Dylan (4 page)

“Damn,” he ground out.

“Something on your mind?” Tyler urged.

Dylan shook his head. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

His brother nodded and Jesse hollered, “I'm heading back to wait for the hay delivery.”

They nodded and waited until he rode out of sight. “OK,” Dylan said. “Tell me what happened. Where is she?”

“Gone,” Tyler answered him, knowing without asking that Dylan had meant Lori. His brother sighed. “I guess you were too busy working over at the Lucky Star to notice she hasn't been around for a couple of days and before you ask, she'll be back.”

Relief flowed through Dylan. “Well, that's all right then.”

“After the wedding…”

Dylan's gut clenched as dread swamped the relief. “Hers?”

Tyler nodded.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, so ease up on our little brother.”

“Just one more question,” Dylan said. “Did she go chasing after that shit-for-brains—”

Tyler cut him off, answering, “Yep. Emily's worked hard to find someone to pick up the slack now that Lori's gone.”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“You OK with bartering your carpentry skills?” Tyler began only to be interrupted by Dylan.

“Don't care, as long as we can eat.”

Tyler looked as if he wanted to say more, but Dylan was done jawing and shook his head at his brother. Tyler shrugged and turned his horse toward home.

Riding back to the ranch house, Dylan wondered what would make a man like Jesse pine for a woman who didn't want him. The truth hit him right between the eyes: sometimes it was simply something about the woman that made a man want to sit up and beg, no matter how many times the woman had turned him down. Luscious red lips that begged to be kissed and siren-green eyes that lulled a man into thinking he was something special right before he crashed against the rocks.

***

Ronnie opened one eye and sighed. The room was no longer spinning, a sure sign that the worst was over. Sitting up, she brushed the hair out of her eyes and groaned. Her stomach felt like she'd ingested broken glass. Rubbing it, she knew she'd have to get going. Emily had promised that one of the Garahan brothers would be stopping by later today to help with the repairs to her shop downstairs. If she planned to be coherent by then, she'd better get started. Too bad she didn't remember which one of the Garahan brothers was the carpenter. Would it be the one from last night?

She shivered, stiff and chilly from spending the night on the bathroom floor. “Tea and toasted Italian bread, plain… no butter.” Her grandmother's patented cure-all for an upset stomach.

With that in mind, she stumbled to the kitchen. “Why didn't I stick with my usual, a nice cold longneck bottle of beer?” Since coming out to Texas, she'd discovered one of its treasures: Shiner beer. Her favorite hangout, the Lucky Star, had three kinds of Shiner on tap: Bock, a rich dark beer; Blonde, a golden lager; and Light, a tasty light beer. She'd tried them all but still preferred hers in a bottle. She'd had a bad experience at a bar back in Jersey that hadn't cleaned out their taps properly, and she had been sick as a dog and emptied her stomach that time too. Too bad she hadn't remembered that last night. She reached for the teapot.

Ah well, she was twenty-five now, and she knew better. Last night was an aberration; she wouldn't make the same mistake again. She was older and therefore wiser. Turning the spigot on, she filled the glass teapot with water and carried it over to the stove. Her head felt just a bit too light. “Probably dehydrated myself.” Disgusted with her total lack of brains last night, she berated herself, mumbling, “Idiot, moron, stupid…
stunad
!”

“No, Bambina… sei giovane.”
Her grandmother always told Ronnie that it was because she was young and not stupid, until the day she'd told Nonni that she planned to marry a nice Italian boy. Nonni had been in favor of Ronnie marrying one of the Murphy brothers. Even though she would have been in danger of fulfilling the DelVecchio Curse. Ronnie fought against it for all of the same reasons. Nonni wanted those grandbabies badly—just as badly as Ronnie wanted to prove that she was immune and not like the other DelVecchio women in her family rumored to have fallen like angels who'd just lost their wings.

Ronnie hadn't listened to her heart or her grandmother. She did everything she could to avoid the Murphy brothers after the oldest had told her best friend that he wanted to go out with Ronnie. But that had been high school and a long time ago. Ronnie was a firm believer that fate and destiny needed a push to make happen what
you
wanted to happen. You had total control, and she'd taken care of the curse when she'd married Anthony Faustino.

Too bad he'd lived up to the rumors she'd decided she could live with and
had
lived with—right up to and after their wedding day. She'd thought she could change the young Italian stallion that she'd married and could convince him to change his wandering ways. Nonni had been right about that too. The only person you have the power to change is yourself. Popping two slices of Italian bread in the toaster, she sat and waited for it to cook. Taking a tentative bite, she chewed slowly, not wanting to rush things and end up with a repeat of last night. By the time the first slice was gone, the tea water was ready.

“I hate tea.” But she knew coffee wouldn't settle her stomach the same way tea always did. Grumbling, she scooped up a spoonful, blew across it, and sipped. “Yuck.”

By the time she'd eaten the second slice of bread, half of the tea was gone and her stomach and head felt as if they were in sync. “Better,” she sighed. “I'll live.”

Her cell phone rang and she automatically reached for her purse, but it wasn't inside. She got up and followed the sound to the bathroom and the haphazard pile of clothes under the sink. The memory of stripping out of her jeans led to another: being lassoed and reeled in by a gorgeous hunk of cowboy.

Dylan the Delicious had lips that should be licensed as lethal weapons. Ronnie shivered remembering the way he'd coaxed a response from her.
Damn.
She had to get her mind on the major task at hand; the carpenter was coming in a couple of hours and there was more cleaning up to do before the man would be able to find the wood he'd be repairing. By the time she uncovered her phone, she'd missed the call. “Great,” she mumbled. “Do not think about Dylan,” she warned herself, pocketing her phone.

Too
late.

The man filled her thoughts and messed with her mind. Unable to concentrate, only able to think about one thing: broad shoulders and a thickly muscled chest that were part and parcel of one towering example of pure unadulterated Texas cowboy. She'd always been a sucker for a man with broad shoulders. Ronnie wished he were here. She'd take back her last words to him and beg him to come home with her. If she had, she wouldn't have kept drinking and wouldn't have been in such sad shape this morning.

“Yeah, I know, wishing doesn't make it happen.” Her head began to throb. “Time for aspirin.”

A half hour later, her headache was under control and she'd donned a pair of yoga pants and her favorite T-shirt, one she'd stolen from her cousin Vito. It always shifted to one side and slid off her shoulder, but it was soft, roomy, and reminded her of home. Placing her phone on the bottom step so she wouldn't miss any other calls, she surveyed the situation.

“Why did I move to Texas anyway?” she grumbled, tucking her hair behind her ear as she bent over to reach for yet another ruined bit of satin and lace. What was left of the teddy was soft and supple, guaranteed to catch a man's eye and raise his blood pressure. The sudden thought that she'd like to raise Dylan's blood pressure irritated her. “He's not even here and the man's messing with my mind.”

Focusing on cleaning, rather than what the mess used to be, was easier to deal with than the heartache of looking at the tattered remains of her fledgling business amidst chunks of wood, drywall, and glass—the result of what happens when some trigger-happy teenager with too much time on his hands goes on a rampage. Why else would someone she didn't know just break in and destroy the contents of her store?

The devastation had been complete—her collection of heirloom fragrances and reproduction perfume bottles, her selection of design-your-own-fragrance massage oil—all of it had been crushed, mangled, or poured out onto the hardwood floor. If that hadn't been enough, someone had broken in a second time and used a knife on her lingerie and a baseball bat on her walls, windows, and shelves.

Although she agreed with her friends and fellow female business owners that it was an act of boredom, she wondered about her collection of massage oils. A lot of towns didn't want anything X-rated within their borders, not that massage oil could be considered X-rated—well at least it hadn't been back home in New Jersey. But things were very different out here in Texas and she'd come up against a couple of narrow-minded individuals who'd rather strike the first verbal blow before even knowing what the facts were. Some towns wouldn't think twice before denying an application for a business permit. The town of Pleasure hadn't given her a hard time; the town clerk had written up the permit, stamped it, and handed it over with a smile, so she wondered if maybe one of those self-appointed do-gooders downtown had decided that her stock wasn't fit to sell in their town. Just because some of the lingerie was a bit on the risqué side didn't mean it had to be wrapped up in brown paper so no one would be offended by the see-through lace panels and teeny tiny thongs that were some of her best-selling items.

The break-ins and destruction of Guilty Pleasures had been a total shock and had ripped Ronnie's world apart. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn't want to give in to them. DelVecchio women weren't weak. She'd been accused of being stubborn, hardheaded, and loyal to the bone—but never weak. Too bad she hadn't found a man who appreciated her best qualities… yet. But that didn't mean that there wasn't a man out there worth cultivating and convincing that she would be worth getting to know. She wasn't a native of Texas, but she'd met quite a few of the local women and didn't think she was that different from them.

Her cell phone buzzed across the bottom step, the only surface left intact… the staircase to her apartment… reminding her of the fact that not everyone she'd met since she came out to Pleasure had been honest with her. Someone out there resented the hell out of her. Finding out why would be the next step—right after she figured out who did the damage to her store. Ready for a break, she tossed the bits of satin and lace on top of the pile she'd begun and lunged for her phone.

“Hey, Ronnie. How's the head?”

She grimaced. “How do you think?”

Her friend Shannon chuckled. “Maybe you should have stuck with your usual. José isn't always friendly. He has he moments when he's everybody's friend, and then before you know it—”

“You wake up lying on the tile floor of your bathroom and can't remember how you got there,” Ronnie finished for her.

“Oh hey, Ron,” Shannon said. “I didn't know you would get sick. I thought you were just buzzed.”

Ronnie shrugged and tried to make light of one of the worst cases of overindulging that she'd ever had. “Not your fault. I didn't have to keep drinking.”

“So what are you doing now that you've joined the quarter-century club?”

She snickered. “Sorting through what's left of my shop.”

“Did Emily's carpenter friend show up yet?”

Ronnie walked over to the front window and looked out from between the boards that she'd painstakingly nailed across the opening wondering which brother it would be. “He's supposed to be here in an hour or so. I guess his day-job boss isn't flexible, so he can't get here until around seven o'clock.”

It was Shannon's turn to snicker. “I hope it's the middle brother. You deserve something good happening today. Need any help sorting?” her friend asked.

Ronnie looked around her and wanted to cry. “Nope. I'm good.”

“Call me later. I want to hear all about him.”

“You just want me to fill in the details, like how well his stellar butt muscles fill out his battered jeans.”

“That would definitely do for starters,” Shannon agreed. “Besides, I know you're a sucker for a man wearing a tool belt.”

“If he can fix what's left of my shop, I'll be forever grateful.”

“So you really accepted their deal to cook for them in exchange for the labor to do the repairs to your shop?”

Ronnie walked back over and sat down on the bottom step. “I'll buy the materials and they supply the food. All I had to do was send over a fresh-baked pie and they'd agreed.” She paused and shook her head. “I just wish I could remember which brother is coming.” Tapping her finger to her bottom lip, she mused, “Now that I think of it, I don't remember Emily mentioning his name.”

“Are you going to cook your awesome homemade lasagna crepes?”

“Absolutely.”

“With your Nonni's red sauce?”

“That's the plan, but do you think a bunch of boys from Texas will appreciate Italian food?” Ronnie wasn't sure about that; most of the people she'd met seemed to eat barbecue beef, steak, and hamburgers.

“They'll be convinced once they've tasted ambrosia.”

Ronnie laughed. “Nonni would love to hear her simple sauce referred to that way. I'll have to tell her when I talk to her on Sunday.”

“There's nothing simple about her pasta sauce.”

“I'll let you know how it goes, Shannon,” Ronnie promised, remembering she didn't have all of the ingredients she needed for the sauce. “I've got to pick up a few things before my cowboy carpenter gets here.” A shiver of anticipation shot through her. Rubbing her palms together, she realized she was about to drool. Time to get ahold of herself; she didn't want to get all worked up if her carpenter was the wrong brother.