Chapter 29
ANNIE – LATE OCTOBER
Just Peachy
Darcy took home number one spot for both her events – breakaway roping and barrel riding. My excitement might be to blame for putting a spotlight on our group because the inevitable happened – Tanner and Colton were spotted.
Sas and I are hovering in the stands while the guys sign autographs and pose for photographs. Tanner is a seasoned pro next to my brother. Sunshine to Colton’s grumpy, as he smiles and jokes with his fans, while Colton, I can tell, is forcing himself to be polite as his weekend off is interrupted.
I almost feel sorry for them but that doesn’t stop me doing the exact same thing to the star women of the rodeo when Tanner leads us all down into the back of the arena where the riders and their teams are hanging out, good spirited after the close of the event.
I’m so high on endorphins that when I finally spot Darcy, I forget myself entirely, literally rushing her as if she’s my sister. I crash into her, arms flying around her as I take it upon myself to make introductions.
“Darcy! I’m Annie. Annie Qui— Lord, it doesn’t even matter who I am. You were insane out there. I’m your biggest fan. I honestly can’t tell you how—”
Two big hands come down on my shoulders – one Tanner’s, the other Colton’s – and one of them tells me, “Breathe, Annie,” while the other says, “Let’s give Darcy some space.”
I hold up my hands – sorry – as Darcy and Sas both mock me. “I’d like to say beer has made me giddy but, hun, I’d love you drunk or sober as a judge,” I confess.
“Darcy, this is Annie Quinn. Annie, my sister,” Tanner says.
If I wasn’t so caught up in the moment, I’d pause to take in the fact that I’m here with my brother, yet someone introduced me as Annie Quinn. My own person. Not a shadow. Not a sister of a football star. I mentally box that away with every other time Tanner has shown me the utmost respect.
“It’s great to meet you at last, Annie,” Darcy says.
I also box the fact that Tanner has told her about me.
Trying to behave like a regular human being who can control her emotions, I say, “You, too, Darcy.” I’m doing great at being normal. Just great. Until— “I mean, this has been my dream for a million years, so I don’t think it’s the same thing but—”
“Annie?” Darcy asks. “Should we get you a drink?”
I point to myself, then her, then back and forth between us. “Like me with you? A drink together?”
Draping an arm around my shoulder, she holds out a hand to Colton and Sas, introducing herself, and finally kisses Tanner on the cheek.
“Good riding, kiddo,” he tells her, then Darcy whisks me away, the others following, to a mobile truck that’s serving margaritas, margaritas, or margaritas.
She sets us all up with some of her team and a few of the other riders on a row of wood benches, then she and Tanner go get us drinks.
“Way to play it cool, Annie,” Colton says, coming to straddle the bench seat opposite mine and tugging Sas between his legs.
Tonight, his sibling quips can’t possibly ruin my happy aura.
Which gets happier as we share a round of cocktails.
Darcy and I have so much in common – the fact she has riding superpowers aside – and spend a long time talking about ranch life, about Sunshine Ranch, about breaking in horses and how she’d like to open a retirement home for sports horses when she’s done with competing at her current level.
More than once, I catch myself looking at Tanner. Trying to tell him how grateful I am, not only because I got to fangirl his sister, but for the whole trip. It’s only one night off from adulting but it’s already felt like a much-needed break.
More than once, when I glance his way, I find him looking back at me.
It gets rowdier as the night grows later but Darcy seems to know everyone and it’s all friendly enough. Still the two stone-cold sober footballers stick to us girls like glue, until they refuse to join in the crowd line dancing. Finally, something I’m good at.
As Darcy, Sas and I tap heels to floor, to butt, to the palms of our hands, I suddenly remember…
“Darcy, I forgot to thank you for loaning me your car!” I shout over the Billboard classic.
“My car?”
“Your Audi. Did Tanner tell you he’s let me borrow it to learn to drive? Only until you need it, obviously.”
We’re still dancing but her frown is focused on me. “Annie, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Your car. The one you have at Tanner’s place to use when you visit.”
She chuckles. “Hun, how many of those margaritas did you have? I don’t have a car at my brother’s place. He usually comes to visit me. I probably stay with him once or twice a year.”
I stop dead, shifting to seek out Tanner, where he’s talking with my brother. As if he’s tuned into me, he looks right back and mouths what I know is, How’re you doin’, Annie Quinn?
My eyes gloss over as my head tells me to mouth back, Just peachy. But I can’t make my lips work. I’m not peachy. Because I think Tanner bought me a car.
Not because he had to. He wanted to. So that I could pass my test and my life would get a little bit easier.
And he hid it, knowing I’d say it was too much.
It is too much. He is too much.
Too generous.
Too kind.
Too handsome.
Too fit.
Too funny.
Too confident.
Too dadgum sexy.
Too desperately out of my league.
Sas, Darcy and I sing our way back to the hotel arm in arm. Line dancing took the edge off but we’re still merrily tipsy.
Darcy is staying in the same hotel as us because Tanner planned it that way, so we all hug by the elevators and agree to meet for breakfast tomorrow morning, then go our separate ways to our rooms.
Since Tanner is my adjoining roomie, eventually it becomes the two of us.
As we walk the hallway, there’s an awkward silence between us that hasn’t been there before now.
I consider thanking him for the car, which I think might be the thing hanging between us.
But he doesn’t want me to know about it and I decide to respect that.
It doesn’t make me any less grateful. In fact, I couldn’t be more thankful to him and for him being in my life.
In the most bizarre twist of fate, he’s made some of the worst months of my life seem immeasurably better than they could have been.
Mama always said the truth comes out in drink.
I have all this stuff I’m feeling about Tanner bottled up inside but I can’t say it because if I do, my words might run away with themselves.
My mouth could talk me into the sort of dangerous territory where I’m left saying things to another man I shouldn’t want, who doesn’t want me back, not like that.
I can’t survive another heartbreak. Not right now.
Tanner taps a key card to my door and lets us inside. Turn down service has been and left the bedside light on, as well as a chocolate delight on my pillow.
As I plonk down on the bed and kick off my boots, Tanner checks the windows, the bathroom and opens the wardrobe doors.
“Tanner, an intruder would have to go to an awful lot of trouble to break into my room on the top floor of this skyscraper.”
“You can never be too careful.” He stops in the middle of the room, suddenly looking… nervous? Uncharacteristically, he pushes his hands into his pockets, shoulders raised. In his hat, he looks like a small-town cowboy more than a football star. “Will you be okay? Do you need anything?”
I sit facing him on the edge of the big cozy bed. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m next door if you want me. We can open the joining door if you like?”
“So I can listen to you snore your ass off all night?” I tease, coming to stand in front of him. He’s even taller than me now without my boots.
“Me? I’m not the one who sank a million margaritas. I hope you don’t sleep on your back.”
I smirk. “Tummy. I’m a tummy sleeper. And I have not had that much to drink.”
His smile fades as his eyes meet mine and he nods, swallowing deeply, then his eyes cast to my lips and I know I shouldn’t but I like the way he’s looking at me.
I’m fighting a big part of me that’s screaming, to hell with heartbreak. Maybe one more margarita would have obliterated Sensible Annie but I chose Coke for the last two rounds.
“You should know, now that I’ve met your sister, I have real, genuine empathy for you, Tanner. You and I are like peas in a pod.”
The moment, whatever the moment might have been, fades, as it should, when he cocks his head to one side, one eyebrow raised.
“I know how it is living in your sibling’s shadow,” I tell him. “I feel for you. The lesser sibling, like little old me.”
He throws his head back with a laugh and I smile as I watch the way his muscles pull under the skin of his neck and chest, the way that strong jaw protrudes even beneath the beard I have the urge to feel against me.
“Annie, you’re so much more than a lesser sibling,” he tells me, sobering and re-intensifying the situation.
I shake my head. “No. I’m not, Tanner.” Which is one of many reasons he and I would never work, and he should hear it. “I’m not one of those people who was meant to fly.”
He opens his mouth to protest and I place a finger across surprisingly full and soft lips, feeling the grizzle of that beard.
“I’m good with that. More than. I’m supposed to be a family girl, a mama, working on a ranch and rolling up my sleeves.
Maybe one day doing some psychology work, too.
I don’t need fame and fortune. I genuinely just want to be happy and to make the people around me happy.
More than anything, I’d like those people to want to be around me.
That’s good enough for me. Simple girl. Simple life. That’s my dream.”
His lips part under my finger, telling me to move it as his eyes tell me he’ll never let me leave – at least that’s what my mind chooses to see.
His hand comes free of his pocket and I think he’s going to bring it to my face, my hair, to touch me. He inhales long and hard, chest rising toward me.
Then he drops his hand and clears his throat but his words still sound hoarse as he tells me, “That’s a real nice dream, Annie Quinn.”
He bends to bring his mouth to my cheek, taking me so much by surprise that I’ve got to hold on to his shoulder to not fall back. The second it takes him to kiss me goodnight feels like a long, blissful moment of spice, wood and cocoa, of heat and warmth and the coarseness of his beard.
“Goodnight, Annie.”
I watch him leave, holding up a hand. “Goodnight, Darcy’s brother.”
I listen to his laugh as my door closes, then his clicks open and I plonk down on the edge of the bed, realizing that I miss him.
That’s what I’m thinking when he taps on the internal door.
I open my side. He’s already opened his, that same look is on his face again, gaze fixed on mine.
“D’you want to talk for a while, until we fall asleep?” he asks.
My next breath is unsteady as I shake my head. “Yeah. I want to talk, Tanner. I want to know why you’re so darn nice to me all the time.”
Now his breathing is heavy and I know he won’t say it’s anything more than him seeing his mama, a single mom, in me, that he’s supporting me to help my brother.
But the way he’s looking at me…
I take myself by surprise, stepping to him, thrusting my hand into the thick hair at his neck, locking my fingers into it and tugging his face to mine.
My own eyes widen as I watch his pupils dilate, and before I can talk myself out of it or let him talk me out of it, I kiss him.