Just Let Go.... Kathleen O'Reilly

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СКАЧАТЬ thought you and Jeff…”

      She shook her head. “Roger?”

      Once more she shook her head.

      “Sonny?”

      For the last time, she shook her head no. She had thought he’d be pleased, but he didn’t look happy about the situation at all.

      The wicked light in his eyes dimmed to something more respectable, more honorable. His perfect mouth curled into a heart-stopping grin and she knew that her first time would be exactly as she’d wanted it to be.

      “Then we should do this right. Not in a field. Obviously you can’t have an up close and personal experience with chiggers in places that chiggers don’t belong.”

      Chiggers?

      At that, Gillian stared into the tall grass, seriously considering the ramifications of her virginity-losing decision. Pregnancy, she had considered often enough. Chiggers were something entirely different.

      Just the thought of it had her itching behind her knee. Discreetly she scratched.

      “We need a humongous bed,” he continued on, “because a physically demanding woman like you, well, a man needs room to work, you know? And privacy, no kids, no parents, someplace where nobody can interrupt. And you’ll need something better to drink than beer, maybe champagne. And you deserve a whole bucket of flowers. Roses.”

      Dreamily she smiled up at him because of all the boys she knew, he was the first one to understand the frilly secrets of Gillian’s heart.

      She’d never seen him like this, so full of ideas and the future, his eyes glittering with excitement. And it was the idea of loving her that brought this big change about. Love truly was a miraculous thing. It could move mountains, it could touch stars and just the thought of it could turn him into the lover she knew he could be.

      She brushed at the grass, realizing that his plan sounded a lot more fun than a quick roll in the chiggers. “You want to wait for prom night?”

      He nodded, reaching for her shirt and firmly buttoning it closed. “I do.”

      “Then we wait,” she said, feeling a little disappointed, and a little relieved.

      With that decided, he took out the old pocket watch from his jeans and checked the time. “I have to head home.”

      “I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”

      “Sure,” he said, kissing her first on the nose, and then more urgently on the lips. Then he pulled the watch from his pocket once again. “Here,” he told her, handing it to her, his face solemn.

      “Why are you giving me this?” she asked, nervous at the seriousness in his voice. “You’re going to stay, right?”

      He laughed. “For a week. This is for you to count down the time. I can’t give you much.” He pressed it into her hands. “Take it.”

      She fingered the worn metal, the scratched glass, and beamed up at him, touched by the gesture. “Really?”

      “Sure. Be good.”

      “Aren’t I always?” she asked, not quite as happy about that as she should be. “You’re going to rent a tux?”

      He glanced over, eyes unblinking. “Sure.”

      “You’ll look nice in a tux. Nearly as good as you’ll look without it,” she teased.

      “You have a very dirty mind,” he teased in return. So normal, so happy, so perfect.

      “Thank you for noticing.”

      As he started over the hill, Gillian held the watch close to her heart, and fell back onto the grass, not caring too much about the chiggers at the moment.

      Five more days, and then they’d be making love. She should buy some sexy lingerie. Sexy, but not trampy. Maybe white. A soft ecru that matched her skin.

      Maybe after that, she could get him to change his mind and stay. A little white lace, some dramatic cleavage. A man’s biological urges were a powerful force. She pulled her shirt away from her chest and checked. Feeling more confident, she silently thanked God for giving her perky tits and a curvy ass that would never go fat.

      Prom night. Five days till paradise. And she wanted to make their night together just as special for him as it was going to be for her.

      Looking back, she should have realized the truth, but Gillian had never been skilled at reading signs that didn’t point in her own fortuitous direction. Five days later, all that changed, but at least then she had someone to blame.

      Easy-loving, easy-lying, easy-leaving Austen Hart.

      1

      BROKEN HEARTS WERE A familiar cause of mayhem in Tin Cup, Texas. Arnold Cervantes had broadsided his girlfriend’s F-150 with his riding lawnmower after he learned she’d been stepping out on him with the landscaper. When Doc Emerson filed for divorce, Mrs. Emerson had laced her husband’s tapioca pudding with a laxative, a charge that was ultimately overturned by Judge Lansdale, who was the second cousin to the defendant. Oscar Ramirez had flown his wife’s plus-sized unmentionables in the Memorial Day parade after she refused him certain sexual favors which Harley considered his right, but which were also illegal according to Texas state law.

      In the three years since Gillian Wanamaker had been sworn in as sheriff of Tin Cup, she’d seen a lifetime’s worth of passion, foolishness and general human stupidity. In Gillian’s humble opinion, people needed to practice more self-control and show a little concern for their own reputation within the community. As a card-carrying member of the Broken Hearts Club herself, Gillian had never been tempted to spray-paint a human being, nor set fire to items of clothing. Or at least, not in a really long time.

      Usually Gillian avoided dwelling on past unpleasantries, or those fleeting moments when she had wanted to dig out a fellow human being’s heart with a dull nail file, but this morning was different. First she’d stopped at Harley’s Five & Dime to sneak a glance at the Austin newspaper, just as she did every day. While checking Thursday’s style section, she’d seen the watchful worry in Harley’s eyes. Like he expected Gillian to bust out into great heartbroken sobs. Ha. Maybe when she’d been a gauche seventeen, but now? At twenty-seven? Ha. Ha.

      Two doors down, at Dot’s Good Eats, Dot had been extra nice, giving her a sausage biscuit for free. Free sausage was a soft-hearted act of pity by even the most liberal definition of the word. As if Gillian was someone people felt sorry for. Sorry! She had been crowned Miss Tin Cup four times running. She had been All-State in softball, with a fastball that could kill a man if he wasn’t paying attention. Gillian Wanamaker of the San Angelo Wanamakers was a force to be reckoned with, not a pity case. She was an icon, a role model. She was a goddamned institution, much like Lady Bird Johnson, Jackie O, Lady Di and Barbie.

      Needing to escape all the sympathetic stares, but without looking as if she needed to, Gillian left the restaurant and headed for the sanctity of the courthouse, where she could cower in peace. Nearly two hundred years ago, they were driving cattle down this street, instead of pick-ups. There was a permanence in Tin Cup, a consistency that Gillian appreciated more than СКАЧАТЬ