Rachel Gibson - Rescue Me

He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. Through the darkness, he looked down at the toes of his loafers. She hadn’t owed him sex, but if she hadn’t wanted to go heels to Jesus, she should have stopped him before he slid his hands to her full breasts. She was old enough to know where kissing and having a man’s hand in her panties ended. She was old enough to know it ended in both people getting something out of it. And yeah, this probably wasn’t the best place to get naked, but there were hotels in town. He’d seen them. He would have let her take her pick, but instead she’d run off like her tail caught on fire. Leaving him with nothing but a hard-on. Nothing but frustration. Nothing. Not even a thank-you.

The light flipped on and Vince looked up as a girl in a Bubble Yum dress walked in. She had long tubes of blond hair pinned about her head. She stopped in her tracks and her eyes widened. One hand went to the top of her strapless dress and she gasped. “What are you doing in here?”

Good question. “Meeting someone.” Vince was used to thinking quick and coming up with plausible lies. He’d been trained to give up just enough information to pacify interrogators. “But I guess she must have left.” He also knew how to change the subject and pointed to her dress. “I see you’re in the wedding.”

“Yeah. My name’s Becca, what’s yours?”

“Vince.” He still didn’t want to risk standing and scaring young Becca.

“Who were you meetin’?”

“Sadie.” The dick tease.

“I just saw her leaving.” She sat in the chair next to his. “She stood you up.”

In ways he didn’t want Becca to know about, which was why he stayed seated.

“Love sucks,” she said, then, to Vince’s horror, burst into tears. She shook her head and her curls bobbed as she told him all about her boyfriend, that dirty no-good dog, Slade. She rambled about how long they’d dated and the plans she’d had for their future. “He ruined everything. He cheated on me with that slut Lexa Jane Johnson!” Becca reached for a Kleenex on the counter behind her. “Lexa Jane,” she sobbed. “She’s as dumb as a wad of hair and been rode more than a rented mule. Why do men go for women like that?”

Instantly Vince’s erection went soft and he was almost grateful for Becca and her hysteria. Almost, but he’d never been the kind of guy who could tolerate emotional females.

“Why?” she asked again.

He figured that had been a rhetorical question. Or at the very least obvious, but she was staring at him through watery eyes like she expected an answer. “Why do men go for easy women?” he asked, just to make sure they were on the same page.

“Yes. Why do guys mess around with sluts?”

He’d never liked the word “slut.” It was thrown around too much and implied that a woman was dirty because she liked sex. Which wasn’t always true.

“Why do guys want that?”

He might be a good liar, but no one had ever accused him of being tactful. “Because some women are a sure thing and don’t play games. You know what she wants, and it isn’t dinner and a movie.”

A frown puckered Becca’s forehead. “Isn’t that emotionally shallow for both people?”

“Yes.” He placed his hands on the arms of his chair and prepared to stand. “That’s exactly the point. Emotionally shallow sex. You get in, you get out, and no one gets hurt.” He rose halfway out of the chair, and Becca burst into hysterics again. Shit. “Well, a . . . It was nice to meet you, Becca.” This was Sadie’s fault, and it was a good thing she was leaving town in the morning and he’d never see her again. He’d sincerely love to wring her neck.

“That’s so immature and dis-disgusting, Vince.”

It was convenient and mutually beneficial, he could have argued, but he didn’t feel like a discussion on sex and morality with Becca, and he wondered how much longer he had to sit there. Thirty seconds? One minute? “Can I get you something before I go?”

“Don’t go.” She swallowed and shook her head. “I need someone to talk to.”

What? Did he look like a girl? Or even one of those guys who liked to chat about shit? “Why not find one of your girlfriends? I’ll go find one of them if you’d like.” Not that he would actually put much effort into it once he escaped out the door.

“They’ll just tell me to get over it because everyone knows Slade’s a dog.” She shook her head again and wiped her nose. Her red watery eyes narrowed. “I want both of them to catch the crabs and die in a fiery crash.”

Whoa. That was harsh and exactly why he steered a wide path around women who wanted relationships.

“I want them maimed and mangled and I have a hankering to run them over with my uncle Henry Joe’s Peterbilt!”

A pain settled in the back of Vince’s head and he suddenly had a hankering of his own. A hankering for the taste of gunmetal in his mouth.

The tap-tap of Sadie’s heels echoed in the old ranch house as she followed the light toward the kitchen. She didn’t even want to think about what she’d just done in the bride’s room at Tally Lynn’s wedding. She hadn’t meant for anything to happen. She hadn’t meant to embarrass herself more than she’d ever been embarrassed in her life, but it all had happened so fast. He’d kissed her and touched her and wham bam. It was over almost before it began.

The only bright spot, the only thing that gave her a modicum of relief, was that no one besides her and Vince knew what she’d done. After she’d run from the room, she’d said a quick good-bye to Aunt Bess and Uncle Jim, and she was sure that if anyone had seen her and Vince, it would have spread faster than a Texas wildfire. Faster than her feet could run from it.

She hadn’t stuck around to say good-bye to her other relatives. She hadn’t wanted to risk running into Vince. She’d send Tally Lynn and the others a nice note once she got home, excusing her rude exodus on a headache or broken ankle or heart failure. The last wasn’t far from the truth. Just the thought of Vince’s big, hot hands all over her made the blood rush from her head and made her feel faint out of sheer humiliation. Although if she was a man, she probably wouldn’t be beating herself up about it. She’d probably consider herself “lucky” and forget it.

The quicker she got out of Texas, the better. Obviously, Texas made her lose her mind, and it just went without saying that never seeing Vincent Haven again was a big, fat bonus.

She moved past the formal dining room and into the brightly lit kitchen, with its stone floor and yellow daisy wallpaper her mother had hung in the sixties. She expected to see her father sitting at the breakfast nook, nursing a glass of sweet tea. It wasn’t real late and he had probably just returned from Laredo, but instead of her father, the Parton twins sat at the nook, chipped mugs sitting on the table in front of them.

“You two are staying late tonight.” Sadie slipped off her shoes, and the tails of her coat brushed the floor as she bent to pick them up. With the straps of her heels hooked in her fingers, she moved to the refrigerator. She’d said her good-byes to both of them earlier. They really shouldn’t have waited for her. Nice, but unnecessary.

“Oh Sadie, I’m so glad you’re finally home.”

With her free hand on the refrigerator handle, she looked at the two women over her shoulder. “Why?” She glanced from one worried face to the other, and the events of the past hour melted away.

Clara Anne, the more emotional twin, burst into noisy tears.

“What?” Sadie turned toward them. “Is Daddy home yet?”

Carolynn shook her head. “No, honey. He’s in the hospital in Laredo.”

“Is he okay?”

Again she shook her head. “That stallion kicked him and broke some of his ribs and punctured his left lung.” Her lips drew together. “He’s too old to be messing with those stallions.”

Sadie’s shoes fell to the floor with a thump-thump. There had to be a mistake. Her father was always very careful around high-strung stallions because they were so unpredictable. He was as tough as an old saddle, but he was almost eighty. She shook off her coat and moved to the nook. “He’s been around those horses all his life.” Breeding American paint horses had always been more than just a hobby to Clive. He loved it more than raising cattle, but cattle ranching paid better. She hung the coat on the back of a chair and sat next to Carolynn. “He’s always so careful.” He’d been kicked and stepped on and thrown many times but never seriously hurt. Never anything that required more than a few hours in the hospital getting stitched back up. “How could something like this happen?”

“I don’t know. Tyrus called a couple of hours ago with a few of the details. He said something happened with the lead rope. Your daddy was fixing it and somehow got in between Maribell and Diamond Dan.”

Tyrus Pratt was a foreman in charge of the JH remuda. Which not only included the paints, but a fair number of cattle horses, too. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”

“Don’t have your number.” Clara Anne blew her nose, then added, “We’ve just been sittin’ here, waitin’ for you to come home.”

And while they’d been waiting, she’d been getting felt up by a guy she hardly knew. “What’s Tyrus’s number?”

Clara Anne pushed a piece of paper toward Sadie and pointed to the top. “Here’s the number of the hospital in Laredo, too. Tyrus’s number is below. He’s staying the night at a hotel.”

Sadie stood and picked up the landline hooked to the wall. She dialed the hospital, identified herself, and was connected with the emergency room doctor who initially treated her father. The doctor used a lot of big words like “traumatic pneumothorax” and “thoracic cavity,” which translated meant Clive had a collapsed lung due to blunt force trauma and had a chest tube. He had four fractured ribs, two displaced, two nondisplaced, and he also had damage to his spleen. The doctors were guardedly hopeful that he wouldn’t require surgery for either injury. He was currently in ICU on a ventilator, and they were keeping him deeply sedated until he could breathe on his own. The doctor’s biggest concern was Clive’s age and the risk of pneumonia.