Rachel Gibson - Rescue Me

She shrugged and tossed him the cheese. He caught it and followed her to the counter. “I don’t really know.” She set the jars on the counter and grabbed her mama’s china plates from overhead. “When I was growing up there were probably fifteen. Now I think most of the people who work at the JH live in town.” She stuffed the sandwiches with Swiss and pepperoncini. “Are you worried that one of my daddy’s men might bust in here and kick your ass for messin’ with the boss’s daughter?”

He chuckled and she looked across her shoulder at him, all big and buff and bad. “No. I just wonder how safe it is for a woman out here all alone.”

“Are you going to do something?”

“Other than what I’ve already done?”

She laughed. “I like what you’ve done. Should I worry you’re going to do something I won’t like?”

“I have a few positions I want to put you in, but I guarantee you’ll like ’em.”

“Do I need my stun gun just in case?”

He raised one brow up his forehead and set the cheese on the counter. “I didn’t believe you the last time you threatened me with your make-believe stun gun.”

She smiled but didn’t admit anything as she pointed to the pantry. “Grab some chips, please.” She set the croissants and a pickle on the blue Wedgwood. When he returned, she arranged the Lay’s on the plate. “Water, beer, or sweet tea?”

“Water.”

She poured a glass of tea and one of filtered water, and then together they carried the plates and glasses into the formal dining room. She set the table with her mother’s best linen placemats and napkins. “We never really eat in here except for Christmas and Thanksgiving.”

“Kind of fancy.”

She looked around at the heavy mahogany furniture and damask draping. Company always ate in the dining room on the good china. It was a rule her mama had drilled into her head. Like chewing with your mouth closed and showing “uglies.”

He picked up a chip. “Where do you eat?”

She placed her napkin on her lap. “Growing up, I always ate in the cookhouse or in the small breakfast nook in the kitchen.” She took a bite of her sandwich, then swallowed. “I’m an only child, and after my mama died, it was always just me and Daddy.” She took a drink of her tea. “It just made sense that we ate in the bunkhouse so Carolynn didn’t have to run back and forth.”

“How old were you when your mother died?” He took a big bite of his croissant.

“Five.”

“Mmm.” He took another bite and chewed. “This is really good, Sadie,” he said after he swallowed. “I’m not usually a croissant kind of guy.”

“Thanks. Sandwiches are easy. Seven-course meals are tough.”

He reached for his water and paused with it before his mouth. “You can cook seven-course meals?”

“It’s been a while, but yeah. Along with manners and charm, and all the many, many classes I’ve taken in my life, I’ve taken a few cooking classes.” She took a bite of her light, flaky sandwich. The turkey, avocado, and pepperoncini a perfect complement of tastes. “My mother was a fabulous cook and a stickler for manners. Not that I really remember. My daddy tried to raise me like he thought she would. Of course he often forgot.”

He took a drink and set the glass on the table. “Are you like her?”

“She was Miss Texas and came really close to winning Miss America.” Sadie popped a salty chip into her mouth and crunched. That’s what she loved about Lay’s: the salty crunch. Of course, Chee-tos were the best snack ever. “Mama was really beautiful and could sing.”

“Can you sing?”

“Only if I want to piss people off.”

He chuckled. “Then you must look like her.” He took two more bites.

Was that a compliment? Was she really going to blush? “I don’t know. People say I do, but I have my daddy’s eyes.” She took her own bite and chewed.

“Were you a beauty queen, too?”

She shook her head and reached for her tea. “I have a few sashes and trophies, but no. I have a hard time walking and waving at the same time.” She took a drink. “Queening is hard work.”

He laughed.

“It is.” She smiled. “You try singing, dancing, and sparkling and shining all at the same time. You think being a SEAL is tough? You think terrorists are hard-core? Piece of cake compared to the pageant circuit. Some of those pageant moms are brutal.” Somewhere in her manners book there was a rule about talking about yourself too much. Besides, she wanted to know more about him. “Why did you join the Navy SEALs?”

“Blowing up stuff and shooting guns for Uncle Sam sounded fun.”

“Was it?”

“Yeah.” He shoved some chips into his mouth and reached for his water. He obviously wasn’t much of a talker. At least not about himself. That was all right. One of the reasons she was such a successful real estate agent was that she got people to trust her enough to talk about anything. Sometimes about stuff she didn’t care to know. Like bodily functions and strange behaviors. “Don’t SEALs have to swim a lot?”

“Yeah.” He took a drink, then offered, “We train in the surf, but in the current conflict the teams spend most of the time on land.”

“I’m not a great swimmer. I prefer to watch the tides from the beach.”

“I love the water. When I was a kid, I spent most of my summers in a lake somewhere.” He picked up the last bite of croissant. “I hate the sand, though.”

“There’s a lot of sand near lakes and oceans, Vince.”

He smiled with one corner of his mouth. “In the Middle East, too. Sand and dust storms.” He popped the last of the sandwich in his mouth.

“Did you have to learn Arabic?”

He shook his head and swallowed. “I picked up a few words here and there.”

“Didn’t that make it hard to communicate?”

“I wasn’t there to talk.”

He wasn’t here to talk, either, and he didn’t give a lot away about himself. That was okay. He was nice to look at with his big muscles and startling green eyes staring back at her from his handsome face. She’d been with fine-looking men. None as fine as Vince, but with all that fineness came a real reserve. A refusal to give anything to a woman but his body. Which was okay with Sadie because that’s what they’d agreed she’d get. And that’s all she truly wanted.

“Why do you live in Phoenix when you could live here?” he asked.

Obviously they were done talking about him. “I know that ranching sounds romantic, in a sort of taming the Wild West sort of way, but it’s a lot of hard work and isolation. I don’t mind hard work, but growing up with your closest neighbor twenty miles away can be lonely. Especially if you’re an only child. I couldn’t exactly jump on my bike and head out to a friend’s house.” She took a bite and chewed. She’d never really had a best friend. Never ran around with other kids in a neighborhood. She’d hung out with adults or the calf or sheep she was raising for 4–H. “If you enjoy moving cattle and stepping in cow shit, then I guess the loneliness is worth it.” Did she say lonely? She didn’t consider herself lonely, but she supposed as a kid she’d been very alone.

He put his napkin on his empty plate. “Isn’t this all going to be yours one day?”

Suddenly she wasn’t hungry as the old feeling of dread landed like a ball in her stomach. “What makes you think that?”

“People talk, and working in a convenience store is like being a bartender.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Only not as many drunks and without the tips.”

People loved to talk, especially in Lovett. “Yes, but I’m a girl.”

He sat back in his chair and folded his big arms across his bare chest. His gaze moved from hers, down her chin and neck to the front of her shirt. He smiled and looked back up into her eyes. “That’s obvious.”

“My daddy wanted a boy.” She took a drink of tea. “He doesn’t want to leave the JH to me any more than I want a ten-thousand-acre ranch, but I’m the only child of an only child. There isn’t anyone else.”

“So you’re going to inherit a ranch you don’t want.”

She shrugged. Her feelings about the JH were confusing. She loved and hated it all at the same time. It was a part of her like her blue eyes. “I don’t know what my daddy has in mind. He hasn’t told me and I haven’t asked.”

“And you don’t think that’s odd?”

“You don’t know my daddy,” she said just above a whisper.

He turned his head slightly to the left as she noticed he did sometimes and watched her mouth. “How old is your father?”

“Seventy-eight.” Why all the questions? He couldn’t be that interested in her life. She was a one-night stand. Nothing more. She pushed her plate aside.

“Are you done eating?”

“I am.”

He smiled. “Are you good to go again?”

Ah. He was just killing time with questions until she finished eating. She looked at the clock. It was a little after one A.M. The Parton sisters wouldn’t arrive for five more hours. No, it wasn’t the most romantic sex, but it was amazing. He wasn’t much of a romantic guy, but she wasn’t looking for romance. What he was, was a one-night stand and he’d given her something she hadn’t had for a while.

A good time. “Hooyah.”

“Who buttered your muffin?”

Sadie turned and looked at her father, an oxygen cannula in his nose, glasses on the top of his head, and a new pair of nonskid purple socks on his feet. Had he found out about Vince? Had someone seen his truck leave at about three A.M. and ratted her out? “What?”

“You’re humming.”

She turned back to the sink filled with yellow daisies. “A person can’t hum?”

“Not unless there’s somethin’ to hum about.”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. She felt more relaxed than she had since the morning she’d headed her Saab toward Texas. For the first time since she’d arrived at the JH, she’d spent the night thinking of . . . well, thinking of nothing. Just feeling pleasure. Of doing something other than watching television, worrying about her daddy and her career and her future. And that was something to hum about.