“Oh. Well, I don’t think there is anything I can do for your aching vagina.”
“It’s my cervix.” Stella leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I’m miserable.”
She looked miserable, too. Becca wanted to have children one day, but not if it meant she had to walk around with a sore vagina and an aching cervix.
“We could try and pull the baby like a calf,” Sadie offered. “I’ve got some experience with calving.”
Stella opened her eyes. “No. Thank you.” She rubbed her big belly and sighed. “Besides, she has to stay in there until after the wedding.”
“When are you due?” Becca would guess she was overdue by a month, at least.
“Three weeks.”
“Do you have a name picked out?”
“Not really. I want to name her Mercedes after Sadie, but I’d call her Mercy.” She smiled at her stomach. “Beau wants to name her Olivia.”
“That’s pretty.”
“Yeah, but it’s a really common name.” She glanced at her sister. “Have you seen Beau around?”
“No. I thought he wasn’t supposed to get in from Dallas until tonight.”
“He got an earlier flight and called me a while ago to say he’s on his way to the ranch.”
Becca stood with her portfolio and moved past a big stone fireplace with a horse painting on the mantel. “Sadie and I were discussing hair.” She knelt by Stella’s chair. “I thought you and Deeann would look pretty in fishtail braids.”
Stella balanced the book on her belly. “Thank God. I thought Sadie was going to stick me with some hideous Texas hair.”
Becca flipped a few pages to one of her most popular prom hairdos. “Like this?” The model’s hair had been set on big rollers, then backcombed in a half-up, half-down retro beehive.
“I actually like that.” Stella pointed to the photo. “I used to wear an Amy Winehouse beehive once in a while, but it’s too damn hot these days.”
“It won’t be hot in the bunkhouse,” Sadie reassured her sister.
Becca looked up into Stella’s face and her silky black hair. When things settled down, and the baby was born and Stella’s vagina didn’t hurt anymore, she’d love to have her as a hair model. Work about a ton of root pump in her hair and construct a stellar constellation circling her head.
The sound of a door closing near the rear of the big ranch house drew their attention to the hall. Becca took her portfolio and rose to her feet as Beau Junger moved toward them wearing a blue dress shirt with “Junger Securities” embroidered on his breast pocket. Like Vince, Beau was retired Special Forces. Becca couldn’t recall which branch. Probably the one that camped out at the North Pole and wrestled polar bears for fun.
Vince and Beau were both big guys with ripped muscles and wide shoulders, but where she thought Vince was a sweetheart, Beau intimidated the heck out of her. Maybe it was his hard jaw and cold gray eyes that could freeze a person in place. At the moment, his cold eyes turned a warmer, softer gray, as he looked at the mother of his child.
“Hello ladies.” He moved toward Stella and reached for her hand. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.”
“Her vagina hurts,” Sadie told him as she rose to her feet. “And her cervix aches.”
He looked from one sister to the other. “What does that mean? Is that in the baby book?” Becca stood a few feet behind Stella, and although she wasn’t sure, she thought that perhaps the hard-as-nails, steely-eyed, ass-kicking security specialist looked a little afraid.
“It means you knocked up my little sister with a big baby.” Sadie pointed at Stella, then dropped her hand to her side. “She’s a small girl, and I’ve never seen anyone that big.”
Beau kissed Stella’s temple and put a hand on her belly. “I’m sorry, boots. I wish I could take the pain for you.”
“So do I.”
One corner of his mouth twisted in a smile. “How’s the baby?”
“She kicked all night and I didn’t get any sleep. My skin is so tight it itches like I’m covered in hives. I have to pee all the time and I’m just irritable.”
He lowered his mouth to the side of her head and whispered something in her ear. Something warm and masculine that made Stella dip her head and her cheeks turn red. Something that only the two of them shared. “Stop,” she told him.
“I missed you,” Becca heard him whisper as he raised his face and smiled. “Excuse us.” He glanced from Sadie to Becca. “It was nice to see you again.”
“You too,” she said as Beau led Stella out of the room and up the stairs. She turned and watched them leave. She wanted that. She wanted a man to look at her the way Beau looked at Stella and the way she’d caught Vince looking at Sadie.
Becca was young. She was busy. There was lots of time to fall in love. Still, she wouldn’t mind finding a man to whisper in her ear and make her laugh. A man who missed her when he went away and seemed desperate to return to her.
No. She wouldn’t mind finding that at all, but for some reason, of all the men in Texas, all the men in the world, all the men she’d ever fantasized about falling madly for her at first sight, men like Zach Efron or Chris Pine, Nate Parrish and his blue eyes popped into her head. And that didn’t make sense at all.
STELLA LAY
SPREAD-EAGLE
in the middle of the old wrought-iron bed while an oscillating fan stirred fine stands of her black hair. She wore a pink bra, and her huge belly hid most of her pink panties. She was more beautiful now than the first time Beau had seen her working behind a bar in South Beach, wearing a leopard bustier and a pair of tight leather shorts.
He picked up the open tub of cocoa butter lotion and dipped his hand inside. “You ready?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She nodded and let out a tired sigh. “It’s been five days. Make it good.”
“You know I will.” He sat and took her right foot in his hands. He rubbed the lotion into her arch and she let out a soft moan. If she wasn’t so big with his child, he’d pull her against him and capture that moan in his mouth as he touched more than her foot. “You’re beautiful,” he said.
“I’m as big as cow.”
“A beautiful cow.”
She chuckled. “I’m fat.”
“You’re not fat.” He massaged her ankle and the heel of her foot. Just over a year ago, Vince had contacted him and asked for a favor: find the younger sister that Sadie had never met. Until Clive Hollowell’s death last year, Sadie hadn’t known about Stella.
“I think I need one of those electric scooters like they have in Wal-Mart. I’ll need it to zip to the bathroom at Sadie’s wedding.”
“There’s probably a four-wheeler around here somewhere.” Clive had never even hinted of his affair that had produced a second daughter. Now that Beau was about to have his own baby girl, he couldn’t imagine not wanting her in his life every day. He couldn’t imagine a circumstance in which he would raise one daughter and ignore the other. If Clive Hollowell were still alive, the two would have had a conversation about it, too.
“I think there’s a four-wheeler in the barn, but I doubt I can climb on it.”
He wasn’t even going to let his mind recall all the times she’d climbed on him. He pressed his thumbs into her arch and thought of something else. Something boring like “How are the wedding plans?”
“Good. The event planner seems to have it all under control, although Becca seems to think the woman is lazy.”
“Becca is one serious girl.”
“She’s kind of intense for a twenty-three-year old.” Stella rose onto her elbows. “When I was twenty-three, I was singing in a crappy band at dive bars. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with my life.” A wrinkle pulled her brows together. “I just bounced from thing to thing, place to place. I’m such a slacker.”
By the age of twenty-three, Beau had graduated sniper/scout school and been assigned to the First Recon Battalion, Fifth Marines. He and his twin, Blake, had always been competitive overachievers. “You’re not a slacker.” Stella had supported herself since graduating from high school. There had been no one to take care of her. “You’ve acquired a unique toolbox of skills and operate under many titles.” No one had looked out for her, until now. “Currently, you’re my baby incubator.” The pregnancy certainly hadn’t been planned, but neither he nor Stella was sorry for the unexpected surprise.
Stella laughed and her hair slid over one shoulder. “Sadie’s worried that you knocked me up and won’t marry me.”
He raised a brow. “You still haven’t told her?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to think you had to marry me.”
He didn’t care what people thought. He’d asked Stella to marry him even before they’d found out she was pregnant. After they’d found out, he’d wanted to have a quickie ceremony at the justice of the peace. He wanted Stella and the baby covered on his insurance and under his protection. Stella had dug her heels in for a wedding with the white dress and flowers and a big cake.
They’d compromised. Something he didn’t have a lot of experience doing, but with Stella, he was learning. She’d agreed to marry him, but only if he kept it secret from everyone, even his brother. He ran his hands up her ankle and massaged her calf. “When was the last time you had more than a passing acquaintance with a razor?”
Stella watched him from beneath her lowered lids. That look used to mean she wanted to make love. “The last time you shaved my legs for me.” These days her nirvana came from a foot massage or a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Toffee Bar Crunch. Sometimes while she had both. “Who would have thought a big Marine like you would be so good at foot massage?”
Not him. “I told you I have a big set of skills in my toolbox.” He never thought his life could be like this. He never thought he could love someone as much as he loved his wife.
BECCA
SWEPT THE
hair from around the salon chair and threw it in the wastebasket near her station. Her last cut and color had just left and she didn’t have anything booked for the rest of the day. Mondays were typically light, and she needed to think up a way to put more clients in her book.
She set the broom next to the trashcan and reached behind her to untie her black salon apron. The problem she had getting new clients was that she had to work within the contract she’d signed with Lily Belle’s Salon and Day Spa. Becca understood why Lily Matthews had strict procedures and rules regarding everything from employee conduct to advertising. The salon attracted clientele who expected a certain level of service. New clients without a stylist preference were booked according to which stylist was available. Sometimes that meant Becca was crazy-busy. Other times, like today, she was done by two.
Several keys on a Hello Kitty ring sat on top of her salon cart next to her iPad. She tapped the touch screen and brought up her calendar. Tuesdays and Sundays were her days off and she swiped the screen until her Wednesday appointments appeared. A cut and color in the morning, root touchup, man’s cut, and a stacked A-line. Men who came into the salon usually tipped well. Especially if she laughed at their jokes and wore something short. Like the military-inspired shirtdress she wore today. Navy blue with gold buttons down the front, the sleeveless dress hit Becca about mid-thigh and made her feel downright patriotic.
She planted her palms on the cart next to her iPad and read her week’s appointments. Her hair fell over one shoulder and, as she scanned her packing list for Sadie and Vince’s wedding, a weird little zap tickled the back of her ankle just above the heels of her navy pumps. For a split second, she thought her shoes might be too tight and cutting off her circulation, but then the little zap got hotter and slid up the backs of her calves and knees and thighs. It tingled her spine and raised the baby hair on the back of her neck. She wasn’t holding a hair dryer with wet hands. Not like the time in beauty school when she’d given herself quite a shock and blown the breaker switches. No one had been able to figure out exactly how or why or—
“I found this mixed in with my mail.” A familiar voice interrupted her scattered thoughts and a white folio plopped next to her iPad.
Becca looked over her shoulder and her breath caught in her throat. Nate Parrish’s starling blue eyes stared back at her from beneath his dark brows. His cheeks were a little red, like he’d been in the sun, and his hair disheveled as if he combed it with his fingers.
“My mother actually did leave your photos in the mailbox before she left town Friday.” He shrugged and gave half a smile. A curve of one corner of his lips that was filled with enough charm to stop her heart like she’d been zapped with a lightning bolt. “They got stuck between my
Motor Trends
and
Muscle Car
magazines.”
She turned and faced him, totally immune to guys with heart-zapping charm. “Thanks.” She glanced past him to several other stylists and an esthetician who openly stared. She didn’t blame them and returned her attention to Nate.
“You’re welcome. It was kind of my fault you didn’t have them for your meeting with Sadie Hollowell yesterday.”
Yeah, she was immune to guys like that, but Lord love a duck, Nate Parrish was smoking hot. The kind that was effortless in the way he wore a navy T-shirt beneath a blue plaid shirt. They way he’d left it unbuttoned and loose and had rolled the sleeves up his forearms. He didn’t have to try. He just was. “Did you drive all the way from Lovett to give them to me?”
“I had to test drive Sadie’s Cadillac today and check for leaks.” He lifted his gaze to her forehead and hair and said absently, “I had a few things in to do in Amarillo. You were on my list.”
Yep. Totally immune. “Your to-do list?” But that didn’t mean she couldn’t flirt.
His gaze dropped to hers. “Do you want to be on my to-do list, Becca Ramsey?”
Flirting was harmless. She was a Southerner. A Texan. It was practically in her DNA. Flirting was just a conversation. “I’m sorry. I’ve got an appointment coming in about five minutes,” she lied.
“Perfect. I only need four and a half.” He raised his left wrist and checked his watch. “I’ve done some of my best work under pressure. In a broom closet, on the trunk of my car.” He dropped his hand to his side. “Behind that big sign on top of the Beaver Den Buffet.”
“The Beaver Den Buffet?” Surely she hadn’t heard him right. “The neon ‘All You Can Eat Y’all’ sign?”
He grinned. “I took it as a challenge.”
The way he said it, as if it was no big deal, was horrifying . . . and fascinating. In a morally deranged sort of way. “Wait.” She held up a finger and lowered her voice to a scandalized whisper. “The sign with the cute beaver family rubbing their bellies? That sign?”
“Are there two neon beaver signs in Lovett?”
“You are so disturbed.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Folks eat there after Sunday church.” She knew because her daddy had taken her to the Beaver Den on his every other Sunday. Until she’d been about thirteen and he’d moved to Houston to work the oil refineries. She’d hardly seen him after that.
“Folks eat there before Sunday church, too.” He chuckled and rocked back on the heels of his Vans. “Best to get all the really good sins in before you have to repent.”
“I don’t think that’s how repentance works.” She was pretty sure, anyway, but she couldn’t think straight. Not with Nate’s talk of sin and buffet and not when the memory of his bare chest and tan stomach were still so freshly vivid in her head. “I fear for your immortal soul.”
“That’s real sweet of you.”
The skin on his belly so hard and tight, thoughts of love bites along his happy trail popped into her head. “Thank you. I try to be sweet to everyone. I was raised on it.” There was nothing wrong with sexual thoughts. They were normal and natural, but she never acted on them until she fell in love. Which was usually after five dates. That was kind of her rule for herself. Love and a five-date minimum.
“Now I feel bad.”
“Now? Now you feel bad but didn’t when you were . . . were . . .” She lifted a hand and gestured toward him. “When you were desecrating the Beaver Den?”
“You’re funny.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I never had sex with anyone behind the beaver family at the all-you-can-eat buffet. I just always thought someone should.”
“What?” Her brows lowered. “I’m confused.”
“I wasn’t serious. I was just joking with you.”
Becca didn’t always get boy humor. “Oh.”
“You look disappointed.”
Was she? Maybe.
“If you’re disappointed, we could always make it true.” He leaned forward and said next to the side of her head, “No one else has to know. Just you and me and cute beavers.” The warmth of his breath was still caught in her hair when he leaned back and smiled, all smooth charm and effortless good looks. “Think of it as camping above a restaurant.”
“As romantic as that sounds,” she said past the sudden hitch in her chest, “I’ll have to pass.”
He raised a hand to his chest like she’d broken his heart. He opened his mouth to say something but his aunt Lily called out to him and he turned to her.
“Has hell frozen over?” Lily asked as she walked toward them wearing a tight yellow tank dress that hugged her slight baby bump. “I don’t think you’ve been in my salon since my grand opening. You or your dad.”
“It stinks in here.” He opened his arms and embraced his aunt. “It smells like face cream and nail polish and toxic hair spray.” He was taller than Lily by several inches. “The fumes will probably shrink my balls.”
Lily laughed and pulled back to look up into his face. “Your balls are safe, Nathan. Tucker comes in all the time and there is nothing wrong with that man’s balls,” she said, referring to her husband, Deputy Tucker Matthews.
“Obviously.” He dropped his arms. “How are you feeling?”
“Still sick as a dog every morning.”
“You’re like my mom. She was sick with Rosie.” While Lily and Nathan swapped morning sickness stories, Becca let her gaze surreptitiously slide down the back of his plaid shirt. His pants weren’t necessarily baggy, but they were by no means tight. In Lovett, some men wore their Wranglers extremely tight to show off a bulge. And sometimes, not a very impressive bulge, either. Normally, Becca didn’t care for tight pants on a man, but at the moment, she wouldn’t mind if Nate’s jeans were a little more butt hugging, truth be told.
“At the risk of breathing toxic fumes and shrinking your balls, what brings you in today?” Lily asked. “Finally going to let me wax that uni-brow?”
Becca bit her lip and raised her gaze. She wasn’t the only one who’d noticed that Nate could benefit from attention to his brows.
As if he read her mind, Nate glanced behind him and frowned. “I brought some photos Mom took for Becca.”
Lily looked past her nephew. “I didn’t know you knew Nathan.”
“We just met when I went searching for my new photos to show Sadie,” Becca told her boss.
“Has Sadie chosen an updo for herself and her bridesmaids?”
Lily was Sadie’s hairstylist. She was talented with scissors and color, but she didn’t enjoy occasion hair. Not like Becca. “Sadie wants loose, sexy curls tucked into a waterfall and the girls are each going to have a fishtail braid.”
“That should be fairly easy for you.” Lily gave her a confident smile. “Marilee and I will be there if something comes up.”
Lily and Marilee were doing the makeup and anything else the bridal party might need or want.
“Are you finished for the day?” Lily asked.
Becca looked up at Nate through the corners of her eyes. “Yes.”
“You little liar,” Nate said through a smile.
If Lily heard her nephew, she didn’t ask questions. “And you’re off tomorrow. Right?”
“Yes.” Becca couldn’t help the smile she returned to Nate. “Tuesdays and Sundays are my days off.”
“Then let’s get together Wednesday when you’re free. We should trade notes and make sure we have everything we’ll need for Sadie’s big day.”
Becca nodded. “Okay.”
Lily turned to her nephew. “Do you have time for some iced tea?”
“I never have time for that sweet crap you drink, but I’ll take you for a spin in Sadie’s wedding present.”
“The Coupe Deville?”
“Finished putting in the water hose yesterday.”
“Let me get my purse and a scarf so my hair doesn’t get messed.” Nate watched Lily move toward her office, then turned back to Becca. She expected him to comment on her little white lie. Instead he asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Not camping out at the Beaver Den, that’s for sure.”
Humor pinched the corners of his blue eyes. “Drive out to the lake with me.”
“Lake Meredith?” With Nate Parrish. Or any guy really. She was busy. She had a lot to do. Like planning how to promote herself and do laundry. “I don’t know.”
He smiled like he was harmless. “No camping or beavers involved. I promise I can keep my hands to myself if you can.”
Just a drive? It sounded innocent enough. Did she trust him to keep his hands to himself? Did she trust herself? What would she wear?
When she didn’t answer right away, he took a step back and put his hands in his front pockets. “You don’t work tomorrow. I have the day off, so I just thought . . .” He shrugged and his brows knitted together over his blue eyes as if he was confused about something. “Maybe some other time.”
“Yes,” she said before she could talk herself out of it.
He took another step back. “I’ll text you next week, then.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ll go with you to the lake tomorrow.” A drive. A simple drive. She’d be gone a couple of hours, then back home. There was no harm in a simple drive.
A smile of pleasure curved his mouth and cleared his brow. “Good.” He lifted his gaze as Lily walked toward them with her scarf and purse in hand. “Bring your swimsuit in case we want to get wet.”
Now, that didn’t sound so innocent, and the warm rush spreading up her chest from the pit of her stomach was anything but harmless.
HE’D
TOLD HER
he’d keep his hands to himself. He was a guy who could keep his word, but, God, he wanted to touch her. From the minute she’d jumped into his truck wearing a bright yellow bikini under a pair of jean shorts and tight white tank top, he wanted to run his hands all over Becca Ramsey. During the hour-long drive to the lake, he wanted to reach across the bench seat and slide his palm to the side of her bare knee and up the inside of her thigh. If he hadn’t promised . . . if he didn’t have a girlfriend down in Dallas . . . if it didn’t feel strangely important, somehow, that he not pressure her or risk pushing her away, he would have touched more than her hand when he’d helped her onto the boat his parents kept docked during the summer.
“I haven’t been up here for a long time.” Becca stood in the center of the twenty-three-foot Malibu Wakesetter with her back to him and her hands inching her shirt up her bare waist. She pulled the tank top over her head, and her ponytail brushed her shoulders. The hot afternoon sun bounced off the water and metal board racks, and behind his mirrored sunglasses, Nate watched her shorts slide down her long legs to her bare feet. God, sitting there in the captain’s seat, in the Texas heat, was better than drinking cold beer in a strip bar. Nothing fake about her, and he didn’t have to worry about breaking a twenty. Then it got even better when she bent over and picked up her shorts. He about popped a blood vessel in his eyeballs but the pain was worth the view. One side of her bikini bottoms slid over the curve of her smooth butt and he got a nice view of under boob. God, he loved under boob. He should feel bad for staring, but he didn’t. Then she rose and slid the tip of her index finger beneath the elastic leg of her bottoms. She snapped it back in place and he felt it between his legs. Beneath his sternum, too. “Your family must come here a lot,” she said.
“Yeah.” He’d come to the lake for the first time with his mother and father at the age of fifteen. “I don’t get up here that much anymore.”