Wild in the Moment

Eleven

Teague pulled over to the side of the road, braked and rolled down the window. The blast of cold air wasn’t enough to wake him up, so he slapped his cheeks.

He had to get some sleep. He’d been burning the candle at both ends all week-and all for a good cause. He just had one more project to pull off before he could crash. It wouldn’t wait because tomorrow was Valentine’s Day.

As whipped as he was, his mood was still elated. This would get her, he thought. It was the Valentine’s present of all Valentine’s presents. All right. So it wasn’t exactly romantic in the classic sense, but romantic was what showed love, right?

It’s not like it was an appliance.

This was big. No one could call it ordinary. It was nothing like that lazy son of a gun would have given her-something she had to give back, something she really had no use for. Daisy already had zillions of jewels and crap like that. She was suspicious of that kind of thing. He’d had to find something that would really, really be a surprise for her-and it damn well wasn’t easy to surprise a woman who’d lived a lot higher than Teague ever dreamed of.

He put the truck in gear and plodded in, turning into the massive parking lot just before four. Barbara Vanhorn was waiting for him. She came on to anything in pants, wore her hair all moussed up, wore tight skirts to show off her legs. And she was a born saleswoman. Still she was okay to deal with.

“Teague, I was afraid you were a no-show.”

“Didn’t mean to be late. Just been running a few minutes behind all day. You got the paperwork on my baby?”

“Of course. Come on into the office.” She sashayed into her cubicle. Steel-blue chairs, steel-blue desk, nothing there but the usual forms. “I could have done better for you.”

“I know you could have.”

“It’s just…not the right toy for you, you know? You need something sexier. Classier. You could have blown me over with a feather when you said you want this.”

Teague suspected that sexy and classy started and ended her vocab on adjectives. At least when talking about her favorite subject. “This is what I want,” he said.

“And you’ve got it, hon. You just call me anytime.”

“Good.” It took a few minutes to fill out the fifty thousand forms. “I need this delivered first thing in the morning-like by eight. To the Marble Bridge Café. To Daisy Campbell. And under no circumstances are you to tell her who it’s from.”

“We settled all this yesterday. Stop worrying,” Barb said.

“I mean it. I’m holding you to your promise. I want to tell her myself, but I just want to do it my own way.”

“Hey, where’s your trust? You know me. I think this whole surprise is just darling,” she assured him.

When he stood up, he had the sixth sense she was going to wrap her arms around him and claim a big hug-for old-time’s sake, and for the sake of the sale, and for the sake of it being a nice day. And any other old sake Barb could think up.

She was nice enough, but right then he didn’t seem to want any boobs pushing against his chest but one woman’s.

In fact, right then he didn’t want to be kissed, hugged or flirted with by anyone except Daisy.

But, man, he was risking everything he had-everything he was-and he knew it. Valentine’s Day didn’t have to be the crunch, but a crunch was imminent. Once Daisy had enough money to take off, that was still her plan-unless a better plan surfaced damn fast.

He was hoping she’d think he was a better plan.

When he climbed back in the truck, he damn near forgot to shut the door-he was that exhausted. He got home. He knew he got home, because he heard the phone ringing. And ringing. And ringing. He seemed to have made it to the bed, seemed to still have his boots on, didn’t care about the boots or the phone.

He suspected it was Daisy. She’d left messages before. Increasingly annoyed messages.

He just couldn’t get it all done-his work, the surprises. Not and pull it all together before Valentine’s Day. Besides which, he was a coward. Unless he could prove to Daisy that life in White Hills-life with him-wasn’t going to be ordinary or dull, a life where she could get back that pride in herself she’d lost with the French Creep…he knew he was going to lose her. He couldn’t accept that. And for damn sure he couldn’t face it until he had to.

So he let the phone ring. In fact, by that time, he didn’t even open an eye. In his mind he heard her talking to him. These last few days he’d fiercely missed working with her. Missed sleeping with her. Missed talking with her. Missed her hoity-toity clothes and the way she arched her right eyebrow when she was teasing him. He missed the way she walked. He missed the shape of her mouth.

Even from the depth of sleep, Teague seemed to be replaying the obvious-not the obvious dream but the totally obvious truth.

He couldn’t imagine living without her.

Daisy answered her cell phone only because someone rang three times already-which meant that someone obviously couldn’t take a hint. She was busy. “What?” she spit into the receiver.

“Daisy! You’ve got to come down to the restaurant right now!”

“Come on, Harry. This is the first day I asked to have off. Jason’s back. You don’t need m-”

“It’s not that. I don’t need you to work. I just need you to come down. Now. Fast.”

She had her hands absolutely full with Teague’s present, but to appease Harry-who after all, had been good to her-she shoved on shoes and sprinted downstairs.

She saw the crowd gathered at the front door, not a crowd in line for the restaurant but a crowd facing the stairs to the apartment, so her immediate thought was uh-oh. When she reached the bottom of the steps, she counted heads. Not every single body in White Hills was sardined into the restaurant lobby, but it had to be close. Faces stared at her, wearing expectant expressions. Nosy expressions. Strangely worried expressions.

Daisy didn’t need any internal conscience warning her uh-oh this time. She spun around to escape back upstairs-fast-and she would have made it, if Harry hadn’t lumbered through the crowd and grabbed her hand. She assumed the point of all this lunacy was for her to see something in the restaurant, but instead of tugging her inside, Harry tugged her outside.

She was wearing navy wool slacks and a Valentinered sweater, respectable inside clothes, but naturally no coat or jacket. The wind blistered her ears before she’d taken the first step. A woman was waiting at the curb, wearing a skirt short enough to risk her rear end getting frostbite, a showy smile on her face. To her right were two townspeople holding cameras. The local newspaper-a weekly-had a snot-nosed kid holding a businesslike camera on her left. Obviously everyone was counting on her to react in some spectacle-like way, but for an instant Daisy couldn’t pin down what on earth she was supposed to react to.

Then she got it. Or kind of. Behind the lady with the showy smile was…well, she had to squint to identify what it was. A vehicle, for sure. But not exactly a car or a truck or an SUV.

And then she remembered. It was one of those things the guys took to war. A Hummer. A used Hummer-truth to tell, it looked like a reinforced used Hummer-painted daisy yellow with a big red Valentine’s Day bow tied prettily on the steering wheel.

Daisy closed her eyes tightly for a good long millisecond, thinking no, this couldn’t be happening. She thought she’d loved him. She actually thought she’d loved him. But this…

This was the end of the line for Teague.

Teague knew he was dreaming. On the other side of his closed eyelids, there seemed to be bright light-which couldn’t be, since he’d stumbled into bed just a few minutes ago in the pitch-black. But he figured the bright light was symbolic. Dreams were goofy like that. And the only time he dreamed at all was when he was so wasted tired that he couldn’t make sense of anything, anyway.

Still, this dream was different. Powerful. Gripping. Whether it was symbolic or wishful thinking or plain old need, Daisy was there. He heard her whispering, “Teague? Teague!” in that exotic, sexy voice of hers. And her perfume wafted around him, the scent that always shot testosterone straight to his brain.

He wasn’t completely surprised that Daisy was there, of course. He knew the Hummer’d do it.

The heart-he’d definitely wanted to give her the heart, but bottom line, giving your best girl chocolate on Valentine’s Day wasn’t exactly a headline-news idea. He needed the opposite of ordinary. He thought the birthday banners on Main Street was a better idea-partly because he couldn’t believe her Jean-Luc would have done such a thing. Also the rest of the town would get off on it, he knew, so that Daisy’d be exposed again to how honestly nice people were in White Hills. It was nice to live in a place where people knew you, paid attention, watched out for you. It wasn’t skinny-dipping in the Riviera, no. But they could do that kind of junk on vacations if she wanted. Daisy knew what it was like to live with strangers and no one she could count on. He couldn’t believe that would be her first choice ever again.

He’d heard feedback that the banner thing had gone over big-which was good-but Teague had known upfront that wasn’t enough. He’d needed to come up with something to really give her a jolt. Dais had to be close to saving enough for a car down payment by now-had to be close to leaving. So the Hummer…well, it was a long way from the cool sports cars she’d likely driven in France, but the thing was, he’d driven with her. She needed to be surrounded by steel. She didn’t need cute; she needed a vehicle that could get itself out of ditches, that could go uphill when nothing else could go uphill. He fully realized that Daisy wasn’t worried about issues like that. It was his problem, that she drove like a bat out of hell.

Her issue, though, was that she wasn’t an exotic flower. He knew she wanted to be-that she’d always wanted to be. But the truth was, his Daisy was no-nonsense to the bone. She loved working. Real work. She loved making something out of nothing, loved feeling challenged, loved getting her hands all messy in stains and varnishes, loved cooking herself rather than being waited on.

Teague couldn’t imagine telling her that her self-image was goofy, that her dreams didn’t fit her at all. But he thought, really thought, that the Hummer was perfect for her. She could go anywhere in blizzards or storms. Carry tools or wedding cakes. Daisy, being a doer in every way, didn’t need a sports car that required constant attention, but a vehicle that enabled her to take off on any wild ambition she had.

Besides which, a Hummer so wasn’t ordinary.

He smiled in the dream. Hell, it was hard not feeling high as the sky. When he’d gone to bed, his whole world looked precarious, the fear of loss hanging over his heart like a lead pendulum…but now everything was coming right.

Daisy’d quit talking. The warm body snuggled next to him made him smile all over again. He could feel her slow, soft tongue. Licking his cheek. Then his nose. Then his mouth.

She was hot for him. Really hot. It seemed like all his life he’d been dreaming about her warm, lithe body, about her warm, wet, lithe tongue. Almost like this. Not exactly like this, but almost.

Suddenly the “almost” part of the dream struck him as a tad disturbing. Because a cold, wet nose suddenly nuzzled his cheek.

And Daisy sure as hell didn’t have a cold, wet nose.

His eyelids shot wide-open. The daylight pouring in the windows almost blinded him. From somewhere he could smell fresh coffee. And the affectionate female body lying in bed with him wasn’t Daisy, but a dog. A young, scruffy mutt with black-and-white fur and brown eyes and no heritage to brag about-or several heritages to brag about, depending on one’s point of view. The instant she discovered he was awake, her long, feathery tail started thumping at several thousand miles an hour. Someone had put a bushel basket next to his bed, filled to overflowing. Teague saw a powder-blue collar, a powder-blue leash, balls, pull toys, carpet cleaning products, kibble, and…he squinted…a powder-blue bowl with HUSSY II engraved on it.

“What the hell?” Teague muttered groggily, which made the puppy respond with ecstatic enthusiasm, leaping on him to lavish his entire face with kisses. “Aren’t you a darling? But whoa, baby, take it easy, take it easy…”

Only one person in the universe would have given him a pup named Hussy, and he promptly forgot the dog-because his real-life hussy was suddenly standing in the doorway.

Some guys fantasized about a woman in corsets and black lace. His fantasy woman was dressed in overalls, no shoes, thick floppy socks, and her thick, elegant hair looked determined to escape a ponytail. He couldn’t speak for a second, because she was so darn beautiful she stole his breath. When it came down to it, she was so beautiful she was probably always going to steal his breath. Today, though, it was more than those gorgeous bones and lush mouth and exotic, sexy eyes. It was the vulnerability in her expression, the anxiety she couldn’t quite hide-although God knew, she tried.

“You’re in trouble up to your eyebrows, Larson,” she said sternly.

“I’m in trouble? I’m in trouble?! What is this dog?!”

“Your birthday present.”

“It’s not my birthday until October.”

She cocked a foot forward. “This is relevant to what? You put up those giant Happy Birthday banners for me all over Main Street, and my birthday isn’t until August.”

“What day?”

“The thirty-first.” Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t distract me. You’re going to take that car back.”

“The hell I am,” he said amiably. “Just for the record, is the dog house-trained?”

“They said she was, at the rescue place, but…” When Daisy opened the balcony door, the pup leaped down from the bed and galloped outside, only falling over its feet once. “My take is that she’s well people-trained. If you let her outside every ten minutes, she doesn’t go in the house.” With the pup safely in the fenced yard, Daisy turned back to him and started up her rant again. “Nobody gives me a car, Teague. I don’t want to owe anyone, ever again. You know I’m not rolling in money, but I’ve saved almost every dime since coming home. I can do without until I’ve got it together. I don’t need charity.”

“Well, of course you don’t. But I figured you knew I was nothing like Jean-Luc. You would never worry that I was trying to buy your affection or trying to con you. Right?”

“Well, of course that’s right, but-”

God, it felt good, hearing her say it. So he forged on, “So I knew you’d understand this was completely different. I’d never do anything to undermine that fierce pride of yours. I just honestly thought you’d need your own car if we were married.”

That vulnerable expression intensified times ten. She sucked in a breath, and then, as if she still couldn’t get enough oxygen, sank on the far edge of the bed.

“You don’t want to get married, remember? You can’t seem to work with other people, you said. You’d given up on relationships, you said. It’s not that you wanted to be alone, but you figured you were too ornery for anyone to survive living with you, you-”

“Yeah, I know what I said.” He crooked his finger, urging her to come closer. “But didn’t you notice the strangest thing happening? That we were working together? Really well?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say really well. I bossed you around that one day in front of your customer-”

“You did. And I was astounded how much I liked that.” He crooked his finger at her again, since she still hadn’t budged from the foot of the bed. “Who would have guessed it could be so much fun to work with someone else? Since I’m as mean as I always was, I realized the difference had to be you. You were the one who made it fun. And I figured if you could work with someone as pigheaded as me, marriage would be a piece of cake. You’d like it. We could have sex a couple of times every day. And we could eat together and work together and fight together. I could teach you to run a planer and a band saw. You could take me to a nude beach on the Riviera once a year. We could have kids. Have all our families together at Christmas. We could add and subtract from that general list, but doesn’t it sound like a good basic plan?”

His Daisy didn’t cry. Ever. But suddenly her eyes welled up and were glittering like crystals, making him pretty sure-not positive, but pretty sure-she thought it was a good basic plan. He started breathing again. His heart was still scared, but not as gut-scared, soul-scared, aching-scared as it had been the night before.

“But what about all those things you said, Teague-”

“We already talked about those. So how about if we talk about all the things you said?” Since she seemed to be frozen in place, he sat up, reached over and tugged her over the comforter to his side. And when she was there, on his down pillow, all tangled up in sheets and comforter, he pinned her down, first by kissing her left temple, then her left ear, then her left cheek…very, very tenderly. “You said White Hills made you feel stifled.”

“That used to be true,” she affirmed.

“So, just for the record, if it’s still true, I don’t give a damn if we live in Timbuktu.”

“I think right here in White Hills might just be perfect,” she said, and then closed her eyes, when he finished kissing the whole right side of her face and then honed in on her mouth. He had to linger over that kiss, because it wasn’t funny, how afraid he’d been that he might never hold her again, that she would leave him, that it was an impossible dream that she could ever love him.

“You’re not bored here?”

“I haven’t had a second to be bored.” Her fingertips traced his jawline, and although he knew he was out of his mind with hope, he could swear he saw both lust and wonder in her eyes. “You know what? I used to think that the place you lived mattered. But the place isn’t the source of excitement. You are, Larson.”

“Me? I’m as ordinary as they come. And that’s an honest problem, I realize. You’re exotic and rare and an orchid in every way. When I’m doomed to be nobody fancy.”

“Teague?”

“What?”

“I have a secret to tell you.” She motioned him just a little closer, which was a trick. When he obediently moved to accommodate her, she twisted until she was on top, and then exercised some kissing techniques of her own. She probably thought she had him pinned, which was certainly an illusion he wanted her to have, because he loved Daisy at her most dangerous. She kissed him and kept kissing him. Ardently. Winsomely. Sweetly. “You love me,” she told him.

“You think that’s a secret? Hell, I’ve known that for ages.” He started unhooking the overalls. “I adore you, Dais. I love your fancy side and your practical side. Your elegance and your common sense. Your spirit. Your pride. Your heart-and I promise, I’ll spend a lifetime protecting that wonderful, giving, precious heart of yours.”

“Can I tell you another secret?”

“We have to keep talking?”

“Just for a little longer,” she promised him. “I just wanted to tell you…I love you. I never thought I’d find a man I could be honest with. A man I could trust. A man who didn’t want a woman to walk in his shadow. I always thought I had to hide who I really was.”

He cut her off, not because he didn’t want to talk to her for the next hundred years. But because she’d hit him where it counted.

She knew him. Really knew him. Knew about his dog, knew about his faults and weaknesses, knew things about him no one else did-and still loved him. It was what he wanted to give her for a lifetime, that total trust that she could be herself with him, that she was safe, that they’d protect each other through life’s challenges.

Right then, though, he’d just as soon she didn’t think he was totally safe. She could cope with a little danger. She liked a little risk. And as soon as he got the rest of her clothes off, he felt inspired to give her all the danger and risk she could handle-along with that other wild four-letter word. Love.