“I’m a thoughtful guy. I’ll be downstairs waiting for you.”
“Don’t wait for me,” I said, resting my head on the door.
“Don’t make me wait too long this time,” he said, ignoring the double meaning in my words. Or maybe he was giving me some of his own. His mouth was just a door’s width away. I could picture his full lips and the feel of his tongue on mine. I rested my hand against the wood, knowing I could just let him in and feel him inside me once more before it was all over. The temptation was driving me insane.
“Why can’t you just let me go?” I asked, almost pleading. This was the dumbest place in the world to be having this conversation, but that was just par for the course with me, I guess. Careless does as careless is.
“I can’t let you go because you’re mine. And because I can’t stand to see you sad. I’m going to fix that. You sure you don’t need me in there right now? I could cheer you up real quick, I promise.”
I could picture the devilish smile on his face, and I couldn’t help but respond in kind.
“I might be wallowing in misery, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be dead-ass lame and not help with your family’s once-a-year family picnic. Stop trying to distract me.”
“That’s the spirit. Grandma Lettie’s coming with her beef brisket, you know.”
I giggled. “So I heard.”
“Well hurry up, then. Those tables aren’t going to put themselves out.”
My heart was soaring over the teasing we were enjoying together. He made the atmosphere that had threatened to suffocate me ten times lighter, and his attitude made me believe that life could be so much simpler and uncomplicated if I just said yes to what he was offering.
I was tempted to open the door and yank him in with me, but the sound of his whistling near the stairs stopped me. It was better that we didn’t do anything else to make my leaving any harder. My hand dropped away from the door and I turned around, sighing.
Stepping into the warm shower, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I might be facing an apocalyptic event with Bradley showing up in the middle of everything and forcing a very public, very ugly breakup, but at least for now I had a pretty new dress to wear and a famous beef brisket to look forward to. What the hell is a beef brisket, anyway?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE FIRST GUESTS FOR THE MacKenzie’s annual picnic and rodeo began arriving around eleven in the morning. A party rental company had set up three large tents earlier to provide shade not only for the guests but also for the band that was in the process of setting up to entertain everyone with eighties rock classics. The food was set out on a long banquet table, and as people arrived, they added their dishes to the offerings. Nearly a hundred people stood in groups, laughing, smiling and talking
I found myself standing alone when several of the guests and family moved as one big group towards the front of the house. Most of my focus was on Mack and the jeans that hugged his amazing rear end and the black t-shirt that stretched across his thick back. He had his best cowboy hat on today, a light cream color with a thin black band around the top. Just looking at him had me going warm in all the wrong ways and in all the most inappropriate places. This picnic was going to last forever with him there torturing me like that, just out of my reach … the perfect male, so close and yet so far.
I took a deep breath to calm my libido down a notch or two. That’s all I could manage with him looking like he did today. It was going to be a helluva long picnic.
A huge cadillac that looked like it was built in the sixties drove up to the front gate and parked before going all the way through. Curious, I wandered over, keeping my distance from the MacKenzie clan and the many townspeople who’d already arrived. The driver’s door opened and then shut, but I didn’t see an actual person getting out. It wasn’t until she made it up to the front of the car that I realized why.
“Grandma Lettie, I presume,” I said softly into the empty air around me. Maeve and Angus fawned over her, and she accepted their hugs and kisses with some of her own. She stood less than five feet tall and had wispy bluish-gray hair that floated around her head like a cloud. Ian took the car keys from her and moved the huge vehicle off to the side, parking it out of the way.
The group of welcomers moved with her in my direction, and I shifted off to the side to give them room to get by. Mack was carrying a big oval pan with a lid on it that had come from her trunk, and I could tell by the way his muscles were bulging under his t-shirt that it was heavy.
As they drew near, Maeve leaned down and spoke in her ear. The older woman’s head shot up and her eyes searched the area until they landed on me. She pointed with a bony finger in my direction and the whole group shifted trajectory, no longer headed towards the banquet table but towards me instead.