knees would have failed him and he’d have fallen flat on his face right there in the café.
“I hope so. Six months is a long time to wait,” Austin said. The gut that did not lie twisted up like a piece of sheet metal in a class five tornado. Her hands trembled and the place where his thumb had grazed her palm was hotter ’n hell’s blazes.
His mossy green eyes rimmed with the heaviest lashes she’d ever seen on a man were undressing her right there in the café in front of Pearlita, the customers, and even God, Himself. Pure animal sexuality exuded from him in those creased jeans, cowboy boots, and a green and yellow plaid shirt. Austin still couldn’t believe he was Rye and kept stealing long sideways glances his way. Damn! She should have known a man with a voice like that couldn’t be seventy!
“What’ll you cowboys be havin’ today?” the waitress asked.
“Fish, full order, and sweet tea,” Kent said.
“Double it,” Rye said. He didn’t want to think about food, eat food, or do anything but stare at Austin. Stare, be damned! He wanted to do a lot more than devour her with his eyes. The palm of her hand was as soft as gentle rain on his calloused thumb. He wanted to slide into the booth beside her, sink his face into that thick black hair, and see if it was as soft as her fingertips.
The waitress nodded and disappeared through the door into the kitchen and promptly returned with four glasses of sweet tea, putting two on Austin’s table and the other two on Rye’s.
He drank long and deep and turned toward the booth where Austin and Pearlita were. That’s when she noticed the barbed wire tattoo circling his left bicep right below his shirtsleeve. She blushed when she realized she was staring at the tat. She shut her eyes and suddenly there he was in her imagination without a shirt, his belt buckle undone showing a fine line of dark hair extending downward, and a big smile on his sexy face. She opened them with a snap to find him grinning at her. A slow heated blush crept into her cheeks.
“So you are here for a couple of weeks?” He knew the answer to the question because they’d talked the night before but he couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say.
“That’s right.” She blinked and stared at the menu on the far wall.
He did the same. A grown man didn’t look at a woman from behind a willow tree on the banks of the Red River and know in an instant that she was his soul mate. That wasn’t just bullshit, it was insanity.
He tried. He really, really tried to keep from looking at her. But it was impossible. When he looked up she was talking to Pearlita so he stared until she shifted her gaze and caught him. Then he blinked and asked Kent if he thought they could find a tractor part up in Ryan at the feed store.
His dark green eyes and the way he looked at her set her nerves on edge. God Almighty, what was wrong with her? She’d never reacted to a man like that in her life and he was a cowboy with a tat on his arm. Her mother would stroke out if she called home and said she was panting after a cattle rancher in Terral, Oklahoma, with a tattoo of barbed wire around his arm.
When she jerked herself back into the conversation with Pearlita, the woman was saying, “Me and Verline met in here once a month for dinner and we usually sat right here in this booth and talked about everything that had happened in Henrietta and Terral since we’d last seen each other. We talked about my niece, Pearl, and you, and what you were both doing these days. I’ve missed her terrible these past six months.”
Rye leaned across the space from the table to the booth and said, “Are you really going to sell the watermelon farm? There’ll be lots of folks interested in Verline’s property. It’s prime watermelon ground but I’d like to be first in line to buy it if you decide to sell.”
“I haven’t made a solid decision about the farm,” she said.
Dammit! We’ve talked on the phone for six months. Why didn’t you mention wanting to buy my land during those conversations? And why in the hell didn’t you tell me you weren’t an old bowlegged