Chapter Four
West
This fucking sweater. All day, I’ve been fixin’ to figure out why the hell I didn’t just give it to her when she got in the truck this morning.
For eight hours, I’ve been trying to understand why instead of just passing it to her, I stuffed it into the back seat of my dual cab truck—and not just the back seat, but I shoved it under a pair of dirty wranglers and a worn shirt so Daisy wouldn’t see I was holding her favorite sweater hostage. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Wade, Wyatt, Colt, and Cash would bust a fucking nut laughing at my bitch ass if they only knew.
Tonight, I watched Daisy wave from the front window once she was safely inside her home, and then I drove to Earl’s and pulled the fucking sweater from the backseat and pressed it to my nose, inhaling like a fucking junkie.
Her perfume isn’t just lingering in my cab, it’s working its way into my fucking mind.
I don’t do relationships. Especially not with recently separated pregnant women I’ve known my whole life.
So this damn sweater has to go. I finger the soft wool and ball it up, tossing it onto the passenger seat.
Earl’s is loud when I walk in, but I guess it is a Saturday night.
Not much happens in Red River Canyon until the weekend comes.
There are the usual bar flies lining the bar, locals dancing in front of a makeshift stage where Earl’s hosts trivia nights, meat raffles, speed dating and the occasional open mic night.
Even though it’s busy, Alexis’s eyes clock me the second I walk in.
I should go and sit at the bar and make her life easier, but I’m an asshole like that.
I pick a booth in the back that no one sits at on account of the table being so wobbly when you set your glass down, you never know if you’re gonna end up wearing it or drinking it.
I grab a menu and look it over. Mama’s gonna be pissed that I’m not at her table tonight, but with Lemon and Colt canoodling at the family dining table, it’s starting to feel like love central around home. Besides, I’m not in the mood for the usual ribbing my family loves to dish out.
I look up from the menu, that I already know by heart, to watch Alexis swaying her hips toward my booth.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite Winchester.”
“Alexis,” I say sternly and glance back at the menu.
“Don’t see you here on Saturday often.”
“Nope.”
“Oh, West. When are you gonna stop being so mad at the world, especially the pretty waitress who shares your bed every so often?”
“Don’t remember sharing my bed with anyone in this town, sweetheart.”
“Right. It was just my sheets we were messing up.”
I slam the menu closed and place it on the mahogany. “I think I’m ready to order.”
Audry grins. “Knew I wouldn’t get away with talking about feelings for long.”
“Who said feelings played any part in messing up your sheets?”
“Touche.” She pulls a note pad from the back of her skintight jeans. “You want the usual?”
“Yep. I reckon I do.”
“Comin’ right up.” She scribbles my order down on her note pad and then tears it off and sets the piece of paper on my table. “Just in case you forgot my number.”
I clench my jaw and avert my gaze as she walks back to the bar and yells my order to the kitchen.
It would be easy to wait around until Alexis was finished, to follow her home and order her to put her smart mouth to use around my rock-hard dick, but I don’t want that.
I know exactly where I want to be, I’m just not sure why.
***
Two hours later, I’ve eaten another excellent chicken-fried steak and downed two beers, but I can’t settle this restlessness.
I should be heading home. Instead, I find myself sitting outside Daisy’s house as if I drove here on autopilot, looking at those little pink shutters that could use another lick of paint.
I grab her sweater from behind my seat, dust it off, and open my door before I can chicken out again like a complete pussy.
I stride up the walk and rap quietly on her door, half afraid I’ll wake the whole neighborhood and set Red River Canyon tongues wagging.
A beat later, I hear Daisy inside, “Shoot!”
Another second and she opens the door, and all my fantasies of this woman standing there with her long blonde hair cascading down her shoulders and her tits straining against the silk of her robe are shot to smithereens because a heavily pregnant Daisy stands before me with footie pajamas on and her hair in this insane silk curler with a bow tied on top of her head.
She looks utterly ridiculous, and yet, she’s about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“West,” she plasters on a big smile. “Everything okay?”
“Sweater.” Good one, asshole. Way to sound like a caveman. “Uh. You left your sweater in my truck.”
“Oh.” She glances at the object in question. “I didn’t even wear that one today.”
“Yesterday.” Me, West. Don’t know how to talk to pretty lady. Fucking neanderthal. “You left it yesterday. I put it on the back seat and forgot all about it.”
“You could have just given it to me next week.”
“Yep.”
She chuckles. “Thank you, though.”
“Yep.” I thrust it at her and turn to leave.
“West ... do you want to come in?”
I spin on my heel and jam my hands in my pockets. “Won’t that look strange? To your neighbors, I mean. You pregnant and having a gentleman caller.”
“Is that what you are, a gentleman caller?” Daisy tries to keep a straight face as she says the words, but she ends up laughing. “You don’t talk to women much, do you?”
I frown. “I ... I talk to Lemon, Mama, and Carla all the time.”
“Family don’t count, West.” She shakes her head, but her smile is warm and inviting and it’s hard to understand why I never really paid this woman much attention before her car broke down.
“Why don’t you come on in, cowboy? You hanging around my doorstep will likely set more tongues wagging than you actually coming inside. ”
Fuck. Why does my dick twitch hearing her say those last two words?
“Okay.” I step over the threshold and move into her foyer.
The door locking behind me sounds so final, my pulse skips a beat.
What the fuck is wrong with me? What am I doing here?
I’m in Daisy-Mae’s house ... at ten o clock, on a Saturday.
I should leave. I should just turn around now because she’s pregnant and I’m . .. me.
“You want a beer?”
“Okay.”
Daisy smiles and leads me from the foyer, past her living room, which has a lot of dusky pink and girly furnishings, and into her equally pretty kitchen. Who the hell kind of person has a pink toaster? She hands me a beer from a retro looking pink refrigerator. I frown. “Your house is pink.”
She grins. “Yep. Just the way I like it.”
“It’s girly.”
“Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but I am a girl.”
“You’re wearing footie pajamas.”
“You’re stating the obvious, what has gotten into you?
” she says with a laugh, sitting at her small kitchen table.
She unties the giant bow from her hair and pulls out the foam curler.
Bright blonde strands fall down around her shoulders in fat ringlets.
Guess that’s why it always looks so pretty—soft, like cornsilk.
Her strawberry and cream shampoo about knocks me off my feet.
I’ve never met a woman who smelled so fucking edible.
If I ever got a taste of her, that’d be it for me. One hundred percent addict.
She’s staring at me expectantly. Fuck. I’m being weird.
“I’ve never been in your house. I’ve never really seen you outside of the B&B. I mean, not since high school, but you’re grown now and having a baby, and—”
“And I don’t bite, West.” Daisy tilts her chin toward the seat opposite her. “Sit yourself down before you go having kittens all over my freshly waxed floors.”
I pop the top of the beer and take a swig, and then I sit heavily at her table. “I’ve never seen a pink fridge.”
“After Eddie moved out—and took half my appliances with him—I just decided to treat myself and finally make my space one I was happy to be in. He wasn’t big on anything I liked.
Anyway, hope you like that beer, because it’s about the only thing he left me with.
Well, that and this little one.” She rubs her distended belly and pours herself a cup of tea, then she sets a cake from the ice box on the kitchen table and sits. “You eat already?”
“Yeah. At Earl’s, but I never say no to cake.”
“Me neither. I was going to freeze this and give it to you on Monday, you know, as a thank you for all you’ve done, but this baby wants buttercream so, I guess you get to eat it here.
” She serves up a piece and slides the flowery China plate toward me.
“Isn’t it a little early in the evening for a Winchester to be leaving Earl’s? ”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m sure I’ll hear all about it in the mornin’.”
“For turning down a plate from Mrs. Winchester, or because you left the party early to come here?”
“The first one.” I grin, loving that she knows that little fact about my family.
I pile a hunk of yellow cake smothered in buttercream onto my spoon and shovel it in my mouth.
A moan escapes me, and my eyes just about roll back in my head.
Fuck. That’s better than a BJ. My whole mouth is orgasming right now. “Holy shit.”
Daisy’s eyes go wide as saucers as she chews her own cake. “Everything okay?”
“I’m not gonna lie, Dais. I might need some alone time with this cake.” I scoop another bite and pause at her amused expression. “I just made it weird, didn’t I?”
She laughs. “I think that’s the most normal reaction you’ve had since walking through my door, West.”
“It’s good cake.”
“I’ll box it up for you when you go. Give you two that alone time you need.”