Page 13 of Forever Finds Us
Realizing it was still true, I pulled the brim of my cap down low and said, “I may look like a city boy, but darlin’, I’m all country. Let’s go.”
Chapter Five
Roxanne
Why did the presence of this man in my truck make me a bad driver? And when he’d declared himself “all country”?
Could vaginas twitch? I was pretty sure mine had.
Twice, I’d almost veered off the side of the road leading away from Brand’s family’s houses on our way out to Old Fish Creek Road when he did nothing more than clear his throat and turn his body toward mine in the passenger seat. I kept looking over at him, which was why I almost missed the glare of headlights headed straight for us.
Dang him and his baseball hat. Brand Lee made me more nervous than I could remember being in a long time.
By his sister’s account, the sexy, quiet man sitting next to me, with his sinful lips, dark stubble covering a jaw cut from glass, and eyes the color of a summer sky, was loaded. Not like me. If I had more than twenty bucks in my bank account and a pot to piss in on any given day, it felt like God was raining fortune down on me.
The skinny gravel lane didn’t allow two big trucks at the same time, so I pulled over and put mine in Park, and confusion crossed Brand’s face when he recognized the other vehicle stopping next to us. I rolled down my window and nodded hello at Bax and Bea.
“What are you doin’ here?” Brand asked. “Shouldn’t you two be holed up, naked in a hotel somewhere?”
I couldn’t stop the flush that traveled up from my navel to my face or the elicit images in my head the man sitting next to me had just conjured. It felt like the heat would scorch me from the inside out as I pictured myself and Brand, lying clothing-less and spent in a pile of messed-up bedsheets, bodies slick with sweat after fucking like bunnies.
Not that that was even a remote possibility. No, Brand would probably rather be doing it with someone like Tabitha, pretty and perfect. Maybe he already had. She looked like a vixen of a woman. I’d bet she was like a little mewling bomb in his bed.
One-two-three.
But dammit. Book club had turned me into a shameless slut, because after reading all the romance our librarian, Sam, could fit on the shelves, all I could imagine was the authoritative sound of Brand’s voice when he told me to get on my knees to suck his dick and his hand tangled in my hair, pulling and guiding my mouth on him.
“We got halfway to our hotel,” Bax said, “and realized there was no way we’d enjoy ourselves with Natalie missin’.”
“Is that where you’re headed?” Bea asked, leaning over Bax’s center console. She held her husband’s hand, and seeing the simple display of affection between them made something clench in the pit of my stomach. “Can we join you?”
“It’s your special night,” I said. “You don’t have to do that. There’s a mass of search and rescue people up there already.”
“We want to,” Bea said with a gentle smile. “Bax here’s good with his hands. He can thwack at some brush with a machete, and I can holler with the best of them. If Natalie doesn’t hear my voice, she ain’t on that mountain.”
I intended to let out a sexy little laugh, but it came out more as a guffaw. Could I be any more embarrassing? But I said, “Follow us up then?”
“You got it.” Bax rolled up his window and they made a U-turn on Bear Lane, the dirt road that led to the cabins, and then they followed my truck out to Old Fish Creek Road and further onto the highway.
Brand was quiet for a while. It seemed to be his way, but finally he spoke, and the sound of his deep voice I’d just been imagining set sparks to bursting in my belly.
“Is this common? A missing hiker?” he asked. “I remember one or two from my childhood, but I haven’t lived here in almost twenty years now.”
“It happens. But there hasn’t been a missin’ kid in a while. It gets everybody in a twist, imaginin’ their own kids lost in the night.”
“Do you have kids? I don’t remember if my sister ever mentioned if you were mar?—”
I shook my head. “No kids. Never been married. You?”
“No. Same. I’m better as an uncle.”
“Same.” I laughed. “I’m Auntie Roxi to fifteen nieces and nephews.”
“Fifteen?”
“I have five sisters.”
“Ah.”
