Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2)
Read Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2) Online
Authors: Melanie Shawn
Tags: #Romance, #Western, #Fiction
by
Melanie Shawn
‡
Copyright © 2016 Melanie Shawn
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Melanie Shawn. Exceptions are limited to reviewers who may use brief quotations in connection with reviews. No part of this book can be transmitted, scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any written or electronic form without written permission from Melanie Shawn.
This book is a work of fiction. Places, names, characters and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.
Cover Design by Wildcat Dezigns
Copyedits by Mickey Reed Editing
Book Design by BB eBooks
Published by Red Hot Reads Publishing
Rev. 1
Sneak Peek: Discovering Harmony
Cara
“She’s got some snap in her garters.”
~ Dolly Briggs
“I
don’t want
to talk about losing my V-card
here
!” My cheeks flamed with heat at the current topic of conversation: my virginity. “In
church
.”
“We’re not
in
church. We’re in my car in the church parking lot, Care Bear.” Tilting her head to the side, one of my best friends in the world Harmony Briggs twisted in her seat beside me. Her long, auburn hair fell over her shoulder as she raised her eyebrow, giving me one of her patented “get real” looks. Her green eyes pinned me to the back of my seat. “And besides, do you really think the man upstairs doesn’t know you’re a virgin?”
“Just because He knows”—I pointed towards the sky through the sunroof of the car—“doesn’t mean He wants me sitting out in front of his house, discussing the fact that I want lose it!”
“Stop trying to veer this conversation off track. In the immortal or
immoral
”—Harmony waggled her eyebrows up and down suggestively “—words of Marvin Gaye, you need to get it on. I mean, look at you. You are the walking definition of a PYT. This should not be a difficult task.”
“You don’t understand.” Leaning my head back against the headrest, I sighed. “I don’t just want a ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.’”
“Okay, so you want a relationship.”
Shaking my head, I turned to my friend. “I didn’t say that. I don’t want anything serious.”
A relationship was definitely what I
wanted
, but realistically, my current status was a lot of pressure to put on any budding love. Not to mention the fact that I’d like to have some experience before jumping into the deep end of the serious relationship pool.
From what I’d heard, first times were
painful
and less than satisfying. The rumor was, until someone was comfortable in their own skin, things were educational more than enjoyable. And the only way to tilt the scales of ecstasy in your favor was on-the-job training. You had to be intimate enough times to know what you liked and what you didn’t. The words I’d heard thrown around to describe sexual encounters before that happened ranged from
awkward
and
uncomfortable
to
comical
and
horrible
.
So my plan was to be with someone I wasn’t serious about to practice on. I would get all of the painful, unsatisfying, awkward, uncomfortable, comical, and horrible out of the way before I was with someone I actually cared about. Many people might view my logic as screwier than a crazy straw, but to me, it was solid as oak.
“A casual hookup then? I can work with that.” Harmony pulled her phone out of her purse.
“I told you I am
not
going on Tinder.”
The topic of my experience, or lack thereof, had been brought up at our last girls’ night out. The third leg of our best friend tripod, Destiny—who had just married Harmony’s brother JJ—had revealed that she was expecting a baby when we’d given her a hard time because she was drinking water when we were downing margaritas.
As excited as I’d been for my friend, who had had a crush on JJ Briggs since she was four years old and was now living her lifelong dream of not only being his wife, but also having his baby, I’d had a slight alcohol-assisted meltdown. While she was in the advanced class of life and acing the sucker, I had barely reached kindergarten level.
Harmony and Destiny, who were more like sisters than friends, had immediately noticed my tears, and the can of worms I’d been trying desperately to nail, glue, or weld shut popped open like it was spring-loaded. I’d blubbered my way through explaining how my virginity was starting to feel like a permanent condition. That I couldn’t see a light at the end of my sexless tunnel.
Thanks to that mini-meltdown, both of my well-meaning friends were on a mission to change my virginal standing.
“No Tinder. No eHarmony. No Match.com. No OkCupid.” Harmony listed the websites off on her fingers. “I get it. Zapp & Roger’s ‘Computer Love’ is not your jam. So the question is: What is your jam?”
“My jam?”
“Yes. Your type. What qualities are you looking for in the lucky gardener that will be deflowering you?”
I laughed. Harmony definitely had a way with words that caused vivid mental pictures to pop up like moles in a game of Whack-A-Mole. Unfortunately, every mole making an unwanted appearance in my mind resembled a certain brother of Harmony’s who had sandy-brown hair, dark-brown eyes, and the strongest arms I’d ever been in. Well, besides my brother Colton’s, but familial arms did not count.
Trace Briggs was the youngest of the Briggs boys and the closest to my and Harmony’s age. Because of that, I knew him better than any of the rest of my friend’s brothers. For as long as I could remember, Trace had always been around. He was only one year ahead of us at school, and we all shared the same circle of friends. That circle unfortunately included all the girls Trace had dated over the years. I’d had a front-row seat to his brief but—from my view—passionate romances.
The only upshot of that scenario was that he’d never had that serious of a relationship. His longest “girlfriend” had lasted two months, one week, and four days—not that I was counting or anything. And he hadn’t even labeled her his girlfriend. She was just the longest he’d ever
dated
someone. It was a well-known fact all over Clover County that Trace Briggs did not do relationships.
For years, I’d watched his attention bounce from girl to girl, always wishing that I was the one he was taking home or teaching how to bowl or play pool. Or that I was the girl sitting between his legs at Movies in the Park on Saturday nights—weather permitting—in the town square park. The town would gather under the stars for a BBQ dinner and then watch a movie projected onto the side of the three-story courthouse—the tallest building in the small town of Wishing Well.
The night he and Char Kramer had been snuggled in a sleeping bag right behind where Destiny, Harmony, and I had our blankets and pillows while we watched Titanic was branded into my memory forever. To this day, I couldn’t watch Jack and Rose’s love story without hearing Char’s giggles or the soft sounds of her sighs as they made out not two feet behind me. That night had ruined one of my all-time favorite movies.
Since my unrequited love of Trace was a secret I’d somehow managed to keep, even from my best friends, I decided not to tell Harmony that the only person I’d ever been able to imagine in the role of gardener in my deflowering was her very own brother.
“I just… I don’t know.” My head was spinning with all the things I wished could be and never would. “I guess that’s part of the problem. I have no idea what I’m looking for,” I lied.
I knew exactly what I was looking for.
Trace Briggs
. I also knew he’d never seen me like that. And he never would because he knew me too well. He knew what I’d been through. As amazingly supportive as he’d been, Trace would only ever see me in one way: as a cancer survivor. He’d been there for the good, the bad, and the very ugly. So, even if, by some miracle, he
had
ever been attracted to me, that ship had sailed. It had probably left the dock when I had celebrated my fourteenth birthday with a shaved head, compliments of my chemo.
I’d tried to cancel it after I’d had to take a razor to my head three days before the event. But Harmony and Destiny had insisted that the party must go on. I still remember how bittersweet it had been to walk into my parents’ kitchen feeling like a freak and seeing that half the partygoers had also shaved their heads. All the guys on the varsity football team, to be exact. Standing right in the middle was the quarterback—Trace. Our eyes met, and just as I was about to start crying, overwhelmed at the gesture, he cracked a joke about us all having the same barber. The whole party erupted in laughter, and he walked over and gave me a hug. A
friendly,
supportive hug. He’d always be my friend, but he’d never see me the way I wanted to be seen by him.
“Honestly, I don’t know what the holdup is. Look at you. Any guy would be lucky to tap that. I know men, and believe me, guys are going to line up and sell an organ to liberate you from your current status. You, my dear, are all kinds of hot, and you’ll have your pick.” Harmony winked as she picked her phone up when it buzzed—probably a text from one of her many admirers.
If anyone could claim expertise in the knowledge of the opposite sex, Harmony Briggs could. My bestie was the youngest of nine, and all of her older siblings were of the male variety. Not only had she grown up surrounded by testosterone since birth, her dance card had always been full. Guys had tripped over themselves to gain her attention.
When we were younger, the guys in Wishing Well were more than a little intimidated by her—understandably so—considering Harmony had eight built-in bodyguards. But, once she’d secured her license at sixteen, the dating pool had extended to the entirety of Clover County. She’d wasted no time taking full advantage of the newfound water, and since she’d kept it out of the city limits, her brothers had been none the wiser.
Glancing over at my friend as she typed on her iPhone, I silently wished that confidence could be derived via osmosis. If it could, I would’ve soaked up every ounce like a sponge in the ocean from the girl sitting beside me, who radiated self-assurance like no other person I knew. Harmony knew her worth. Not in a stuck-up way. It was just that she knew she was attractive, smart, and funny, and she could hold her own with anyone.
If she could bottle that self-esteem, she would be a millionaire.
I would be her first customer.