the damned middle of the night, gal. Your folks know where you are?”
Guilt heated her cheeks, and she smoothed her hands down the front of her skin-tight jeans. “Not exactly.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Or that you hauled butt way out here all alone in that fancy convertible of yours?”
She tossed her honey blond hair out of her face and tilted her chin at a belligerent angle. “I’m eighteen years old. I can do what I want.”
“It doesn’t make it any easier for a proud man like Kenny, having the Honorable Judge Holt think he isn’t good enough to court his daughter. And you acting like it, too, with this kind of shenanigan.”
“My parents don’t understand,” she said, sullen. “It’s not my fault they’re living in the Stone Age.”
“Grow up, Mercy. Adults don’t deal with each other that way. If you were honest with them—”
“Don’t treat me like a child, Travis. That’s what my parents do. They never listen to what I say about anything—not med school or my friends or getting out of boring Flat Fork.”
“They just don’t want you involved with a rodeo bum, and I can’t say that I blame them. Hell knows we ain’t got much in the way of job security. And maybe defying them is part of Kenny’s appeal for you.”
She gasped, stung. “What a despicable thing to say! I’m in love with him.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you got a funny way of showing it, darlin’. You put him in a bad position. When are you going to learn to think first, act later?”
His condemnation sent a hot and startling prickle of tears surging behind her eyelids. Travis had been their intermediary time and again, the one whom she’d trusted to convey the most precious secrets of her heart, and now to find he’d been a reluctant and disapproving ally was a betrayal almost as potent as Kenny’s walking out. Maybe more.
Her words rasped with hurt. “If you disapprove so much, why have you tried to help us make this relationship work?”
Travis shrugged. “He’s my best friend.”
“And he’s the man I love,” she avowed, with force enough to squelch any doubts. Thwarted, resentful, the tears spilled over. “And now you’re telling me he hates me just because I wanted to see him. I can’t do anything right. Oh, God, what am I going to do?”
Sobbing, she collapsed onto the crumpled bedspread and curled into a ball of sheer misery.
“Aw, stop, darlin’. Don’t cry, blue eyes.” The bed sank under Travis’s weight, and rope-callused hands lifted her, cradling her against his bare chest. “Mercy, I can’t stand it when you cry.”
“Why does love have to hurt so much?” Weeping, she clung to him, her tears raining onto his bronzed shoulder. He was hard and muscular and smelled intoxicatingly of soap from his shower and healthy male musk.
His voice rumbled rough as gravel. “Love can’t help where it lands sometimes, I reckon.”
“But why can’t he understand? You do, don’t you, Travis?” Hiccoughing on a ragged sob, she looked up at him through tear-blurred eyes. “You’re a better friend than he is. Sometimes I wish—”
“Hush, don’t cry anymore.” He pressed a comforting kiss against her temple, his palm soothing as he stroked her bare arm from shoulder to elbow, his fingertips slipping under the strap of her lace-edged tank top.
Mercy’s breath caught, and she shuddered, her skin quivering beneath his touch. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the room, as if a flash of heat lightning had consumed all the oxygen.
Murmuring soothing nothings, he brushed his mouth over the corner of her eye, sipping the salty essence of her tears, and Mercy’s lips parted in a silent exhalation of surprise and anticipation...of what? She didn’t know, could only wait suspended, her middle turning to jelly at the feather touch of his carved male lips, her heart thumping against her ribs so hard she knew he could hear it.
He seemed to be waiting, too, his mouth now hovering mere inches from hers, his coffee-colored eyes hooded and mysterious. Their breaths mingled, warm and uneven across flushed skin, and Travis’s fingers tightened on her arm, his knuckles barely brushing the underside of her breast through the thin knit of her top.
Confused, shamefully aroused, Mercy’s head spun. She couldn’t be feeling this, could she? This utter longing to have his mouth sealed on hers, to experience his taste on her tongue. But this was Travis! Best friend to the man she swore she loved. Was she crazy, or was that light blazing behind his dark eyes a burning curiosity and need that matched her own ungovernable, inappropriate desire?
What would he do if she curled her arm behind his neck and drew him down to her? What would she do if he took up her offer and pressed her down against the bed? Worse, what would she do if he didn’t?
The potential for disaster, for rejection, for utter humiliation made her stiffen, and suddenly the heated light disappeared from Travis’s features, masked so quickly by his normal teasing expression that she was sure she’d imagined it.
“Lord-a-mercy, Miss Mercy, you sure are a mess when you blubber.” Easing his grip, he dropped a brotherly peck on the tip of her nose.
Chagrined, flustered, she pulled away, using the hem of her shirt to wipe her damp face. Had he guessed where her wayward impulses had almost led her? Oh, God, how mortifying!
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, but she wasn’t sure if the apology was for weeping all over him or almost placing him in the awkward position of betraying his best friend’s trust.
If he hadn’t sensed anything, then it was best to ignore that flash of hunger that had nearly made her forget herself. There was a name they called girls like that, and while she might have a reputation for being spoiled and a bit wild, she’d be damned if she’d ever let anyone call her the other.
“It’s okay, darlin’, you’re just upset.” He stood and slipped on a pearl-studded cowboy shirt, then jammed his feet into a pair of well-worn boots. “Look, I’ll go find Kenny. It’ll be all right. You know he can’t stay mad at you for long. You got him wrapped right around that pretty little pinky finger.”
She swallowed, not much liking the picture his words painted. “Is that how you think it is?”
“Sure thing.” He opened the door and slanted her a grin. But somehow it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m sure Kenny’s cooled off by now.”
“I hope so.” Cooling her own humors wasn’t such a bad idea, either, not if she expected her relationship with her boyfriend to continue. But she had to know something first. “Uh, Travis? Have you ever fallen in love?”
He froze on the threshold, his shoulders stiff, then he grinned again, all cowboy cockiness and masculine charm.
“Sure, darlin’. About every ten minutes or so. Only problem is, I tend to fall out again faster’n chain lightning.”
Suddenly cold wind whipped Mercy’s hair about her face and brought her back to the present. “Every ten minutes or so...”
That’s
