Page 85 of South of The Skyway

“She’s a drama queen.”

“And I know how much six boys can put down in an hour.”

“I’ve got a random question for you,” he stated as he turned around and backed up until his tailgate nearly kissed the front of the fifth wheel.

“Hmm?”

“When you're done with your book, will you publish it?”

I blew out a long breath, eyes suddenly too heavy to have this conversation. “The truth is…I hadn’t thought about it in so long, I’m not sure. I’d like that. But I don’t know the first thing about querying.”

“That’s where you get an agent?”

“Try to, yeah.”

“Ahh,” Rhyett said, nodding thoughtfully. “Anything I can do to facilitate the research?”

Eyes wide, I rotated in my seat as he threw the truck in park. “You want to…help me find a publisher?”

“Hell yeah,” he said, that heartbreaker’s smile reminding me I was already in so much deeper than I’d ever meant to be. Shifting my gaze from the heartthrob in front of me, to the progress on the property, I let my thoughts wander as my heart scaled the walls of my throat.

The Rhodes home was fully erected now, the future landscape beds carved out and windows installed. Green grass was coloring in the expanse of the once mostly muddy ground. Rhyett’s beautiful deck was finished, save for the boxes of lights sitting on the edge of the hot tub surround. He’d stained it a few days back, giving it that shiny finished look I just knew his mother would love.

He loved her, and his sisters too. Rhyett seemed to possess a sincere love for his entire, enormous family. When I was little, my father had once told me to watch how a man treated the women in his life when it came time to select suitors. He’d been right: you could tell a lot about a man by studying his interactions with sisters and cousins and the respect, or lack thereof, for his mother. I didn’t need to see Rhyett with them to know how deeply he cared for them.

The evidence was everywhere. Him uprooting his life to come oversee the erection of a project thousands of miles away, in the magazine-worthy design of a backyard space big enough to accommodate them all. He’d even thought ahead to summer and engineered a way to screen in the space so the bugs didn’t eat them alive. His face lit up when he talked about his sisters. Hell, I knew some of their favorite colors, their dietary preferences, their college majors. And I’d yet to see one of them, digitally or physically.

Don’t even get me started on the sex—I couldn’t keep up with the man, his need to feast on my body more than I could bear some nights. Is over-orgasming a thing? Because if it is, Rhyett certainly served it in heaps, leaving me breathless, a little lightheaded, and a bit dumb. He could get me to agree to just about anything in that post-coitus bliss.

Compared to my chaotic upbringing, his steady presence was so alien, I wasn’t sure how to describe it. Rhyett kept his hands busy—an achiever like me. But he knew how to prioritize his time to make me feel seen and read me like a book. Saw me in a way nobody else ever did. Right down to the overwhelm of thinking about publishing. It should be comforting. But something in his rock-solid permanence scared me. Watching him play with Kyler and Gemma made my chest tighten, expectation bickering with my inner bitch, who screamed that it was all too good to be real.

“Yeah,” I breathed, turning back to his sincere eyes. Hell, he’d even had the sense to just let me think, staring off into space. Just his steadily stroking hand settling on my thigh to let me know he was there. “I think…I think you’d be good at that.” He cut off my reply by bringing his mouth to mine. One soft kiss, and my head was spinning, all fear of the future amputated by his touch, his scent, the way he consumed all of me. And once again, I was lost in Rhyett Rhodes.

THIRTY-NINE

RHYETT

Before I’d had time to question it, weeks bled into a month. The hour wedged between us had been traded for laughter and blow jobs and slipping my fingers under her skirt to find her soaked and waiting. Long days of labor punctuated by the delicate feminine scent of desire in the cab. Enough to drive even the best man to the brink of madness. My favorite days were the ones when Brexley would jump into my truck with the latest pages she’d penned in hand. She’d read me some of it. The pieces she said I’d inspired. No woman had ever put me in a book before. Even if it was just pieces of me. I mean, no one that I knew of anyways. I winced at the thought of my earlier years flitting from fling to fling.

The heat of Florida spring had darkened my skin, now a rich caramel tan to rival Brexley’s. Hell, even Noel’s skin was kissed with it, her freckles out in full force. She was cute as hell, and some profoundly male part of me wondered if I could dissuade her from her weasel of a boyfriend into the arms of someone closer to being worthy. My younger brother, Axel, or maybe our cousin, Jake? Maybe it was knowing she was biased towardsTeam Rhyett, although I didn’t think so. Her cast had come off last week, and the girls invited me along for celebratory drinks. I sneakily snatched the bill before any of the sharp-witted, self-made millennial women could object. ‘The girls,’ I’d learned, received my offers to pay for things with the same enthusiasm as buying a timeshare in Antarctica. My stealth mode paid off, although Josie’s glare matched Noel’s tone as she told me they’d get mine next time.

Windows down, music blasting, Brex started to sing along to “She’s Always A Woman” by Billy Joel. I grinned, loving the fact that she turned her face into that Florida sun she was so determined to loathe. She had a terrible voice. I mean, sometimes it was nice, in the way a mother’s voice is nice as she hums melodies to get her baby to sleep. This song was mellow enough that she’d fool someone who didn’t know better. But in general, she reached for notes out of range and fell flat more often than not. I fucking loved it. Because she was free to be herself in that truck cab. With me. Free to be silly and imperfect and to…well…sing. I might have been reading too much into it, but I doubted Brexley had ever sung for anyone. It wasn’t in her nature.

But she sang for me.

We parked in the shade beneath the copse of trees beside the trailer, then made our way around to the now graveled path to the front door. Royal lazily lifted her head from where she basked in the late evening sun. The so-called retriever was unwilling to abandon her rabbits. Honestly, I wasn’t entirely convinced she was actually a dog.

Brexley was spending most of her evenings camped out on the Rhodes property. Hell, she’d helped me hang the patio lights last month. Was my right-hand lady while we installed fencing all weekend to pen in the soon-to-arrive cattle she’d dubbed Hank and Frankie.

“You can’t name your food,” I protested, wiping sweat from my forehead. She just glared at me, swiping between the photos of the first two animals secured for the property.

“Hank.” She showed me the Angus I’d hand-selected myself. “Frankie.” His hopeful first mate. Bemused, I shook my head as sweat stung my eyes. Working beside Brexley was like outrunning one of the billowing storm clouds that blew in here. You knew your time was limited. Beautiful fury on the horizon. She’d lasted twenty-five minutes after my sopping shirt hit the dirt before she was in my arms. Devouring her mouth, I dropped the shovel, exchanging it for my girl. She was up and around my waist in a heartbeat, kissing back as fiercely as she took it. The contractors brought our union to a halt with their catcalls and applause. I flipped them the bird, earning a chorus of laughter as she found her feet.

“You’re mine when they leave,” she promised, cupping my erection through the denim. I groaned, fighting the desire to grind into her open palm. I could give a shit less about ears too close. I wanted her…lusty, naughty, right here and now. Brexley shook her head like my intentions were plastered over my face.

“Get to work!” I barked over her shoulder. More laughter mingled through the chaos of construction.

The familiar tapof her keyboard caught my attention as I stepped out of the shower. It had become a comforting reassurance over the last few weeks, her ceaseless work towards that long-buried dream like a balm after long days. Dry and dressed, I’d just finished tidying my stubble line when I realized it had gone silent.

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