Texas Rose Forever (Texas Rose Ranch #1) (11 page)

She moaned softly against his lips as her legs opened wider. He kissed his way down her neck and nudged the spot right below her ear. She moaned again and he sucked that spot hard. His mouth found her nipple. He licked and sucked playfully.

One of her hands tunneled through his hair holding his mouth to her while the other slid down his chest to his boxers. She circled him hard and worked his cock. Her thumb massaged the tender tip as she stroked him.

Her nipple wasn’t nearly enough, he had to taste her. His hand slid down her belly and found the tiny scrap of lace covering her. He slipped a finger under the lace and into her warm wetness. She was so fucking wet for him. He slid another finger in and used his thumb to draw tiny circles above her opening. Her hips moved against his hand. As he worked her nipple with his mouth, her breathing turned heavy and her hand stroked him faster.

She felt so good against him, under him. Gently, he unwrapped her hand from him, and kissed his way down to her sex. He spread her legs wide . . . he wanted to see her . . . to taste her.

There was a thin line of short red curls pointing the way to heaven. With his fingers still stroking her from the inside, he set his mouth on her. Slowly, he made circular movements, lightly licking. Her hips bucked against his mouth and she turned sweeter—like tangy strawberries warmed by the sun. Her hips picked up his rhythm and with every lick his cock strained to get to her. Her breathing got faster as her hips bucked harder against his mouth. He increased the pressure to finish her off. Her
muscles tensed and then she moaned as the orgasm washed over her.

When she lay back boneless against the pillow, he wanted to roar like a lion. He’d put that rosy-flush on her body and he could still taste her sweetness. He eased up and kissed his way up to her face. He wanted to be gentle, but his body wouldn’t let him. He needed her . . . needed the release.

He made to roll off of her, but her legs clamped around him, holding him on top of her.

“Condom.” His voice was rusty.

She reached over to the nightstand, pulled the top drawer open, and grabbed the box of Trojans.

“I moved them in here from the bathroom medicine cabinet.” She grinned.

He snagged the box, tore it open. In a flash, he had it on and was ready. As gently as he could, he slid into all of that warm heat.

She sighed contently and lifted her hips to take him deeper. She wrapped her legs tighter around him and rolled him on his back.

“You’ve done the work so far, it’s my turn.” She leaned forward, placing her hands on either side of his head. He took her nipple into his mouth as she rode him hard, each thrust taking him closer to the edge. Her hips built to a frantic pace, stroking him. Every muscle in his body tensed. He bit his bottom lip so hard he tasted blood trying to hold the orgasm back.

“Oh . . . oh.” CanDee moaned as she tightened around him.

He pumped harder and harder as the first wave of orgasm crashed through him. She rode him until he’d almost forgotten his own name and then she rolled off and lay beside him.

He curled into her, surrounding her with his body.

“So you went through my medicine cabinet?” He smoothed her long, coppery hair down and buried his face in it. It smelled like coconuts and lemons.

“Yes. I’m a girl, which means that I’ve snooped in every cabinet, drawer, and closet you have.” She reached back, found his hand, and wrapped it around her.

“Did you find anything interesting?” He loved that she was honest.

“You have an alarming array of antacids. I’ve never seen so many.” She slid his hand up to cover her breast. He could get behind that plan. “Do you have some stomach ailment I should know about?”

“No, just a love of spicy chili.” He nuzzled her neck.

“Speaking of chili . . . does your spicy chili involve beans?” She stilled, waiting for his answer.

“No, ma’am, this is Texas. It’s all meat, all the time. Only Yankees or Californians put beans in their chili.” Absently, he ran his thumb over her nipple.

“Thank God. Beans in chili are a deal breaker for me. I’d hate for whatever we have to be over before it really started.” She relaxed into him.

He grinned. They’d just had sex and discussed chili. He could get used to this.

CHAPTER 11

Three hours later, CanDee was hard at work. On the floor of the parlor, she had documents and pictures laid out in a huge timeline. Starting with the original land deed titling the first thousand acres to Colonel Lacy Kendall Lehman all the way to the marriage license of Lacy Kendall Rose IV and Lucy Anne Braxton in 1975.

She was halfway through the boxes and the timeline was starting to take shape. Carefully, she pulled another piece of browned-with-age paper out of a box. This was the land deed for the additional acres purchased by Lacy Kendall Lehman that had belonged to Noah Smithwick. She scanned the deed and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Cinco asked from the chaise-lounge end of the brown leather sectional sofa. He’d brought a stack of paperwork and his laptop in there to hang out with CanDee.

The company was nice.

“This is the deed for Noah Smithwich’s acres. The language is a little different. It states, ‘
Lacy Kendall Lehman, a man with impeccable morals, kindness toward his family and livestock, and his unwavering Christian generosity
. . .’ and then there are lots of heretofores and thuses and hences.” She held the document up for him to see. “And there are no less than five official seals. They really wanted to make sure that your three-times-great-grandfather was the owner of these acres.”

“I guess they felt like they needed to make up for Noah Smithwick.” He typed something on his laptop and moved a paper from one pile to the next.

She walked the paper over to the beginning of the timeline and gently stacked it on top of the original deed. On the way back to the box she was currently sorting, she noticed a stack of photos on top of yet another box. “Where did these come from?”

Cinco looked up from his computer. “I found those photos in a shoebox in the barn. I thought they might be useful.”

Gingerly, she held the top photo up and then turned it over.
Tres, age 14
was written on the back. The black and white was of a tall skinny boy, unsmiling, and with his hands to his sides. She moved that one to the bottom of the pile. The next one was a wedding photo of a stiff groom with scars on his face and hands standing next to an even stiffer-looking bride. She turned it over.
Tres Rose and Suzette McCloud Rose, 1942
. She pulled out the other photo and set the remaining photos on the box. She went to the window and held the two photos up. “That’s odd.”

She compared the photos again.

“What?” Cinco banged away on the laptop.

“Tres started out tall and skinny with freckles and ended up as short and dark skinned. I guess the fire and working outside did that to him.”

That had to be it, or maybe the perspective of the photo was off. Perhaps—she turned the wedding photo over and looked at the name—Suzette had been tall.

“Probably just a trick of lighting or something.” Cinco rustled through his paperwork, picked up one, typed something in the computer, and then put the paper in the other stack.

“You’re probably right.” She set the pictures down on the sofa, “I’m surprised that you don’t have people to do that for you.”

He looked up from the laptop. “What?”

“Don’t you have an assistant or someone who can handle the paperwork? That would give you more time to concentrate on running the ranch instead of running the paperwork.” No one who ran anything did their own paperwork. It was the American way.

“I did.” He glanced down at his lap. “Naomi was my assistant.”

“Oh.” She smiled and hoped that it made him less uncomfortable. “Somebody had an office romance.”

“It was less romance and more of a pursuit. She saw dollar signs and I was the easiest way to get to the money. She lured me in, faked a pregnancy, spent my money, and slept with everyone but me. Only after the ink dried on the marriage certificate did she start to show her true colors. When we were dating she’d been into the same music I like and we seemed to follow the same sports teams, but it was all an act.” He sounded so matter-of-fact—that was the worst part.

“Whoa, wait a minute. Faked a pregnancy? How did that work?” She moved the stack of papers on his right and sat. Naomi seemed like a class-A bitch.

“Well, I was about to end things because she’d run up thousands of dollars on my American Express—”

“What? Why did you give her your credit card?” It didn’t make sense.

“I didn’t. She was my assistant and once she became my girlfriend, she thought she was entitled to my personal assets.” He sounded disgusted with himself. “After we started sleeping together, she went shopping.”

“Why didn’t you call the police? Identity theft is a crime.” Then again, she hadn’t called the police when her ex had run up her credit cards. Life was never that black and white.

“I almost did, but she promised to return everything and then she turned up pregnant.” He shook his head. “Part of me knew it was a lie, but another part of me wanted it to be true so badly. I grew up in a big, rowdy family. I guess I wanted one for myself. And, I felt like a fool for having been played.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like he’d just pushed through a hard task. “Now, it’s your turn to tell me something personal.”

Anxiety rolled around in her stomach. She’d never signed up for a game of tit for tat.

“I’m not wearing any underwear.” It was hard to get any more personal than that.

He cocked an eyebrow in her direction. “While that’s interesting, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Everything in her screamed to keep things light, and her palms started to sweat. Light and funny were her fall-back plan, light and funny meant things weren’t getting too deep, but light and funny wouldn’t work for Cinco. He wanted more. It was written all over his face. As long as things didn’t get too personal, she was all in, but the minute she started attaching feelings to whatever it was that they had, she wouldn’t be able to stay. She just couldn’t take any more hurt. Years of being taken advantage of had made her the queen of wanting less. Less was more in her book.

She opened her mouth to throw out another great one-liner, but it
stuck in her throat. “I was with Phillip for six years. I worked two full-time
jobs while he wrote the great American novel and pursued several other
careers that he was interested in for about five minutes each. While we were
together, he managed to pay off his credit cards and charge up mine . . .”

All the light and funny faded into the background. The anxiety turned to nausea, but she needed to tell him the rest. She needed to say it out loud. “In my spare bits of time, I wrote my first murder mystery. It was something I’d been dying to write since, well . . . forever. When I left to write the King Ranch genealogy, he cleaned out my checking account, took my novel, and left. He must have done it the second my car pulled out of my apartment parking lot because when I got back eight weeks later, I found that I’d been evicted for nonpayment of my rent and my things had been sold at auction.”

The auction had been the worst part. The possessions that had been her parents’—her only link to them—were gone.

“He called me every single night at nine sharp while I was at the King Ranch and not once did he mention that he’d moved out.” Her voice was hollow, like she was recounting details from someone else’s life. “I didn’t figure out until I got home why he’d insisted that I take his laptop and leave mine behind. He’d told me to take his because it was newer and nicer, and at the time, I’d thought how wonderful it was that he wanted the best for me.”

She nodded. “I completely understand your feelings of humiliation. Mine involved sleeping in my car until I worked up the courage to tell my grandmother what happened and move back in with her. It’s funny, the hurt feelings from a breakup are never as bad as disappointing family.”

Every muscle in his body tensed like a caged lion waiting for the door to spring open.

“You should have gone after the son of a bitch. Hell, I want to go after him myself.” His voice was a low growl. In a move that was more possessive than consoling, his arm came around her and he pulled her to him. “I don’t suppose you’d give me his last name. I got the Phillip part.”

She shook her head. “I appreciate the bravado, but it wouldn’t do any good. My parents’ things are gone and if I ever saw him again, I’d probably rip him limb from limb. Since I can’t rock prison-jumpsuit
orange, I’ll wait for karma to kick his butt.”

She wasn’t a roll-over-and-take-it kind of girl, but she didn’t have money
for a legal battle and thanks to her missing laptop, she also didn’t have any
evidence that she wrote
Murder, Mayhem, and Madness
. Sometimes life sucked, and all she could do was wait on the kindness of the Universe.

“Are you sure? I could find him for you.” His offer sounded a lot like
I could kill him for you
.

“No, I’m good. I’m happy to never see him again.” She put her head on Cinco’s shoulder. It was nice to be comforted by someone and it was good to have gotten the Phillip mess off her chest. She’d never really spoken of it to anyone. She’d only told her grandmother part of the story. “I imagine it’s the same with Naomi.”

“If I never see her again, it will be too soon.” Absently, he massaged her shoulder.

“How did your parents feel about Naomi?” She remembered Lucy mentioning his ex-wife. Lucy hadn’t seemed sorry to see Naomi go.

“My parents hated her, but they didn’t tell me that until she was gone.” Cinco kissed the top of CanDee’s head. “They tolerated her because they thought she made me happy. They don’t know about the credit card bills.” His tone suggested that they never would.

“What did she buy?” CanDee didn’t want to ask how much money his ex had run up in debt, but it seemed like a lot. Apart from the occasional splurge on shoes at an upscale resale shop, she couldn’t think of anything worth buying.

“Lots of things. For example, crosses. Once she bought ten thousand dollars’ worth of crosses at a store in Marble Falls. I almost had a heart attack when I opened the bill.” He shook his head. “Crazy.”

“I don’t understand. Crosses, like the kind with Jesus hanging on the front?” She couldn’t comprehend spending ten thousand dollars on anything. Her gaze went to his face. “Were they encrusted with rubies and made of gold?”

“I wish. At least I could have seen them as an investment.” Laughter rumbled up and made his chest shake. “That would have made sense. She bought one hundred and twenty-four crosses to hang on that wall.” He pointed to the wall across from them. “She claimed to have started collecting them.”

“Was she overly religious?” She tried to imagine a bunch of crosses crammed on that wall and shuddered. “That makes me claustrophobic just thinking about it.”

“Tell me about it. Every day I walked into my house, there was another collection of things hanging on the wall. Birdhouses, teapots, clocks, china plates, plastic flowers, baskets, you name it and she collected it. And then there was all the crap she displayed on every available surface—carnival glass, crystal ink wells, imported porcelain egg cups, cake stands, snuff boxes, silver spoons.”

“Damn, I don’t even know what most of that stuff is.” She looked around at his large comfy furniture and tried to imagine his house cram-packed with things. “How did you manage to get around amongst all of that crap? I would have been afraid that I’d break something.”

“That’s exactly how I felt. She had these baskets hanging down from the kitchen ceiling. I bumped them all the time. I hated coming home.” His face screwed up. “I just realized that. When you hate to come home, it’s time to move on.”

“Come to think of it, I was so excited to get away from Phillip for the eight weeks at the King Ranch. I should have known then that it was over.” She remembered the huge sigh of relief she’d felt as she’d pulled away from the curb of her apartment.

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. We’re both better off without them.” He chewed on his upper lip—an action she was beginning to realize meant he was mulling things over. “I don’t suppose you’d reconsider giving me Phillip’s last name. I have a few choice words for him.”

“Nope, I’m good. Thanks for wanting to fight my battles, but I’m perfectly happy to fight them myself. I can stand on my own two feet even if the shoes I’m wearing aren’t that comfortable.” Even when it meant crawling back to her grandmother’s house because she hadn’t eaten in two days and had hit rock bottom. Finding a job without a permanent address was impossible and she’d experienced firsthand the desperation of homelessness.

“What about you? What did your family think about Phillip?” Every time he said
Phillip
it sound a lot like
asshole
.

“My grandmother hated him. She swears she didn’t poison him that one time, but he spent the night in the ER with food poisoning.” Now it was funny, back then it wasn’t. She remembered that her grandmother had made a batch of blueberry muffins—Phillip’s favorite—and practically forced them down his throat. When CanDee’d tried to take one, her grandmother had batted her hand away and told her that they were all for Phillip. Luckily, he’d never put two and two together and come up with poisoning.