Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
RYE
She said yes.
Holy shit. Didn’t see that one comin’.
What the fuck was I even doing? What now? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Well, that was a lie. I’d dreamed up a whole life for Aubrey and me, but that was all it had ever been for me: a dream.
But who was doing the faking in this scenario? Not me. Nothing about the way I wanted her was fake, but it was all fake for Aubrey. So technically, I was fake fake-dating her… kind of?
Whatever. I saw the way she looked at my body longingly, and damn if I hadn’t felt her get a little wet through her jeans when I got down on my knees for her.
That alone was enough to make me forget about the whys and hows of the situation.
I transferred money to Aubrey’s bank account so she could pay her tax bill before I left the store, though she wouldn’t let me pay the whole thing. She kept telling me she’d pay me back, even though I’d insisted she didn’t have to, that her help with my parents was all the payback I wanted.
I’d known her pride would bite at her, and I was right about that, but she also proved me right that she was a determined fighter. I had no doubt that as soon as she could afford it, the five grand would show back up in my account or a check would arrive in the mail. Not because of stubbornness, although she was definitely stubborn, but because Aubrey would always do what she thought was right, no matter the detriment to her reputation or her bank account.
But if she did back out on our deal, at least I’d helped her. Just having that knowledge filled me with a sense of gratification so intense, I felt almost euphoric. All those times I’d seen her looking defeated and frustrated with life, and I was the guy who helped take that away?
Damn . I hadn’t thought it would feel this good. She was right about one thing though. I did want to take care of her. Not because I thought she couldn’t take care of herself, but because taking care of her would mean I’d get to be near her. I’d get to soak up her determinedness, get to hear her laugh, not just watch it through a dusty store window, and I’d finally get to know her.
I knew she wouldn’t back out though. She had always been someone who lived up to her word, was honest, maybe to a fault in some people’s view, and she had integrity.
She’d agreed to go to dinner with me so we could hash out the specifics of our little arrangement, but beyond that, I had no clue what to do.
I needed advice, so I called the only person I knew who’d understand, or at least wouldn’t think I’d gone completely mental.
“What’s up, dumbass?” Devo said when she answered my call. How I’d managed to become friends with a four-foot-eleven lesbian activist still baffled me, but she was the most honest person in my life.
“Not much. What’s new with you, carpet muncher?”
“I did munch some carpet this mornin’, and I licked it and sucked it, and it was delicious.”
“Oh God. Stop. Why do you do this to me? You know listenin’ to you talk about your sex life activates my childhood trauma, and it doesn’t help that the person you have sex with is my oldest friend’s little sister and the freakin’ town sheriff.”
“And I don’t feel bad about it,” Devo said, chuckling.
“You good though?”
“Yeah. I’m on my way home from the community center. Abey wants to work on the garden today, so I took the afternoon off.”
Devo had reminded me that I needed to call Abey’s brother, Bax. He’d left me a voicemail last week, but my head had been in the clouds, and I kept forgetting to call back.
“Nice. How’s the house comin’?”
“Oh, it’s so cool! They just poured the foundation. We may be jumpin’ the gun, but we’ve already started pickin’ out furniture and paint colors. I seriously can’t wait for all that domestic stuff, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking I agreed and trying to imagine it for myself.
Devo cut into my daydream. “I heard a rumor about you today.”
“You did? What’d you hear?”
“Roxi told Abey and Abey told me that Roxi talked you into goin’ to see Aubrey, and that you were plannin’ to ask her out.”
“Truth,” I said.
“So did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you ask her out? What’d she say?”
“In a roundabout way, I did. And she said yes. That’s why I’m callin’. We’re havin’ dinner tonight. What should I wear? And where should I take her?”
“Pause,” Devo said. “Back up. What does ‘in a roundabout way’ mean?”
Oh yeah. I’d forgotten that part.
“Have you heard about Aubrey’s financial troubles?”
“Kinda. Abey tells me everything, but not specifics. Why?”
“Aubrey owed some back taxes, so I paid ’em.”
“Rye! You did not.”
“Yeah, I did. What’s wrong with that?”
“I mean, nothin’ if she’s your friend and you wanna help her, but if you’re lookin’ for sex in return, it’s kinda… prostitution.”
“Shut up. It is not. Besides, no one said shit about sex.” Well no one said anything, not out loud, but… “And anyway, I’m gettin’ somethin’ out of this deal, too, so it’s a fair trade. I have the money. She needs it. What’s the big deal?”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What can Aubrey do for you that’s worth thousands of dollars?”
“Devo Mescal, I hereby swear you to secrecy. You may not share this information with anyone, not even Abey.”
“Okay…?”
“Do you swear?”
“Yes,” she said, and I knew I could trust her.
“Aubrey and I are gonna pretend to date.”
There. I’d said it, and honestly, the satisfaction of saying Aubrey’s name and the word “date” in the same sentence made me feel like a king. How long had I waited for this?
Too long.
“Uhh.”
“What? What does ‘uhh’ mean?”
“I don’t have words.”
“C’mon, Devo. I already feel like I’m in some kinda twilight zone ’cause she finally said yes. I need you to talk me down off a ledge here.”
She sighed loudly into her phone. “Okay, fine. First, fake datin’? I thought you really liked Aubrey.”
“I do. I’ve wanted her since I knew how to want.”
“Okay, so then, why this arrangement? Why not just walk up to her and say, ‘Hey, you wanna go out with me?’”
“She would’ve said no.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.”
“Why would she say no?” Devo asked. “I’ve seen complete strangers throw themselves at you. Why wouldn’t Aubrey wanna jump on the Rye train?”
“Because she’s older than me by more than a few years. And because she already said no once, probably ’cause I’m the annoyin’ little brother of her dead husband’s best friend.”
“Oh shit. You never told me that.”
“Yeah, my oldest brother, Grady Jr., and Aubrey’s husband, Tommy, were thick as thieves their whole lives. Then Aubrey and Tommy started goin’ out when they were in high school.
“I was just a scrawny kid who followed them everywhere they went. But I got older, and I saw the way they were together, and I hated him for it. He treated her like she was somethin’ to stick on a shelf, not a woman. And then they got married, popped out two kids, and I knew my shot with her was gone. I never really had a shot, to be fair. Tommy was it for her back then.”
Slumping back against the seat in my truck, I sighed and tossed my hat next to me, staring across the street at Red’s actual red house.
“I gave up, you know? What choice did I have? I was too young, and she was married. But Tommy passed overseas ten years ago, and then last year, when I came to help you at Uncle Red’s store, well, things looked different. Aubrey looked different, and I thought, or maybe I hoped, I might finally get a chance with her. Of course, then she shot me down.
“But I dunno, Devo. There’s just somethin’ about that woman. I feel like I can’t breathe when she’s near.”
“Wow, Rye. You got it bad.”
“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.”
“But why do you think you have to bribe her to get her attention? Doesn’t that demean you both?”
“I wasn’t tryin’ to demean anybody, but I got this money, you know? It’s just sittin’ in my account, and I see the way Aubrey has been lately, like the world has her by the throat. She’s stressed out. I just wanted to help her.”
“That’s chivalrous.”
“Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe I am.”
“Rye, you are not stupid. Don’t you listen to your dad.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I asked her to do for me. I asked her to date me so I could stuff it in my parents’ faces, so maybe they’d see me as somethin’ other than the baby. So maybe my dad could see that he can trust me to run the ranch. Aubrey’s older. She’s got her own business, and she was married to someone they held in high regard.
“Besides Aubrey, runnin’ my family’s ranch is all I’ve ever wanted. But me and Dad? All we do is butt heads. He don’t trust me at all, and he sure as shit won’t listen to anything I’ve got to say about raisin’ cattle.”
“Damn,” Devo said.
“What?”
“It still surprises me how rigid these old cowboys can be. I didn’t grow up in that kind of environment, so I don’t really get it.”
“Growin’ up in it doesn’t make me understand it any better than you.”
“Alright, well, where are you takin’ her for dinner?”
“No clue. The only places I ever eat when I’m in Wisper are the coffee shop or the diner.”
Devo scoffed. “Absolutely not.”
“Okay, well what other options do I have? Aubrey never really liked big crowds or busy places, so a restaurant in Jackson is out. Maybe she’s different now, but she’s still quiet.”
“Ooo. That gives me an idea,” Devo said in her plotting-trouble, masked-marauder’s voice. “I’ll call you back. I need to do some recon, which just means I’m gonna make my fiancée tell me everything she knows about Aubrey.”
“Okay, but Devo—” Annnd she hung up on me.
Three hours later, when I pulled up in front of the little, beige, one-story house Aubrey lived in on Valley Drive, the porch light was off.
She was expecting me, so maybe she’d just forgotten to turn it on?
I stumbled over some cracked cement on the sidewalk outside her yard. Thankfully, her curtains were drawn, so hopefully she hadn’t seen me almost kiss the ground. I caught myself and checked my breath, and I made sure my shirt was still tucked in before I knocked twice on her front door.
When she opened it three seconds later, I was speechless. I couldn’t seem to draw enough air into my lungs to tell her how beautiful she looked.
She’d pulled her hair up into an elegant bun at the nape of her neck, but just as I’d requested when I called her two hours ago, she had dressed in jeans and a pretty pink shirt with frilly edges, with a little leather purse that crossed her chest but hung low by her hip. In case it got cold tonight, she had a hooded sweatshirt in her hand, and I’d brought blankets.
She looked me up and down. “I thought you said to dress casually?”
I looked at her legs in her jeans. So sexy with the bottoms cuffed short and those cute little slip-on shoes she liked to wear. The ones she had on tonight had blue and green books all over them.
“I did say that, and you did that.”
She scoffed and cocked her head to the side, her eyes sliding down my body again slowly. “ You don’t look so casual.”
“What?” I said, looking down at my denim shirt, jeans, and boots. “Yeah I do. I wore jeans too.”
“Yeah, but you’re you , and you wore a nice shirt. Even tucked it in. I feel underdressed. Hold on, I’ll go change.”
What the hell does “you’re you” mean? But before she could run away, I grabbed her hand and pulled her through the door, then shut it behind us and heard the automatic lock click into place.
Her irritation and the feel of her skin on mine made me feel at ease, so finally, I told her, “You look lovely,” as I led her around my truck parked by the curb in front of her house. “And what you’re wearin’ is perfect for what I’ve got planned. If it’ll make you feel more comfortable, I’ll untuck my shirt. I can even take it off. I’ve got a T-shirt underneath.”
She shrugged, but the apprehensive look on her face made my decision for me. Letting go of her hand, I untucked my button-down, unbuttoned it, and took it off, then untucked my T-shirt, and finally dragged my fingers through my hair to mess it up a bit. So much for fashion advice from Devo. Next time, I’d just listen to my own damn instincts. Aubrey wasn’t about fancy things. She never had been.
“There. Better?”
She nodded but she didn’t say anything, probably because she hadn’t yet looked away from my bicep. She seemed fixated on my tattoo peeking out beneath my sleeve.
I laughed under my breath but cleared my throat to hide it as I walked around to open her door, and she followed slowly.
“Hop in, milady.”
“Thanks,” she said as she stepped onto the running board, and I watched the way her ass filled out her jeans and imagined taking them off and finding home between her supple thighs, but then she slid into my front seat carefully, and my view was obscured.
Walking back around to my side, I had a hard time hiding my smile. She had no idea how many times I’d imagined her in my truck. And she looked good in it, too, like she belonged next to me.
Once my ass was firmly planted in the driver’s seat, she narrowed her eyes at me. “What? Why’re you smilin’ like that?”
“I’m happy you said yes.”
Sighing heavily, she said, “Thank you for the loan, Ryder, but I will pay you back. And I don’t know what you think pretendin’ to date me will do for you, but maybe this is a mistake.”
“Oh, ho,” I laughed. “Don’t you go thinkin’ you’re gettin’ out of this, Spitfire. You said yes. I paid your bill, and now you’re gonna help me too. I’ve got it all planned out. We’re gonna go for a drive, eat, and then I’ll lay it all out for you. By the end of the night, if you still think it can’t work, then you’ll be free to say so, but until then, relax. Sit back and tell me what you wanna listen to.”
I fumbled with the dash screen until I found a Zach Bryan song and turned it up a tic. She didn’t protest, so I left it on.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her leg next to my hat on the console between us. She fiddled with her shirt, the dainty gold necklace around her neck, and then she released her hair from its bun. When thick, strawberry-blond waves cascaded over her shoulders, I held my breath. If I got any more turned on at this point in our date, she wouldn’t take me seriously.
But then she lifted my hat and laid it in her lap, and I had to bite back a moan.
It was the second time in one day she’d touched my hat. Maybe it was only silly cowboy folklore, but a man’s hat was an extension of his body, and when she touched it, it was like the gentlest caress over my skin. Goosebumps rose on the back of my neck, and as she ran one finger lightly over the brim, I swore I could’ve come right then and there ’cause all I could picture was her soft fingertip doing that to the head of my dick.
In the circles I usually ran, if a woman touched a man’s hat, held it, wore it, she’d claimed that man.
Damn, what I wouldn’t do to be claimed by Aubrey.
When she asked, “So what’s this big plan of yours? Where are we goin’?” I resisted the urge to rearrange the baseball bat in my jeans. Putting my hand anywhere near it would definitely draw her attention.
“I’m takin’ you somewhere we can talk.”
“Okay…?”
Nodding to the back seat, I said, “We’re goin’ on a picnic.”
She twisted to see the basket of food sitting there next to my discarded shirt, and the cooler I’d brought with white wine and a couple beers, in case she was in the mood for that.
“Rye, it’s seven at night.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Little late for a picnic, don’t you think?”
“Nope,” I said, “not the way I planned it. Relax and don’t you worry ’bout a thing. You will be fed and satisfied before the night is through.”