Chapter 18
“You can change it,” she says when the commercials come on.
“And miss your riveting performance? Not a chance.”
A warm spring breeze cuts through her open window, pulling strands from her ponytail and whipping them across her face.
It’s fascinating, the way she just tucks them behind her ear like it’s nothing.
Like the wind’s not out to get her the way it would if we were in LA where everything, even the tiniest gust, feels like a threat to your image.
“Where is everybody?” I say, eyes back on the road. “Is it usually this dead on a Saturday night?”
“The Chuckwagon has all-you-can-eat fried catfish on the weekends. That’s where most folks are. Either there or playing bingo at the VFW next door.”
“Why didn’t we do that?”
She shrugs and rolls up her window, trapping the warm air in the cab with us. “Those are date-night kinds of places.”
The thought of taking Maggie on a date stirs something in me I haven’t felt in years. I flash her a grin. “Are you saying you wouldn’t want to go on a date with me?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it again when the music comes back on.
No comment, then.
It’s nothing I recognize, but judging by her smile as she cranks it up, I bet she knows every word.
“This was my mom’s favorite,” she says, tapping her foot to the beat. “When I was in high school, my best friend and I used to hang out in the barn for…”
Her voice trails off, smile fading.
“You okay?” I ask, wondering if this is the same best friend I’d read about. The one who screwed her over.
“Hang on.” Her fingers tap her knee in time with her foot. “Quick, quick, slow, slow… Holy cannoli, Holden, stop the truck!”
“Here?”
“Just pull over.”
I do as I’m told, and she’s out the door, racing around to the driver’s side before I even get us in park. I crack my window.
“Leave the radio on, and get out,” she says. “Hurry!”
The air is muggy and thick with the scent of warm asphalt. Stars spill across the sky, brilliant in the moonless night.
“What are we doing?” I laugh as she grabs my hand and drags me into the road. “Trying to get us killed?”
“Hush.” She grins. “Just listen.”
But instead of listening, I check both ways for headlights. “Maggie…”
“Holden,” she says, exasperated, arranging my arms in dance position. “You’re missing it.”
Missing what?
I bite back a smirk and tighten my grip on her hand. Then, in the middle of the goddamn road in Nowhere, Texas, we begin to dance.
“This is insane,” I tell her.
“Focus.” She’s still grinning. “And don’t look down.”
Her smile’s fucking luminous, and the way her hair catches the starlight…
I couldn’t look down if I tried.
“So why this song?” I start to ask, but Maggie shushes me just as I figure it out. The beat’s similar to “Take the Bull by the Horns,” only this one’s bearable. Likable, even. A superior stand-in. The song that should’ve landed the part but didn’t know the right people.
Maggie got it instantly.
Maggie, with wind in her golden hair…
My feet come to an abrupt stop as the lyrics sink in.
The bluest eyes in Texas blink up at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
God, where do I even start?
“Um, nothing,” I mutter, heat prickling my neck. I tug at my collar, and we begin again.
But this time, I bring her closer, hold her tighter. She fits against me like she belongs there, her cheek brushing my shoulder, breath warm against my throat.
I don’t want to let her go, but the song will end. Filming will end.
Then I’ll leave, and those eyes—those impossibly blue eyes—will haunt me.
“Holden,” Maggie whispers after a beat, “you’re dancing.”
“I’m what?” I glance down, and sure enough, my feet are moving—actually moving—right along with hers. “Oh, shit. When did that start?”
I stumble a little, and she laughs, fingers threading through mine where they’re still caught between us.
She tips her head toward me. “Maybe we should focus.”
The wind stirs the cedars, and crickets trill in the weeds like they’re keeping time. I stop thinking about where my feet are or how close she is or what comes next. I just dance.
When the song ends, Maggie drops her arms and steps back. The sudden distance leaves me strangely unsteady, and I huff an incredulous laugh, because what the hell is happening right now?
Her skin glistens, the faint shine along her collarbone picking up the light when she moves. “We have to do this again.”
The DJ’s voice drones from the radio as Maggie grabs her phone and pairs it to Ben’s sound system. The speakers click, then go quiet as she spins back toward me, wisps of blonde hair falling around her flushed cheeks. “You were dancing, Holden! Actually dancing!”
I was fucking dancing.
“It has to be the song,” she says. “I noticed in the truck it’s got the same rhythm as the one from the movie. I mean, not exactly the same but close enough your feet can’t tell the difference.”
It’s definitely the song—but not the rhythm so much as the lyrics. Like they were written for her.
I force a swallow. “So, if this isn’t a fluke, maybe I can dance to this one during filming, and they can swap that other piece-of-shit in later.”
“Or,” she says, drawing out the word, “just scrap the other one completely. ‘Bluest Eyes in Texas’ may not be about rodeo, but at least it fits.” She’s practically vibrating. “Restless Heart peaked in the eighties. They’d probably pay you to use it.”
Maggie plays the song again, and damned if my body doesn’t fall right back into it. I catch her watching me, and she lets out a laugh so infectious even the crickets chirp in answer.
Because she did it. She actually did it.
We keep dancing, and by the umpteenth go, my shirt’s soaked through and it feels like I’m breathing fire. “Is this normal, or do I need to get my ass in the gym?”
She piles her hair on top of her head. “It’s not normal, but it’s not you,” she says, and when she drops her arms, what’s left of her ponytail falls in a wet heap at her shoulder. “It’s so humid it’s like swimming in soup out here.”
“Speaking of swimming.” I chance a grin. “How far are we from the creek?”
Her brow lifts. “The ankle-deep creek we were in the other day? You want to swim in that?”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah,” she says, mischief written all over her face. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“We’re here,” Maggie says as we come to the end of a narrow dirt road. Grass stretches in every direction, headlights cutting a path toward a line of trees.
I put the truck in park and watch her in the soft glow of the dashboard lights as she rummages through our takeout bags. Grease and pepper waft through the cab, and my stomach rumbles. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.
She digs out a couple drumsticks and hands one to me. “To tide us over.”
I down mine in three bites and reach for another. “Now, where are we again?”
“Blue Hole,” she says, jutting her chin at the windshield. “Still the creek, only deeper.”
“Only deeper,” I mutter, and then it clicks. When I asked about the creek I wasn’t literally suggesting we swim. “Are we”—I clear my throat—“skinny-dipping?”
Her gaze dips to my thighs. “Wait, you’re not commando under there, are you?”
“No, I’m not commando,” I say, while absently feeling for the hem of my briefs. “What about you?”
“Am I commando?”
I rub my temples. “What are you going to wear?”
“Same as you.”
The image hits before I can stop it: Maggie, dripping wet, bra and panties plastered to her skin. I swallow wrong and cough. “Maggie, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Don’t be such a prude, Holden.” She grins. “You couldn’t wait to rip your shirt off at the creek. What’s the big deal?”
What’s the big deal?
I take a long pull from my straw. “I don’t think you ripping your shirt off is quite the same thing.”
“My underwear covers a heck of a lot more than my bikini does,” she says, and great, now I’m picturing that too.
“Stop acting like we’re doing something scandalous.” She swings open the door, tosses what’s left of her chicken leg into the grass, and hops out. “Best leave the lights on.”
I climb out of the truck and follow her through the grove of trees, down the hill toward this “blue hole” of hers. It’s steeper than I expected, the dirt slick beneath my sneakers. The water below glints like black glass, no hint at what’s lurking beneath.
About three-quarters of the way down, she stops to pull off her boots. The soft thunk as they hit the ground echoes in my chest like the warning I’m already ignoring.
“Might as well leave everything here,” she says, balancing on one foot while she peels off a sock.
I offer my arm, and she peels off the other. “Here?”
“Unless you want it covered in mud.”
But the idea of Maggie swimming in her underwear and the reality of it appear to be two very different things, because when she begins to lift off her T-shirt, she hesitates, dropping the hem.
“You good?” I ask.
“Yeah, um…hangnail.” She fusses with her finger for a moment before trying again, this time turning around.
I do the same.
Minutes later, we’re standing half-naked on a rocky slope, clothes scattered at our feet.
Maggie hides behind her folded arms, hands clasped under her chin. “This sounded easier in my head.” Her nose wrinkles in a way that’s disarmingly cute. “Sorry I teased you.”
“We don’t have to.”
“No, I want to.” She drops her arms, and it takes every ounce of restraint I have to keep my eyes on hers.
“I’m being silly,” she says. “It’s not like I’m parading around in Victoria’s Secret.
More like Fruit of the Loom. And you…in those…
” Her gaze travels down my body, curious and charged all at once, stopping on my beat-up high-tops that I had the foresight to change into.
Her mouth curves, but she doesn’t comment. “Ready, Cowboy?”
Cowboy. I puff out my chest, though the boxer briefs and not-boots kind of kill the vibe.
“Right behind you.”
The truck’s beams slice through the trees, spilling just enough light to catch her ahead of me, every inch committing itself to memory.
Her hair’s twisted into a loose bun that bounces with each step, baring the long line of her neck.
My eyes lower to the soft dip of her waist and the full curve of her hips, nominally covered by a tiny pair of polka-dotted shorts that somehow manage to be the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever seen on a woman.
Kill me now.
I focus on the backs of her heels and follow after her.
At the water’s edge, she takes my hand and we wade in, cold biting at our feet. I flinch at the sudden chill, then at the slimy creek bottom that oozes through my shoes like they’re not even there.
“It’s just sludge,” she says at my pinched expression. “And we still have a patch of weeds and some algae-covered rocks to cross before we hit the limestone bottom.”
She doesn’t mention the treacherous roots, but I let that go.
The water, shockingly cold after the heat-soaked air, rises around us as we slog through it, but once we reach the middle, I’m able to relax and take it all in.
Blue Hole has an eerie kind of stillness at night, like the world beyond it doesn’t exist. Instead of cedar trees, cypresses tower over one side while a limestone bluff looms on the other, the same star-filled sky we danced under stretching above.
Behind us, the truck’s headlights cast a faint shimmer across the surface, just enough to turn the ripples silver.
Getting here aside, it’s romantic. The last place we should be—and the last place I want to leave.
“Well?” she says, and I’m suddenly hyperaware of her hand still holding mine.
“It’s, uh…nice. Peaceful.”
Cold as hell, I think, my eyes dropping—before I can stop them—to her cotton-covered breasts just breaking the surface as she rises onto her toes. Her nipples strain against the fabric, and it’s all I can do to tear my gaze away.
She brings our joined hands to my shoulder. “Care to dance?”
“Here?” I ask, though my arm’s already around her waist, pulling her cold, slick body flush against mine, hoping she can’t tell my dick’s in full hibernation.
“You look like you’re freezing,” she says, rubbing my bicep like she’s trying to start a campfire. “Let’s warm you back up.”
Her hand lingers, and between the heavy, humid air above us and Maggie’s nearness—her skin pressed to mine, her breath on my collarbone—the chill starts to fade.
Her off-key hum vibrates through me as we clumsily move through the water. I keep my eyes on her face, on that damn smile, so bright and carefree it makes my cheeks ache.
“Based on what you told me last night,” I say, “this is where we try the lift.”
She giggles, and fuck me. Our ungraceful dancing grinds to a halt. “I’ll pass.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“To lift me over your head à la Patrick Swayze in four-foot-deep water? I do not.”
“Ye of little faith,” I say, attempting a spin. I manage to trip her, then catch her as she falls into me—righting her the same way I did last night, just before she tore herself from my arms and fled the dance hall office.
Last night. Shit. Feels like forever ago.
“See?” she says, only her head visible now, her messy bun slipping loose against her shoulder. “You can’t even spin me.”
“That’s why I suggested the lift.”
To my surprise, she actually tries. Several times, in fact. But in chest-deep water, there’s no traction, no leverage. Just a series of clumsy, weightless collisions that amount to little more than Maggie throwing herself at me again and again.
Not that I mind.
She’s laughing hysterically, and I—Christ—am barely keeping it together. Because every time she launches at me, I have to catch her. And every time I catch her, I have to touch her.
The next time, I realize a moment too late, is the last. Because when I catch her again, I don’t let go.