One True Love (Cupid, Texas 0.5) (10 page)

He reached for a red rag to wipe his hands, straightening to his full height. He stood well over six feet tall, sturdily built and breath-stealingly impressive.

The moment hung in the air, tremulous as a spiderweb spun under eaves in a rainstorm, but bright, sharp, clear, and unmistakably special.

As Natalie coasted past, their gazes locked.

In that fraction of a blink, she memorized everything about him. Eyes the color of coal, chiseled jaw, Olympic shoulders, hard everywhere, all of him bottled into an explosive package.

Boom!

His eyes pierced into her like an arrow’s point, took her, owned her.

Dear God! What was this?

A lazy, wolfish, one-sided grin spread slowly across his face.

Just one look and all the mysteries of the universe were answered. Every nerve ending in her body tingled to life as if she’d been asleep for a hundred years and was awakening for the very first time.

It’s him!

He was a stranger to Cupid. She did not know him, had never met him, and yet, in that hushed sweet second, her body knew something that her mind did not. She felt him deep in her center.

At last.

He’d found her at last.

It struck her like a fever, hot and rushed, an emotion so sudden and sweet that her brain fumbled and stupidly came up with the word “love.”

Did she dare think it? How foolish to think such a thing of a stranger. No. Not love. Love at first sight was absurd, right?

And yet . . . and yet . . .

Panic spread through her as more images fell in on her. His big, black cowboy boots parked underneath her bed, her sunny yellow Keds lined up beside them. Warm quilts on a cold winter night. Silver lightning that lingered—burning and brilliant. His hard mouth crushed against her soft one, tasting rich and decadent as pure dark chocolate.

What did it all mean?

She had no explanation for what she was feeling. It was too blissful. Too good. It scared the living crap out of her.

Thankfully, gratefully, she’d already sped past him. She was too terrified to glance back.

A mirage, she told herself. A dream. Not real. He could not be real.

The blood had drained from her face, leaving her cheeks quite cold. Ghostly. The road flattened, her pace slowed. She tried to get her legs moving again, but they were cement, too heavy to move.

Craziness.

This was sheer craziness. She’d lived in Cupid too long and even though she didn’t believe in the love legends, apparently the stories had been like the creeping damp, silently, insidiously closing in on her to culminate in this . . . this . . . What the hell was
this
?

She swallowed, listening to the quickening of her pulse, felt the blood rush fierily back to her cheeks, and suddenly, she could not see. Oh, everything was still there—the trees, the buildings, and the vehicles—but the image imprinted on her retina was not of the scenery before her. Instead, his face blotted out everything else, like a full solar eclipse turning high noon to midnight.

Music filled her vision—violins and saxophones, pianos and drums, Vivaldi and Mozart, Pachelbel and frickin’ Bonnie Tyler. Colors surrounded him—a rainbow of pleasure—crimson, azure, olive, lavender, saffron.

Could she be having a stroke?

Yes. A stroke. That might explain the wild euphoria, the ceaseless pounding of her heart, the inability to breathe. Why couldn’t she breathe?

“When it hits, you’ll know.” Aunt Carol Ann’s words rang in her head. “There will be absolutely no doubt.”

Dear Cupid, the most awesomely awful thing has happened.

D
AZZLED,
D
ADE
V
EGA
blinked and she was gone.

He shook his head, wondering if he’d imagined the phantom beauty in yellow on the pale blue Schwinn, looking like springtime in Paris. Why did it feel as if the bottom had just dropped out of his world?

A hard tightening gripped him in all the right places. He scrubbed a sheepish palm over his face. Purposefully, he stepped to the curb and glanced down the street.

Nothing. Nobody.

She was gone, if she’d ever really been there at all.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had a hallucination, but it would be the first time since the head injury he’d suffered in Afghanistan four years ago.

Ah shit. Man, he couldn’t backslide, not after all the progress he’d made. If he was backsliding, it’s had everything to do with Red’s disappearance.

Funny how easy it was for the past to reach up and punch you in the face when you least expected it.

Honestly, he was half hoping that she
was
a hallucination because that would rightly explain the berserk push-pull between his head and his heart. He felt a rushing need to go after her, spill his guts, tell her who he was and how he felt. One look in her enigmatic sky blue eyes and he felt as if love beckoned him with open arms, while his soul had dug in its heels and jerked back, too guilty of damage and sin to believe anything so good could be true.

He knew better.

Life had kicked Dade in the teeth far too many times for him to trust it. He’d learned that happiness, by and large, was a mirage and it was best not romanticized.

But the woman’s image lingered, leaving an indelible imprint, and he found himself thinking about a soft mattress on a hot sweaty night, sheets tangled up in their entwined limbs. He could almost hear her calling out his name in ecstasy, and dammit if he didn’t start to get hard.

False, this vision, he knew it, but he could still see her delicate lightness, her smile, modest and a little shy, but as welcoming as warm socks on a cold winter’s day. A tumble of soft brown hair floating out behind her like a cloud as she rode past.

For that instant when she’d looked at him and he’d looked at her, one lonely soul connecting with another, Dade had thought,
It’s her.

It was a stupid thing to think, he was well aware of that, but he’d thought it nonetheless.

Forget it. Move on.

Moving on was the only way he’d survived, another lesson courtesy of the Navy SEALs. It was harder to hit a moving target. Red had proven the point. His friend had stopped in Cupid, stayed, gotten comfortable, and now he’d gone missing after texting Dade a Mayday message three days earlier.

Tanked.

The secret code only they understood. It meant
I’m in trouble deep, trust no one.

That’s why he was here in this dead-end, desert mountain town. To find out what had happened to his foster brother who’d also served with him in the SEALs. They’d joined the navy together the day after they graduated from high school, and Red was the only person in the whole world that Dade gave a shit about. Because of that, he’d taken a leave of absence from the security detail he’d been on in New Orleans.

There were no commercial flights into Cupid and since the nearest big airport was in El Paso, two hundred miles away, he decided to simply make the drive. Waiting around in airports made him feel helpless. At least when he was on the road, he was making progress. Unfortunately, he’d been out on an oil derrick in the Gulf of Mexico when the text had come through, and it had taken him this long to arrive.

He was terrified that Red had gone off his meds and was in the grips of full-blown, post-traumatic stress flashbacks. After the Mayday message, Red had not answered any of Dade’s calls or texts. Tough as he was on the outside, his buddy was as emotionally fragile as an eight-year-old.

Dade had to be careful. He couldn’t afford to assume it was simply PTSD. What if Red had stumbled across something or found himself in some other kind of trouble? He was here to retrace his buddy’s steps. The best way to do that was to ease himself into the community and see what he could find out.

First his junkie parents, and then the foster care system, had taught him that trusting people was a damn dumb thing to do, so his plan was to keep his connection to Red a secret until he got the lay of the land and figured out where his buddy had gone.

Which was another reason he was particularly disturbed by his overwhelming reaction to the woman on the bicycle. It simply wasn’t smart.

There she was again, clogging up his mind—that pretty oval face, big blue eyes, and full pink lips. He imagined she smelled like honeysuckle. When he and Red were kids, they used to pluck the white blooms from the honeysuckle vines that grew up the wooden privacy fence of their foster home, break them open, and suck out the drop of sweet nectar.

Kissing her would be like that.

Honeysuckle woman, that’s how he thought of her now.

For Chrissakes, Vega, knock it off. If she’s even real, she’s way out of your reach for so many more reasons than you can count.

He might as well wish for the Hope Diamond. He was as equally likely to possess it. Dade pulled a palm down his face, winced at the prickle. He hadn’t shaved since the previous day and he haired up fast thanks to his father’s Hispanic blood, Satan rest the bastard’s soul.

“Screw it,” he muttered, and wrestled into the T-shirt he’d stripped off while working on his motorcycle.

The trip through the desert and up the Davis Mountains had messed with the Harley’s timing and he’d had to disassemble the gas tank to get to the timing belt. The job had taken over an hour and he’d been putting the chopper back together when she’d ridden past.

He’d stopped underneath the security lamps in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot because it had still been dark when he’d started the job. Dade packed up his tools, stuffed them in the compartment underneath the seat, and wondered what honeysuckle woman’s name was.

Forget her already.

He strapped on his helmet, slung his leg over the machine, reached down to turn on the check valve. Instantly, fuel poured from the tank, soaking the leg of his pants in gasoline.

Dammit!

In his stunned enchantment with the woman on the bicycle, he’d neglected to reattach the hose.

All Out of Love

Millie Greenwood High School, Cupid, Texas, May 25, 2001

Dear Cupid,

I am crazy in love with my older brother’s best friend, Pierce Hollister! You should see him in his gym shorts when he’s out on the football field running sprints. Omigod, he’s got the most amazing thighs. Of course that’s nothing compared to the way his butt looks in Wranglers. Be still my pounding heart!

And his eyes! Brown with intriguing green flecks.

He made direct eye contact with me once. It was a moment I will never, ever forget until my dying day. I’d dropped my books in the crowded hallway and I was fumbling to pick them up when suddenly, out of nowhere, I see a pair of black cowboy boots and a hand reaching out to help me.

I looked up and it was him!

I got tingly all over and honest to God, I thought I was going to die right there on the spot! This is no ordinary boy. He’s the quarterback of the football team! He dates cheerleaders! His daddy owns the biggest ranch in Jeff Davis County and here he was helping me!

And I’m nobody. I’m pudgy (Mama calls me fluffy) and I wear glasses and I stutter. I’ve had speech therapy, but I still can’t speak without stammering and that is in a relaxed atmosphere. Believe me there was nothing relaxed about this. Every muscle in my body was tuned as tight as the strings on a concert violin and I couldn’t have said a word if my life depended on it.

His eyes met mine and he smiled.

Smiled! At me!

“Here you go,” he said, handing me my biology book (it had to be biology, didn’t it?), and our knuckles brushed. I don’t know how I kept from bursting into flames. “Have a nice day, Lace.”

And then he was gone, leaving his heavenly sunshine and leather scent lingering behind, as I stared after him with my mouth gaping open.

Pierce Hollister had smiled and touched my hand and said eight whole words. To me!

I have no chance with him. I know that. He’s a senior. I’m a freshman. He’s handsome as a movie star. Way out of my league. He’s filet mignon and I’m day-old bread. Okay, so I am a direct descendant of Millie Greenwood, but so are practically half the people in this town. It’s not a unique claim to fame.

It’s silly of me to wish and pine, I know. But Cupid, I just can’t stop thinking about him, no matter how much I try. Every night before I go to sleep, I imagine what it would feel like if he were holding me tight against his muscled chest, our hearts beating in perfect time together. Beating as if we were one.

That’s why I’m writing to you, Cupid. I’m miserable with love for him. I want him to love me back so badly that I can barely breathe. Please, Cupid, please let Pierce Hollister fall in love with me. I know I’ll have to wait for him. I am only fourteen after all and he’s got a girlfriend and a football scholarship to the University of Texas, but one day? Someday? Please!

Yours in total despair,

Hopelessly Tongue-Tied

Lace Bettingfield stood frozen in freshman homeroom, half in the doorway, half out of it, with her backpack slung over one shoulder.

Seated in front of her were seventeen students, and every single one of them was reading the current issue of the school newspaper, the
Cupid Chronicle
.

Ominously, hairs on the nape of her neck stood up.

The fact that
everyone
was reading—including the stoners and the jocks—was odd enough, but when they all looked up at her with what seemed to be perfectly choreographed smirks, Lace’s stomach took the express elevator to her Skechers.

In a split second, her gaze darted to the student nearest her. It was Toby Mercer, her biology lab partner.

Toby was six-foot-six and weighed the same as Lace, a hundred and sixty-two pounds; on him the weight was gaunt, on her it was zaftig. He possessed strawberry blond hair and skin so pale it had earned him the nickname Casper way back in kindergarten. She’d known him her entire life. His family lived just down the block from hers. She’d comforted him when kids had picked on him. They’d attended each other’s birthday parties. They’d dissected frogs together.

But right now, Toby was looking at her all narrow-eyed and smug, like she was a dilapidated barn and he was a wrecking ball.

She flicked her eyes from Toby’s face to the paper he held in his hand, and there it was.

Dear Cupid,

I am crazy in love with Pierce Hollister!

It was the letter she’d written to Cupid, her private letter that had never been meant for anyone’s eyes but her own, printed on the front page of the school newspaper!

Her letter. Front page. Declaring her love for Pierce.

How? How had this happened?

Unlike the tourists who came to Cupid, wrote letters to the Roman god of love, and deposited their letters in the special letter box in the botanical gardens (expecting them to be answered by the town’s volunteers and published in the weekly Cupid Chamber of Commerce circular), Lace had never intended for anyone to see this letter.

She’d written it in study hall three days earlier as she gazed out the window, watching the football team practice. She’d carefully folded the letter and tucked it into the side pocket of her notebook with every intention of burning it in the patio chiminea that weekend when her parents were out of town at a cutting horse event.

Reality hit her like a fist to the face.

Mary Alice.

Mary Alice Fant, her second cousin, who was also the editor of the
Cupid Chronicle
. Pierce had recently dumped her for the head cheerleader, Jenny Angus. Two nights ago, Mary Alice and her parents had come over to Lace’s house for dinner, and at one point, Lace had caught Mary Alice snooping around in her bedroom.

Oh God!

Now everyone knew about her secret crush. Her life was ruined. Nausea splashed scalding bile into her throat. Her entire body flushed hot as August in the Chihuahuan Desert.

One heartbeat later, and the class erupted into a feeding frenzy.

“Do you imagine she calls out Pierce’s name when she’s touching herself?” sniggered Booth Randal, a smart-assed stoner who spent the bulk of his time in detention.

“P . . . Pa . . . Pa . . . Pa . . . Pierce,” another boy stuttered in a fake falsetto, “Yo . . . yo . . . yo . . . you . . . ma . . . ma . . . make me so hot.”

Moaning and breathing heavily, the two boys pretended to kiss and fondle each other, while the other students hurled derisive catcalls like stones.

“Poor me,” wailed Tasha Stuart, whose mother worked in the teller cage next to Lace’s mom at Cupid National Bank. “I’m sooo in love with the most popular boy in school and he doesn’t know I exist.”

“Who knows,” someone else called out. “She might stand a chance. Pierce could be a closet chubby chaser.”

“Na . . . na . . . na . . . not unless she can sta . . . sta . . . stop stutt . . . stutt . . . stuttering.” Toby stabbed her in the back.

“Yeah, who wants a girl whose tongue is hopelessly tied?”

“One day. Someday.”

“Please, Cupid, please, please, please.”

The words slapped her harder than any physical blow. She knew these people. Was related to some of them. Had thought many of them were her friends, but they’d turned on her like hyenas.

The only one who looked at her with anything other than ridicule was Pierce’s younger brother, Malcolm. He slunk down in his seat, pulled his collar up, sank his chin to his chest, and kept his eyes trained on his hands folded atop his desk. He was embarrassed for her humiliation.

Blindly, Lace spun on her heels, and almost crashed into the teacher, Mr. Namon.

He put up his palms, “Whoa, slow down, what’s going on, Miss Bettingfield?”

Head ducked, Lace shoved past him and fled down the corridor.

But there was no sanctuary here.

The hallways were lined with students, several of them holding copies of the
Cupid Chronicle.
Some laughed. Some pointed. Some made lewd gestures. Some threw out more catcalls. A goth girl was slyly singing “Crush,” a song about a stalker.

Everyone was going to think she was a stalker.

“Hey, Tongue-Tied, drop thirty pounds and maybe you can land your dream man.”

“Reality check. No guy like Pierce could ever love someone like you.”

“Yes, he touched your hand, but I heard he washed it off in Lysol afterward.”

Lace plastered her hands over her ears, willed herself not to cry, but it was too late, tears were already streaming hotly down her cheeks.

Nightmare. It was a living nightmare.

And just as in a nightmare everything moved in slow motion. It felt as if she was trying to run through knee-deep mud. Her lungs squeezed tight. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it was going to beat right out of her chest.

Good. If her heart beat out of her chest she would die.

It seemed to take hours to traverse that hallway. She kept her head down, didn’t once make eye contact with anyone. She was headed for the exit, desperate to find a place to lick her wounds.

The morning sun glinted against the metal bar in the middle of the exit door. Almost there. Salvation was just a few steps away. She rushed forward, her legs breaking through the slow-motion morass.

Her hand hit the bar and she gave a hard shove.

But fate, that vicious bitch, wasn’t done with her yet.

The door smacked into something solid. Someone was coming in at the same time she was trying to get out. Trapped. She was trapped. No exit.
Knock ’em down if you have to. Just get the hell out of here.

She raised her head and found herself staring into Pierce Hollister’s brown eyes.

Her heart literally stopped and a whimper escaped her lips.

For Mary Alice to print her letter in the school paper was a horrible betrayal. The bullying by classmates she thought she knew was unbearable. Breaking down and crying in front of everyone was humiliating, but nothing that had happened to her that morning was as bad as what was written across Pierce’s handsome face.

Utter, abject pity.