked at him as several heads in the
crowd turned to see what all the commotion was about. She wasn’t
sure if she wanted to hide under the table or simply run out of the
crowded bar. Neither of those was a suitable option because already
she could see the crowd part and she forgot to breathe for the
second time that day.

She hadn’t thought it was possible but he
looked better in the smoky bar than he had when he stepped out of
that Ford just a few hours ago. He’d changed clothes but the blue
plaid pearl snap with the sleeves pushed up his big forearms showed
off just as much of his hard frame as the t-shirt had. He’d lost
the baseball cap and his hair was shorter than she’d imagined,
almost buzzed to his scalp in a militaristic fashion that
reinforced her first instincts.

Bad. Dangerous. Sexy. Her mouth was
practically watering.

“What the Sam Hill are you yelling about
now?” He cleared the crowd and got a look at where his little
brother was sitting. Those green eyes slowly moved over her and
when he spoke her name in that deep rumble she felt the
increasingly familiar urge to lick her lips and bat her lashes.
“Hello Bluebell.”

“Zachary.” She managed to only get his name
out which was just plain stupid.

Obviously he wasn’t affected by her since he
was standing there with that look of disapproval curling at his
mouth. Obviously he wasn’t attracted to her since he hadn’t taken
her up on her completely inappropriate offer to drive her car and
do a whole lot more. He’d practically run screaming once he got her
name and she should remember that before she made an even bigger
fool of herself in front of him.

“My friends call me Zach.” He sauntered a few
steps closer to the table.

Her reaction to him just proved how long
she’d toed the line with responsible men. She was just in desperate
need of good sex and he looked like he might know a thing or two
dozen about that. Men that looked like him always knew their way
around a bed, or a couch, or the backseat of a car. Not that she
was thinking about him and sex in any of those places or
anything.

“I take it you made it the rest of the way
home without incident.”

“Yeah, I’m going to see Bert tomorrow. I just
hope he can get me something permanent before I head out on
Sunday.”

She should not be thinking of sex with Zach
West. No sir-ee Bob she was going to stop thinking about it
immediately. But damn, it was hard to think of anything else with
him standing there looking so sexy in that pearl-snap that’d peel
apart if she pulled just hard enough.

“So you’re heading back to the city in a
couple of days then?” His gaze slid across her face before meeting
her eyes again.

“Um, yeah, that’s the plan.” She took a deep
swallow of her beer. “I’m not really a Fate forever type of
girl.”

“I caught that vibe.” He grinned.