Brown-Eyed Girl (Travis Family #4)(32)

Joe was ruthless. “One year?” A pause. “Two?” As I kept silent, he stroked my upper arms, his warm hands bringing up gooseflesh. His voice turned gentle. “More than two years?”

I had never felt more vulnerable or mortified. Too much of my past had just been revealed, along with an avalanche of self-doubt and naïveté. As I wilted in the heat of exposure, it occurred to me that I may have judged him differently from how a more emotionally secure woman would have.

I threw a longing glance at the door, desperate to leave. “We have to get back to the party —”

Joe pulled me against him. I writhed in protest, but his arms tightened, restraining me easily. “I understand now,” I heard him say after a moment. Although I wanted to ask what, exactly, he thought he understood, I could only stand there in a trance. A minute passed, and another. I began to say something, but he hushed me and kept holding me. Clasped securely against the rise and fall of his chest, steeped in his body heat, I felt myself relaxing.

I was filled with the bittersweet knowledge that this was the last time he would ever hold me. After this we would cut our losses. We would put the memory of that night behind us for good. But I was going to remember this embrace, because it was the best, safest, warmest feeling I’d ever had in my life.

“We slept together too soon,” he said eventually. “My fault.”

“No, it wasn’t —”

“It was. I could tell you didn’t have much experience, but you were willing, and… hell, it felt too good to stop. I wasn’t trying to play you. I’m —”

“Don’t apologize for having sex with me!”

“Easy.” Joe began to smooth my hair. “I’m not sorry that it happened. Only that it happened too soon for you to feel comfortable with it.” He bent his head and kissed the soft skin around my ear, making me shiver. “It wasn’t casual,” he murmured. “Not for me. But I would never have let it go so far if I’d known it would scare you.”

“It didn’t scare me,” I said, nettled by the implication that I was behaving like some terrified virgin.

“I think it did.” His hand went to the back of my neck, kneading the small muscles gently, easing the ache into pleasure. It was all I could do not to arch and purr like a cat.

I tried to summon more indignation. “And what do you mean, you could tell I didn’t have experience? Did I do something wrong? Was I a disappointment? Was I —”

“Yeah,” Joe said, “it’s a hell of a disappointment when I come so hard, I see stars. It was such a downer that I’ve been chasing after you ever since.” He braced his hands on either side of me, gripping the edges of the bookshelf.

“It’s over now,” I managed to say. “I think we should chalk it up to – to a spontaneous moment —” I broke off with an incoherent sound as he leaned forward to kiss my neck.

“It can’t be over when it never even started,” he said against my skin. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, brown-eyed girl: You’re going to answer the phone when I call. You’re going to let me take you out, and we’re going to do some talking. There’s too much we don’t know about each other.” He found a pulse, and his lips lingered on the tiny, rampant rhythm. “So we’re going to take it slow. I’ll get to know you. You’ll get to know me. And then it’s up to you.”

“It’s too late,” I managed to say in between shivering breaths. “Sleeping together ruined the getting-to-know-you part.”

“It’s not ruined. It’s just a little more complicated.”

If I agreed to go out with him again, I was asking for heartbreak. Begging for it. “Joe, I don’t think —”

“No decisions right now,” he said, his head lifting. “We’ll talk later. For now…” He retreated a step and held out his hand. “Let’s go back out there and have dinner. I want a chance to prove that I can behave around you.” His hot gaze chased over me. “But I swear, Avery Crosslin… you don’t make it easy.”

Dinner was an elaborate six-course affair, with a piano-and-violin duet playing in the background. The tent had been decorated in black and white, with white phalaenopsis orchid centerpieces, all of it a perfect setting for the art auction. I sat with Joe at a table for ten, along with Jack, Ella, and a few assorted friends.

Joe was in a relaxed good mood, at times casually resting his arm at the back of my chair. The group was chatty and animated, making small talk with the ease of people who did it often, who knew exactly how to keep the conversation fluid. As the Travis brothers exchanged quips and good-natured jabs, it was obvious that they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company.

Joe recounted a recent road trip he’d taken to do photos for a Texas magazine’s “bucket list” issue, featuring activities and places that no Texan should miss during his life, among them to go two-stepping at Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, eat chicken-fried steak topped with white gravy at a particular diner in San Antonio, and visit Buddy Holly’s grave in Lubbock. Ella volunteered that she didn’t like white gravy on her chicken-fried steak, at which point Jack half covered his face. “She eats it dry,” he confessed, as if it were blasphemy.

“It’s not dry,” Ella protested, “it’s fried. And if you ask me, battering and deep-frying cube steak and drowning it in biscuit gravy is the worst —”