Acting Happy (Texas Desires #2) (5 page)

“Dad wants you to remember to take your medicine,” he heard her say to the woman behind the register as she took a spot behind the empty one to the right. Her voice caressed his skin leaving goose bumps in its wake.

“Already did, honey. He’s such a worrier.”

He continued to watch as she shoved a piece of hair off her face. The strand fell back and irritation crossed her lovely features as she absently used both hands, feeling around her head until she found a hairpin to stuff the piece behind. From this angle, he suspected when released from the tie that her hair hit about the middle of her back and was thick and full. The blonde looked real, not dyed.

“I can get you,” she said to the next person in line. Her voice was soft, deep, and incredibly alluring. Since he’d stood there staring, he watched every move she made as she smiled openly at the couple now in front of her.

“Did you get everything?” Connor asked from out of nowhere. Ty looked over at him then back at the woman behind the register.

“I need beans,” he said absently, proud of his coherent thought with his focus elsewhere.

“Get these. I’ll make us a pot of beans. What’re you staring at?”

The question drew Ty’s attention back to Connor who had positioned the biggest can Ty had ever seen under his arm while he carried a large bag of charcoal over his shoulder. He stayed silent as Connor looked over the shelf in the direction he’d just been staring. “Ahh… Yeah. Dude, just go talk to her. You’re you. Once she figures that out, you’re in.”

“She looks young,” he said quietly.

Connor nudged him in the arm as Cole came to stand beside them, his arms full of wrapped meat, and they were all three staring at her now.

“There’s the angel of Tennessee. You better get in there before I do. Snooze you lose. You know the ladies love me,” Cole teased in louder than the whisper he and Connor had been using.

“Shh…” Ty said, looking around. They were drawing attention now. He hit Connor in the arm to get him to stop staring and started to move around the aisle, his head lifting every so often to watch her movements. As he got closer, his original guess that she might be too young faded.

“I can take you over here,” the older woman said.

“We can wait for this line,” Cole added cheekily from beside Ty.

“Dude, get over there.” Connor knocked Cole in the shoulder with enough force to move him into her line.

“Kenzie, I see you have some interested suitors,” she said playfully.

“Hmm,” Kenzie replied, drawing the word out, but she never looked up from her task at the register.

“Kenzie. I like that name. You know her?” Cole asked the older woman behind the register as he dumped the steaks on the counter.

“I do know her pretty well. She’s my daughter. Just moved back home from the city,” she stated proudly as she organized the white-wrapped pieces of meat with the prices facing up.

“Is that right? We came up here last year, and I would have remembered her if I had seen her before,” Cole answered. Ty found himself staying in the background like he normally did, trying not to draw unwanted attention.

“Where are you guys from?”

“Well, I’m from Texas, ma’am,” Cole said, bending over, propping himself along the countertop. All his attention was on Kenzie who had to be purposefully ignoring them because she never looked their way. Only out of frustration with his own inaction did Ty force himself to move, push his way to the counter, shoving his heavy basket on top for the cashier to checkout.

“Where are the rest of you guys from?”

“We’re all originally from Texas, ma’am. Scattered out across the country, much like Cole here is across your counter,” Ty said, letting that natural Texas drawl settle back into his voice. He stepped on Cole’s foot and elbowed him in the side as he reached across to take the groceries out of the basket. “Sorry, dude. My bad.”

“That’s okay. I’ll just scoot closer to Kenzie,” Cole said, and that had everyone in the place laughing, even causing Kenzie to fight a grin, but she stayed focused on her task and still hadn’t made eye contact.

“What’s a pretty thing like you doin’ in a place like this?” Cole asked, now standing in the small space between the two cash registers.

“You need better lines,” she said and finally cut a cool gaze toward Cole.

“She makes those outdoor chairs over there by hand,” her mother said, and Ty looked over to see a rustic-looking rocking chair by the front door as he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “Let’s see. That comes to three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

“What?” he asked, the sum drawing all his attention to the older woman behind the cash register.

“The meat’s expensive and with all that beer,” she explained. His gaze connected to hers and it happened…that moment of recognition crossed her face. “You’re that guy…”

He lifted a finger toward his lips before he began thumbing through his wallet for his American Express. Luckily she did stop speaking, closed her mouth up tight, and didn’t say another word as she finished the charge, but her eyes kept moving from her cash register over to him.

As potentially devastating as being outed might be, Ty couldn’t help looking over to see Cole had finally engaged Kenzie in conversation as Ty stood there paying this enormous charge. Cole had toned it down a notch, quietly giving his best attempt to flirt, and he was dangerously good at it. When a faint blush crossed her cheeks and a small smile hit her lips, Ty knew he had to do something other than pray this woman behind the counter didn’t out him.

“We’re gonna be in town for a few days. Could use some sightseein’ with the pretty store clerk,” Cole said.

Thinking fast, Ty spoke out loud, damn the consequence of drawing every eye to him. Fuck it. Maybe he wanted the recognition after all. That might impress her enough to give him a second look.

“How much for the chair?” Ty asked.

“Oh, honey, he asked about the chair! Did you say fifty dollars?”

“Not even that much. He could have it for twenty dollars,” she said, finally looking in his direction. He saw no recognition in her stare, but the most vibrant bright blue eyes held him transfixed. Oh man, he liked her.

“Charge me a hundred dollars for the chair. If you have a set, I’ll buy them both. It’ll look good on my porch,” he said, holding her gaze for a few seconds more before turning away. Although he hadn’t played the dating game in many years, he knew there were rules, and he couldn’t act overly interested—that was Cole’s deal. Besides, he didn’t know how he knew, but she wasn’t going to be taken in by Cole’s charm. She would need a little gentle prodding.

“Oh, honey, you sold two. Congratulations. It’s been such a hard few years for her,” the woman said, running the card again.

“Mom.”

Ty looked over to see her face had changed: a sternness there.

“I’m sorry, honey. I’m just happy. I bet you’re the new resident we just got the house ready for. I never suspected. Is your place that nice log house on the ridge? We always wondered who’d bought that thing. You own that by yourself?” she asked, and Ty chuckled a little to himself. The matchmaking didn’t go unnoticed.

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” he said, smiling down into his billfold as he added the card back in its space.

“Kenzie, do you hear that? Honey, he owns that house. I thought your chairs would look real good on that porch too, remember?” she asked, placing the charge slip in front of him for a signature.

“I hear that, Momma. Thank you, sir, for buying the chairs.” Ty looked up at Kenzie before signing his assumed name. The strain was still in her eyes but a big, pretty smile lit her face making it all more than worth it.

“She donates all her money to help battered women,” her mom said proudly, and slowly the pieces began to come together. That explained a whole lot. Usually people who donated like that had a history. Ty kept an eye on her, much like Cole, but he wondered if his buddy noticed the slice of pain that crossed her face at the mention of abuse. Probably not. Cole’s thoughts aligned too closely with his dick, and he wouldn’t easily recognize all the signs of not-interested she was putting out there to them.

“Good cause. We’ll be by tomorrow in the truck to pick them up,” he said, picking up all the bags. “Connor, grab your boy.”

Since Ty planned to be there many weeks, and Cole would be leaving in a couple of days, he’d bide his time. If he could manage to even get her to the house, he didn’t want Cole monopolizing her. Ty shoved the bags he had in his hands toward Cole, dumping them in his arms as Connor pushed him from behind. “She not interested.”

“Dude, I’m making progress,” Cole said, looking offended, but moving with them toward the door. Again the laughter around them proved they were still the main attraction in the store.

“Right, sure you are. Now get in the truck,” Ty said. At the door, he took a chance and glanced back over his shoulder. Kenzie made eye contact, but there was a sadness in her eyes, and something unexpected tugged at his heart. He’d done the right thing by giving her a break. She clearly had more on her mind than just them. He’d have to take his time to figure her out.

With the last swipe of the industrial-size mop, Kenzie dropped the mop-head inside the rolling water bucket and pushed it toward the back room. Tonight was different than the others before where nothing but sheer boredom filled her thoughts. Instead, the entire time she cleaned, her mind stayed fixated on the three men who’d stopped in earlier that day.

She wasn’t sure what made them different than the hundreds of men who came through those doors every year. To hike this terrain, none could be slouches. Most of the men were rugged and flirty. Just being away from home always lightened guys up, but today there was something different. Something unsettling. Something that stuck with her for the rest of the day and apparently into the evening too.

“Let me get that for you,” William said, reaching for the bucket. She should have stopped him, emptied the dirty water on her own, but she always made a mess.

“Thank you. Is it because you’re being nice or you’re waiting for me to finish so you can leave?” she teased loud enough for him to hear. The old man who was at least eighty ducked his head, laughing a little as they moved toward the workroom.

“You don’t want me to really answer that, do you?” he said, hoisting the bucket and neatly dumping the dirty water down the drain. She took the mop and cleaned it under the running water before wringing out as much as she could then storing it away.

“Selling them chairs was good for you today,” he said, his voice always a couple of decibels louder than necessary.

“It’ll be a good donation.” She waited as he slowly made his way out. She flipped off the light before they both went for the back door. The front doors had been locked up tight a long time ago.

“You’re a good girl,” William said, opening the back door for her. He lived on the other side of the property in a small house right on the edge. He’d been there for at least the last fifteen years. When her home schooling activities started to take her out of the home, he’d been hired to watch the place in their absence and inevitably became a trusted part of their lives.

“Thank you, William. I’m not so sure of that,” she said in a rare moment of honesty.

“Those charges will be dropped and you learned lessons you needed to learn. You can’t just trust people to do the right thing,” he said like he had half a dozen times since she’d been home.

“I hope so,” she confided, and like the anthem running through her mind over the last few weeks, surely the justice system wouldn’t have let her leave Austin if there were a chance those charges would stick, but she hadn’t got the final confirmation from her attorney, and until then, she was too scared to think too far into the future. And it was most definitely way too early to even consider the best way to rebuild her life.

From the corner of her eye, she caught movement. Kenzie turned her head to see her father climbing over the tailgate of his old truck, hoisting one of her chairs inside. Her mother trailed behind, holding another one, struggling under its weight.

“Hey! What’re y’all doin’?” she called, taking several steps in their direction before turning back to William. She waved and yelled a fast goodnight before taking off, jogging to her parents. “Mom, hang on. Let me help you!”

She got to the truck as the chair started to slip from her mom’s hold. She grabbed the side, trying hard to raise it high enough, but the dang thing was heavy—made of solid wood, not easy to manage. “What’re you guys doing? Shouldn’t you be in there watching TV?”

“We thought we’d take these over for Mr. Bateman tonight,” her mom said happily, like that explained anything. She could only assume Mr. Bateman was the man who’d bought both chairs this morning.

“He said he’d come get ’em in the morning,” she answered as her mom went around to the side of the truck. She was torn between following after her and going to the back of the truck to help make sure her father got out all right.

“I know, honey, but he paid a lot of money. We can deliver them,” her mom called out, dusting her hands on her shirt. Luckily, she’d stayed behind because her father missed the bumper. He could barely see on a good day; he should have never climbed in the truck to begin with.

“You should go grab a jacket. It’s getting colder.”

“You want me to go?” she asked, keeping her hands up until her father was back on safe ground.

Those irritating primitive defense mechanisms spiked at the mere suggestion she put herself in front of those men again. She had no desire to see any of them, especially the one who paid so much money for those chairs. An intense anxiety hit hard. She’d already prepared her excuse for missing work in the morning in order to stay far away when they came to retrieve their merchandise, and now her parents wanted her to deliver them personally.

“Well, I think you should. Ma says they were taken with you and paid a lot of money. You should thank ’em again,” her father said, moving to the side of the truck, throwing a rope across the back to tie the chairs down. Her mother grabbed the rope on her side and they worked together to secure the chairs while Kenzie just stared at the both of them. What the heck was going on? They were supposed to be inside that house, watching Wheel of Fortune, eating whatever artery-clogging food was designated for Friday night’s dinner.

“Get your jacket, Kenzie. We’re almost ready to go. I don’t like being out much past dark,” her father encouraged again. Out of excuses, she did what they asked, walked inside the house still completely confused. She grabbed her jacket, made a pit stop by the bathroom, and stopped short at what she saw in the mirror. She looked a mess. She’d worked twelve hours today. Her hair was tousled, her face had a smudge, and the little bit of makeup she wore was now underneath her eyes.

Quickly, she pulled the hair tie from her hair and turned on the flat iron, surprised when she didn’t smell dust burning after how long it had been since she’d used the thing. She raked a brush through the long stands and prayed there might be a wife or two at the house with the guys tonight. Wasn’t that how those things normally played out? Innocent flirting until the wife was around? Yet something unknown drove her to clean herself up because she certainly didn’t want their advances.

She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and used the straightener over those pieces of hair that bent where the tie had held. The curls she added were just because the flat iron was on.

“Babe, we need to get goin’!” her mom hollered from the back door.

“I’m coming,” she called out and quickly added eyeliner, mascara, and lip gloss. She couldn’t have been inside for any longer than ten minutes, but by the time she reached the back door, night was already settling in. She quickly zipped up her hoodie and went out to the truck. “Why don’t I drive?”

“You can on the way home,” he father said. Her parents were already loaded inside the single cab pickup, her mom sitting close to her dad, and she stalled. How long had it been since he’d driven at night?

“What if they aren’t there?” she asked at the driver’s side window.

“Then we’ll leave ’em on the porch.”

“What if it’s the wrong house?” she asked, telling herself it was more her father trying to drive than the nerves of going over there.

“Then we’ll leave our number. Get in, honey.” Her father rolled up the window on her, and she reluctantly went around the hood of the truck, piling in next to her mom.

“I’m glad you wore your hair down. You look so pretty this way,” her mom said, smiling brightly.

“Thanks, Mom. I can’t believe you’re missing TV tonight.”

Her father hit the ditch at the end of the driveway, bouncing them all over the front seat. With both hands on the dashboard, she tried again, “You sure you don’t want to me drive?”

“Brace yourself,” he teased. Her mom laughed too. It wasn’t so funny to her, and she would have sworn she lost years off her life on that little ten-minute trek down the road.

~~~

Cole pulled a few cold Bud Lights from the refrigerator and began tossing them around the kitchen as all five friends stood around the large center island, watching Connor expertly season the steaks. Ty grabbed his can from the air and weighed the option of opening the beer after it had been shaken while airborne. Living on the edge, he decided to risk it. He popped the top, thankful it didn’t spew, and took a long drink.

Bud Lite reminded him of home, good times, and these guys.

“Is Old Man Harper still kickin’?” Ty asked, anchoring a hip on the counter as he remembered the old man who’d stand up in the bleachers, barking orders at them while they played football for the high school team. Since Cole was the only one who’d stayed in the area, these were the general update questions that got asked every single year.

“Before you answer that, Willis… It’s been thirteen years since we all played together and back then, I thought he had to be at least ninety years old. No way he’s still around,” Reed Prescott said.

“And he still looks exactly that old,” Cole commented, popping the top on his can as he took a seat at the kitchen table. “Mom says he’s barely in his eighties. I couldn’t believe it, made her prove it to me. He’s in a wheelchair now. Always sittin’ on his porch when I go to town. He lives in that old, run-down house right on the edge of town. You know which one I’m talking about? The one that looks like it should be fallin’ in on him. He sits out there every night, yellin’ at the cars or whoever walks by. He’s an ornery old coot.”

“I saw him when I came home for y’alls family reunion. I stopped by and talked to him for a couple of hours before headin’ out to the Willises’. He remembered us all by name,” Connor said, still taking special care with the meat. The marinade was his award-winning secret blend—at least award-winning in the special-teams annual cook-off—and they’d all been schooled on the importance of the steaks being at room temperature before hitting the hot grill.

“He went to State with us. Even when we made it all the way, he still kept yelling we were gettin’ the plays wrong. I’ll never forget hearing his booming voice all the way down on the field,” Braden said.

“I know, right! His voice is still just like that. In my truck, I swear I can hear that man yelling at me when I drive by. Did you hear that Carolyn finally got married?” Cole added, more to Braden than anyone else. They’d been high school sweethearts up until the very day he’d come out gay.

“Yeah, Mom told me. I figured she would’ve done that a long time ago. She was always talking about marriage,” Braden said, not taking his eyes off the meat. Connor began to shake the dry rub like maracas with the spices going everywhere. “Dude, more’s on the counter than the meat.”

“He’s making a fuckin’ mess is what he’s doin’,” Cole added.

“I gotta get it all over the meat,” Connor said, never slowing the shake of his hand.

“Okay, so what about this baby, Prescott? You really gonna be a father?” Ty asked. He’d not been present for that particular bombshell of an announcement.

“Yep,” Reed said, lifting his beer can for a drink, probably to hide the smile shoving at the corners of his lips.

“What about marriage?” Cole blurted out.

“She wants to wait.” Reed’s smile turned to a scowl.

“Really? She wants to wait? That’s remarkable. I never saw that coming,” Connor said and paused in the application of the dry rub as every eye in the room focused on Reed. He was considered a prize catch in just about every circle known to man and his woman wanted to wait for him to put a ring on it?

“Me either.” Reed gave a cold little chuckle. “She blindsided me with that. Won’t even consider marriage right now.”

“When’s she due?” Connor asked, slowly moving the shaker again.

“February fifth’s the official date.”

“Where’s she at now?” Ty asked.

“With her roommate.” When he didn’t say old roommate, Ty’s brow furrowed. They weren’t living together? He wasn’t sure how far to probe that piece of information. Everyone seemed to love Lara, and Reed wasn’t someone to be put off by anything in life. All this didn’t really make a lot of sense.

“He’s gay, right? I think I saw his picture. He’s the officer?” Braden asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back against a counter.

“Yeah, and you stay away from him,” Reed shot straight out to Bray.

“What?” he asked innocently while holding up his hands in a placating gesture.

“No, really, I don’t need the chaos that hookup would bring to my life. No matter what he says, Kade’s not in it just to hit it. He’s got real issues. Stay away from him.” Reed pointed a finger straight at Bray, using his most stern voice guaranteed to send senior executives running in fear.

Honestly, outside of all the questions forming, that whole exchange was kind of funny, especially as serious as Reed was about the idea of Bray hooking up with anyone. Braden was the biggest player out of all of them, and when he looked so offended, Ty busted out with laughter until the doorbell rang. His brow immediately furrowed. Everyone that was coming was already there and no one else but his assistant knew the address of this home. Ty bent his head to look out the uncovered window along the front door at the same moment Cole darted up from his chair.

“She came!”

Ty instinctively reached out for Cole, grabbing him by the back of the T-shirt as he stared at the unexpected profile of his angel from the grocery store. She hadn’t been too far from his thoughts since he’d left the store that morning. The impact of their brief meeting was substantial, and just like in the store, when he saw her, he got immediately territorial. With a brute strength he didn’t quite know he possessed, he gripped the shirt tighter and jerked Cole backward several steps. That apparently became game-on as Cole laughed out loud right in his face. Ty anchored his body in front of Cole, getting all in his personal space.