Page 14 of Forever Finds Us (Wisper Dreams #7)

Chapter Eleven

Roxanne

After I dropped Brand at his mama’s house, I drove back into town.

I should’ve gone home to my duplex to shower and sleep, but instead, I parked behind my best friend’s bookstore and let myself in through the back door, narrowly escaping knocking over a human-sized stack of boxes piled near the entryway.

“Who’s there?” Aubrey called from the front main room.

“It’s your best and most beautiful friend.”

Peeking my head around the corner, I saw her standing behind the cash register, closing the drawer as a customer walked out the front door, a tote bag loaded to the brim with the latest bestsellers dangling from their hand.

“Any other customers?” I asked.

“Nope. Just you, but I doubt you’re gonna buy anything.”

Aubrey had recently decided to change her hours of business.

She’d been switching up a lot of things to try to increase business.

It seemed to be working. Tourists spent Sunday mornings eating breakfast in town and then a lot of them would pop into Your Local Bookie to grab a paperback to read during their vacation or on their flight back to wherever they called home.

“You are correct. Not today, but I’ve got somethin’ better for you than revenue.”

She spun to face me with her hands on her cute, little five-foot-four hips. “What?”

I couldn’t hide my smirk. “A heartbreakin’ tale of a lost girl alone in the mountains, vicious wolves, the brave man and woman who saved the girl, and their tawdry sex affair after it was all said and done in a motel off Highway 191.”

“I heard they found the girl. That was you? Wait. Did you say sex affair ?”

I backed up into the storeroom and wilted down to the cold, hard floor, spreading my arms and legs wide like a tab of butter melting on a hot pan.

“You know I haven’t mopped that floor in ages. Get up. You’re gettin’ dirty.”

“Oh, Aubs,” I breathed. “I’m already dirty. So, so dirty.”

“Roxi! You had sex? With whom?” Her eyes narrowed in skepticism. “Seriously, who? And skip the rescue part for now. You can come back to that later.”

“So much sex! I think my hoo-ha might be broken.”

“Does that mean it was good sex?”

Using my core, I sat up and could feel my hair frizzing out behind me. “The. Best. Sex. I’ve. Ever . Had.”

Aubrey pulled her rolling desk chair toward me and sank into it. “Tell me and start with a name. Do I know him?”

“Uh, I think ya might.”

She stomped her supportive and cushy Hoka’s on the floor in rapid succession.

“I slept with Brand. Well, ‘slept’ isn’t exactly the right word.”

“Brand?” Aubrey’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. “Brand Lee ?”

When I nodded and purred satisfaction in the back of my throat, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “Does Abey know?”

“No! Not yet. It literally just happened.”

“Why are you makin’ me drag this out of you? Spill right now!”

“Well, he was kinda flirtin’ with me while we looked for the girl, but then we found her.

It was crazy, like somethin’ you’d read in one of your books.

Anyway, but then they whisked her off to the hospital and everybody lived happily ever after.

The rescue teams and cops went home, and it was just Brand and me on the trail.

“He came onto me. I swear to you, he would’ve screwed me up against a tree if I’d let him.”

“ If?”

“I told him no.”

“Roxanne Rhiannon Fitts, I don’t believe you. He’s handsome and kind, and I don’t know him super well, but somethin’ tells me he’s just your type.”

“Okay, okay, jeez, Ma. Don’t go all middle-name on me. You know I hate it. But I did say no ’cause I was armed with all kinds of weapons. I couldn’t have sex out in the open air in my uniform. You know I take my job seriously.”

She nodded. “Okay, I see your point. Then what happened?”

“God, when he turned his hat backwards and looked in my eyes?” I sighed dreamily. “You’re right. He is my type, so you know that little inn by the fill-up station off the highway by Flat Creek?”

She nodded.

“We went there, and while I locked my gun in my truck, he got us a room, and then we screwed our brains out!”

Kicking her legs and stomping her feet again, she squealed.

“Orgasms, Aubrey,” I breathed. “So. Many. Orgasms! We did it in the bathroom in front of the mirror.” Heat rushed to my cheeks, and Aubrey’s eyes got big. “Then he said, ‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ and he fondled me in the shower.

“And when he carried me to the bed, I thought I’d die. He carried me, Aubrey! Like I weighed no more than a pillow. I felt like a girl for the first time ever.”

“Roxi, you are a girl. You’re a woman. And apparently, one who knows how to get some.”

“Yeah, but you don’t get it. Men look at all this”—I waved my hand over my torso like a gameshow host—“and they wanna run for the hills. My stature intimidates them or just plain turns ’em off. But not Brand. He said we were a perfect fit.”

Like a dreamy eyed teenager, I sighed. “He went downtown then, and I didn’t think I had it in me to withstand all the naughty things he did to me there, but oh”—a devil’s smile grew on my lips, like Lucifer himself had slapped it on my face—“he wasn’t anywhere near done.”

Aubrey fanned her face with her hand. “No?”

I shook my head slowly, remembering my legs hooked over Brand’s shoulders and the almost-feral look in his eyes while his balls slapped my ass and he pounded into me, but then the jingle bell on the bookshop’s front door tinkled.

Aubrey stood. “I have to get this, but we are not done here. Don’t you dare leave.”

“I won’t.”

As she greeted her customer, my phone rang in my back pocket. I pulled it out and saw my daddy’s face flashing on my screen.

Popping up off the floor, I leaned around the door again. “It’s my dad. Call me after work later and I’ll fill you in more.”

Aubrey shot me an angry glare as the two women in the store meandered down the aisles.

I blew her a kiss. “Promise.”

She rolled her eyes but smiled, and I answered my call as I left the way I’d come in.

“Hi, Daddy. How’re you and Mama?”

“This is your mother, Roxanne. Daddy’s drivin’ us home from church, which is where I expect you’ve been this mornin’ too?”

Uh, that’s a hard no.

“Mama, don’t start. No, I didn’t go to church this mornin’. I was… workin’.” That was close enough to the truth. And besides, what forty-something woman was required to report her whereabouts to her mama and daddy?

“Daddy was on the Facebook last night, and he said y’all had a missin’ girl up there.”

“That’s why I was workin’. We found her though. She’s okay.”

“Praise Jesus. You know, that’s just one more reason you need to go to services. And who knows? You might meet a man there, a God-fearin’ one.”

Right. The last “God-fearin’” man I dated wanted to paint my toenails and suck on them while he jacked off. Another hard pass.

Mama didn’t bat an eye at my silence. “You could bring him home for Thanksgiving.”

“I told you I probably can’t come home for the holidays this year.”

She tsked. “You say that every year.”

One-two-three .

“I know,” I said as I opened my door and slid into my truck. “I’m sorry, but my job is really important to me, Mama. And my coworkers have young families. I like workin’ the holidays so they can spend time with their kids. It makes me feel good.

“And it makes me feel even better if an emergency call comes in on Christmas or Thanksgiving and I get to be the one to help. Bad things don’t stop happenin’ just ’cause you made pimento salad and bought way too many gifts for your grandkids.”

Mama clucked her tongue, then under her breath, she said, “You should be doin’ that for a family of your own.”

I started my engine, and my phone transferred to Bluetooth. “Mama, I heard that. I am forty-one years old. Kids are not in the cards for me, and if I never marry, well, you’re just gonna have to figure out a way to accept it. I will not hitch my cart to someone I don’t love just to make you happy.”

I heard my dad in the background, grumbling for Mama to put me on speaker. When she did, his gruff voice was like a bullhorn in my truck cab. “This is your father, RiRi. Don’t you upset your mama today. Now, tell us about the case.”

I held in my derision, smiling to myself. They made such a big deal about my life and the lack of a husband in it, but my dad was always interested in my cases.

My uncle Al had been on the OK City police force all of his adult life.

I had a feeling Daddy regretted not following in his brother’s footsteps.

Instead, he’d gone the suit route and had recently retired from his job as a bank manager, so he lived vicariously through me and Uncle Al.

He’d never admit it to Mama, but he was proud of me for becoming a deputy, helping and saving people and protecting my adopted home of Wisper, Wyoming, and he was proud that I’d left home and found my own piece in the world.

“You know,” I tried to tempt them, “y’all could come out here for the holiday. I can cook for you.” I was certain Aubrey could talk me through turkey preparation, or maybe she and Rye could even join us and my parents could get to know my friends.

“We can’t do that, and you know it. Cecily’s helpin’ me cook this year, and Bridget and Ramona and their families will be here the week before.

All my grandkids will be here for Thanksgivin’ dinner.

I’m not givin’ that up to sit in some cold, lonely mountain town with the daughter who does everything she can to make me sad. ”

While that dig worked its way beneath my skin, my dad asked, “Can’t you drive down this year? Just for a day or two?”

I tried not to scoff. Had they listened to anything I’d just said?

“It’s an eighteen-hour drive, Daddy. You know I don’t like to fly, so that’s two days there, two days back, and two days with y’all.

That’s a week off work. I can’t do it. Everybody’s already put in for their time off.

I’m sorry. Maybe I can come next summer for your anniversary.

Everybody will be home then too, right?”

“If we’re not dead by then,” Mama mumbled.

“Doris,” Daddy scolded. “Don’t start with that morbid stuff.”

“Fine,” she intoned, and I could picture her swiping lint off her church slacks, her lips fixed in a hard line. “But is it too much to ask for the daughter I spent thirty-seven hours in labor with to come see her family? I don’t think so.”

One-two-three . Breathe .

“We’re pullin’ into the OK Corral for brunch, RiRi. Mama will call you back later. Good job findin’ that missin’ girl, baby.”

“Thank you, Daddy. Love you both,” I said and barely got the last word out before Mama hung up the phone.