Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(99)

Willa and Rad sat on a rock at the edge of the pond late the next morning. Tall trees circled the water and made cool shade. There wasn’t a lot of that on the Randall farm. A family of ducks swam around at the far side. Ollie was flopping around in the shallow water on this side, avoiding the ducks.

For their part, the drake had swum to about the middle of the pond and yelled at Ollie for a second, then swum back and forth as if to say This is our side, buddy. Cross this line at your peril.

Ollie was happy to give them their space. He’d had a traumatizing incident with a goose when he was a puppy and had a healthy respect for birds since. As protective and obedient as he was, Willa thought if a goose ever came after her, she’d be on her own.

The night before, after a good dinner and a lot of great talk, augmented for everyone but Harmony and Willa by a lot of good booze, her brothers had gone to their homes, and everyone else had gone to bed. Willa and Rad had slept in her girlhood bedroom, with Ollie on the floor at their side.

The next morning, after an early breakfast, they’d all gone to church. The Baptist kind, not the biker kind. Neither Willa nor Rad was a churchgoer, but they’d both been brought up Southern Baptist, so they’d shared the same kind of awkwardness about sitting in that service—the discomfort of being somewhere that you knew really well but had been avoiding for a long time. Like tea with an elderly aunt at a nursing home, or sitting in church for the first time in ten years. Like everybody around you knows that you don’t do this nearly enough, and they’re all judging.

As she’d expected, Pastor Ed was young and gave his sermon with a wry flair that Willa enjoyed, but she could see that not everyone was yet sold on the new kid who’d taken over for the retired Pastor James.

Willa had caused a minor commotion after the service, showing up in town after so long. Everybody knew that Jesse was dead, and everyone wanted to make sure that Willa had heard about it, too, and wanted to see her face when she heard.

If they’d been expecting shock and drama, they’d all been disappointed. But she was sure they’d spice it up in the retelling.

Back at home, while her mom and sister started lunch, and Willa was feeling a little queasy, she begged off helping and lured Rad outside for a walk. They’d ended up here, at the pond, a cool little oasis in the middle of the hot Texas farmland.

“No,” she answered his question. “They’re definitely attracted opposites. And I think we’re all a mixed-up bag of both of them.”

Willa thought of her tall, lanky father, a rough man who’d raised up rough sons and tomboy daughters. He was older than their mom by a bit—more than the ten years between Rad and Willa. He’d left Duchy for a spell when he was young, did a couple of years riding bulls without much acclaim, then tramped around on oil rigs for awhile. When his father had needed help on the farm, he’d come home and married a little local girl.

Rad was a lot like her dad, she thought—rough on the outside, brusque and sometimes harsh, but tender deep down, and fiercely protective.

Her dad had really struggled with her problems with Jesse, and he hadn’t been there the way Willa had needed. To him, Willa was too headstrong. He’d seen Jesse as trying to get control of his woman, and he’d seen that as a thing a man should do. Until Jesse had hurt her badly. Then it had probably become as difficult for Jesse to be in Duchy as it had been for her.

She didn’t know about that, because she hadn’t come back.

Her mom was little and bubbly, happy to fill in her husband’s laconic silences, and happy to let him think the family ran his way. They’d made a good pair to balance a family out. Their kids learned which parent could be worked in which way, and which parent to avoid in certain circumstances. Willa had never felt anything but loved here.

Even when they hadn’t understood her need to be away, or her need for more than Jesse. Even when they hadn’t been able to see that the way he treated her wasn’t just ‘old-fashioned’—or if it was, that she couldn’t abide it. Even then, she’d known they loved her.

And they hadn’t kept her in Duchy. They’d let her take her scholarship and fly. When she said she had to stay away, they’d understood. When she said no one could know where she was, they’d kept her secret.

They’d done their best.

After a calm stretch of quiet, Rad set his hand on her leg and slid his palm up the inside of her thigh. “I f*ckin’ love these little dresses you wear.”

She hadn’t changed after church, except to switch her ballet flats out for an old pair of scuffed cowboy boots she’d found in her closet. For church, she’d worn a little grey fit-and-flare dress with pink roses. It had spaghetti straps, and her dad had made her cover up—he hated her tattoo, even if it was a memorial to her grandma, his mother—so she’d worn a denim jacket over it, but by the time they’d gotten home, it was far too hot for a jacket.

Now she was sitting on this rock in her little sundress and battered boots, and Rad’s hand had made it all the way to the top of her thigh.

“Sittin’ in church, thinkin’ about how close I was to this,” he rasped at her ear. “They should do a sermon about your *. It’s a goddamn miracle.”

“Blasphemer,” she giggled.

“No, baby. I am a true believer in the glory of your body.”

Oh man, how his fingers felt, his touch light, his skin coarse, leaving little shockwaves in their wake. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she let her legs relax and fall open.