Page 62 of Then You Happened
“See? It’s fate. He’s just the man to break your goatee cherry.”
“Goatee cherry?” I almost spit out my wine.
“C’mon, Tee. You know me. I’m part shock-value, part truth, and always pro you get yours.”
After that, she doesn’t ask anything else about things between Jack and me, though. Even with as forward as she is, I think she knows this is uncharted territory for me that I need to wade through on my own.
Instead, we fall into small talk. My plans for the ranch. How Rhonda Fitz was pissed at her husband so she got drunk at Ginger’s and drove her car through the front of the Post Office. How I’m in desperate need of a manicure. If I’ll attend the Lone Star charity event of the season this year.
The sun slowly moves toward the west as we sit and polish off the first bottle of wine and decide to have a sip or two of the second one.
“So, how’s he working out?” she asks and lifts a piece of huckleberry muffin to her lips.
I exhale a long, audible sigh that speaks for itself, but the wine has me smiling like the cat that ate the canary. “He’s frustrating and a know-it-all and . . .” The man can kiss like there’s no tomorrow.
“And?” she prompts while her eyes flicker between the stable and then back to me.
“And what?”
“You like him, don’t you?” My wine glass halts midway to my mouth as I contemplate telling a bald-faced lie with the truth. Fi points at me. “Don’t you lie to me. It’s written all over that gorgeous face of yours.”
“You got a second, Knox?” Jack catches me off guard because I didn’t notice him walk this way. A slow, sinking part of me knows that this whole situation is about to make me uncomfortable on so many levels. Between Fi’s forwardness and Jack’s tell-it-like-it-is attitude, I’m certain I’m in over my head.
“Talk about a tall drink of water,” Fiona murmurs appreciatively under her breath, her eyes roaming the length of him. I sit up, suddenly feeling like a kid caught ditching school, and set my wine glass down.
“Yeah. Sure. What did you need?” I ask.
“She was just playing hooky for a bit,” Fiona says, her Texan accent suddenly becoming a little more Southern and a lot more seductive. “You gonna get mad at her for that?”
“No, ma’am,” Jack says as he walks up to the foot of the verandah and tips his hat in a way that I swear only happens in old-school western movies. His grin is wide, and his eyes crinkle at the corners.
There’s an unexpected thrill that shoots through me, which I blame on the wine I’ve consumed but is really because I’ve already decided I’m having sex with him.
“And who might you be?”
“Jack Sutton,” he says, his boots clomping on the wood as he walks toward her to shake her hand. I swear that, if I didn’t know any better, she holds out her hand for him as if she’s hoping that he’ll kiss the top of it, which he doesn’t.
Still, I’m startled by the small streak of jealousy that fires through me.
“Fiona Camden.” She bats her lashes. “Such a pleasure. Is my girl here behaving herself? She’s been known to have a wild temper.”
I roll my eyes.
“Now, I wouldn’t know about that.” His tone says the opposite of his words.
“Life would be so much easier if you tamed it,” Fiona says.
“What are—”
“Her wild is one of her best parts,” Jack says, looking at me for the first time since stepping up here. But it’s the look that he gives me—eyes intense, expression sincere—that knocks me speechless.
Even more so, it leaves Fiona in the same boat as he studies me and she stares at us.
I scramble for something to say. Anything. “You needed me? You said you did. What did you need?”
Jack’s smile widens at my nervous rambling. “How’s the wine?”
“It’s fine—I’m not—Fiona—”
