“MR. BAXTER?”
We had just gotten back from our ride and were grabbing a refreshing drink to help with the heat of the day and the dust of the road. That dust was everywhere. Even in my throat. The iced tea was heavenly.
“Mr. Baxter?”
I turned to find Darla Clark with what might have been concern on her face. But I was feeling pretty good, and I wasn’t worried in the least.
“Yes, Mrs. Clark?” I said.
“Darla, please,” she said.
“Only if you call me Neil.”
She gave a slight shrug. “I can try. But a twenty-year habit is hard to break.”
“I can’t be the first guest to ask you to call them by their first name?”
She smiled. “See what I mean?”
“What is it, Darla?”
Her smile diminished. “It’s about your accommodations.”
“Oh?” What about them, I wondered. Had they still not solved whatever the problem was?
“Well,” Darla said, “the Radcliffs have always used the same cabin. It’s one of the family units. Two bedrooms. Mr. and Mrs. Radcliff took one room, the girls the second, and Todd slept on the foldout couch. I’m embarrassed, but we weren’t thinking. The cabins have been assigned for months. Most of our reservations are. In our defense, we weren’t expecting you until about a couple of weeks ago. When we thought it was going to be just her and the kids, we were either going to credit Mrs. Radcliff or give her money back. Are you seeing the problem?”
Problem? What problem? I could only blink at her.
“There’s no space for you,” she said. “Not enough beds.”
Then I saw it. I couldn’t sleep with Amy. “What about the foldout?”
“Not enough room for you and Todd, I’m afraid. It’s pretty small.”
“You don’t have a place to put me?” I asked. No place to sleep? Then, strangely, it didn’t concern me. I was in such a good space that nothing seemed to bother me. There was always the car.
“Well, actually,” Darla said, scratching behind her ear, “we do have a solution. One I hope isn’t inconvenient.”
“Tell me,” I said, curious.
“Well, we have a small cabin set apart from the rest, a little more private. It’s about a ten-minute walk down the stream. It’s very nice. Quite a step up in many ways.”
“Okay,” I said with a shrug, and meant it. I was feeling too good. What, me worry? as Alfred E. Neuman used to say.
“You haven’t seen it,” Darla said. “Don’t you think you should see it first?”
“Okay,” I repeated. Why not?
Darla nodded. “Cole will show it to you.”
Cole had a big grin on his face. “Let’s go, Mr. Baxter,” he said, and motioning for me, he started down the porch steps. My eyes fell to the rear of his pants. Those jeans encased possibly the roundest, highest, tightest-looking butt I’d seen in a millennium. What was the saying? An ass that sticks out far enough you could set a cup of tea down on it without spilling it?
Geez, could they be much tighter?
And what are you doing looking at his butt?
I followed Cole down the steps and, despite myself, found it hard not to stare at his ass…. It, like the rest of him, looked very muscular. It flexed as he moved, and I wondered what it looked like without his jeans. Would it still be that round? Would it be smooth? Hairy? Somewhere in between?
Damn. One afternoon with a homosexual and I’m letting a lifetime of discipline slip? One afternoon and I’m imagining a man’s bare ass?
I knew it was a mistake to have Cole as our wrangler. No. I would not allow myself to fall back onto that path. This was too good a day. I would not let perverted thoughts ruin such a perfect day.
We went around the building, and Cole indicated a golf cart with my luggage already in the back. I wondered if I was being given a choice.
Cole and I climbed aboard, and he grinned again. “Trust me, Big Daddy. You’re going to love it.”
Then we were zipping down the main road, past all the buildings. After a short jog, Cole turned down a path that looked like it might be too narrow. Cole was pretty confident, though; he barely slowed as we went down a fairly steep hill.
This is a bit out of the way, isn’t it? We broke into a clearing dominated by a small, rustic-looking log cabin. It looked like something I might have constructed out of Lincoln Logs when I was a boy. It even had a green roof, although that was because grass and some other small plants were growing on it. The cabin seemed to have one end sticking right out of the side of the hill.
“Gosh,” I said. It looked primitive, although it was pretty.
“Wait until you see the inside,” Cole said with glee.
He jumped down, grabbed my bags, and led me onto a small porch, complete with two rocking chairs. Cole turned to me with a huge grin. “We’ve turned this into the newlywed cabin.”
“People go on their honeymoons at a dude ranch?” I asked.
“They’ve gotten married here,” he said happily and let us into the cabin.
“Whoa!” I exclaimed.
The inside was nothing like the exterior. As if in imitation of the main hall, the walls were all done in pine paneling with pretty prints, and a small version of the main hall’s stone fireplace dominated the back of the room. There was a large four-poster bed on one wall, with matching bedside tables. A love seat and recliner sat by the hearth, along with a coffee table. There was even a small sink, refrigerator, and a microwave. The painting over the fireplace was of a great sleeping bear.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or not about the rifle over that. So Western. The room was like a set from a Clint Eastwood movie. At least the gun seemed to have a lock. People might honeymoon at Black Bear Guest Ranch, but I was sure ugly fights happened too, like anywhere else.
“Like?” Cole asked.
I nodded, knowing he meant the cabin and not the rifle.
“I knew you would.” He tossed my bags on the hope chest at the foot of the bed. “Check this out,” he said and led me through a door into a striking slate bathroom with a large shower. It was easily big enough for two people.
Two men, even, I thought—and then banished the image.
“Nice, huh?” Cole asked.
“Very,” I answered.
“No bathtub, but look at this!”
“This” turned out to be a backyard of sorts with a small bubbling hot tub.
“Voilà!” he exclaimed. He pointed above the hot tub. “It’s protected by the roof overhang. And it’s totally private.” He swept his arm outward.
Indeed, the small grassy area was fenced in and ingeniously built over a creek that flowed through the backyard. “Even if someone hiked down the creek, they couldn’t see you back here. The fence is too high.”
He stepped close to me. “You can get naked,” he said quietly. He pronounced the word “nekkid.” Then: “I hate hot-tubbing with something on, don’t you?”
I could only gulp.
Cole stepped even closer. “You’ve got this whole place to yourself. If you want to be by yourself, that is. If not, I could come keep you company.”
I stood back.
Shit!
Cole was hitting on me!
And why not? The way you’ve practically been drooling over him.
No, I haven’t!
I had to nip this in the bud now. If I had given him the wrong impression, it was time to set things right. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Cole, I am not homosexual.”
A look crossed his face that would have been comical if I hadn’t felt insulted. “Y-you’re not?”
“No, Cole. I’m not,” I said with all the strength I could muster.
“But….”
“But what?”
He shook his head and looked away. “God… I… I’m sorry.”
“You thought I was homosexual.” It was a statement, not a question.
Cole backed up. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Baxter.”
Mr. Baxter? So I’m no longer Big Daddy? “What made you think I was gay?”
You know why he thought it!
“Because I was nice to you? Paid you a compliment? Do I look gay? Do I act gay?” I asked.
Did I? Had Cole been able to see something in me? How?
Cole’s eyes changed then. Went hard. It was like a door slammed shut, and the light in those eyes of his winked out. He shook his head. “Do I look gay?” he replied. “Do I act it?”
“You do when you come on to me two or three hours after we meet,” I said, letting my disgust show in my voice. Suddenly, his confusion was pissing me off. So I’d told him he was good-looking. So what? It didn’t mean I wanted to fuck him.
Are you sure?
Once again I pushed that voice away, getting even angrier. “You’re all like that, aren’t you?”
Something happened to his face. It grew even harder. The play and the merriment were gone. I didn’t like this new face of his. “Like what, Mr. Baxter?” he said, his voice like ice.
I gulped. Was he getting indignant? How dare he? “It’s sex with you all. That’s all you want. All you do!”
“We all?” His voice was even colder, if possible.
“Gays,” I said, feeling a rise of self-righteousness. “With those clubs and bathhouses and… and AIDS.”
Cole opened his mouth and then it snapped shut.
Time stopped.
“I do not have AIDS, Mr. Baxter. I haven’t been with a man in two years. And I’ve been tested. Regularly. Trust me.”
Yeah, right, I thought. Trust you? Why should I trust you? “You expect me to believe that?” And yet, inexplicably, another part of my mind was shouting something else. Asking me what the hell I was doing. That I had trusted him. He’d asked me that very question a half-dozen times today. Asked if I trusted him. And I had. Everything had been so wonderful. I’d been having the best day I’d had in a very long time.
And now?
Why, everything seemed to be going right to hell!
“I don’t care what you believe,” he replied. “It’s true.”
True? What was true? That he didn’t have AIDS, or that he hadn’t been with another man in two years?
Two years….
The same amount of time as….
How could it have been two years since he’d had sex? I’d read the articles. I’d read Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). I’d snuck my mother’s copy and read it with a flashlight under the covers the way most guys my age read comic books, or looked at Penthouse and jerked off. But what I’d read horrified me instead of got me off. That chapter on homosexuality was all about how promiscuous gay men were always looking for the next cock to suck. The next man to fuck them.
If that wasn’t true…. “Then what’s this about?” I asked, waving back and forth between us. “You say you haven’t been with anyone in two years, but you come on to me, someone you’ve just met? What was all this ‘you can get naked in the hot tub and I’ll keep you company’ business?”
Cole’s mouth did that open-and-shut thing again, and the ice seemed to melt. Something else took over. He looked sad.
“I-I don’t know, Mr. Baxter.” He looked away. “I’m sorry. It’s just…. There was something… I mean… I looked at you and… I thought you were….” He stopped, turned back to me, but didn’t meet my eyes. “I thought you wanted….” He stopped again. Cole visibly swallowed. “I made a mistake, Mr. Baxter. I’ll leave. If you need to talk to Mrs. Clark, I’ll understand.” He turned and walked away, leaving me standing there. Alone.
To my surprise, I realized I didn’t want him to leave. One minute I was angry and incensed, and the next I was feeling his absence like a newly missing tooth, and he wasn’t even gone yet.
I had no idea why.
“Cole?” My mouth froze up before I could say anything more.
Say something! But what?
He stopped. “Yes?” he replied, his back—his broad muscular back—to me.
And what did I say? “We can be friends,” I offered weakly.
“Sure,” he said, then left without another word.
“Cole?” I whispered to the air.
He was gone.
I felt it. I could actually feel the lack of his presence.
Shit.
What was happening to me?
DINNER WAS beyond belief. I could only hope every meal wouldn’t be like it or I’d gain twenty pounds, and no amount of “working ranch” would keep it off of me.
We had a Cornish hen apiece, plus stuffing to die for—
“The herbs were picked here in the last day or so,” Amy told me.
—country-style mashed potatoes and gravy, with bits of peeling mixed in, like my grandmother used to do, green beans—
“They grow those here as well?” I asked, and Amy nodded.
—with chunks of ham, and cinnamon rolls the size of a saucer, covered in butter and crunchy goodness and still warm from the oven.
I avoided looking at Cole. At least in the eye. In the time since he’d left my cabin, I’d played the scene over and over and over in my mind. Guilt, that old enemy of mine, had hit with a vengeance. I only went to dinner reluctantly, sure I wouldn’t be able to eat.
But the Black Bear Guest Ranch’s food worked its superpowers on me, and I couldn’t resist. Especially when Cole was so bright and cheerful, as if I had never said the things I said to him.
Then Darla Clark stood on a little stage, welcomed us again, and gave us a rundown of our schedule for the week.
Next was the entertainment.
Leo, the pudgy kid with the luggage cart, was first. Seemed he was an amateur ventriloquist, and despite the corny jokes, he had us in stitches.
“Hey Ernie,” Leo asked his dummy, which was widemouthed and cue-ball bald, “if an athlete gets athlete’s foot, what does an astronaut get?”
“Why, missile toe!” Ernie responded, rolling his eyes upward.
To his credit, Leo’s mouth moved hardly at all. And further to his credit, people laughed.
“If a room is full of married couples, why is it still empty?” came another of Leo’s jokes.
Now Ernie’s eyes moved back and forth, as if looking around the room. “Because there isn’t a single person in it.”
More laughter. Especially the kids, who I wasn’t convinced got the joke. I think they just liked the comical movement of those big eyes.
“How do you know carrots are good for your eyes?”
“Because you never see rabbits wearing glasses!”
This time the kids did laugh. They squealed in delight. That one they got.
“Why did the man sleep under the car?”
“So he could wake up oily in the morning.”
And so on.
Even I laughed, although the jokes were pretty simple. But this was a family place. Dirty jokes wouldn’t be appropriate, and the one about the married couples was about as racy as he got. The laughter felt good and relieved the tension from my incident with Cole. I’d avoided looking at him during the meal but dared look now. He was laughing at the jokes he’d surely heard dozens of times before, and his laughter was contagious. Those eyes of his, that mouth, lit up the table. I had to keep myself from staring.
Gay.
He was gay. He was proudly gay. He was indignantly gay! I looked around and saw several women staring at him. His looks spared no age as a girl of no more than thirteen or fourteen and a woman old enough to be Darla’s mother were all but ogling him. The old lady was even waving and giggling.
Cole could have almost any woman he wanted. I even caught Amy giving him a long, appreciative look. Why would he choose men when he so obviously could be with women? Did he want to have a life where he was ostracized? Hated? Sneered at? A life where he was unable to have a romantic dinner with his lover (lover!) without people staring or pointing or even threatening him? Didn’t he want a normal life? Stability? Acceptance? A wife and home and children?
My daughter claimed that some people were just gay. Like she would know. Eighteen and she thought she knew everything. “Pop, it’s the way it is.” She said some people couldn’t help it. But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.
Cole did have a choice.
I believed that.
I had to!
Or had the more liberal and indulgent culture that had arisen since I was Cole’s age seduced him into thinking otherwise?
Unbidden, an image of Jack, a friend from high school, came to mind.
And George. Oh, George too—
Hey, Neil, do you ever play with it?
—and I pushed their memories away.
When Leo was done, a small group took the stage—including Cassie, the curly-headed blonde wrangler—and did a couple of square dance routines. Darla’s husband, Vincent, played a mean fiddle, calling out moves while he did so.
“Now, ’member, folks,” he said gleefully between numbers, “to pay attention. Cuz y’all are doin’ this Tuesday night!”
My eyes went wide. Had Darla mentioned square dancing? How had I missed that? Nightmares of elementary school and me messing up and the kids making fun of me rushed back.
First horseback riding and now this?
Was this place designed to torture me?
Of course, riding Mystic hadn’t been as bad as I’d thought it would be. In fact, it had been wonderful.
But square dancing? That was something else again!
I looked to Amy, who laughed, then reached out and took my hand. “You’ll be fine,” she said loudly to be heard over Vincent’s resumed fiddling. “You’ll have fun. I’ll protect you.”
When Vincent and his group finished, our wranglers brought out dessert.
“But we had those cinnamon buns,” I protested, but I shut up when I saw what Cole had brought. It was huge pieces of pie, our choice of apple or pecan.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Grown on the ranch?”
“Sure is!” Cole said. He gave me a strange, quirky smile and refused to meet my eyes. “Both the apples and the pecans. And we’ve got home-churned vanilla ice cream.”
After one bite, I knew I’d never get in my jeans by next Sunday. I couldn’t say no. It was all just too enticing. Delicious beyond words. We dug in, but to my surprise, Cole didn’t join us. He let Leo take over our table, and Cole headed for the stage.
That’s when I saw Cole had a guitar. Where had it come from? He sat on the edge of a stool, propped one booted heel on a rung, fussed for a second tuning his instrument… and then he began to play.
Well. Really well.
He had a nice voice too. Reminded me a bit of Michael Bublé, but a tad rougher. But kind. A weird word to use, but it fit. Kind and strong and deep. He did maybe three, four songs. That many before the next performer, but he didn’t bore any of us from the expressions I saw on people’s faces.
“Blackbird,” by the Beatles—which struck me, because it had been a haunting favorite of mine since I’d first heard it way back in high school. Then a country song—which I am not a big fan of, but Cole made it work. Followed by the classic “Home on the Range,” of all things. And finally something, he informed us, by someone named Christine Cain… or Kane? I found myself falling into the song and knew I’d have to look her up when I got home.
The lyrics drew me in.
“And all the poets taught me,” he told us in song, “that there’s a difference between free, and just pretending not to see.”
Whoa. For some reason the words hit me hard.
“How will you go,” he continued, “the long, long journey, if you’re always about to begin?”
Strange song to pick for a last number, but Cole finished to a loud round of applause, which freed me from the world his singing had taken me to.
I shook my head. The lyrics had shaken me up, and I didn’t even know why.
And was he looking at me as he came down from the stage?
Into me?
Afterward, I hung back a bit with Amy. And hell, keeping her company was what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. We had coffee, which I knew would keep me up, but I did it anyway. Amy loved ending an evening with her coffee. The caffeine never kept her from sleeping when she wanted to. At home, I had to make sure I had some Bailey’s in mine or I’d be up half the night.
“I miss him, Neil,” she said, looking around the room. “He’d have had so much fun tonight.”
I had no idea what to say. There was no reason for me to ask who “he” was. I’d wondered why she wanted to come here. I wouldn’t have. Couldn’t, if our positions were reversed. I missed Emily—every day. And I hid from her, as much as I could. Even now. And here was Amy, facing the very ghosts I’d worried she’d have to confront. What was there to say? I still hadn’t dealt with Em after two years. How could I offer sage advice for my friend when her husband had died less than two months ago?
But then I remembered that advice wasn’t something I’d wanted. All I really wanted was company. I wanted someone to listen to me.
So that was what I gave Amy. My ear, and no advice.
“I look at Robin, and she worries me.”
I nodded. I knew about Amy’s worries in that department. Robin had cried for an afternoon and then seemed to bounce right back. She hadn’t shown any grief since then. She was bright and positive and told everyone that she was okay.
“At least Todd is quiet. I can tell he misses Owen fiercely. He’s using that whole ‘now I’m the man of the house’ to get through. I want to tell him to fuck that. To cry. To really cry! Or at least, I did. A few weeks ago I was passing his room on my way to the kitchen to get some water one night, and I heard him crying. For a minute I almost knocked on the door, but then the relief—the pure relief that he at least was letting it out—stopped me from doing it. That and the fact that being the man of the house is so important to him.”
She went silent.
Then she talked about the first time they came here. Owen was a huge Western fan—had read the books by Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, and Max Brand since he was a kid. He loved the movies, too, and had infected both Todd and Robin.
Amy gave me a laugh. It was a little one, but a laugh all the same. “Robin was like you at first,” Amy told me. “Not so excited about bugs and dust and the heat.”
But it was the horses that drew her in. She was the little girl who always wanted a pony.
“I hadn’t been all that excited either, but Owen never expressed a preference for any of our vacations—not once. So who was I to say no? As it turned out, we all had a wonderful time, even the night we slept on the ground, learning what it was like to rough it like in the Old West.”
She smiled, her eyes going to a far different time and place.
“We went back the very next year, and brought Crystal, as you know, and continued every year after that.”
She looked at me, her eyes coming back to the present. Sighed. She smiled, but I could tell it was forced. “This just might be the very last year,” she said. She shrugged. “I don’t know if I’ll want to come back after I say….” Her voice faded again. “Good-bye.”
It didn’t take long after that for her to decide she was ready to turn in.
“Want me to walk you?” I asked as we stepped out onto the porch.
She shook her head. “No. I think I want a few minutes to be alone before facing the kids.” She kissed my cheek, thanked me for coming, and headed into the night.
Unexpectedly, I found Cole and Leo leaning against my golf cart, and it looked like they were passing a flask. I cleared my throat, and they spun, obviously surprised at being caught.
“Good night, Leo,” Cole said.
Leo looked at Cole, me, then back at Cole.
Oh, for goodness sake, I thought, recognizing Leo’s expression almost instantly. Women had been giving Cole that very same look all evening.
Shit.
Leo too?
“Go on,” Cole said.
The shorter boy looked stricken and turned to me, nodded, then ran off into the night.
“Did I interrupt something?” I asked.
Cole shrugged. “He’s got a crush on me.”
I felt my stomach clench. “Maybe I should’ve been the one to get lost,” I said, trying to be casual. Had I stopped some homosexual liaison?
Cole shook his head. “He’s not my type…. Too young.”
“How old is he?” Eighteen, maybe? Was Cole giving liquor to a minor?
“He’s twenty-one,” Cole answered.
“He is?” I was surprised. “He sure doesn’t look it.”
“Nope, and that’s the problem. He’s a nice guy. He’ll make some guy a great lover one day. But I can’t be attracted to someone who I’m not attracted to, you know?”
I guess I had assumed differently. Had I thought all a gay man needed from his partner for the evening was a penis? Maybe I had. Probably.
“I imagine you’d like someone a little closer to your age? Em and I were only a few months apart in—”
“I like older men,” Cole said and looked away.
Older men? How old? Older as in…. My stomach fluttered, and I refused to let my thoughts go where his words threatened to take me. I needed to change the subject. Fast.
“You were good in there,” I told him. After all, it was true.
He looked at me, those dark eyes all but lost in the shadows of the porch. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
We stood there for a minute, neither of us saying anything.
The conversation we had earlier—the very ugly one—began to play in my mind again. The guilt came back. I looked away.
I need to get to my cabin. I need to get out of here.
Now.
Cabin. Sleep. But, hell, I was going to be up for hours. I could feel the caffeine zinging through me like electricity. Maybe the hot tub? But that reminded me of Cole’s little pass.
Shit.
Cole looked away again, started to take a drink from his flask, then stopped. “Want some?”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” he replied and laughed.
I shrugged. “I guess not.” Hell, I thought, it might help me sleep. I reached for the flask, and when he handed it to me, our fingers touched for a second.
I almost jumped.
It was like one of those static zings that happens when you rub your stockinged feet on a carpet and then touch something metal. But that wasn’t what happened. There hadn’t been a static discharge. It had all been in my imagination. In my head.
But then when he looked at me the way he did, shadows or not, I wondered if that was true.
I paused for a moment before drinking, the fear of AIDS suddenly rising to the surface like noxious swamp gas. And then something I did know about the virus rose upward as well. Even if Cole did have AIDS, I couldn’t get it by drinking out of the flask.
I looked at Cole.
Beautiful Cole.
Beautiful?
I trembled. Geez. Yes. He was beautiful.
“I do not have AIDS, Mr. Baxter,” he had told me. “I haven’t been with a man in two years. And I’ve been tested. Regularly. Trust me.”
I wanted to trust him.
With an uncomfortable abruptness, I remembered the hateful words of the guys from the dock I worked during the summers between my high school years.
“Never pass a bottle with a queer. You might as well kiss the buttfucker. Think where his goddamned lips have been! Sucking cock for one thing. Eating some shit-covered ass! Fucking death-germs, man! It’s no wonder they all got AIDS.”
“I do not have AIDS, Mr. Baxter. I haven’t been with a man in two years.”
Dammit!
Was I being like those hateful, ugly people?
I looked into Cole’s eyes and suddenly realized I was. I was being just as bad as they were. Gay or not, Cole had shown me nothing but kindness.
“Do you trust me?” he’d asked when I rode Mystic. When he’d told me that Mystic trusted me.
Agree with what he’d decided to do with his life or not, he’d done nothing but been trustworthy.
Fuck!
I was so ignorant. I didn’t know anything. Why wasn’t I better educated? No, I hadn’t been in the “sex pool” in a very long time. But I had a daughter old enough to be having sex, after all. I should know about these things. And as uncomfortable as that idea made me, it was one I needed to deal with. And damn! How was that even possible? That she was eighteen? When did that happen? I somehow still felt her age.
And also like I was at least a hundred years old. Two hundred. More…. Had Crystal been through some of what I had been through? It was possible. She probably knew more about condoms than I did. Was she a virgin? I hated this. I hated the way my thoughts seemed to be swinging in a hundred directions.
I took a swig from the flask, knowing those lips had touched it before mine, and felt the burn. “Whiskey.” I handed it back.
“Good Kentucky whiskey,” he said, then took a drink. He held it out.
I took the flask and, once again, our fingers touched. He didn’t let go for a second, letting the contact linger. I didn’t pull away, and my heart began to race.
He was flirting again.
Dammit!
Why me?
He let go, and I took a long swallow this time. Too long. Shit. “I think I finished it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I got plenty back at my cabin,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Was that an invitation?
Damn, he was so good-looking! Hell! How could a man be so damned good-looking? He was a man! Why was I seeing it? Weren’t there plenty of nice-looking women around here? But when I tried to think, nothing but the old lady that had been ogling Cole came to mind. And Charlize Theron she wasn’t. Why couldn’t I think of one single attractive woman? Out of thirty-some people, there had to be one. Besides Amy, that was. Amy was family. Amy was my “sister.”
Again, we just stood there, and I felt the heat in my face as I went all flush.
Go to bed! my mind screamed at me. Get out of here!
But why couldn’t I move?
“My flask?” he asked.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling like an idiot. I handed it to him. “I need to be getting to bed. I’m worn out. It was a long drive, and all that food and the horse….”
I paused.
Remembered.
I looked at Cole again, but this time I could think of something besides how attractive he was. I remembered the amazing afternoon astride that incredible animal. How free I’d felt. How spellbinding. “Thank you for that.”
“For what?” Cole said.
“Mystic. It was magical.”
He smiled, and my stomach leapt again.
Get out of here!
“No problem,” he said. “There’ll be plenty more tomorrow. You rest up. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Morning” was all I could say back.
Then he turned—
“Cole?”
—and stopped.
“Yes, Mr. Baxter?”
I said it before I even knew I was going to. “I’m sorry. About what I said.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said and walked off.
I watched him go.
And finally I climbed into my little cart and drove back to my cabin.
I COULDN’T sleep. All I could think about was Cole. His eyes, his grin, the touch of his fingers when we passed the flask.
Shit.
A lifetime of control flying out the window in a single day. Not even a day.
I like older men.
My stomach was full of butterflies. Did he mean me?
I haven’t been with a man in two years.
Really? He hadn’t? Why? A man as nice-looking—hot! He’s hot!—as Cole could get any man—gay man—he wanted.
Were his reasons anything like mine?
No.
Of course not.
I looked at you and… I thought you were….
He thought I was what? Homosexual? Of course he did. All he had to do was look at me and I acted like a twelve-year-old girl.
I got up. Paced. This was crazy. I was never going to get to sleep. Damned coffee.
It wasn’t the coffee, though.
If only I had drunk more of his whiskey.
That made me think of fingertips again. And the fact his lips had been on the flask….
Shit! I was acting like a teenage girl! I was a man. A grown man!
I went to the cabinet over the sink to see if there was a glass for water.
There was a half bottle of whiskey. I took it out. Jim Beam Choice (green label)? Cole’s? Good Kentucky whiskey?
Mine tonight.
I screwed off the cap and took a long, hard drink, my throat working to swallow the wild, bitter taste. The whiskey exploded in my belly and intense heat spread through me.
One or two more of these and I’ll sleep like a baby.
I did.
More or less.