Hometown Wedding. Elizabeth Lane
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bus depot!
The worst part was the way Travis had lapped it all up. He probably thought she was great with teenage girls. Well, she wasn’t. Apart from the memories of her own painful adolescence, she understood nothing about them, especially pretty, self-assured creatures like Nicole. To her, they were like bubbly little space aliens, beings from a world she had always envied but never inhabited.
Travis’s knuckles bumped her knees as the truck growled into second gear. Eden tensed, fearful of what the contact might arouse in her.
She could hold her own in the workplace, where she knew exactly what was expected. But when it came to relationships, especially with men, Edna Rae was alive and well. A few months ago she had almost believed she could change-but no, she could not afford to think about her broken engagement now. She would only get maudlin, and that wouldn’t do. Especially not in front of Travis Conroy.
She would make the best of the next three hours, Eden resolved with a hiccuping sigh. She would be civil to Travis and patient with the high-spirited Nicole. And when the ride was over, she would thank them kindly and run for her life—or at least for her sanity.
She would have to.
Any way you looked at him, Travis Conroy was trouble, more trouble than she ever wanted to deal with again.
Travis shifted into third, his wrist skimming Eden’s thigh as the truck ground up the on-ramp and nosed onto the interstate. He was making every effort to appear cool, but the veneer was already wearing thin. The changes in Nicole had thrown him off balance, and now, with no time to recover, he found himself plastered side by side against one of the most disturbingly attractive females he had ever encountered.
And the hell of it was, she was Edna Rae Harper.
This was crazy, Travis lashed himself as he gunned the engine and roared into the center lane. This lady was the original ugly duckling. Worse, her misguided fantasies had triggered one of the most embarrassing episodes of his life.
All he had ever wanted to do with Edna Rae Harper was forget her.
He stared fixedly at the black butt of the Pontiac LeMans in front of him, doing his damnedest to keep his eyes off Eden’s peach silk blouse. The way the fabric clung—No, he vowed, not one glance. But even the best intent could not stop his imagination from working. Her fragrant warmth invaded his senses, stirring a vision of ripe peaches in the summer sun, round, lush, silky to the touch of his fingertips…
It was enough to make a man sweat.
“So, uh, how long do you plan to be in Monroe?” he asked, making a lame stab at conversation.
Eden’s bare arm grazed his shoulder as she shifted in her seat. “Let’s see…I’ll be running my mother back to Provo tomorrow, and they’ll be doing her hysterectomy the next morning at Utah Valley Regional. After that, maybe four or five weeks, depending on how fast she recovers.”
“At least you’ll have a vacation from your job.”
“Not really. That heavy briefcase you put in the back is full of manuscripts to read and edit.”
“Hey, you’re an editor?” Nicole, who’d been hanging out the window like a happy Labrador retriever, popped her head back into the cab. “That’s cool. Do you work with any kickin’ writers, like Stephen King?”
“I’m afraid not. Parnell is an educational textbook company. Compared to Stephen King, most of the stuff I work on is pretty dry.”
“Textbooks! Yuck!” Nicole twisted back toward the open window to wave at the blond male driver of a red Corvette. Travis ground his teeth, biting back the temptation to lecture her. Nicole was just keyed up from the trip, that was all. She would settle down fine after a day or two on the ranch. Then everything would be just like old times.
Eden was gazing past him now, toward the rugged Wasatch Mountains that jutted between the city and the eastern sky. “I noticed traces of hay in the back of the truck,” she ventured. “Does that mean you’re working the old family ranch?”
Travis forced a sidelong grin. “You have been away a long time,” he said. “I moved back to the ranch when I finished college. Been there ever since.”
“Ranching.” Eden fidgeted with her nails. “Somehow I always imagined you in a more glamorous role, like a sportscaster, or an FBI agent, or a male super model.”
“Oh, nothing of the sort. Running that ranch is all I ever wanted to do.” Travis edged the truck around the small Pontiac, striving to ignore the womanly warmth of Eden’s leg and the sensually whispered message of her perfume. Edna Rae Harper. He rolled the name in his mind as he took a deep breath and continued speaking.
“My dad barely made enough on the place to keep the family fed. The land’s too dry and rocky for most crops. Even the few cows he kept were poor milkers. But ten years ago, I started raising quarter horses. The horses do fine with extra hay and oats, and since I mortgaged the place to pick up a champion stud, the colts have been bringing decent money in Vegas and L.A.”
“You sound like a satisfied man.” She settled back into the seat beside him, the hot wind bannering her spun-honey hair.
“Satisfied?” Travis let the question hang on the air. If “satisfied” meant coming home to an empty house and eating supper alone, then drifting into solitary slumber in the big brass bed where his parents had conceived five children…
“Uh-huh,” he nodded, feigning smugness, “you might say I’ve done all right by the old place.”
“It sounds as if you have no plans to leave.” Eden stirred, her breast brushing his sleeve with the impact of a rocket burst.
“Leave?” Travis’s attempted chuckle came out sounding hollow. “My grandpa bought that land west of town when he came home from the First World War. My dad spent his whole life there, battling rocks and tumbleweeds to grub out a livelihood. He and Mom raised five kids before they passed on. I was the baby of the family—but then, I guess you know all that.
“Over the years, as I watched my brothers and sisters spread their wings, I promised myself that after I got my education, I’d come back and take care of the ranch, maybe even make something fine of it one day.”
He paused for breath. He’d been talking too much, he realized. Probably making a bore of himself. What was wrong with him today, anyway? With the women he occasionally dated, he was never at a loss for clever flattering things to say. But in the thirty-odd minutes he’d spent with Eden Harper, he’d done little more than talk about himself. He’d already unloaded a good chunk of his life in her lap. If he didn’t stop soon—
“Hey!” he announced, seizing the moment. “I see a Circle K sign just past that off-ramp. Anybody for sodas?”
“Me!” Nicole jerked her head back inside the cab. “I’ll have an extra-large Diet Coke. And can I have some Cheetos, too? And a Milky Way?”
“Sure.” Travis pulled into the exit lane, grateful that at least one thing about Nicole—her appetite—hadn’t changed. “What’s your pleasure, Eden?”
“Uh…iced tea. Plain. And thank you.”
“You won’t get much nourishment out of that. Sure I can’t get you a hot dog or something?”
“I had lunch on the plane. Tea will be fine.”
“Hey, Eden!” Nicole grinned. “I think your hiccups are gone!”
“Oh…” Eden blinked, then, as if on cue, emitted a lusty hic. Her cheeks flushed appealingly as she shrugged, then laughed, shaking her wind-tangled hair. She looked damned sexy, Travis observed. And he knew some very interesting cures for the hiccups. The thought flashed through his mind that, under different circumstances, he wouldn’t mind trying some of them on her.
But this was crazy, he reminded