Texas Thunder (20 page)

He was one of those pretty boys.

A man exactly like her rat bastard of an ex with his polo shirts and Citizens of Humanity jeans and Sperry Top-Siders.

“I'll tell him you stopped by.” She started to close the door, but he caught the edge with one hand.

“What's the hurry?”

“I've got things to do.”

“So do I, but that's no reason to be rude. I'm not finished talking.”

She pulled the door back open a few inches and eyed him. “What else is there?”

“Maybe I can come inside and we can sit down. I've got some samples of our current whiskey.” His gaze caught hers. “You are twenty-one, right?”

“Sorry. Two months shy.”

“I'm twenty-four,” he offered, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled.

“I don't recall asking.”

He shrugged. “I just thought since we were sharing.”

“We aren't sharing. You're sharing and I'm tolerating.”

“Are you always so personable or is it just me?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“Ouch. Talk about prickly.” He grinned then, a slow slide across his lips, and a balloon expanded in Karen's chest. “But then I like prickly.”

Not that she cared what he liked. She didn't. Sure, he had great eyes and a nice smile to go with them, but looks could be deceiving. She knew that firsthand. Just because he seemed harmless enough, didn't mean she was going to let her guard down and talk to him.

Flirt with him.

“Are you going to leave the samples or not?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He leaned down and pulled a bottle from a duffel bag at his feet. “Here you go.”

His hand brushed hers and a sizzle of heat went through her.

Duh. Karen was on the rebound and Mark was a good-looking guy. It made sense that she would feel flattered. Turned on, even.

She was vulnerable, and he was off-limits.

“Thanks.” She started to close the door again and his foot stopped her a second time. She frowned. “What now?”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Do you want to have lunch?” He held up a hand before she could answer. “Before you say something you'll regret, just think about it. I don't have to head back to Austin for another hour. We could drive into town, pick up something at the diner, and get to know each other along the way.”

“Maybe I don't want to get to know you.”

“And maybe you're just scared because you do.”

And that was it in a nutshell. Karen
was
scared.

Scared because he was too good-looking. Too sexy. And she was far too gullible after her recent breakup.

At the same time, she'd never been the type of person to give up just when things got tough. Sure, her ex had broken her heart, but what she was feeling had nothing to do with her heart and everything to do with good old-fashioned lust.

Mark had great lips and she couldn't help but wonder what those lips would feel like. Taste like.

“It's just lunch,” he pressed. “Besides, it's a beautiful day. We should get out and take advantage of it. You know how it is in Texas. It could all go to hell tomorrow and a hurricane could blow through just like that.”

He was right.

She thought of her pappy and the smile he'd given her that morning. A good smile because he'd recognized her. While Brett was way off the mark when it came to the future, he'd been right about one thing.

Today
was
a good day.

Even more, she could relax knowing that everything was okay. For now.

“I'll get my purse.”

 

CHAPTER 22

One good day turned to two. Three to four. A week.

Brett spent every second with his pappy, touring the ranch, going over the existing problems and exploring all the ways to solve them. Selling acreage was the answer. They both knew that, but it didn't make the reality any easier or lessen the shine in the old man's eyes.

Brett spent his days taking care of ranch business and his nights searching for the recipe. He even asked his pappy about it, but the old man only remembered as much as Karen—the recipe had been stuffed in the family Bible, which had been stored somewhere in the attic. As far as the safe, Pappy couldn't remember what had happened to the contents. Not that Brett made a big deal about it. He didn't want worry dragging his grandfather back down into confusion and so he kept Pappy busy with the day-to-day demands of the ranch.

Brett would handle the worry, just as he would find that recipe. Pappy's good days sent a renewed determination through him and he moved faster that night, plowing through boxes so quickly that he almost missed the small Mason jar of gold liquid stashed inside one of them, half-buried beneath a stack of his grandmother's antique quilts.

“You don't think that's actually Texas Thunder, do you?” Callie voiced the question that raced through his mind the moment he held up the glass container.

“If it is, that would make it over eighty years old.” He eyed the clear gold liquid. There wasn't a speck of anything floating in the jar. No cloudy spots. Nothing. Just pure perfection.

“Liquor gets better with age, right?” Callie asked, as if reading his thoughts.

“I'm not so sure that applies to moonshine.” His family had been in the cattle business his entire life and while the patriarch of his family had been half of the duo involved in the best liquor to ever come out of the Lone Star state, Brett himself had zero experience with the stuff.

“It could be the real deal, or it could just be what's left of someone's stash.” Maybe Pappy's. Maybe his own father's. Berle had been a serious alcoholic and while he never would have bought the mediocre stuff that James had cooked up, he'd gone to great lengths to buy some decent shine, even going as far as driving across state lines, whenever the urge hit him.

“We have to find out.”

“We could call that Edwards guy. He might have some connections to help get some answers.”

“If he wants the stuff bad enough, I'm sure he'll try.” She took the jar from him and stared at the liquid. “Can you believe it? This could really be it.”

“Does that mean you're going to head home and start sending out resumes?” He wasn't sure why he brought it up, or why it bothered him so much that she'd put her life on hold.

Maybe because he never had. The first chance he'd had, he'd left Rebel far, far behind.

“I'm not sending out anything until we know for sure what's in that jar, and then only if it's the real deal.” She set the jar to the side and went back to the large trunk she'd been digging through. “In the meantime, we need to keep looking.”

“There's no better time than the present,” he said after a silent moment.

“For what?”

“The resumes. You keep waiting for a right time, but there isn't one.”

“What does it matter to you? It's my business.”

He shrugged. “Just thought I'd initiate a conversation. It beats this silence.”

“Silence is fine by me.” That's what Callie told him, but after twenty minutes going through the chest of drawers, awareness zipping up and down her spine as Brett worked nearby, she was more than ready for a distraction.

“I can't send out resumes yet.”

“Not until we get an exact ingredient list for the jar. I know.”

“It's not that.” She thought of the stack of tear sheets sitting in her bedroom next to her laptop. All she had to do was shove them in an envelope and send them off.

“Then why not?”

“Because the closest I've been to a newspaper in the past ten years are the property listings that I handle for Les. I just started doing a few things for the local newspaper last year. I need more new stuff.”

“Why not just send the old stuff?”

“What if it's not good enough? What if I'm not good enough?”

“What if you are?”

His question echoed in her head, prodding a truth she'd done her best to ignore. She'd made so many excuses—she was rusty, she was out of practice, she needed time to get back into the swing of things, but the real worry was that she would get a yes.

The realization hit her as she sat in front of the open trunk and pulled out several old black-and-white photographs of her patriarch Archibald Tucker and his archenemy Elijah Sawyer. Only they weren't enemies way back then. They'd been business partners.

Friends.

Family.

And that was the real trouble of it all. As much as she wanted to get on with her life, her career, she wasn't so sure if she was ready to leave her family.

Or if she would ever be ready.

“With all the bad blood,” she blurted, eager to change the subject, “it's hard to believe they were once such good friends.” She held up the old black-and-white photo. The two men posed in front of an old Chevrolet, a shotgun in Archibald's hand and a jug of moonshine dangling from Elijah's beefy fingers.

“They were really close,” Brett said, letting her shift them onto a different topic. “That's what Pappy always said. He told me that at one time, Archibald was his godfather. Then the shit hit the fan and that was it. The friendship was over.”

“What do you think did it? What could have been big enough to kill that kind of a friendship?”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew. Whatever it was, it was enough to divide an entire town. Say, would you look at this?” He pulled the sheet off a nearby table that held an old phonograph and a stack of ancient records. He dusted off the machine and reached for a record. A few cranks of the handle and Roy Acuff's “Wabash Cannonball” carried from the speaker. “My pappy always loved that song. He used to crank up this old machine when I was a kid and dance around the kitchen with my grandma.”

“That sounds nice.”

He grinned and a faraway light touched his gaze. “I miss those days.”

“My parents used to do the Cotton Eyed Joe around the living room on Saturday night. We never had a lot of extra money, so they didn't get to go out much. They would roll up the rug and dance the night away right there at home.” Callie fell into her own memories then, seeing her parents in her mind's eye, feeling their giddiness as they twirled around the room.

They'd been so in love that the lack of money had never mattered. Nothing had been able to come between them. Not the stress of raising a family or James and his hateful ways. They'd stuck together through it all, and died together.

Oddly enough, the notion didn't stir the same bitterness she'd felt so many times. There was something strangely comforting about sitting there with Brett so close, listening to the old song, feeling it deep down in her soul. The beat, the excitement, the nostalgia, the loss.

The song played down, ending in a rush of static and Brett picked up another record. A heartbeat later, “The Way You Look Tonight” crackled through the attic.

As if he sensed the melancholy of her thoughts and he wanted to distract her, he smiled and held out his hand. “Care to give it a try?”

“You want me to dance with you?” She glanced around. “Here?”

“Why not?”

Because … He was the wrong man and this was the wrong time and certainly the wrong place, but damned if it didn't feel right when he took her hand and pulled her into his arms.

“If memory serves me, you used to like to dance.” He slid an arm around her waist. “You weren't very good, but you did get an A for enthusiasm.”

“Thanks a lot.”

He grinned, a slow, sensuous tilt to his lips that made her tummy tremble and her heart stutter. “That was meant as a compliment.”

The past stirred and it was prom night all over again. Moonlight pushed through the large windows, creating a spill of shadows that moved as they moved. She closed her eyes and leaned into him and in her mind's eye, she could see the swirl of colored lights around them. The steady beat of his heart kept tempo with hers. The scent of Old Spice, racing hormones, and spiked fruit punch teased her nostrils.

A dream.

That's what it felt like. As if she were caught up in one of her dreams, reliving their first date, those few precious moments when they'd danced beneath the glitzy Time of Your Life sign and kissed beneath the splatter of neon strobes. She'd been crazy nervous, but then he'd held her, guided her around the dance floor, and she'd relaxed in his arms. He'd made her laugh. He'd made her feel pretty. And then his mouth had been on hers and she'd been swept away on a sea of emotion unlike anything she'd ever felt before.

Or since.

Yep, he was one of a kind. No man had ever measured up to him, and she had the sinking feeling that no man ever would.

Before she could stop herself, she slid her hands up the hard wall of his chest, around his neck. She pressed herself closer. His warm breath sent shivers over her earlobe, the slope of her neck. Large, purposeful hands splayed at the base of her spine. His thumb rubbed lazy circles just above the swell of her bottom.

“Do you know what you do to me, Callie?” His deep voice slid into her ears. “I want you so bad. I always have.”

The words, so raw and ragged, shattered the hazy pleasure of her memories and drew her back to reality—to the all-important fact that she was dancing chest to chest with the only man who'd ever broken her heart.

She tore herself away. Putting her back to him, she stared at the spill of moonlight on the windowsill. Just beyond, the rich pastureland stretched endlessly beneath a star-studded sky. In the far distance a few clouds rumbled and she knew the rain was finally coming in.

“What you're feeling is natural.” He came up behind her, still a few feet away but close enough that she could feel the heat rolling off of him. “It's chemistry. I want you and you want me. That's all it is, Callie. All it needs to be.”