Authors: Carolyn Brown
Rye looked at Austin who thought about it a second then said, “Coconut.”
“Two of that,” he said.
They ate slowly, talked little, but enjoyed every single spark that danced between them that Saturday night. When he took her home he walked her to the door, fenced her in with an arm on each side of the door, and kissed her hard and passionately.
“Revived?” she asked.
“Not quite, but I’m workin’ on it.”
She pulled his lips to hers for another searing kiss.
“Picnic on the river tomorrow night? Maybe neither of us will be dog tired,” she said when she broke away.
He leaned in and their lips met again for a kiss that caused fireworks to explode in her head. “Then tomorrow at dusk? What do I bring?”
“Yourself. This time I do the honors,” she said.
“I’ll see you then.” He kissed her on each eyelid, on the nose, and added one more on the lips after each word.
She slept late on Sunday, did laundry in the afternoon, checked the window several times to see if Rye had moved his truck, and finally picked up the phone at two o’clock and called him.
“Are you alive?” she asked when he answered.
“I’m catching up on housework and laundry. Are we still on for the picnic?”
“Oh, yes. What’s your favorite dessert?”
“Your kisses,” he said.
“Other than that?” A country song called “Long Slow Kisses” by Jeff Bates played through her mind as she waited on his answer.
“Chocolate cake,” he said.
“Okay, then chocolate cake and kisses,” she laughed.
She made half a recipe of chocolate cake, fried a chicken, and made potato salad that afternoon. She packed it, along with a loaf of French bread and a block of Colby Jack cheese, all into a basket with two plastic plates, silverware, napkins, and two chilled bottles of watermelon wine. She found a blanket in the top of the closet in her room and tucked it under her arm. When Rye drove across the road she was waiting on the front porch.
He wrapped her up in his big arms and kissed her when he walked up on the porch. “Staying across the road and doing my Sunday chores was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life,” he whispered into her hair when he broke away from the kiss.
“I’ve looked forward to this all day too,” she said.
He stepped back, grabbed both her hands, and took her in from black flip-flops, to cut-off jean shorts, a tied up shirt that showed skin above the jean’s waist, and cute little black and white polka dot earrings. “You are gorgeous.”
“Thank you. Now it’s my turn.”
She started at his sandals, to jean shorts that grazed his knee, a gray muscle shirt, to his freshly shaven face and twinkling eyes to his hair, combed straight back and still too long.
“You are sexy as hell.”
He grinned. “Thank you. Never had a woman tell me that when I was dressed for the river, though.”
“Well I never had a man tell me I was gorgeous in hand-me-down cut-off jeans and flip-flops,” she said
“Were they all blind or just stupid?”
She laughed and the clouds parted. Rye O’Donnell was in heaven.
He drove to the river and carried the basket to the sand bar. She flipped the blanket out under a weeping willow tree and sat down on it. He dropped the basket and joined her, sitting close enough that their bare legs touched. The sizzle was right there, but Rye felt like they had all of the time in the world and there was no hurry at all. They had all night and then some, if he had anything to say about it.
“It’s nice out tonight. I’m starving,” she said.
He opened the basket and his eyes widened. “Fried chicken, plates, and is that really chocolate cake?”
“From scratch with fudge icing.”
“Will you marry me?”
“You’re not on one knee and you don’t have a ring,” she teased but her heart skipped a beat when he said those magic-sounding words.
She took out the plates, cutlery, and napkins and then the chicken, potato salad, bread, and cheese. She handed him a knife.
“To slice the cheese.”
“You remembered everything. This ain’t your first picnic, is it?”
“No. Granny packed a picnic of peanut butter sandwiches and chocolate milk in a quart jar for me and Pearl when we were little and let us come to the river. She sat under the trees far enough away to make sure we didn’t do anything stupid like skinny-dip in the river and we thought we were the luckiest two little girls in the world.”
“I feel like that tonight,” he said softly.
She looked up in time to see his lips coming toward hers and shut her eyes so she could enjoy every sensation that the kiss would bring, and she wasn’t the least bit disappointed as he slowly, perfectly pressed his warm lips to hers and pressed gently, gently until she opened for him and their tongues tangled. He ran his hand up her back and her body heated up twenty degrees.
“Your kisses turn me inside out, but I’m starving,” she said.
His eyes twinkled. “Eat for energy for what comes later.”
“Something like that.” She forked a wing and a leg and bit into the chicken leg while he sliced cheese.
He broke tidbits from a slice and fed them to her, then licked the grease from the chicken from her fingertips, lingering on each one long enough to send electricity all the way down to her curling toes. “That’s a wonderful way to eat chicken,” he said.
“Even better than the gravy and fries?”
“Better location and I don’t have to stop with just one taste. It’s like having a one-inch bite of good steak or having a whole one right there on your plate,” he whispered.
“So I’m just a chunk of steak?” she teased.
“Darlin’, you are…” he paused and kissed her passionately. “There are no words for what you are. God didn’t create them yet but when He does I’ll tell you exactly what you are to me.”
They managed to eat their supper between more slow hot kisses and then they started on the second bottle of wine. They’d each had a glass from it when the pickup load of teenagers invaded the sand bar right in front of them. The kids had two six-packs of beer and a couple of fishing poles; three boys and three girls who didn’t even see Rye and Austin sitting back in the shadows of the weeping willow. They pretended to fish but mostly they chased the girls in and out of the edge of the water and teased them about going skinny-dipping.
“Ever done that?” Rye asked.
“Not with a boy.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Girl?”
“Pearl and I were about nine or ten. We got in big trouble but we didn’t have bathing suits on and we wanted to go swimming.” She smiled.
“They won’t stay long. Lie down here beside me in the crook of my arm. We’ll snuggle while they act like normal teenagers.”
She plastered herself to his side. He kissed her forehead. She laid her head on his chest. He undid the knot in her shirt above her belly button and made slow lazy circles with his fingertips on her back. The tension eased out with each circle and pretty soon she was asleep on his chest.
He smiled and shut his eyes. The kids would get bored and leave soon.
It was three o’clock in the morning when he awoke with a start to find a raccoon staring at him from the edge of the blanket. It had snagged what was left over of the bread and was having its own picnic.
“Hey, darlin’, you’d better wake up. It must’ve been the wine but we fell asleep and it’s only a few hours until sunup.” He kissed Austin awake.
“Mmmm,” she mumbled. “Did they leave?”
“Hours ago. It’s three in the morning.”
She sat straight up with a start. “We’ve got to go home, Rye. I’ve got to plant watermelons at six thirty.”
“I know, darlin’.”
“What is that?” She pointed at the raccoon.
“A thief. I’ll help you get the leftovers packed up unless you want to leave them for the old boy.”
She shook the cobwebs from her head. “That was some good wine.”
He tossed everything but the cake out toward the raccoon and repacked the basket. She folded the blanket and they went back to the truck, arm in arm, like an old married couple.
But she didn’t feel married. She felt cheated and determined that she wouldn’t drink another bottle of wine on a night when she had a chance to make Greta (or was it Molly?) pay up twenty dollars.
Black clouds covered the sky all morning on Monday. The seeds already in the ground could use a good soaking but muddy fields would keep them from finishing planting that day. Austin listened to country music loaded on her iPod when it was her turn to drive the tractor from one end of the field to the other and back again. The Judds were telling her about love that morning. She kept time with her thumb on the steering wheel and wiggled her head a few times when Naomi and Wynonna sang about moving the moon and stars above.
She’d made the turn at the end of the field and started back toward the road when her phone rang. She pulled it from the bib pocket of her grandmother’s striped overalls, popped the music from her ears, and held the cell phone with one hand while she steered with other one.
“Hello.”
“Austin, what is that noise? What are you doing?”
“Planting watermelons. This is my second day. I’m getting the hang of this tractor. I can even turn it around without tearing up half the field.”
“You are what?!” Her mother’s scream made her jump and she had to grab the wheel to keep from swerving out of the ruts.
“I’m planting watermelons. I decided to do this rather than use my time to pack. Just a minute. I’ve got to lay the phone down a minute to turn this thing around. It takes both hands.”
She slipped the phone back into her pocket, turned the tractor around, and dug it out again. “Okay, I’m back.”
“Have you lost your mind? I swear the closer a person gets to the Red River the more brain cells they lose. Get off that tractor and come home. I’ll pay someone to go down there and take care of the packing,” Barbara said.
“Actually, I’m having a helluva lot of fun. I met this handsome hunk who lives across the road. Remember me telling you about Rye, the older gentleman across the road who I talked to on Thursdays for an update about the place?”
“Yes, what about him?”
“Well, I thought he was old and wondered how in the world an old man and I could talk every week and enjoy it so much. He’s not old. He’s thirty-two and handsome as hell. He’s so sexy, he’d even melt Aunt Clydia’s underpants and I’m not even sure she’s straight.” Austin laughed.
“Damn it all to hell!”
“Momma, ladies do not swear.”
“Well, they don’t drive tractors or plant watermelons either. I worked my whole life to keep you out of that place and all Verline does is die and you get on a damn tractor. If you aren’t home by dinnertime I’m coming after you.”
Austin couldn’t control the giggles. “Bring some work clothes. You can help plant watermelons. I don’t think Granny’s overalls will fit you. They’re doing a fine job for me. I even wore her capris and a shirt from her closet over to Rye’s for steaks, down to the Peach Orchard, and to the river for a picnic last night. He makes this most incredible bread you’ve ever eaten.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t bring anything but my spike heels and my running shoes down here. That wasn’t too smart, was it? Anyway, my feet are a size bigger than Granny’s but she has a whole bunch of those rubber flip-flops that fit me. Are you really coming down here? You’d love it in two days’ time. It’s so peaceful and you sleep like a baby at night.”
“No, I’m not coming down there. I hate that place.”
“I did too, but I’m learning to love it. With all this exercise I can eat like a horse and not worry about my weight one bit.”
“Promise me you’ll come home immediately. We’ll fly anywhere in the world you want to go. Want to go to Paris and shop for next season’s clothes?” Barbara’s tone softened.
Austin giggled again. “How about we go to Nocona to the western wear store and buy some boots and jeans and throw all our power suits in the river?”
Barbara gasped. “Are you on drugs?”
“No.” Austin bit the inside of her lip to keep the giggles at bay. Not unless there was a brand new drug out there called RO, short for Rye O’Donnell.
“Did you sleep with that cowboy?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you coming home?”
“Not until I have to. Good-bye, Mother. Talk to you later.” She hung up, finished out the row, and looked up to see Rye sitting on the side of the road in his truck.
“Hey,” he called out the window. “I’ve got to drive to Nocona for some more barbed wire. Want to go with me and have lunch at the Dairy Queen?”
She looked at Felix.
He checked his watch and nodded. “It is dinner and siesta time. We’ll start again about two o’clock.”
“I’ll be back by then.” She pulled off her brown cotton work gloves and tossed them on the tractor seat and got into the truck with Rye.
To Rye she was far sexier with that little bit of dirt on her face than she had been in that fancy black suit the first time he saw her. The woman might shape up to be a farmer after all.
“Well?” she asked. “Are we going or are we going to sit here all day?”
“Sorry, I was admiring the scenery.”
She blushed. She’d been afraid it would be awkward between them with fall-out from the almost-sex but it wasn’t. She didn’t feel like there was an elephant in the truck with them. She glanced at him from her peripheral vision. His jeans had grass stains on the knees where he’d been kneeling to fix fence. His shirtsleeve had a tear up near the shoulder where the barbed wire had won at least one fight. Would that tat keep her out if she decided to make a run for his heart?
She’d never made out with a man with a tat until now. Just looking at the thing was exhilarating. The next time her mother called she fully well intended to tell her about it. If she was reduced to unladylike cussing when she found out Austin was driving a tractor, just think what kind of words would flow from her mouth when she found out her daughter was having lunch at the Dairy Queen with a rancher with barbed wire tattooed around his arm.
They passed the school on the right. The children were out on the playground, running from swings to merry-go-round and playing chase and tag. Kids were the same at that age, whether they were playing in a schoolyard with five hundred of their classmates or ten.