Total pages in book: 14
Estimated words: 13485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 67(@200wpm)___ 54(@250wpm)___ 45(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 13485 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 67(@200wpm)___ 54(@250wpm)___ 45(@300wpm)
I give my bathing suit another tug. No one—and I mean no one—has ever turned me on like Josie Reid.
Lowering the can, she crumples it in her hand and looks me in the eye. “You calling me a wimp?”
My pulse skips. The fire in her—it’s back. The same fire and fight I saw in her when she’d sing as I played my guitar on warm summer nights like this one.
I feel like hollering. Some things never change, thank Christ.
“I’m just saying that you took the girl out of Texas. But did you take the Texas out of the girl too?”
Dropping her can into a nearby trash bag, Josie reaches for the knot of fabric at her hip. “You tell me.”
I nearly have my second heart attack of the day when her cover-up falls away, revealing the sexiest pair of long, tanned legs in existence. I read all about the intense workout routine she underwent to prepare for her worldwide tour. Girl did two-a-days for months on end. Her trainer commented he’d never seen anyone show up the way she did. Not even professional athletes.
Her hard work shows. I bring my hand to my mouth and bite down on the knuckle of my first finger, hard.
Quinn takes the cover-up, a blank look on her face. Is she in shock? Or is she about to cuss me out for antagonizing her best friend?
Whatever the case, she doesn’t stop Josie from marching over to the rope and grabbing it.
I hustle to the edge of the canyon. “Let me go first. That way I can be there if—”
But Josie is already taking a running leap over the edge. She lets out a loud holler of delight as she swings outward. The last thing I see is her wide, happy smile before she lets go and plunges into the glittering green-blue water below.
She doesn’t emerge.
My body reacts before my brain does. I grab the rope as it swings back to me. Taking one, two big steps back, I launch myself over the canyon. I’m careful to let go at a moment that will allow me to land far enough from where Josie disappeared.
My stomach shoots up the back of my throat as I fall. I see her head break the surface of the water just as I plunge beneath it.
The rush of cold that greets me is a welcome antidote to the heat coursing through my limbs. The Colorado is deep here. Deep enough that I never touch the bottom, and I have to kick my way to the surface.
“Jesus Christ, Josie,” I gasp, snapping my head so that my hair’s out of my face. “Are you trying to kill me? I thought you were drowning.”
She treads water, bobbing in time to the movement of her arms. “Killing you would mean that I care. I don’t.”
“Ouch.”
“Truth hurts.”
I meet her eyes. “One of my favorite songs of yours.”
Sometimes I wonder if she’s ever written a song about me. Her melodies are beautiful, sometimes upbeat. But her lyrics are searing in their honesty.
Their intensity.
I always feel a surge of guilt over the possibility that I made her feel all that loss and loneliness she sings about.
I know that loneliness well. Granted, it was self-imposed. I listened to my friends and brothers when they told me not to follow Josie. You’re a cowboy—you can’t go to Nashville. What the hell is a country boy like you gonna do in a city like that?
Truth is, I was too much of a coward to show everyone I loved Josie so much that I’d put her dreams before mine. It felt embarrassing—a betrayal of everything I’d ever learned about being a man.
Now I see how wrong I was. A real man doesn’t avoid his feelings or shut them down. He owns them. Feels them. And he follows his heart, no matter what anyone thinks.
“Look,” she says. “You and I don’t have to be friends for this to be a good weekend. Just—you do your thing and I’ll do mine, and everything will be fine.”
I dip my head so that my lips are in the water. I gotta respect her pain—her instinct to keep her distance.
At the same time, I know I don’t have much, er, time. Grady says she’s leaving bright and early Sunday morning to make her next tour date in Kansas City. Given how busy we’ll be this weekend, that only gives me a handful of hours at best to win her over.
To convince her that I’ve changed, and that she can trust me to give her the life she’s always wanted.
The life we used to dream about in the bed of my truck, looking up at the stars.
I lift my head. “Since when are you okay with ‘fine’?”
“Since never. But with you, I’ll make an exception.”
“Dang, girl. You still got the zingers.”