Chapter 8 #2
His tone led Stevie to believe that he’d been through something similar. Her Google search had definitely turned up clips from post-ride interviews he’d done as well as podcasts and a couple of big late-night shows.
‘You don’t have generic answers for their questions ready to go? In my experience they all ask the same damn things.’
Stevie nodded as Clay slowed right down then rolled to a stop near the gravelled path that led to the front porch of the cabin. ‘I do. But…’
He cut the engine, the sudden silence loud in its intensity. ‘But?’ he prompted when she didn’t continue.
‘It feels like all the questions are a conduit to talking about Yolly.’ Stevie didn’t talk about her sister to anyone – certainly not journalists. Apparently, though, it was easy to tell Clay. Who she’d known for less than a week.
Maybe because he hadn’t asked?
‘And it doesn’t seem to matter,’ she continued, staring out the window at the deep night beyond the hood, ‘how I try to divert and lead them away, they inevitably move on to her with sympathetic smiles and understanding tones, not realising that they might as well be stabbing me in the chest with a blunt knife.’
If the silence had been loud before, it was deafening now. Good one, Stevie; freak the man out by getting all deep and meaningful. As if that kiss hadn’t been bad enough.
Giving herself a mental shake, she absently smoothed her palms down her legs. ‘I’m sorry, ignore me.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’
Surprised by his apology, Stevie glanced in his direction to find his amber gaze intensified in the dark of the cab and his hand reaching across the space between them.
His fingers inched closer, as if in slow-mo, her breath catching in her throat as they slid onto her jaw and his palm cupped her cheek.
Every hair on Stevie’s body prickled to attention.
‘I’m truly sorry your sister died.’ His voice was a low murmur, barely disturbing the air currents around them. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through something so awful only for some people to treat it as entertainment. The world can be a seriously fucked-up place sometimes.’
Stevie swallowed at the sincerity in his tone, her eyes shutting involuntarily at the slow drugging stroke of his thumb and, before she could stop herself, she was leaning into the caress, rubbing her cheek against his hand.
When her eyes fluttered open, it was to find him still looking at her, radiating the kind of empathy and understanding she wouldn’t have expected from a cowboy whose palms were this rough.
He was so close, his presence almost overwhelming, and yet somehow so far away, and she wished he would come nearer.
Or that she was brave enough to make that move herself.
But… she was giving too much of herself away here. To a guy she barely knew. She shouldn’t mistake his compassion for something else. It would be too easy to romanticise this moment and while her heart was inexperienced in this kind of intimacy – she was no dummy.
She knew they didn’t make sense on paper. City v country. Dreamer v rancher. Virgin v Casanova.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured before physically moving away from the caress. ‘I appreciate that.’
He nodded, his palm dropping away. ‘For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed tonight.’
Stevie’s belly fluttered. For what it was worth? Sitting here in the hushed confines of the cab with him, this sophisticated man of the world who could have been with any woman he wanted tonight, doing dozens of things any red-blooded male would probably prefer? The fact he’d enjoyed the evening?
That was worth a lot.
Unable to put any of that into words lest she sound unhinged and desperate as well as an emotional basket case, Stevie dragged her eyes off Clay, his bulk even more impressive cloaked in the shadows of the night. She undid her seat belt. ‘I better get inside.’
He didn’t protest or try to stop her which, perversely, made her wish he had. He just said, ‘I’ll wait for you to get inside before I go.’
That shouldn’t be a turn-on. He was just being a gentleman who no doubt did the same for any woman, but she was so hopelessly infatuated that any courtesy felt like something for her and her alone.
Opening the door, she bade him goodnight.
His goodnight floated out to her as Stevie exited the pickup and shut the door.
She didn’t look back as she walked on shaky legs to the front door, but she was conscious of his eyes following her, of the heated caress of his gaze on her thighs.
When she reached the door she didn’t turn and wave, just slipped in, shutting it behind her, leaning against it, her breath held as she waited to hear the engine start.
It felt like an age before it rumbled to life and she stood and listened to it, her heart beating a little too fast as the noise got fainter and fainter.
‘Stevie?’
An orange glow emanated from her mom’s room and, on legs still not quite stable, Stevie crossed to it, hovering in the open doorway. The bed was strewn with paperwork, her mother looking over the top of her reading glasses with a smile.
‘Thought you’d be asleep.’
Gesturing to the paperwork, her mom said, ‘Tour stuff.’ Oh yes. The tour. How could Stevie forget the tour? ‘Did you have a good night?’
‘Yup.’
‘Who dropped you off?’
‘Mags,’ she lied as she crossed her fingers behind her back.
Guilt at the falsehood was instantaneous.
Stevie never lied to her mother. Yolly had done so regularly and with no remorse, but not Stevie, mostly because she’d never done anything risqué enough to warrant it.
Except tonight, she’d sat in a dark car with a guy she’d wanted to do more than just talk with, and instinctively she’d kept that to herself.
Because she didn’t want her mother to worry. More than that, she wanted to hug it to herself as a delicious secret.
Her mom nodded. ‘Don’t forget your lesson is at eight tomorrow.’
It wasn’t but Stevie didn’t mention that either. She just nodded. ‘Night, Mom.’
‘Night, sweetie.’
Stevie headed to her room, too buzzed to even think about sleep.
In the corner sat her Martin D-35 acoustic guitar.
She had four other guitars at home but this one was the one she preferred when it came to creating, and her oldest. She’d saved her pocket money up to buy it when she’d been thirteen because it was Johnny Cash’s guitar of choice.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, she started strumming, the first notes of a new song teasing around the edges of her brain, flirting with her subconscious, waiting for her to pin it down.
Waiting for her to strum it to life.