“There really isn’t much of a way to make a living way out here, otherwise, is there?” The bride’s question was rhetorical.
“Tourism does have a downside. Because we were getting so many people littering the caverns with letters, the town built a Cupid statue fountain in the botanical gardens and put up an official ‘Letters to Cupid’ box there.”
“Oh, this is such a good story.” The blond bride turned to her husband, clasping her hands together in a plea gesture. “Tiger puss, we’ve just got to visit those caverns.”
“We’re supposed to leave for Big Bend this afternoon,” he said.
She batted her eyes at him. “Could we extend our stay an extra day and stay one day less at Big Bend?”
He looked at Natalie. “Would you be able to accommodate us another day?”
Natalie smiled. That was why she told them the story. “I think that can be arranged.”
The blonde hugged her young husband, the older ladies went back to the buffet for seconds on the cinnamon rolls, and the writer got on his cell phone.
Natalie bade them all good morning and went about her business, but once away from people, her thoughts tracked back to the motorcycle man and his midnight black hair and his impressively muscled body. She tried to tamp down the image of him, but it was impossible to shut down her jumbled mind. That piercing look he’d sent her, like he knew exactly what she looked like naked, brought an unwanted burn to her cheeks.
Stop being silly
, she scolded herself, and limped to her office, where she ordered Pearl’s flour, and inputted the young couple into the computer as staying an extra night.
Now, she had one more task before returning to the community center. She had to decide what to do about Red Daggett. If he wasn’t coming back, she needed to get his room rented out, and the sooner the better.
Red had been staying in the carriage house that once upon a time had served as servant quarters. There were two other tenants in the carriage house. One was Lars and the other was a nineteen-year-old computer science whiz kid who went by the nickname of Gizmo. He rarely came out of his room except to attend classes. He’d even managed to sweet-talk Pearl into delivering his meals to his room. Occasionally, Gizmo and Zoey carpooled to Sul Ross together in the Cupid’s Rest van.
The room looked out over the duck pond that was situated in the pocket park behind the backs of the houses on Stone Street. When she was a kid, Natalie used to hide in the red-tipped photinia hedges that grew along the fencerow between her house and the park and watch the wild ducks fly in. Most ducks headed for the lake, but a few outcasts and stragglers always ended up in the duck pond.
She pulled a key from her pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped over the threshold. She glanced around the room. Tidy, sparsely furnished, nothing out of place.
It felt like spying. She folded her arms. What should she do? “Red, where are you?”
She tried his cell phone, but it went to voice mail, just as it had the other half-dozen times she’d called him.
Can’t leave the room vacant forever
. No, but it felt so cold, just giving up on him. She could put his stuff in storage and use the room for tourists instead of another long-term boarder. That way, if and when Red returned, he could move back in without a long wait. Eventually, she could go back to renting it to long-term boarders if she wanted.
Plan of action. Good. Follow through.
Natalie got a cardboard box from the attic and started clearing Red’s meager things from the chest of drawers—an old Timex wristwatch; $4.23 in pennies, dimes, and nickels; a handful of metal washers; a pair of worn-out house slippers; an unopened package of brand-new Hanes boxer underwear; a stack of carefully folded white T-shirts; one pair of faded Wrangler blue jeans; three button-down Western shirts; half a pack of nicotine gum; cheap drugstore sunglasses; six pairs of rolled-up boot socks; empty bottles of both paroxetine and doxepin; and a bus ticket stub. Red hadn’t owned a vehicle. He’d kept mostly to himself, walked to his job at Chantilly’s bar at the marina, and did odd jobs around the place for Natalie.
Red had lived here for two years, but when it got down to it, she knew hardly anything about him. She remembered their first meeting.
He’d shown up on her front porch, wearing a green windbreaker in spite of the summer heat, and navy blue mirrored sunglasses. He sported a droopy Sam Elliot mustache that hid his upper lip. He was tall and stocky, but stood with his shoulders hunched as if trying to fold in on himself. His long strawberry blond hair had been pulled back into a greasy ponytail. Around his left wrist, he wore a braided black bracelet with a spent bullet casing tied in the middle. He had on blue jeans and a Western shirt, but he didn’t really look like a cowboy. His eyes were too wary, his movements too guarded.
“Room?” he’d mumbled.
“For the night?” she’d asked.
“To stay.”
At the time, Lars was her only long-term boarder and she’d hesitated, not sure she wanted to turn the B&B into a rooming house, but then he pulled a money clip from his pocket and started peeling off twenties.
“Follow me,” she said, and led him to this room.
Junie Mae had freaked out when she’d first seen Red. “He looks like a felon. Did you do a background check?”
“Looks can be deceiving. He’s gentle as a mouse, keeps to himself.”
“He could be a serial killer.”
“Or he could just be someone who needs a soft place to land.”
“You’re too empathetic.” Junie Mae snorted. “Not everyone is worth your compassion.”
“I don’t get a bad vibe from him.”
“You’re also too trusting.”
“I’ve never had it go against me. I believe that, by and large, people live up to your expectations of them.”
“Still, have Calvin do a background check on him, just in case.”
To keep Junie Mae from nagging her and because she had guests and a sister to consider, she’d gone ahead and asked Cal to do the background check.
She learned Red had been arrested a couple of times for bar fights and that he was an ex–Navy SEAL diagnosed with severe PTSD. Calvin had advised her to evict him, but Natalie didn’t have the heart. What kind of person would she be if she turned her back on a military veteran? Red had served his country. He deserved a break.
Red never spoke about his past. A couple of times, she saw him coming out of the little run-down house on Hill Street where AA meetings were held, but she never mentioned it to him.
Had he perhaps fallen off the wagon and gone on a drinking binge? She hoped not.
The sound of frantic quacking came from the duck pond. Were neighborhood dogs after the ducks?
She hurried to the window.
A mallard female was in a panic, flapping her wings like something was chasing her, but Natalie spied no predator. Why didn’t she just fly away?
The duck’s quacking turned pitiful, doomed. Natalie couldn’t bear to see any creature in pain. Moving as quickly as she could, Natalie left the carriage house. Sometimes, her lameness really bothered her. She hated being vulnerable. Zoey used to tease her and say if monsters or vampires or zombies were ever chasing them, she’d be the first one eaten.
Good thing there were no such things as monsters, vampires, or zombies.
Natalie left the perimeter of the McCleary property, pushing aside the short backyard gate to the community area between the surrounding houses. Back in the 1920s, the neighboring homeowners had gotten together, pooled their money, and bought the vacant plot of land behind them and turned it into an oasis. There was no playground equipment—it wasn’t that kind of a park—just trees and benches, and a wandering pathway that led in from Dennis Street on the west side and circled around the pond. The round trip made for a nice one-mile walk that Natalie’s B&B guests enjoyed.
By the time she reached the flailing duck, the poor thing was so frantic Natalie feared she’d kill herself.
“Hey, there,” she soothed, slipped off her Keds at the edge of the pond, and unstrapped her AFO.
The water was murky green with algae. Lilly pads, corkscrew rushes, and cattails grew in profusion. The pond was spring fed and sheltered in the shade of mimosa, desert willows, and mesquite trees. All kinds of squiggly, squirmy things lived there. As kids, she and Zoey had caught tadpoles and kept them in a fish aquarium, watching them grow into frogs.
She took a faltering step.
Mud squished up between her toes, minnows darted underneath the surface, slimy anacharis brushed against her legs as she moved. The water smelled of briny musk.
The female mallard strained to swim away, but she seemed trapped in one place. The closer Natalie came, the more the duck flailed.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Natalie crooned.
Quack! Quack! Quack!
“No need for a heart attack, sweetheart. I’m here to help. What’s going on?” Natalie crouched low trying to see what was causing the ruckus, and spotted part of a plastic six-pack ring sticking up behind the duck. Apparently, she’d gotten her feet enmeshed in the plastic ring and couldn’t get out.
“Damn litterbugs,” Natalie muttered.
Sometimes, late at night, careless teens sneaked back here to drink beer and make out. Zoey used to be one of those teens, but Natalie had never had that luxury. She’d never once sneaked out. Never dated in high school. For that matter, she’d never even had a sip of beer. Goody Two-shoes. That’s what Zoey called her. As if she’d had much of a choice.
The duck was bobbing and quacking and flapping. How was she going to get close enough to help the poor thing out?
“It’s okay, Miss Mallard, I’m here to help.”
The duck looked skeptical.
“Honestly, it’s what I do. Just ask anyone. I’ve even been accused of being too helpful. Or as my sister likes to put it, sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, but I bet in the end you’ll be grateful for my help.” She took another step forward.
Quack
. The duck’s voice softened.
“That’s right, relax.”
The duck was no longer trying to swim away. She waited, finally calmed or too exhausted to try to escape, and blindly accepted her fate.
The water was up to Natalie’s knees now, dampening the hem of her sundress. The duck was still a few feet away. It had been a long time since she’d mucked around in the pond and she didn’t remember how deep it was in the middle.
What if it was over her head? She paused. Maybe she should go back for a change of clothes before plunging ahead.
Honestly, she didn’t think that pond was that deep and she was worried what might happen to the duck if she left her alone for too long. If a dog did happen by, the duck would be defenseless. She blew out her breath and took another step. Her ankles sank into the ooze.
Ugh.
She’d never been a tomboy like Zoey, who would throw herself headlong into any adventure without giving a thought to getting dirty or making a mess.
Gram had often said Zoey’s middle name should have been Fearless. Did that mean that
her
middle name was Fearful? Cowardly. In her heart, she suspected it might be true. Natalie was afraid of a lot of things—thunderstorms and rattlesnakes, not being able to pay the bills and ending up alone. These fears and many more churned around in her head when she lay in bed at night, but her biggest fear was the fear of heights.
“Completely understandable,” Gram had said when she tried to get Natalie on a plane to visit relatives a few years after her parents’ death on the mountain and not long after Grandpa’s fatal heart attack. The plane was so tiny. All the planes at the Cupid airport were small and the sky was so tall.
Natalie had freaked out worse than the duck with the plastic ring tangled around her legs. She remembered hyperventilating so badly that the copilot had brought her a brown paper bag to breathe into.
“No worries.” Gram kissed her on the forehead. “We’ll drive.”
“I wanna fly!” Zoey had cried. “I wanna go up in the sky.”
“How come she’s not scared?” Natalie whispered to Gram. “She was in the plane too.”
“She doesn’t know any better,” Gram said, and then with a tinge of admiration in her voice added, “Zoey is fearless.”
Shame had rushed through Natalie and she’d longed to be fearless too, but she knew there were some fears you didn’t dare face because if you did, you could lose everything.
So they made the nine-hour drive to Fort Worth to see their cousins, and as they drove, Zoey would look up into the sky and say, “We coulda been there already if Natalie wasn’t such a chicken.” Then she made chicken noises, tucking her hands under her armpits and flapping her arms like wings.
“Ignore her.” Gram leaned over the driver’s seat to whisper in Natalie’s ear. “She doesn’t understand.”
That made her feel somewhat better, but still, her fear had caused an inconvenience.
Natalie and the duck stared at each other.
“Don’t be afraid of the ring. I’m here to help. Be like Zoey. Be fearless and you’ll soon fly away,” Natalie murmured.
The duck did not move.
“That’s it. We’re going to do this together. Face our fears.” She reached under the water, searching for the plastic ring.
The duck stared into Natalie’s eyes, mesmerized, trusting.
“Good girl.” She almost had it.
A growling motorcycle engine roared up the circular park path just as Natalie’s fingers found the plastic ring.
The panicking duck flew up, the tip of its wings brushing against Natalie’s face.
She gasped, lost her balance, and, arms windmilling, fell backward into the water.
Love at first sight makes absolutely no sense until you experience it, and then everything else is nonsense.
—MILLIE GREENWOOD
T
he woman came up sputtering.
Soaking wet strands of soft brown hair clung to her face and dripped down her shoulders. She swiped at her eyes and then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and glared at him. Hot as a smoking gun.
But Dade wasn’t looking at her eyes.
His gaze was glued to her chest. He slipped off his sunglasses for a better look, folded them, and stuck the shades in the front pocket of his T-shirt.
Yeah, it was rude, but he couldn’t seem to glance away. Her dress was soaked, revealing clearly that her nipples were knotted up hard.
Involuntarily, he licked his lips, and then he noticed that she’d noticed that he was staring, just as a realization slammed into his head solid as a two-by-four.
It was the honeysuckle woman.
A single word lit up his brain in bold, red, glowing letters.
HOME.
What the hell? Dade had never in his life had a real home. The military was the closest he’d ever come. Why did he think home when he looked into her eyes?
Shit. This was crazy.
Dade sat astride his Harley. The woman was standing in the middle of the pond, her hands on her hips, looking like a pissed-off water nymph.
Something inside him shifted in a most peculiar way, sort of like an imploded building falling in on itself, leaving behind nothing but a pile of dusty rubble.
Breathe, Vega. Just take a deep breath and hold it.
All well and good in theory, but his treacherous lungs barely stirred air and his head buzzed as if he’d pounded down a couple of shots of tequila in record time.
He didn’t know what to say. His pulse hammered so hard and quick that he wondered if he was getting sick. He had hawk-eye vision, and even from this distance, he could see the pulse at the hollow of her throat pounding just as hard as his was.
If he was sick, so was she. The same restless fever.
Even in the best of situations he wasn’t a chatty guy. Keep your mouth shut and just act. That was his motto. Too many people dicked around, talking, dissecting, assessing, Monday-morning quarterbacking. Not enough people took the bull by the horns and just did what needed to be done.
Except at this moment, his baser instincts were screaming at him to get off the motorcycle, slog through the water, grab the woman around the waist, throw her over his shoulder, drag her off to his lair, and have his way with her.
What the frig is the matter with you? You’re here to find Red, not get your rocks off.
He could have his pick of women and often did.
What was it about this one that left him speechless? What was this spell she’d cast over him? Honestly, he was surprised to run across her again. The woman in yellow. How could she be here? As if she lived in the pond. As if she’d sprouted there and thrived.
Fairy tale.
He felt as if he was in the grip of some idiotic fairy tale. She was the beauty and he the beast. He thrived on loneliness and anger. It had served him well for thirty-one years. Why mess with what worked?
“Well,” she said finally, softly, in a voice as lyrical as a meadowlark’s warble. “Well.”
He chuckled, and that surprised him too. He wasn’t a cheerful guy by nature and she hadn’t said anything that was remotely funny, but a strange lightness moved through him, churning up from his stomach into his throat to escape in a laugh.
“It’s not funny.” A stern glower creased her brow.
He pressed his lips together, trying to stop the laughter, and realized with a start why he was laughing. He was scared!
Why are you scared? You were a frickin’ Navy SEAL. What is it about this sweet little bit of honeysuckle that’s got you wanting to run as far and as fast as you can in the opposite direction?
He had absolutely no answer to that question.
But he had other questions. Who was she and what was she doing in the middle of the pond?
He swung off his Harley.
She clenched her hands into fists.
He swallowed.
She raised her chin.
For some unknown reason, he thought about Tombstone, Arizona, where he recently completed an assignment—stormy skies filled with voluminous dark clouds, tumbleweed-strewn dirt streets, the taste of gritty sand on the tongue, cowboys with six-shooters hitched onto their hips.
Gunfights? First home and now gunfights? Had his brain misfired? Where were these images coming from? Why did she make him feel both accepted and challenged, throwing down a gauntlet with her eyes. He had no idea what that gauntlet was or why she was putting it out there, but he could not stop staring at her.
A match.
He’d met his match.
He tried to bat the thought away, but it stuck there. Velcro. Duct tape. Super Glue.
Her nipples were tight as head bolts on a factory engine, poking straight up through her wet dress. She seemed rooted, as if her legs were buried deep into the bottom of the pond.
His eyes were back on those breasts, lush and pert and fully round beneath her wet dress.
She crossed her arms over her chest.
His nose burned. His throat tightened. His eyes hooked onto hers and he simply could not look away. His breathing came out short and hot, and his legs felt oddly weak.
“I’m here,” he said, without even knowing he was going to say it.
“I can see that,” she answered, as if it was a conversation that they’d long been meaning to have.
How could that be? He didn’t know her, and yet he was feeling all these bizarre things. Dade was usually pretty damn good at shutting out unwanted feelings. Why couldn’t he do it now?
How must he look to her; his cheeks hollowed with worry over Red, his hair tangled in windblown swirls, his skin ruddied by the desert sun? Could she see exhaustion on him? Feel the violence of his past? Taste the impending grief that something cataclysmic had happened to the only person in the entire world he loved?
Her body might be rigid, but her eyes were soft, accepting, and compassionate. She cared about people. Truly cared.
It made him angry, her gentleness. Didn’t she realize it was a cold and vicious world out there? That trusting people opened you up to a whole wide world of hurt? Didn’t she get just how damn vulnerable she was?
A crow flew overhead, crying out a harsh caw. Tiny ripples spread over the surface of the pond as a small perch came up to snatch a water strider in its jaws. The scent of fresh-brewed coffee drifted on the air.
Even though he’d changed his clothes and done his best to clean up in the bathroom of a convenience store, he still smelled faintly of gasoline. He’d put on a fresh pair of Wranglers, a black T-shirt, and a weather-beaten straw cowboy hat before he’d gone to Chantilly’s bar to apply for Red’s old job. He’d found the owner asleep in a hammock on the back patio of the nightclub and he’d roused him.
The old-timer had snorted awake, peered up at Dade with bleary eyes.
“Name’s Dade Vega.”
The old man squinted at him with tarnished eyes. He was skinny, leathery, and possessed an oversized head that didn’t match his body. He had a short snub nose and big ears with attached lobes, causing him to resemble Curious George. “Jasper Grass.”
Dade lifted an eyebrow.
“I don’t wanna hear no marijuana jokes.” He pronounced it
mara-ja-wanna
. “Heard every damn one of them.”
“I’m not making any jokes,” Dade assured him. “Looking for work. Got anything?”
“You ever tend bar?”
“Yes. Been a bouncer too.” And he’d been a security expert and a bodyguard and a mercenary, but he wasn’t putting those on his résumé.
“You’re hired,” Grass said.
“That easy?”
The man shrugged. “I need help, you need work, why mess with red tape? I don’t ask questions that I don’t want to know the answer to.”
“Ostrich policy?”
“I mind my business, you mind yours, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Gotta place to stay?”
“No.”
“Cupid’s Rest B&B might rent you Red Daggett’s room. That’s the man who used to have this job. He took off without notice. You ain’t gonna do that, is ya? Take off without notice.” Grass took a red bandana from his pocket and blew his nose.
“No.”
“Good. You start tonight,” Grass had said, turned over on his side in the hammock, and gone back to snoring.
At the mention of his buddy’s name, Dade had experienced a cold, persistent dread. This felt wrong in a hundred different ways. He’d felt this way before. In Afghanistan. He had not listened to his instincts then, but he’d learned a hard lesson.
Always trust your gut.
Right now his gut was telling him something strange and unsettling about this woman.
She’s special.
How could he trust that nonsense?
She was still staring at him. Neither of them moved.
For the first time, Dade noticed that she was trembling. “You’re cold.”
“Yes.” She shook her head.
Were those tears in her eyes? Or was it simply water dripping from her hair and clinging to her lashes? Had to be water. No reason for her to cry, but she looked . . .
touched.
Finally, she dropped her gaze and slogged from the pond, the soaking dress plastered to her legs, outlining her shapely thighs.
Dade stayed motionless beside his motorcycle. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He couldn’t say why she so enthralled him. Yes, she was pretty, but it was a mild beauty, certainly not strong enough to explain why his entire body throbbed for her.
“What were you doing in the pond?” he asked, hoping a return to reality would break the strange spell.
She didn’t answer immediately, moved with heavy, plodding steps, not light and effortless the way she’d been on the bike. She stepped free from the pond, and he saw that mud was caked halfway up her calves.
“The duck had a beer six-pack plastic ring around her legs,” she said at last. “It kept her from flying.”
“Shackles,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You saved her.”
She poked her tongue against the inside of her cheek and pushed a hand through her hair. It was all he could do to keep from ogling her tits again.
Canting her head, she studied him as she wiped her feet on the carpet of grass. “Who are you?”
He loved her voice. Soft but low, sexy, enticing. Dade cleared his throat. “Name’s Vega.”
“Just one name?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Like Elvis?”
“Dade Vega,” he amended.
“Well, Dade Vega, this is a private park. What are you doing driving your motorcycle through here?”
“GPS.” He waved at the gadget mounted on his motorcycle. “Technology is great, but flawed.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Cupid’s Rest B&B. Am I close?”
“You’re at my back door.” She waved a hand at the house behind the park fence. When she moved, so did her breasts, rising high and perky. If he rested his head there, would they feel soft as pillows?
Dade felt a stirring below his belt, and he steeled his jaw to stave off the erection. “Your back door?”
“I’m the owner of Cupid’s Rest.”
“Ah,” he said, and narrowed his eyes. “My luck has turned.”
“Your luck has been unfortunate?”
He shook his head. “Since the day I was born.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Not really. Nowhere to go from the bottom but up.”
“A sound philosophical outlook.”
He held both arms out in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture.
“Natalie McCleary,” she said with a regal, lady-of-the-manor tilt to her head, extended a hand, and offered him her best hostess smile as if she wasn’t standing wet, muddy, and barefoot at the edge of a pond.
He rushed to take her hand, his breath quickening and his heart rising as if it was filled with helium. When they touched, palm to palm and skin to skin, a startling tenderness swept over him, so strong and unrelenting that he almost jumped back on his Harley and sped away. Only his desire to find Red kept him rooted against the onslaught of excitement, pride, desire, and fear.
She smelled like fresh-baked cookies, not honeysuckle as he’d supposed, and the look in her blue eyes was so otherworldly that Dade understood that her delicate image would haunt the recesses of his memory for years to come.
Years? How about for the rest of his life?
Impossible, but unshakable. How was it she seemed the very blueprint of the woman he’d never dared dream existed?
What the frig? This was lunacy and he wanted no part of it. No part of her.
He dropped his hand and it was all he could do not to back up. Dade never backed down. Ever. Instead, he held her wide-eyed stare, determined not to let it show just how much she disturbed him.
“Natalie,” he murmured like some love-struck fool. “Pretty name.”
“It means born on Christmas Day.”
“Were you? Born on Christmas Day?”
“No.”
“Neither was I.”
Her smile deepened. “Look at that. We have something in common.”
He raked his gaze over her again.
That’s the only thing we have in common, babe.
“You looking for a room?” Her lyrical voice stroked him as warm as the arid morning breeze.
“I am.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You were leading me on?”
“I’ll have a room tomorrow, but only for a few days. We’ll fill up after that for the Fourth of July weekend. Will that do?”
“You already rented out Red Daggett’s room then?”
A startled expression skimmed over her face. She hauled in a breath so deep that her chest rose high. He tried not to look at her breasts again, but dammit, he was only human, and she was so delicious that he could eat her up with a spoon. “Where’d you hear about Red?”
“Jasper Grass told me about the vacancy after he gave me Red’s job.”
“Jasper’s already replaced Red?” She frowned, knotted her hands.
“Looks like.”
“So you’re the new bouncer at Chantilly’s?” Her gaze darted to his biceps.