A pleased glitter flitted through those dark eyes, a cheeky grin giving her the reward of his dimple.
“You ain’t ever needed makeup. Let’s hit the road.”
With the dog put in the house, she locked up and jogged down the steps, the breeze teasing the hem of her dress and his eyes snapping hard to the peeks of her bare thighs, further messing up her hair and lifting tendrils on the air. She wanted to keep Yoda for another night anyway before she discharged him to ensure no infection took root from those cactus spines. She fought her hair from her face as he opened the passenger door for her, resting his forearms on the top of the window frame and gazing over it, eyes burning into her profile as she slipped past him. Fingertips skimming her shoulder and sending a shiver of goose bumps over her skin. Her nerves were on high alert, tingling. This was really happening.
Brandon had texted from the drive to the game hours ago—all was well. The animals were fed and put away, and Jasper was planning to stop to check up on things. I can do this. She could go on one date. See where the waters were settling after Travis had landed like a splash in her life two days ago. They weren’t solidifying a contract right now, just fact-finding…right? Yet her legs nearly trembled with nerves. She was about to climb in, when she paused, her hands bracing on the old red vinyl and stripe of upholstered weave.
How many times had she sat here? She smiled. It was all so familiar. Exactly the same as it had once been. The same red dashboard, the same marbled strip inlaid over the glove box.
“There’s a spot in the middle that’s missed you, babe,” he drawled from behind her. “No need for ‘that damn Dixon bastard’ to sneak you out a window anymore. I got you fair and square.”
She glanced back at him, expecting a cocky grin, instead finding a gentle smile. Got me? He’d gotten her all hot and bothered. He’d gotten her worked up in knots, unable to stop thinking about him in spite of the fallout from the truck accident and worry about Anita. But while he might’ve been “hitting the ground running” to prove he was making the past up to her, they had baggage to sort through. It would take time, and she couldn’t allow this girlish heat pulsing through her veins to interfere with Brandon when so much lay on the line.
He jutted his chin. “Hop up in there.”
She shifted her dress under her thighs and dropped onto the seat, remembering all too well how her skin would stick to the vinyl in the summertime heat. He wanted her to scoot to the middle like old times? She did, the vinyl pressing memories into the back of her thighs, her boots wonky as they straddled the hump in the middle running lengthwise under the bench seat.
He nodded with satisfaction and shut the door, patting it. Came around the hood. As a teen, he would have trotted, as if lazily taking first base after being fouled into a run. This time, he moved with that uneven gait and circumvented his open driver door, his head on a swivel looking around at the barn and corral at the sound of Patches’s distant nickering.
“Did you want me to show you around?” she asked as he dropped onto the seat, his thigh brushing against hers, his arm brushing against hers, so close she felt his body heat and caught a delicious nose full of his sandalwood soap. Was it too soon to nestle closer? “Introduce you to the horses? You’d like Patches. She looks like Cimarron.”
He glanced at her, an easy expression, yet the upturn on his lips didn’t turn into a smile that met his eyes. Did he not want to see the horses?
“Sure. Later. But for now, we’re racing the sunset.”
“Does that matter?”
“It does for what I have in mind.” The grin and dimple followed, and on a playful eyeroll, she succumbed to being spirited away.
She turned up the radio as he shifted into drive, his body jolting slightly against her as he moved the transmission shift. Those nervous butterflies that had kept her from eating much today flitted merrily through her belly and poured out onto her skin. Soundgarden grew louder through the speakers.
She quirked a brow at him. “You listen to this stuff? I thought you turned your nose up at my grunge phase,” she teased.
He chuckled, but was that redness creeping up his neck? Surely no. “I guess, yeah.”
Huh. Travis had been born and bred on country music. He’d cut his teeth on George Strait, Tim McGraw, and Garth Brooks. Every mix CD he’d made had been some combination of modern country—of the time anyway. She’d been the one to go through an alternative angsty rock phase where she’d made shopping at thrift stores for old flannels and overalls her style, since it was all she could afford anyway.
“But you were always in charge of the music,” he added, nodding toward the stereo and plucking his phone off the dash as they rolled down the gravel access road toward Tyson Beef’s main ranch road. “Here. Pick your poison.”
The stereo was the one thing updated, she noticed now. Red Lightning used to have a tape deck, and he’d used a tape adaptor for his portable CD player.
“No mix CDs anymore?” She quirked the corner of her mouth as he handed her his unlocked phone.
Their fingers brushed as the device switched hands. For some reason, it felt personal, being in his phone. His private world. Such things hadn’t existed when they’d been younger. She dare not open his photos and risk seeing him with someone else, a former girlfriend from years past. It would pinch her chest too hard. She’d tried to date, too; Travis wasn’t her only anymore, in or out of bed. It wasn’t as if he’d slept around while she’d waited in an ivory tower like a vestal virgin, but the sentiment still stoked the roiling of unease.
He grinned at her remark. “Got about ten playlists or internet radio.”
She X’d out of his music library and found his radio app and sorted through his music choices. More of that alternative rock. Interesting that he’d gravitated toward her music while she found herself these days gravitating toward his. Both of them swapping tastes on their own. Perhaps they’d been trying to feel close to one another, even though the other was gone. She found a country playlist and tapped it as the accelerator roared onto Tyson’s main paved road and he kicked up the pace. The vibrating of the truck beneath her legs, the breeze rolling in from his window as he rested his arm on the door—his farmer’s tan, she smiled, and she leaned over to crank down the passenger window to let the wind rush through.
“I thought you didn’t like your hair all windblown,” he teased.
She sat upright again, her thigh once more rubbing against his denim-clad leg, which pressed a little harder against hers in return this time. Brushing the wisps out of her eyes, she laughed. “It wouldn’t be Red Lightning without some wind in my face.”
She turned up the music. Glanced up at him. Wished he’d put his arm around her like he’d always done. They blew past the yucca dotting the road, reached the entrance gate, and rumbled out onto the back highway, stretching out in the evening glow toward the east with the sun sinking at their back. The engine roared as he pressed down the pedal—
“OMG, stop,” she breathed.