Texas Kissing

by Helena Newbury

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© Copyright Helena Newbury 2015

The right of Helena Newbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.

This book contains adult scenes and is intended for readers 18+.

Cover photo: 4x6/iStockPhoto

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my editor, my street team and all my readers!

Lily

I use blackout drapes but Texas morning sun
don’t give a damn.
It crept around the edges and through the pinprick holes where the material had worn thin and lit up my sleeping face like a laser. When I blearily opened my eyes, it was with my hands up over them, trying to push away the morning like it was a dog licking my face.

It was going to be one of those days.

I figured I might as well get it over with, so I knelt up on my bed and lifted the drapes. I tentatively opened my eyes just enough to glimpse a massive Texas sky dusted with marshmallow clouds, the sun already hot on my face through the rear window.

I should explain
rear window.
My home is a Greyhound bus.

I needed a project, when I arrived in Texas. Buying the bus and converting it was perfect—complicated enough that I could immerse myself in it for weeks and forget what I’d left behind.

My bed is where the last four rows of seats would have been. A single bed, because that’s all I need.

Walk forward through a curtain and you get to the kitchen. I ripped out all the seats and added a counter, stove and sink. Water and power comes from the farm I’m parked on—the dried-up creek bed wasn’t any use to anyone, so the farmer’s happy to let me park there for a few hundred dollars a month.

Downstairs, I expanded the bus’s bathroom. You know the luggage bays under the bus where you stuff your suitcase? That’s where my tub and shower are.

Why a bus? Because it’s always ready to move.

My name is Lily, and I’m on the run.

***

People say that, when you move somewhere new, it takes a couple of days to acclimatize to the weather. It’s been two years and I’m still waiting. In winter, I long for snow and the slippery-smooth feel of a freshly-broken-off icicle. In fall and spring I hanker after those cool, comfortable days where the rain’s just cleared the air and everything feels fresh and new. And in summer, like it is now...I just want to be in civilization, where the outdoors is tamed—something to be enjoyed from behind darkened glass in the cool breeze of air conditioning.

I miss New York.

I left the drapes closed (have you any idea
how many
drapes you have to make for an entire bus?) and padded in my nightshirt downstairs to the bathroom. It was way too hot for a nightshirt, even with the bus’s a/c, but I’m not one of those women who’s comfortable walking around in her underwear, even when there’s no one to see.

I’ve rigged up a system of mirrors to bring sunlight down from the roof of the bus to the bathroom, so it feels almost like showering outdoors. I washed my hair, drawing conditioner through the ends so that—hopefully—it would freak out slightly less when the sun hit it. You would have thought raven-black, Italian-American hair would feel like it’s in its element in Texas, but not mine. Back in New York, I think I spoiled it with fancy salons and now it sulkily refuses to cooperate.

Ditto my skin. My ancestors, I’m told, came from some village in Sicily, so I know that in theory I can tan with the best of them. But my skin’s as pale as my name—Lily—suggests because….

Well, because I spend a lot of time indoors.

Part of that has to do with having
too much
skin. Too much flesh. I was never the slender, foxy girl, bouncing around New York from party to party. That’s the movie star role. I’m more like the comedy sidekick, the one who has to struggle into her plus-size jeans and is there to make the main character look good.

That was always okay with me; I knew my place.

But that slender, foxy girl I was best friends with? She’s dead. And I’m not anyone’s comedy sidekick, because I don’t dare become friends with anyone anymore.

***

When I’d finished patting the water from my body with a faded towel, I dressed in a blouse and jeans and got ready to go out.
Not
my favorite thing in the world. With grocery deliveries and an internet connection, I can go a week without leaving the bus and that’s exactly how I like it. But there was business to attend to.

I reached under my bed and pulled a lever and the whole thing folded up on springs. Beneath it is my work area.

On the underside of the bed, in little plastic pouches, were over thirty fake passports and driver’s licenses, all in various stages of completion. More pouches held my raw materials—the special paper and bindings, the holograms and electronic chips that are supposed to be impossible to fake.

I picked up the bag containing this month’s delivery: five of my special “All in One” packs (passport, driver’s license, social security card—buy together and save!) and I was ready.

Almost
ready. Also attached to the underside of the bed, where I can grab it quickly in the night, is my gun, a cute little snub-nosed thing that fits in my purse. It has mother-of-pearl grips and looks like a toy, and it’ll happily chew up anyone I turn it on. In two years, I’d never had to use it. But I was ready to.

***

I hate crowds. Not in a social phobia sort of a way. I just get kind of antsy and breathless and irrationally angry and there’s never enough air….

Okay, maybe I’m on the social phobia
spectrum.

Whatever, I don’t like crowds. Or the hooting, crowing war cries Texan men feel it’s necessary to give when they’re doing anything exciting. Or animals, which are big and unpredictable.

So a rodeo? Not my thing.

Gold Lake is a pretty small town and really doesn’t need a sports arena anything like as big as the one it has—I suspect some greasing of palms went on somewhere to get it built—but now that it’s here, the rodeos, Monster Truck shows and other events bring in big crowds. For the whole two years I’d been in town, I’d studiously avoided going anywhere near it.

But for some reason, that was where Francisco wanted to meet and I wanted to keep him happy. I’d been supplying passports to the Mexican cartel since I arrived in Texas and they’d become my biggest customer.

I paid and went in...and then realized my mistake. The message had said they were in Block Q. I’d come in through the wrong entrance and I was way on the other side of the arena. I’d have to thread my way between about a million people to get to them. I felt my skin crawling at the thought of all those bodies pressed against me. Plus, I’d be late. And I
hate
being late.

Then I spotted the stairs heading down under the arena. Some sort of backstage area—I could cut through and emerge on the other side.

I hurried down the stairs. It was dark down there and pleasantly cool. I passed storerooms and dressing areas and then the floor turned to bare concrete, dusted with hay. And then—

Oh crap. I’d reached a dead end. There was a wooden fence and, beyond it, an open area with straw on the floor, so big that the edges disappeared into the darkness to my left and right. Some sort of holding area for horses or something, although it seemed to be empty at the moment.

And there, on the far side was the exit. I could see the sunlight blazing in and hear the crowd roaring. I could cut across and be at my meeting in a few minutes.

I climbed inelegantly up the fence, swung my leg over and clambered down the other side. Then I started to trudge through the straw. It was further than it had looked to the other side.

My first sign that something was wrong was a snorting noise, like someone was trying to blow an obstruction out of their nose. It was much, much louder than it had any right to be. I spun around, trying to place it, but could see nothing.

Then two gleaming white horns emerged from the darkness.

Oh shit.

I’m 5’5”. The bull’s shoulders came to the top of my head. It was only walking at the moment, but each step was a pissed-off stamp. It was eying me with a look that said,
what the fuck are you doing in my home?

I glanced around. I was roughly in the middle of the area, too far from either fence to get there in time.

Maybe if I keep still. Don’t antagonize it.

The bull pawed at the ground, sending straw flying.
Shit! That’s bad, right?

It charged.

I froze for a split-second, by which time the bull had picked up a terrifying amount of speed. When I started running, the ground was shaking with the thunder of its hooves. I knew I wasn’t supposed to look back but I did—and saw the thing had its head down, its horns pointed right at me. It was easily going to outrun me, well before I hit the fence. And then I was going to be—my stomach lurched.
Gored.

I raced for the fence, but with my body I’m not exactly nimble. The bull snorted and the sound was horribly close. I couldn’t stand the thought of it hitting me in the back, of not knowing when it would happen, so I spun around, still stumbling backward. The bull was ten feet away, eight, six—

A man crashed into the bull from the side and gripped its horns. Any normal man would have been tossed aside, or simply flapped around like a balloon attached to a freight train.