Convincing Cara (Wishing Well, Texas Book 2) (2 page)

Out of habit, I tugged on the soft cotton fabric of my cardigan. The temperature was in the low nineties, but even if it had been in the hundreds, I still would have been that covered up. Logically, I understood that my port scar was not the worst thing in the world. I was used to it. Half of the time when I looked at it, I saw a badge of honor. It was the evidence of my survival. But, the other half of the time, I saw a glaring reminder that I was different. As much as it represented the life I’d gained, it also represented the childhood and the years I’d lost.

Not to mention, what girl wanted to have a scar right above her lady lumps? Maybe if I’d been rocking double Ds, that wouldn’t be an issue. But my B cups (on a good day!) were not anything to write home about.

It wasn’t that I thought I was unattractive. I knew I was pretty—in a plain way. Harmony and Destiny always tried to tell me that I was
hot
. I’d always taken the compliments with a grain of salt. Especially considering that they had stuck to that story even when I was in the hospital and looked like the walking dead. They’d wanted to make me feel better, and even though I was convinced they really did believe what they were saying, I was not so sure.

It was hard to have any kind of confidence after I’d spent my formative years fighting leukemia. My diagnosis at age twelve had changed everything. When most girls were developing and becoming a woman, I’d been trying to stay alive. I’d gone into remission at age seventeen. A few months later, I’d left for college with every intention of making up for lost time. I was going to have all the experiences I’d missed in high school.

But, instead of letting loose, I’d spent those years holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’d constantly overanalyzed every symptom I experienced. Every time I woke up and still felt fatigued, every headache and stomachache, every time I lost my appetite, I’d been sure that the C-word had returned.

Thank God it hadn’t.

Then, a month ago, I’d gotten the news that I was no longer classified as being “in remission.” After five years of clean bloodwork and scans, I’d been upgraded to “cancer-free.” That news, as good as it was, caused me to hold a mirror up to my life.

Had I been living? Yes. I’d graduated from Baylor University with a degree in communications. I’d just been hired on full-time for a publication in Dallas, where I’d freelanced for two years. I had amazing friends.

Technically, I did still live with my brother. But it was in my own house. It was on his property, but it was mine.

Life was good. Just not as
good
as I wanted it.

Laughter sounded, causing me to glance up. A wave of the congregation filed out of the church through the large, wooden doors. There were kids, parents, teens. Families. From the time I was a little girl, that was all I’d really wanted. Whenever Destiny, Harmony, and I would play house in her shed, we’d pretend that our husbands were out in the field and we were fixing supper for them. But I hadn’t had to pretend that much because the man I wanted to marry, even at six, was out in Harmony’s field.

“Oh shoot, I’m late. I didn’t realize how long Pastor Benson’s service went.” She was in full puppy-dog-eyes mode, which meant I would probably not be getting the ride home she’d promised me. “Care Bear, do you think—”

Lifting my hand, I stopped her. “It’s cool. I can find another ride.” Or, more likely, I’d walk. No way was I going to ask someone to go out of their way to give me a ride. “Go get your groove back, Stella.”

During the past six months, Harmony had been in a self-imposed dry spell. She’d decided to be a little more discriminating when it came to the partners she did the horizontal mambo with, mainly for the very reasons I wanted to get it out of the way. Her love life had been filled with encounters that she said didn’t even out rank a good bath and a glass of wine.

But, over the past few weeks, Harmony had started seeing a doctor two towns over in Parish Creek. She’d met him while Destiny’s grandma had been in the hospital after she’d fainted. Thankfully, Grandma Dixie, who was the town matriarch, had only suffered from anemia. After a two-night stay, she’d been discharged and was right as rain.

Harmony was more than a little eager to see her Dr. Hottie since they hadn’t done the deed yet, and their time together was limited due to the crazy hours he had to put in at the hospital. The last thing I wanted to be was a nookie blocker.

“Oh look!” Harmony’s fingers grabbed my forearm as I was reaching down to get my purse. Then she called out, “Trace!”

I froze.

“Hey, sis!”

The deep rumble of Trace’s voice sent a shiver down my spine, and goosebumps broke out on my arm. Trying to mask the fact that my pulse had just sped so fast that you would think it was trying to outrun the law, I sat up straighter as Trace’s sculpted forearms appeared on the passenger side of Harmony’s Jeep. His face was less than six inches from mine as he leaned in the car, and before I could stop it, I inhaled sharply. His clean, musky scent wafted into the vehicle, and his nearness made it difficult for me to remember how to breathe.

Staring straight ahead, I prayed that neither Harmony nor the cause of my breathlessness noticed my reaction.

Leaning over the center console, appearing to be completely unaware that I’d forgotten how to intake or expel oxygen, Harmony asked, “Hey, are you headed to Circle M? Cara needs a ride home.”

No. No. No!
My inner self-protective voice screamed in panic.

It was hard enough for me to deal with the fact that Trace worked for my brother Colton on the ranch. That, at any moment of any day, I would see him up at the main house, in the stables, out in the fields. The last thing I needed was to be in a confined space with him. I was scared that my overactive, under-stimulated hormones might turn me into some sex-crazed freak. That he would be the moon to my werewolf.

“Sure thing. I was just headed that way,” Trace easily agreed as he opened the door.

“Great!” Harmony chirped. She wrapped her arms around my neck to give me a quick hug as she whispered in my ear, “This conversation is not over. I’ll call you tonight.”

I nodded, unable to speak. Harmony had no idea what she had just done by asking her brother to give me a ride, and I had no one to blame but myself for that.

My feelings for Trace Briggs were the best-kept secret in Wishing Well, and even if I spontaneously combusted from the heat he inspired in me, I planned on keeping it that way.

Trace

“If you find yourself in a hole, the best thing to do is stop diggin’.”

~ Dolly Briggs

“S
o, what were
you and my sister talkin’ about? You two were in a serious girl huddle.” I glanced over at Cara beside me to gauge her reaction.

“Nothing. Just…you know…” she stammered. A faint blush appeared on her smooth cheeks, and it told me she was trying to hide something.

“Nope, I don’t know.”

“Oh, right… Um, nothing.”

“Nothing, huh?” I asked as a grin pulled on my cheeks.

“Yep. Nothing,” she maintained as she stared straight ahead.

As much as I wanted to continue down this path, just to see where it would lead, I decided to drop it. I knew the gist of what they’d been talking about. When I’d left out the side door of the church to avoid several well-meaning mothers determined to set me up with their daughters, I’d heard Cara say that she didn’t want anything serious. And my sister had asked her what her type was.

Instead of doing the honorable thing by rounding the corner and coming into view, I’d waited and listened. Eavesdropped. I hadn’t really been able to make much out until Cara had said that she would find her own ride. Then I casually walked directly in front of my sister’s car, knowing she would see if I would take Cara home. If Harmony hadn’t spoken up, no way Cara would have. She
hated
asking anyone for anything.

In fact, if I hadn’t been there, I would bet a month of paychecks that she would have walked the five miles back home. The girl beside me was as stubborn as a mule. Which was one of my favorite things about her because it had kept her alive. She’d fought her battle with cancer and won.

A few weeks ago, Colton had called to say that the doctors had declared Cara cancer-free, and until I take my last breath, I will never forget the relief, the joy, and the clarity I’d felt in that moment.

For years, I’d been sitting on the sidelines of Cara’s life. I knew I was more than just her best friend’s brother—I was her friend. And I’d been content with that. Well, maybe not content, but I’d accepted it. Because Cara had always had enough on her plate without dealing with any kind of romantic gestures from me.

So, even though I’d been in love with Cara McCord since a hot summer day when I was nine and she was eight and I’d seen her running through the south field on my parents’ farm, the sun shining in her long, blonde hair, her blue eyes wide and shimmering like diamonds, I’d kept it to myself.

First, it was because I hadn’t really known what it was I was feeling. Just that I always wanted to be around her and she smelled like flowers. And, whenever she smiled, I got a funny feeling in my chest.

As we got older, those feelings intensified. As a kid, they’d scared me. No other girl’d ever made me feel the way Cara did. During middle school, I’d tried to ignore them. But, one night in the basement, a game of Spin the Bottle changed all of that.

I still remember the way my heart beat so hard that I was sure that all of our friends in the circle could hear it when the neck of the bottle pointed at Cara after I’d spun it. I still remember my palms tingling and growing damp as I stood and walked over to her. I still remember the way her eyes looked when they lifted to mine through her dark, thick lashes. I still remember how soft and perfect her lips felt against mine when I lowered my mouth to hers. The innocence and intensity in that one kiss had haunted me for over ten years.

That night, I tossed and turned in my bed until it was time to get up and feed the chickens at four thirty a.m. By the time I got dressed for school, I’d decided to ask her to the Valentine’s Day dance that Saturday. I looked for her after first and second period. Finally, I ran into Harmony, who said that Destiny had told her that Cara was sick at home.

The weeks that followed, Cara was in and out of school. She kept having doctor visits and was sick with flu-like symptoms. Then, on a rainy afternoon, I was eating a Hot Pocket for an afterschool snack and Harmony came into the kitchen, sobbing because she’d just found out her best friend had been diagnosed with a rare form of juvenile leukemia. She fell into my mom’s arms, and I sat at the table, tears running down my face, stunned, heartbroken, more scared than I’d ever felt in my life. To this day, I haven’t been able to eat a Hot Pocket again.

After that, I watched the girl I loved fight for her life. Literally. I’d dated here and there, mainly just as a distraction, but none of them ever meant anything to me. I never felt a tenth of what I felt for Cara for any of them.

Now, Cara was cancer-free and ready to date. And I’d waited long enough. There was just one problem: To celebrate Cara’s good news, Harmony, Destiny, and Cara had tied one on. I’d ended up taking her home from the Tipsy Cow and she’d had a lot to say about her lack of a love life. She’d said that she didn’t want a relationship, that she just wanted to have fun. She’d also tried, more than once, to kiss me. Somehow, I’d used super-human strength and hadn’t succumbed to her drunken advances. After getting her into bed, I’d camped out in a nearby chair to make sure she was okay. The next morning, she’d basically thrown me out and, unless I was being paranoid, had been avoiding me ever since.

We hadn’t talked about that night. The things she’d told me or the fact that she’d thrown herself at me. Now, she was stuck in my truck, and I figured it was as good a time as any.

“Service was good,” I said, making small talk as we pulled onto the main drag of Wishing Well.

“Mmm, hmm.” She nodded, her lips pursing as she stared out the passenger side window.

Okay, so maybe no small talk. You could cut the tension radiating off Cara towards me with a knife. Maybe she was embarrassed by her behavior. Maybe she regretted telling me such personal things. Maybe she regretted trying to kiss me.

Only one way to find out.

I tried to decide what the best way into this conversation was going to be. We turned down the fire lane behind Circle M; I only had a few more minutes.

“So, want to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me since the night I took you home from the bar?” I figured, might as well cut to the chase.

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw her spin around so fast that her hair fanned out as she turned towards me.

“I haven’t been… I’m not—”

“You have and you are, darlin’,” I said. “The question is: Why?”

Crossing her arms, she shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, let’s see. We can start by you throwing me out of your house when you woke up to me making breakfast.”

“I did not throw you out!” Her voice rose as she defended her actions. Her hands flew up as she started talking animatedly. “I was just surprised to see you, and I told you that you didn’t need to take care of me. I said that you could go…you know…do whatever it is that you do.”

After
she’d asked, with a horrified expression on her face, if anything had happened between us. I couldn’t lie, the look on her face had stung, especially since, the night before, she’d had a very different take on the possibility of something happening between us.

I kept that information to myself for the time being. “And when I said that I wanted to stay to enjoy the breakfast I’d made for us, you told me to wrap it up and go.”

“Yeah, so you could go do whatever you had to do. You’d already done enough. I was just…” As she leaned back against the seat, her arms flopped down to her sides. “I was embarrassed that you’d had to waste an entire night taking care of me because I let Harmony talk me into a third pitcher of margaritas at Don Julio’s.”