Page 43 of Roads Behind Us
She saw the confusion on my face. That was easy to deduce from the way her eyes got big and she looked down at her plate intently, like the answer to time travel lay tucked inside a tamale, and if she paid close enough attention, she could go back to when we hadn’t complicated the fuck out of everything. We hadn’t had actual sex, but not having sex was just as complicated as having it.
Was I desperately attracted to Bea? Yes.
Was she attracted to me? I thought she was. I mean, you don’t sit on a guy’s face and let him eat you out if you’re not, right?
But Bea was right that the circumstances were far from ideal.
Still, knowing that didn’t make me want her any less.
Neither of us said another word as she stuffed her face, and I sat there, watching her dip bites of tamale into sour cream and verde sauce and then shovel them into her mouth, and I kept thinking about how absolutely absurd it was that I’d finally moved on from Candy’s death and her loss enough to want another woman, but now that I had, the woman I’d found myself wanting was so unavailable, it wasn’t even funny.
Bea went back to work, and I spent the afternoon trying to distract Athena from getting even more curious about Bea than she already was. She came to drive me back to the barn after lunch, and that was when the questions started, and they didn’t stop for at least a half an hour.
“Where’s Bea, Daddy?”
“She went back to work.”
“Oh. I thought she might hang out and keep you company. Do you think she’d like to go muddin’ with me? She could ride Aunt Abey’s ATV.”
“I dunno, Road Trip. Ask her.”
“You should’ve seen her earlier. One of the men workin’ on the cabins questioned her, and she handed him his a— She put him in his place. She’s so cool, and I think she’s pretty, Daddy. Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Sure.”
She drove over a big bump on the dirt path and winced as it jostled and tossed me around on the seat. “But, like, really pretty or just normal pretty?”
“I don’t know what that means, Athena.”
“Like, when you look at her, do you think ‘she’s beautiful’? Or do you just go, ‘meh’?”
The question made me laugh. “The first one.”
If anybody looked at Beatrice Baker and thought anything other than, “She’s fuckin’ gorgeous,” they were nuts. And when I pictured her handing her crew member his ass, I had to hold back a laugh. I would’ve paid money to see it.
Bea Baker was breathtaking.
Her skin glowed under the light of the sun, and she had these faint freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Her green eyes were the oddest color, kind of hunter green, kind of teal green, depending on the light, but absolutely mesmerizing either way, especially when she was speaking her mind.
She had these bangs that drove me wild. I’d never noticed much about women’s hairstyles, but dang. Athena had told me they were “curtain bangs,” but whatever she called them, they were sexy, the way they swopped down and framed her face like a painting, drawing my eyes to her high cheekbones.
She was on my mind so much that I had a hard time looking at anything else when she was around. I’d been sketching her in my down time, which was pretty much all the time lately, as long as no one was around to see the goddess I’d scribbled onto my sketchpad in graphite lines.
And her body? Fuck my life. Tight ass, tiny tits, and toned arms. I wasn’t used to a woman built like Bea. It kind of surprised me that I’d be into it since the only other woman I’d ever been with had been tall and soft.
And the warm, succulent space between Bea’s legs? Goddamn, I wanna fill that ho?—
“I think so too,” Athena said, completely oblivious to my horny daydreams. “Does she want kids? I mean, like, do you think she’d be a good mom?”
Shit.
I made it to the barn answering the rest of Athena’s questions with a copy-and-paste answer of “I dunno,” and when we got there, Rye grabbed my crutches and helped me out of the skid steer. He listened to Athena’s interrogation, trying discreetly to hear my answers, but finally, he stepped in and showed me a little mercy.
“Athena, can you saddle Tulsa for me, please?”
“Sure,” she said in a chipper voice, and she skipped into the barn to do what he’d asked.
