Saddles and Sin, page 17
Until this afternoon. Cole could be waiting for you when you get back with that video cued up and ready to play.
Marisol pushed the fear to the back of her mind as she and Robert pulled up at the ranch and joined Laura Mae in the kitchen for a quick breakfast. If Cole was that determined to stick his nose in, he would have answered the phone last night, or met them for breakfast this morning. Robert had said Cole usually slept at his girl-of-the-month’s house, but that his middle brother had a home on the opposite side of the valley from John’s. If Cole had been determined to get to Robert, he could have slept at his own house and been waiting for them at Laura Mae’s the moment they walked in the door.
But so far, he’d been lying low, making her think he must have taken her words at the bar to heart. Hopefully, he felt his warning had been sufficient, and there was no need to enlighten his little brother to her status as a low-level sex tape celebrity.
Marisol would tell Robert the entire, sordid story herself, sooner or later, but she wanted to make sure the moment was right. They needed more time together first. Time to cement their relationship, make more good memories, and share less scandalous secrets before jumping into the “millions of men have watched me have sex” conversation.
As she and Robert saddled up and started up the trail into the mountains, Marisol finally dared to believe they might have that time. Sadie and Mally Alice, the border collies, ran ahead, obviously eager to find the cattle that had eluded them days before, and the sun had the decency to hide behind soft gray clouds that promised shade, but no serious rain. It was the perfect day for a roundup, and at nearly ten after seven there was still no sign of Cole’s truck pulling up the long road to Laura Mae’s.
Still, Marisol didn’t completely relax her guard until the ranch was out of sight around several curves in the trail, and the only sounds were the cries of whip-poor-wills settling into their nests in the dirt, and the soft clomp of horse hooves on the dusty ground.
Only then, when she knew they were out of cell range and there would be no phone calls to interrupt them, did she turn to Robert and say, “I have a confession to make.”
He glanced over, brows lifting beneath the brim of his cowboy hat. “You hate sausage gravy.”
She smiled. “No, I like sausage gravy.”
“You didn’t each much,” he said. “Were the biscuits too hard?”
“No, they were great, I just…wasn’t very hungry,” she said, taking a bracing breath. “This is more of a…personal confession.”
“I’m listening.” Robert’s voice was rough and a little sleepy sounding, despite the two cups of coffee he’d downed with breakfast. But they’d stayed up late last night, and Marisol could tell he was tired, though, to her, he looked even more handsome than usual.
In a faded brown plaid button up rolled at the sleeves, battered blue jeans, and a hint of scruff on his cheeks he hadn’t bothered to shave, Robert looked more like an outlaw than every cowboy’s best friend. The scruff gave him a rough edge that turned Marisol’s thoughts to all the wicked things he’d done to her last night. Her bottom still ached from the spanking, but it was a pleasant ache, a blissful reminder of how good it felt to let go of her worries and inhibitions, and be vulnerable in his arms.
But she knew Robert craved that vulnerability outside the bedroom, too, and she wanted to make him as happy as he was making her. She wasn’t ready to confess her deepest, darkest secrets, but there were a few shadowy ones she was ready to bring out into the light.
“You asked me yesterday why I’d never told you that I could sing,” she said, pushing on when he nodded. “The truth is, when I was growing up, I used to dream about being a country music star. From the time I was really little, listening to Johnny Cash with my abuela in her trailer behind my parents’ house, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. Abuela Adelita was my biggest fan, and always had new music picked out for us to play together. We made scrapbooks full of costume ideas with pictures I cut out of magazines, and wrote songs together on my mother’s recipe cards. And every chance I got, when I wasn’t helping my parents or my brothers, I’d run out to the swing set in the backyard and swing and sing at the top of my lungs.”
She glanced over to find him watching her with a cautious expression, as if he wanted to know more, but was hesitant to ask. Marisol knew that hesitance was her fault, and it made her even more determined to show him that she didn’t want to shut him out. Not anymore.
“Even when I was in high school, and way too old for a swing set, I’d still go out there sometimes,” she continued, a wave of melancholy filling her chest as she remembered how lonely she was by then, with her abuela dead and her parents having abandoned all hope of understanding their strangely outgoing only daughter. “I made my first demo tape when I was sixteen, and I would perform at every craft fair and flea market my old brother would drive me to. I was sure I was going to hit it big straight out of high school.”
“So why’d you give up?” Robert asked, making Marisol cast him a narrow glance out of the corner of her eyes.
“What makes you so sure I gave up?”
“You must have given up. You’re too good. If you’d kept at it, you’d be too big by now to have time to mess with someone like me.” He took a quick look ahead at the trail before turning back to her. “Seriously, Marisol, your voice is one of the prettiest things I’ve ever heard.”
“You might be a little biased,” she said, even as she realized she loved him for it, for making her feel like some amazing catch, instead of a minnow better thrown back in the stream.
He shook his head. “I’m not biased, at least not about that. You heard those people last night. They fell in love with you while you were on that stage.”
“They fell in love with us. I wasn’t up there alone.”
Robert smiled a secretive smile. “That’s true. I’ve been thinking about that…”
“Thinking what?” she asked, brows drawing together. “I’m not sure I like the tone in your voice.”
He laughed. “What tone is that?”
“The crafty tone,” she said. “I’m the crafty one, you’re the likable one.”
“You’re likable. I like you a lot.” He winked at her, setting a fluttery feeling stirring in the places where she already ached. “Now tell me why you quit. You don’t seem like a quitter.”
She glanced back at the trail. “I told myself I quit because people didn’t know what to do with the kind of songs I was writing—Chicano-country fusion stuff that reminded me of why I fell in love with music—but lately I’ve been thinking…” She shrugged uncomfortably. “It didn’t have to end there. I could have changed things up. I could have tried a different style, joined a group, or found some other way to stay in front of the microphone.”
“So why didn’t you?” he prodded after she was silent for a long moment.
“I think I was scared to succeed,” she said, pulse picking up as she finally said the words out loud, words she’d barely let whisper between her own ears let alone dared to bring out into the open. “My whole life I’d been so determined to prove everyone wrong—my parents, my brothers, and everyone else who said my dreams were ridiculous. But the closer I got to making it…”
She took a deep breath, tilting her head back to gaze up at the thick gray clouds. “I don’t know. I guess I started to worry that if I got big enough for the world to notice me, it would confirm what all the naysayers had been saying all along. And by that time I really didn’t have anything left but the music. I didn’t know who I’d be if that was judged and found lacking.
“Then, there was this one month…” she continued with a sigh. “I got a horrible review in ATX, followed by three brutal rejections on my demo tape and I just…backed away. I stopped booking new gigs, and started apprenticing with my old manager. Before long, I was relieved to be behind the scenes, where I was safe from failure and success and everything else that comes along with fighting to make a dream come true.”
“Was it worth it?” he asked, guiding Cricket closer to Darcy, close enough that he could reach out and give her thigh a squeeze.
“I love the clients I’ve helped, and I love working with you, but….” She looked over at him, heart beating faster. “I’m starting to think some dreams are worth the risks, no matter how scary.”
A light came into his tired eyes. “You aren’t just talking about singing, are you?”
She shook her head, smiling as he leaned over, standing up in his stirrups to press a kiss to her lips as Cricket snorted in disapproval.
“You’re going to get thrown,” she said, laughing against his warm mouth.
“Worth it.” He settled back into his saddle. “Thank you for telling me. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She grudgingly lifted one shoulder. “I’ve been through worse. I guess I could get used to the personal sharing thing.”
“You’re cute when you’re pretending to be cranky,” he said, laughing when she stuck out her tongue in his direction. “You want to stop and eat lunch?”
She frowned. “We just ate breakfast. And you had four biscuits.”
“I know, but having sex all night makes me hungry,” he said, shooting her a heated look beneath the brim of his hat. “I was thinking we could maybe work in a quickie while we were at it.”
“Tempting,” Marisol said, knowing she would have raced him to see who could get their clothes off fastest if she weren’t dying to get out of Lonesome Point. “But I’d rather get these cattle back to the pens, get on the road, and have our quickie in a hotel room with a bed before we start working through our to-do list.”
“You’re right,” Robert said with a sigh. “I wasn’t worried until you started worrying, but I was awake for an hour in the middle of the night last night thinking of all the things I need to do to get ready to go. I need to call my boss at the electric company, and I should probably see if Tulsi and Clem want to move into the house while I’m gone. No sense in it sitting empty, and I know Tulsi’s been hoping to move out of her parents’ place once she saved up enough money.”
Marisol smiled. “Your friends are lucky to have you.”
“I’m lucky to have them.” Robert’s tone said that he meant every word. “Tulsi would stay on the phone and listen to me moan for hours after I broke up with Casey. Mia told me to stuff a sock in it after a few weeks, but Tulsi was there as long as I needed her, even when she was busy with work and school and the baby.”
“I love Clem.” Marisol laughed. “She’s a character. I can’t wait to play poker with her.”
Robert watched her for a moment, an unspoken question in his eyes.
“What?” she asked, dividing her attention between him and the trail as it opened up around a curve and another stunning valley view spread out before them.
The view near the house was of softly rolling hills that dropped off into flatlands on the way into town, but this valley was bisected by the sharp crease of a canyon, where Cole had been certain the cows must have been trapped. He hadn’t found any sign of them in the gullies, however, so Marisol and Robert planned to go around the canyon to the very back of the property, where the ten-thousand-acre Lawson Ranch gave way to government land, and see if the cows were lost back there.
“What,” she repeated when Robert stayed quiet. “Don’t be shy.”
He grunted. “I’m not shy. I’m cautious. I don’t want to spook you.”
“I’m not a horse,” she said, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder. “I don’t spook. I just have some questions I don’t mind answering, and some I do. You won’t know which is which until you ask.”
“Okay then…what about kids,” he said, sending her brows floating up her forehead.
“Kids,” she repeated dumbly, not knowing what else to say.
“Yeah, kids. With me,” he said, in a breezy tone that made the idea even more outrageous.
She called him a few choice words in Spanish, shaking her head hard enough to send her hair twitching around her head.
“I’m not crazy, I’m just crazy about you,” he said, proving he understood enough Spanish to know she’d called him a crazy person. “I think kids would be fun. We could teach ’em to sing, send ’em out to sing for their supper while we get it on in the shower. And after, we’ll reminisce about the first time we made love on my parents’ property, all those years ago, back before I started to go bald and you started wearing penny loafers, instead of high heels.”
“I’m never going to wear penny loafers,” she said with a hard look. “You can get that fantasy out of your mind right now.”
He smiled pleasantly, obviously not deterred by her glare. “How about the rest of it?”
“The rest of it…” She shrugged as she turned to watch the dogs skid down a steep section of the trail up ahead, fighting to keep her expression neutral as anticipation for the future began to bubble inside her like champagne on New Year’s Eve. “The rest I’ll…take under consideration.”
“Yeah?” He sounded so delighted she couldn’t help but smile.
“Why not?” She laughed at the wonderful insanity of it all. “I like kids, and I like you. I guess we could give it a shot someday many years from now. But no more than three.”
“No more than three,” he repeated with a grin, squinting into the distance as the dogs began to bark at something up ahead. “That sounds about right.”
“And only if we have more than one bathroom,” she amended. “I spent too many years trying not to wet my pants while someone else was hogging the toilet to want to—”
“Well, shit,” Robert interrupted with a laugh. “Guess we won’t get to be heroes after all.”
“What?” Marisol followed his gaze, but didn’t understand what he was talking about until he pointed a finger at a dust cloud moving across the valley below.
“Cole must have gone out last night, and found the cows sometime this morning.”
Marisol’s smile dropped from her face. Cole. He hadn’t decided to leave her alone, after all, he’d simply been out of cell range.
She recovered from her shock quickly, but Robert had obviously already seen her distress.
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting her thigh through her jeans. “He’ll still need our help bringing ’em back in. We’ll still get to play, and we’ll be back at the ranch, ready to head to Austin, by lunchtime.”
“Great.” She forced a smile, even as all the happy bubbles inside her transformed into bowling balls that thudded down in her stomach.
She nudged Darcy into a trot, following Robert down the steep section of trail where only one horse could pass at time. She trained her gaze on his broad shoulders and silently promised to keep him in her line of sight until they got into the truck to head back home. If she could make sure Robert and Cole were never alone, Cole wouldn’t be able to spill her secret. She didn’t think he’d have the guts to bring it up in front of her.
At least she hoped he wouldn’t. He’d looked ashamed of himself at the bar. Hopefully, a long night alone had solidified that shame into a decision to keep his nose out of other people’s relationships.
But as she sent half a dozen desperate thoughts out into the universe, she had a bad feeling she wasn’t going to make it out of Lonesome Point without having every skeleton in her closet yanked out by the ankles and hurled on the ground at her feet.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cole looked more surprised than pleased to see reinforcements arrive, but within a few minutes, Sadie and Mally Alice were making Cole’s life easier—heading up the small herd, and keeping stragglers from wandering off the path—and Bubba’s big brother sat easier in his saddle.
Still, Cole didn’t have much to say. After a few minutes, Bubba assumed he was tired from a night spent camping on the hard ground, and gave up trying to make conversation. Personally, he was happy to sit back and listen to Marisol chatter as they made their way back to the ranch. Now that she’d finally opened up, he was loving learning more about what she’d been like as a kid.
She told stories about her childhood, including her first singing competition at the Strawberry Festival when she was six years old. She said she’d been tiny at the time—no bigger than your average three year old—and the emcee had tried to pick her up so the crowd could get a better look at the second place winner. But her parents had driven it into her head that she should never let a stranger touch her, so she’d hit him over the head with her trophy and ran offstage.
“The poor man had to announce first place with blood running down his face,” she finished.
Bubba laughed, but Cole only grunted. He was definitely exhausted, or in a foul mood, or both, making Bubba glad he only had to spend half a day with his brother. The other half would be spent driving through pretty country with an even prettier woman in the passenger seat next to him, and this time he wouldn’t have to keep from touching her.
He planned to keep Marisol as close as he could all the way back to Austin, where he would check them into a hotel so that they wouldn’t have to worry about waking her roommates when they went to bed. He did his best not to think about all the things he wanted to do with her tonight, but it wasn’t easy with her riding next to him looking unreasonably sexy in faded jeans and a white tee shirt that clung tight enough to her curves to make pure thoughts practically impossible.
The only thing that saved him from having a hard on all the way back to the ranch was the two cups of coffee he’d pounded down at breakfast. By the time they reached the final stretch, he had to force himself to think of sick puppies long enough to get off his horse and find some relief.
“Heading to the boys’ room,” Bubba said as they neared the split in the trail that led up to the pool to the left, and down to the ranch to the right.
