Texas Kissing (32 page)

Lily

Mmm, bacon.

I could smell coffee, too. I sleepily opened my eyes to see that Bull had gotten a campfire going. My heart swelled. He was cooking me breakfast! God, he was too much!

Then I heard him talking in a low voice. And not to me.

“But I never said—” he said to Caliope. He broke off and swallowed. “I never said that I—” He stopped again.

My forehead wrinkled. Either Caliope had been seeing him behind my back,
the hussy,
or—

Bull sighed. “Look, you came into my life—“

Oh God, I was right. He was rehearsing what he wanted to say to me!

“...and I just—I don’t want to be with anyone else.” He paused. Then his shoulders set as firmly as if he was about to wrestle a bronco. “Lily, what I’m trying to say is—”

I wanted to hear it so much. But I couldn’t let him say it.

“...I lo—”

Bull

At that second, there was an enormous yawn from Lily’s direction. I snapped around so fast I got neck ache.

Lily was sitting up and stretching, her magnificent breasts rising under her tight t-shirt. “Good morning,” she said between yawns. “Oh! You made breakfast!”

“Did you hear any of that?” I asked.

“Any of what?”

I studied her for a moment. She blinked back at me sleepily.

“Nothing.” I could feel my face going red. “Coffee’s ready. Let’s eat.”

***

The bacon was crispy, the potato hash was soft and fluffy, and the eggs had perfect, oozing yellow yolks. I’d even brewed the coffee just right. But my carefully-rehearsed speech was in tatters. She’d interrupted me right before I got to
I love you.
That had to be fate, right? Someone was trying to tell me this wasn’t a good idea. Someone was trying to clue me in that Lily was going to run a mile if I said the L-word.

So we got ready to go home. We looked at the lake and both decided it was too cold for another swim. It shouldn’t have been a big deal but, for some reason, it felt like one. As if I should be doing everything I could with her
now, today.

As if this might be the last time I saw her.

Don’t be stupid.
We were heading back into town, not breaking up. Hell, she’d probably spend the night in my trailer, or maybe I’d actually stay in the bus for the first time ever. Nothing was going to change.

As the day drew on, the weather turned. A storm was rolling in—it wouldn’t hit us for a while, I estimated, maybe not until tomorrow. But it was coming. We saddled up and did the long ride back almost in silence. Each time I looked at Lily, she was staring off into the distance, deep in thought. I knew better than to press her, but it worried me.

Goddamnit, what’s happening to me?
I’d always been a pretty simple guy. I’d never had to second-guess things before. If a girl got all mysterious and mopey on me, I’d just up and leave. But Lily? She had my damn heart in the palm of her hand.

When we’d stabled the horses, we walked back to her little Toyota. But instead of both of us getting in, she just stood there, hugging herself, shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot. “Um...look,” she began. “I need some time.”

My heart dropped right through my boots. “What?”

“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “Everything’s going to be okay.” And she smiled.

I stared at her, utterly confused. Was she breaking up with me? She seemed to be in the weirdest mood, worried one minute, grinning the next. What the hell was going on?

“I just need some time to think,” she said. “Can you give me that? Please? Just tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.”

I could feel the frustration building up inside me. All the times she’d run away from me...and now, just when everything was going so well, she was doing it again. I opened my mouth to yell—

And stopped. She was looking up at me with huge, pleading eyes, begging me to give her one last chance.

With a superhuman effort, I reigned in my anger. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s really what you need. But I swear I don’t know what’s going on with you.”

“I know.” She suddenly hugged me tight and the feel of her against me made me forgive her everything. A week ago, it would have just been the press of her breasts that I couldn’t get enough of. But now it was more than that. It was the feel of her warmth, the closeness of her—

Goddamn it, she’d turned me into a damn sissy.

She unwrapped herself from me and ran to her car.

Her little Toyota’s engine coughed once before it started and then she was roaring away in a cloud of dust. “Tomorrow!” she yelled out of the window. “I’ll call you first thing!”

“You better,” I muttered under my breath.

Lily

I was almost dancing inside, drunk on excitement. I had been ever since I’d heard Bull say it—or nearly say it.
He loves me!

I couldn’t let him say it. Not then. As soon as I’d realized what he was going to say, I’d known it in my heart.

I loved him, too.

But I couldn’t let him say it. Not when I was lying to him about everything in my past—who I was, what I was scared of. It wasn’t right.

I realized now that I’d been stalling all along. Now I had to make a decision. I owed him that. I had to end this thing now...or tell him everything and risk the consequences.

Back at the bus, I went down to the bathroom, ran a deep, hot bath, and slowly sank into it.

Bull was the best thing that had ever happened to me. He’d pursued me even when I’d pushed him away. He’d battled through even when I was
hard work,
as he’d put it. And the things he did to my body reduced me to a hot ball of goo every single time. He was exactly what I needed: solid as a rock, when my whole life was a paper-thin mess of lies and fakery.

He’d given so much of himself. Now it was time to give something back in return.

I lay back, submerging everything except my nose.

If I really wanted him, if I wanted this thing to be
real
the way he was real, I had to be totally honest with him.

I thought about it for a long time. And then, underwater, I gave a nervous smile.

I was going to tell him the truth.

I sat up and climbed out of the bath. The hell with tomorrow. Now that I’d made my decision, I was bursting with excitement. I’d get dressed, dry my hair, and call Bull. And, if he was in, I’d head over there and tell him right now.

Bull

Back at my place, I used the door frame of my trailer to lever the cap off a beer and then drank it sitting on the step. There was a pretty good sunset, but I couldn’t appreciate it...because
she
wasn’t with me.

What the hell’s going on with her?

It was the first time I’d ever been in any sort of relationship crisis. Hell, it was the first time I’d ever been in a
relationship.
All that whining Kirsten and her friends did when I didn’t call them started to make a little more sense.

A cold wind was getting up. That storm was still moving in—it’d be here by morning, maybe even before that. But I was too stubborn to get up and move inside.

Headlights suddenly swept across the side of my trailer and then hit me dead-on. I threw my arm up over my face as the sedan pulled up and a guy got out.

I stood up, still unable to see. “You want to kill the goddamn lights?” I growled.

The guy leaned through the window and flicked a switch. The lights died but I was still left with burning purple spots in my eyes. “You Bull?” he asked.

New York accent. Not so different to Lily’s.

“Who’s asking?”

He stepped forward. I hadn’t even been inside my trailer to turn on the lights yet and the gathering clouds were blocking the moonlight, so I had to scrunch up my eyes to see. A big guy in a suit. Dark hair. “Antonio,” he said. And stuck out his hand. “I’m out here looking for my cousin. I think you know her?”

I blinked. “Lily?”

For just a second, he hesitated, as if he didn’t recognize the name. Then he smiled. “Yeah. That’s right. Lily.” He peered around me at the darkened trailer. “She in there?”

“No.” My brain was still racing to catch up. “You’re her cousin?”

“That’s right. So, Lily found herself a cowboy, huh? You two...together?”

I straightened up. “Something like that.”

“You know where I can find her?”

I hesitated. She
had
said she missed her family. And the guy looked kind of Italian-American, like her. But…. “I don’t know you. How do I know you’re her cousin?”

He gave me a look. “I’ve known that girl since she was a tiny little thing. I used to take her to fucking band practice. Hell, she’s allergic to radishes. How about that?”

I relaxed. Okay, fine, he really did know her. “I’m glad you’re here,” I told him. “She’s got some shit going on with the law.”

His face tightened. “Oh really?”

I nodded. “There’s an FBI guy hanging around. It’s okay, though. She cut some sort of a deal with him.”

He went white, then red. “Where can I find her?”

I hesitated. And then I told him where he could find her bus. I watched him drive away and then wandered inside to get another beer.
Damn. Should I have offered him one?
The guy was family, after all.

I was just opening the next beer when my phone rang. Lily. I snatched it up. “Hi!”

“Hi.” She hesitated. “I need to talk to you.”

I stood up straight, my breath catching in my chest. Every muscle in my body had gone tense. “Lily,” I croaked. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“
No!
God, no! The opposite. I need to tell you some stuff. Stuff I should have told you a long time ago.”

Relief sluiced through me. I sat down on my trailer’s step. “Well, Jesus, girl, you had me going.”