Riley's Pond (New Adult Romance) (15 page)

I only had one choice—to go the one way I knew. Home. I’d take Taylor there, then call her grandmother.

“I’ll take you to my house.” She sneezed again. When I tried to set her on her feet, she yelped and I lifted her instantly.

“I twisted my foot on some loose rocks. I’m not sure I can walk very far. Maybe you should go get help. There’s no way you can carry me up those steep banks.

“Leaving you here is
not
happening.” I bent down, “Climb on my back and hold the quilt over both of us.”

Taylor shifted onto my hips and I locked my arms under her thighs. The weight of the wet quilt pulled me off balance and for a second, I panicked we’d tumble into the mud. She fumbled with the blanket, pulled it over both our heads with one hand and wrapped her free arm around my neck.

She kissed my cheek. “Thanks for saving me. I do love you Riley.”

Thoughts of this afternoon, reeled in my head. “Don’t say that. I’m too confused right now to believe you.” She tried to squirm out of my arms, but I held tight. “
No! Stop it!
” I shouted. “I’m getting you someplace warm and dry. We can argue later, if you don’t die from pneumonia, first.”

She started crying and all my macho posturing vanished.

“Taylor, I’m sorry. Let’s just get you somewhere warm, okay? My house all right?”

“Yeah. But promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t leave me. Not tonight. Not ever. And keep my grandmother away from me.”

“Okay.” There wasn’t time to argue the finer points of our verbal contract. My back ached and large, flat drops of rain pummeled us.

I literally crawled over the rise from the pond, keeping Taylor tucked under the quilt. When I stood again, I adjusted her weight and started across the meadow. Heavy gray curtains of rain blurred the lights to my house in the distance. The waxy leaves of drenched sunflowers turned the ground beneath my feet slippery. We stumbled to the ground once, but I managed to take the hit from the hard ground first.

When we finally stepped onto the back deck, Lucky barked wildly inside. The lights came on one by one, starting upstairs, down the stairwell and through the house, illuminating the kitchen.

Jaxson looked half crazed with his hair matted to one side of his head, his gray T-shirt crinkled over pajama bottoms. He approached the door, baseball bat in hand. We both knew where Dad kept the shotgun, but were instructed bat first. Bullets second.

Jaxson wrestled Lucky by the collar, holding her back while he flipped on the outside lights. He let out a high pitch squeal when the light shined on us. Apparently, I couldn’t be recognized as “Riley with a girl on his back.” We looked more like a mass of mud with pink rosebuds peeking beneath the filth.

“Jaxson, it’s me Riley. Open the door, quick!”

Between wrestling Lucky and fighting the sticky door latch, Jaxson pretty much used every swear word in his vocabulary. Finally the door opened and I pushed through the opening, hissing at Lucky to stop barking. I felt Taylor’s legs wrap around my waist away from Lucky’s mouth.

“Shut the fuck up!” Jaxson yelled, grabbing her collar and hauling her to the laundry room.

“Well, that woke everyone,” I scowled. ‘

“Dirk’s downstairs watching a movie, but more than likely, asleep. Once that kid shuts his eyes, he’s in a coma.

“Where’s Mom?”

“She went to Lydia Daniels to wait for you. Dad’s checking the bridge, so she left me in charge of the ‘mini Martin’.”

The quilt fell to the floor and Jaxson sized up my
back pack.

“Well, well. My guess is you’re Taylor, Riley’s secret and the cause of a chain of events rivaling my last crime spree.”

“Taylor, this is Jaxson, the blackest sheep possible belonging to our family. Jax, this is Taylor and she’s off limits, understand?”

“Nice with the whole ‘trust thing’ bro. No worries. I’m sworn off girls.” Taylor slithered down my side and I curled my arm around her waist to keep her steady. Jaxson gave her his usual once over, tallying the numbers in his head to rank her on boobs, face, legs, and butt.

“Maybe I’m not. I give her a ‘nine’. Nice work. Let me know when you’re done with her.”

“You’re disgusting!” Taylor snapped, launching into a coughing spell with a bark offering stiff competition to Lucky’s.

I bent to lift her in my arms again, but hissed against a jab of pain on my right side. “Damn, I must have pulled something when I fell.”

When Taylor teetered on her sore ankle, Jaxson swooped in and lifted her effortlessly. “I presume we’re going upstairs?” I followed behind them, trying to not focus on Taylor’s hands locked around my brother’s neck, or his hand poised to the side of her breast, his other arm secured under her thighs.

At the top of the stairs, Jaxson carefully placed Taylor on her feet at the bathroom door, letting his hand slide a bit too slow across her rear. She shot him a look that should have vaporized him, but didn’t say anything.

“There are towels in the cabinet. Get in a hot shower and I’ll put some dry clothes outside the door.” I paused, noting Jaxson still lingered and motioned for her to step closer so I could whisper. “What do you want to do about underwear?”

Her cheeks reddened under the mud caked to her face. “I’ll go ‘commando’,” she whispered and shut the door.

“My kind of girl,” Jaxson smirked.

“Go to hell.”

“Already am. Army in three weeks, remember?”

I had no comeback. He was going “Hell” and as each week brought the time closer, joking about it seemed cruel. Still, I had to give him something.

“Just so you know, Jax, you scream like a girl.”

**

After I finished my turn in the shower, I scooped Taylor’s dirty clothes off the bathroom floor and put them in the washer with mine. I hopped on top of the rumbling washer and made the daunting call to Lydia Daniels. After she chewed through me when I told her Taylor would stay here tonight, my mother lectured me on “appropriate behavior under
her
roof.”

Quietly, I slipped into my room where I told Taylor to stay to avoid Jaxson. The lamp on my computer desk washed the room in a warm glow. Outside, the rain pulsed relentlessly against the window, but in here with Taylor curled on my bed, her damp head on my pillow, everything felt perfect. I didn’t want anything to change. I never wanted tomorrow to come.

When I crawled on the bed next to her, she nuzzled into me. “I called your grandma to tell her you were all right.”

Taylor’s brows wiggled into a serious knot. “I’m not going back.”

“You don’t have to. I told her you were staying here tonight.”

“What about your parents?”

I wrapped my arms around her, smelling the coconut scented shampoo lingering in her hair. Nothing mattered outside this moment. “They’ll have to deal with it. Right now, I need to know you’re safe and I can only feel that if you’re in my arms.”

While usually this close proximity would trigger certain body parts to prepare for action, tonight I only wanted to protect Taylor, not ravage her. Maybe because my sweatshirt and sweatpants completely covering her naked body looked anything but sexy, but probably because she felt vulnerable to me. I kissed her forehead, tugged her closer.

“Taylor, who’s Michael
?
”

Her long dark lashes brushed her pale cheeks, now clean and glowing from moisturizer. “He’s my
supposed
boyfriend back home, or I should say the boy everyone thinks I should marry.” My body stiffened, but her arms held tight. “Relax, Riley. I don’t love Michael and have no intention of marrying him, regardless of what everyone wants me to do.”

“Sounds like he’s going to be rich someday. Your future would be secure.”

She settled deeper in the bend of my arm, her eyes still shut. “He’ll be rich because his daddy will give him money. Not because he earned it. I know what it’s like to have your future
bought.
Grammy’s right. I’ve been accepted to Harvard, but I haven’t decided to go. That’s why I didn’t tell you. My dad wants me to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer.”

“What do you want?”

She yawned wide. “Honestly? To be a school teacher or counselor. Anything but a lawyer. What about you?”

“Anything but the ‘son of the local sheriff’. I’ve thought about becoming a doctor—one for kids.”

“You’re good with…”

She never finished her sentence. She’d fallen asleep. I stared at her slumbering in my arms, her breaths warm and feather soft against my skin. I found it hard believe someone as special as Taylor could be in to me. I didn’t deserve such a gift.

The soft rap at my door sounded in my dreams, until it happened a second time, interrupting my fantasy dirt bike race. I’d rounded the last berm, heading for the finish line when Lydia Daniels’s voice blared over the speaker system, instead of the announcer.

“Riley, can I come in?” she asked.

I wanted to sit up, but Taylor snuggled deep into my curves, my legs spooning under her hips. No way would I disturb her. I covered her with a quilt and motioned for her to come in. I pushed my finger to my lips.

“Quiet. She’s finally asleep. Don’t wake her.”

Mrs. Daniels nodded and pulled my desk chair closer to the bed. The lamp still glowed and the room actually had a cozy feel to it. Of course it didn’t hurt that I held a gorgeous girl’s body in my arms, enhancing the effect.

“Your mom said you found her by some pond?”

“In the thicket, there’s a pond Jaxson and I made years ago. That’s where I first met Taylor. She found it on a walk and was swimming when I came to do the same.”

“Oh. I had no idea one existed.”

“No one did until tonight.”

“Riley, about what happened earlier. I was out of line. My accusations were harsh. You and Taylor are adults, and as hard as that is for me to face, it’s really none of my business if you two are having sex.”

Hearing the word “sex” come out of Taylor’s grandmother’s mouth sounded nasty. From now on, if I needed anything to stop my lustful urges from getting out of control, I’d picture Lydia Daniels’s thin, pale lips mouth the word
s-e-x.

“Well, we’re not. The hickeys really were just playful.”

At least mine. Taylor’s, on the other hand, was a pure unadulterated
turn on.

“Promise me you’ll be responsible, Riley. Use protection.”

Okay this reached beyond the boundaries of weird. Taylor sighed, shifting her sweet, round bottom against my stomach. “Riley Jr.” awakened. I tucked the quilt between us and draped my arm over her waist, wishing Lydia Daniels would go home.
Now.

“
Riley, there’s a reason I lost it. You see, I was only seventeen when I got pregnant with Taylor’s mother. The baby’s father was a smooth talker who worked on our ranch for the summer. He made me promises of a life together, traveling and seeing exotic places—a fantasy that appealed to a young girl trapped in farm town, facing a future as a rancher’s wife.

“My boyfriend was backward when it came to romance, so when ‘Mr. Tight Jeans’ told me he loved me, I believed the lie. He knew all the right things to do and say, even promised to marry me if I gave him what he wanted. Then one morning I found the bunkhouse empty, his room cleaned out. He’d left me behind with a shattered heart.

“I lied and told my boyfriend the baby belonged to him. We’d had sex a couple of times, so he didn’t question me. But then Taylor’s mother was born a month early at a healthy eight pounds, her head was crowned with thick blonde hair. We both had dark brown hair. He finally asked the ultimate and I told him the truth. The man had the decency to stay with me another three years, working two jobs to give me enough money to survive on my own. That’s when I bought the house down the way. I raised Grace by myself.

“When she went away to college, she met Richard, a law student with a promising career like Michael. I pushed her into marrying him when I found out she was pregnant with Taylor, even though she had her doubts. I didn’t find out for ten years, that their marriage had been a sham. He’d dated other women behind Grace’s back, and the worst was, she allowed it. All for the sake of appearances. Not even for Taylor. On Taylor’s eighteenth birthday, they announced their divorce, spinning her world out of control. She arrived on my doorstep the next day.

“Riley, my point to all of this is that I don’t want Taylor to repeat history. She’s got a chance to break the bad karma. You’re a nice kid, but Michael can give her the life she needs to survive. That’s why I got so upset. If she got pregnant it would ruin everything. Michael’s made it very clear he wants Taylor to be a virgin when they marry.”

At this point, my head snapped back in the game. I’d tuned out most of the story because I didn’t want pictures in my head to match the words describing Lydia Daniels as a barnyard slut.

“They’re
engaged
?”

“He’s asked her, but with the divorce, she told him she couldn’t deal with the pressure. That’s the main reason she’s here. She needed time to sort through her feelings before starting law school in the fall.”

“Taylor doesn’t want to go to law school. She doesn’t want to be with Michael, either. She says he’s who everyone else wants her to be with. Not her.”

“Love is overrated, Riley. With the way the world is, she needs security. Not love.”

Taylor turned over and nestled onto my chest, mumbling. I folded my arms tightly around her, keeping her safe from the outside world grabbing at her. Safe from her grandmother—safe from
Michael.

“No offense, Mrs. Daniels, but you’re wrong. Taylor deserves to be loved.”

“Riley, you’re not saying you’re
in love
with my granddaughter, are you? You can’t be in love this fast. You’re too young and naïve to think otherwise. Sorry, boy, but the only thing you’re feeling is
lust…
not
love.
”

I wanted to wipe the smirk off her face. Every muscle tightened, causing Taylor to stir again. I didn’t want her to wake and find her grandmother sitting next to the bed, nor did I want anyone taking her from my arms. Not tonight.