Diamonds and Dust (Lonesome Point, Texas) (2 page)

Mercifully, it seemed he felt the same way.

“Shit, Tulsi,” he said, breath coming fast against her lips. “Where did you learn to kiss like that?”

“Hours of imagining what it would be like when you finally kissed me,” she confessed, tightening her arms around his neck. “I’ve been crazy about you since I was a kid, you big dummy.”

Pike laughed, his hazel eyes sparkling as he gazed into her face, studying her like an unexpected gift discovered beneath the Christmas tree. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

She rolled her eyes but couldn’t keep a smile from her face. “I did! I said it a thousand times, in a thousand different ways. You just weren’t listening.”

“Well, I’m listening now.” He hugged her closer, sending a thrill of awareness racing across her skin. “Can I take you out tonight? We have training early tomorrow, so I can’t stay out too late, but we could get dinner and talk, or…whatever.”

Tulsi sighed dreamily. “I would love to get dinner and talk. And definitely whatever. I want lots and lots of whatever. As much of it as I can get.”

Pike shook his head, that wonder-filled glow still lighting his face. “I really am an idiot.”

“Yes.” She laughed. “But I still like you.”

“I like you, too,” he said. “I more than like you. I just thought…”

“What?” she asked, heart still floating even when he set her back on her feet.

“I thought there was something wrong with me, thinking about you the way I did,” he confessed, his gaze shifting to the ground. “You’re Mia’s friend, and I’ve known you since you were this tiny little thing. I felt like I should be protecting you, not noticing how good you looked in your swimsuit.”

“God, Pike,” she said, her head spinning. “You don’t know how much I wanted you to notice me. Seriously, I’ve been crushing on you since I was practically a fetus.”

“That’s a long time.”

“You’re telling me,” she said, loving the way his eyes sparkled when he laughed.

“I wish I’d gotten the hint sooner,” he said, smile fading. “I’ve wasted so much time, fighting the way I feel, when I could have been kissing you, instead.”

“It’s okay.” Tulsi fought the urge to weep with relief, not wanting to ruin this perfect moment with a runny nose and red eyes. “We’ll just have to kiss more often to make up for it.”

He nodded as he drew her into his arms. “As often as you’ll let me.”

He leaned down, sealing the promise—and Tulsi’s fate—with a kiss.

While Tulsi was busy kissing him back, her heart was busy falling into Pike’s hands, where it vowed to stay until the day it stopped beating. Her most impossible dream had become a reality, proving there was no wish too big or outrageous to come true. It was like discovering the unicorns she’d loved as a kid were real. Realizing Pike Sherman cared about her as more than a friend was
that
miraculous, that magical, and from that moment on, she was helpless to do anything but fall deeply and profoundly in love with him.

They spent the entire week together, grabbing lunch at the drive-through down the street, taking picnics out to the nearby lake for dinner, and spending hours lying on the quilt they’d spread on the hay in her aunt’s back pasture, talking, laughing, and kissing until their lips were numb. By Friday night, Tulsi was ready for more than kisses, but Pike insisted they wait. He didn’t want Tulsi to have any regrets about going too far, too fast. He wanted their first time together—her first time with anyone—to be perfect.

They parted on Sunday afternoon with promises to see each other as much as they could before Pike joined the minor league season already in progress when he graduated in June. Tulsi cried all the way back to Lonesome Point, not knowing how she was going to make it through the three weeks until his next planned visit. Now that she knew what it was like to be with Pike, living without him felt like trying to live without oxygen.

She was still in a state of deep despair when Pike surprised her the next weekend. She walked into the barn Friday afternoon after school to find him waiting with a fistful of flowers, and a plan for them to be alone. Tulsi told her parents she was going camping with friends and she and Pike took sleeping bags, the camp stove, supplies, and a bottle of sweet white wine out to the old cabin at the edge of the Hearst family’s sprawling ranch. They cooked spaghetti with meatballs, drank wine while watching the stars come out, and made love for the first time in front of the campfire with orange and yellow flames dancing across their bare skin.

Tulsi had never seen anything as beautiful as Pike without his clothes on or felt anything as earth-shattering as the way he made her feel. He touched her in all the places she’d been dying for him to touch her, kissed her until there was no place his lips hadn’t explored, and when he knelt between her legs and pushed inside her with aching slowness, the emotion in his eyes was enough to banish the brief flash of pain.

“I love you,” she whispered as he held still inside her, knowing she would never feel this close to another person in her whole life.

“I love you, too,” Pike said, his hands skimming gently up and down her ribs. “Is this okay?”

“It’s amazing.” She wrapped her legs tentatively around his hips as the soreness inside began to fade, replaced by more of the hunger he’d awakened inside of her. “So perfect.”

“You’re perfect,” he said, gliding in and out of her with a shaky breath. “God, Tulsi, it’s never felt like this before. Not even close.”

“Like what?” she asked, pulse leaping.

“So right.” He kissed her neck, her jaw, the hollow beneath her ear, before whispering against her skin, “Like you’re the one I should have been doing this with all along.”

She sighed as her fingertips trailed down his muscled back. “I’m so glad you’re my first.”

“I wish you’d been mine,” he said, staring deep into her eyes. “Promise me we’ll make this work. I don’t want to lose you when I go on the road.”

“You won’t, I promise,” she said, tears of happiness filling her eyes. “All I want is you, Pike. All I’ve ever wanted is you.”

He captured her lips, kissing her until she was breathless as he continued to move inside her, binding her heart closer to his with every sensual shift of his hips. Within a few minutes, the last of Tulsi’s discomfort faded and things low in her body pulled tight, tighter, until she was lifting desperately into his thrusts.

“Come, baby,” he said, sounding as breathless as she felt. “I want to hear you call my name before I come. I want to feel you—”

She cut him off, crying his name loud enough to send the birds nesting in the nearby trees fluttering into the night sky. The bliss coursing through her body was so much more powerful than when Pike had brought her over with his hands or his mouth. She felt like she was drowning in pleasure, suffocating on euphoria, dying and being reborn as Pike joined her for the long fall, his body jerking inside of her as he found release.

She was so happy, so dizzy with joy, that when Pike pulled out with a curse and began to talk in a low, urgent tone, she couldn’t make sense of what he was saying until he’d repeated himself.

“The condom, Tuls,” he said, holding it up between them with one trembling hand. “It broke.”

Tulsi sat up on the thick blankets they’d spread before the fire, her heart racing as she realized what that could mean. “Okay, so…what do we do?”

He shook his head as he tossed the condom into the paper bag along with their trash from dinner. “I don’t know. I’ve never had one break before. But I think there’s a pill or something you can take. We’d have to go into town and talk to the pharmacist. Or maybe your doctor?”

“Oh God,” Tulsi said, running a hand through her blond curls. “I can’t, Pike. Dr. Brown’s been our family doctor since my mom was a baby. If I go to him, my parents will find out, and my dad will kill me. Reece is the one who gets into trouble, I’m supposed to be the good one.”

“You’re still the good one.” Pike reached out, drawing her into his lap. “You didn’t do anything wrong. We were trying to be responsible, but…accidents happen.”

Tulsi shook her head. “My dad won’t see it that way. And I don’t know what he’ll do. He said he’d pay for college, but if he finds out about this…”

Pike hugged her closer with a sigh. “I get it. Your dad’s not as much of an asshole as mine, but…I understand why you’re worried. Still, we should be more worried about what happens if our timing is off. Do you remember when you had your period?”

Tulsi’s tongue slipped out to dampen her lips as she thought back over the past few weeks. “It’s been almost…three weeks. I had it the week before spring break.”

His arms relaxed around her. “Then we should be fine.”

“Really?” she asked, gazing up at him, unable to keep from noticing how handsome he looked in the firelight even when she was scared to death.

“Really,” he said with a smile as he smoothed her hair from her face. “We’re at least a week too late for a baby. It’s fine. No worries.”

Tulsi sagged against him in relief. “Thank goodness. I’m not ready.”

“Me, either,” he said with a laugh. “I want a few more years of having you all to myself.”

She tipped her head back, gazing up at him with a mixture of wonder and disbelief. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

“What?” he asked, an uncertain note in his voice. “Don’t you want to have kids with me someday?”

Tulsi nodded numbly, worried her chest might explode from an overload of joy.

“Too soon?” he asked when she was silent for another long minute. “Should I pretend I’m not crazy in love with you?”

Tulsi’s nod transformed into a swift shake of her head, making him laugh.

“Good.” He kissed her bare shoulder. “Because I am, and I’m going to figure out a way for us to be together. I promise.”

The rest of the weekend passed in a blissful haze and Tulsi practically floated back to school Monday morning. Her friends, Mia and Bubba, knew immediately that something was up, but Tulsi refused to say a word, wanting to keep what she’d found with Pike to herself for a little longer. She’d waited so long for him, she wasn’t ready to share him with the world just yet.

The weeks before graduation seemed to drag with unnatural slowness, even as weekends with Pike flew by. They spent their time alone riding horses, learning each other’s secrets, and making love like it was their mission on earth. After her period, mercifully, came right on time, Tulsi drove into San Antonio to get a prescription for birth control pills. By the end of April she and Pike were taking full advantage of their newfound freedom, making love in the river during a swim, on the side of the trail while they watered the horses, and in the back of Pike’s truck after Tulsi’s graduation, the night before Pike left to go on the road with his team.

They stayed together until the sun came up, and Pike couldn’t put off leaving another moment.

“I’ll call as soon as I can,” he said, kissing her goodbye. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Tulsi said, trying not to cry as she watched him drive away. Things were going to be harder with him on the road, but what they felt for each other was real, the kind of love people wrote songs and stories about. She had no doubt—her and Pike’s love was going to last.

She believed that with every fiber of her being…right up until the day he proved she’d been a fool to trust him with every piece of her heart.

But by then, it was too late. Her fate had been sealed that warm spring day in Springfield, Texas, when Pike Sherman kissed her, and put her permanently under his spell. No matter how hard the coming years proved to be, or how lonely she often felt, Tulsi never stopped loving him. Even as she lied to him, pushed him away, and learned to hate him, love was there, pulsing beneath the stormier emotions, refusing to be snuffed out.

Loving Pike was a habit she couldn’t break, as much a part of her as her passion for horses, her devotion to her daughter, and her belief that there is beauty in almost everything, if you just take the time to stop and look for it.

But on the hot July night when she locked eyes with Pike for the first time in seven long years, Tulsi wasn’t looking for beauty. She was looking for strength, and the will to cut her heart free of the man who had ripped it out of her chest once and for all.

CHAPTER ONE

Present Day

Tulsi

The setting sun dipped closer to the butte on the western side of Old Town Lonesome Point, casting the main thoroughfare of the historic site in a blood-red glow, sending a shiver of foreboding up Tulsi Hearst’s spine.

This patch of Texas desert had once been home to Wild West cowboys and outlaws. Now, it was littered with hot dog wrappers, red solo cups, and discarded arm bands—leftovers from the two-day benefit concert that had ended only hours ago. But Tulsi had the cleanup crews stabbing trash and had supervised the removal of the temporary fences meant to keep rowdy concert-goers from damaging the historic structures. All that was left was to pack up the ropes and dividers that had allowed the talent to move from stage to stage without mixing with the crowd and she’d be ready to head for home.

She glanced down at her watch. Five after six. She had approximately forty-five minutes to finish up her duties, dash to her truck, and get out of Dodge without risking a run-in with the last person she wanted to see.

A few days ago, she’d flirted with the idea of running into her old flame “accidentally-on-purpose” after his meet and greet with the fans who couldn’t wait to rub elbows with one of the most famous pitchers in major league baseball. But now that she was mere minutes away from a potential Pike Sherman sighting, she couldn’t believe she’d ever been so stupid. She didn’t want to see Pike; she
hated
Pike.

Or at least she
wanted
to hate Pike…

She wanted to forget that he was her first everything and the only man who had ever made her feel like she was flying with her feet still on the ground. She wanted to forget that, for one perfect spring, he’d been her world, and she’d been certain the love they’d found was going to last forever. She wanted to forget the way she’d pined for him for years after any self-respecting woman would have moved on, fallen in love again, and settled down to build a life with a man who cared about her. Remembering her weakness made Tulsi feel like a fool, but it was understanding how wrong things could go if Pike got too close to her life in Lonesome Point that transformed her rib cage into a vice that squeezed at her heart.