The Prodigal Texan. Lynnette Kent

should sit up, get down, go home. Jud Ritter was bad news, as at least one girl in Homestead had learned the hard way. He was drunk enough to seduce Miranda, for lack of anyone better, but she wasn’t drunk enough to succumb. She didn’t think she could get that drunk without passing out first.

      Then he kissed her.

      She gasped, tasting the liquor on his breath. And there was more…the firmness of his lips moving gently and deliberately over hers, the faint lime scent of his aftershave. She put up a hand—to stop him?— which came to rest on his shoulder, square and solid under his shirt. Without thought, she lifted her other hand to his hair, running her fingers through the short, sleek strands, pausing to cup the nape of his neck, the curve of his head.

      And now they were both involved in the kiss, as he coaxed her response with patience and persistence and—dammit—expertise. She wouldn’t have him thinking she was a total novice, though that might not be far from the truth. By the time she was finished with him, he’d know he’d been kissed….

      Somewhere along the way, though, her intentions grew wispy, then evaporated altogether. Mouths fusing, releasing, the clash of teeth. Hands exploring with long, savoring strokes or desperate clutches at sweat-slicked skin. Night air cool on heated bodies pressed ruthlessly together. Tension building, desire pounding in her veins. This, this was the reason she’d waited. He was the reason….

      “Jud.” She whispered his name, and he stopped his exquisite torture of her breasts to look into her face. She saw his eyes focus.

      In the next instant, he took his hands off her body and jerked away. Choking, growling like a rabid wolf, he partly fell, partly jumped out of the truck bed, hit the ground on his hands and knees and stayed there, swearing.

      Miranda lay on her back where he’d left her, staring up at cold stars in a black sky, her mind an absolute blank.

      “What the hell are you doing?” Jud dragged himself to his feet using the edge of the tailgate. “You let just any sonofabitch maul you?”

      He grabbed her hands and drew her to sit up, like a rag doll who’d lost half her stuffing. “Any woman with half a brain would know better.”

      She put a hand to her head, where her brain used to be. “I didn’t—” Past and present swirled together…she might have been sixteen again, standing at the door to the high school gym where she was supposed to meet Jud for the homecoming dance. He’d said to wait for him there, in the note she’d found in her locker.

      “Are you crazy?” he’d demanded, when she stepped out to claim him. She showed him the note, and he laughed. The crowd of kids watching them laughed, too.

      “If you had half a brain,” he’d said, “you’d know better.” Then, with his arm around his date, he’d walked past Miranda into the dance.

      “Pull yourself together,” he ordered, with a wave at her wrecked blouse and wrinkled skirt. “Go home, before you get tarred with the same brush they used on me. That’d ruin your election chances, for sure.”

      When he reached for the whiskey, Miranda focused enough to grab it. “No. I’m not leaving you a single, solitary drop.” Scrambling on her knees to the other side of the truck, she launched the bottle into the darkness beyond her vehicle. The satisfying crash of glass shattering on asphalt announced her success.

      Jud swore again, even more fluently.

      Still kneeling, Miranda fixed her bra and drew the edges of her blouse together. One of the buttons had popped—or been torn off. She’d have to wear her jacket into the house and hope her mother didn’t notice.

      When she scooted to the end of the tailgate, Jud held out a hand. Miranda told him what he could do with his hands, his truck, and the rest of his life before she hopped down without help.

      He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her around to face him. “Look, I—”

      As she pivoted, Miranda slapped him with the full force of her turn. “Don’t talk to me. I don’t care what you think. I was stupid—gee, that’s a surprise. But I’ll get over it, all the easier if I never see your face again.”

      She’d reached for the door handle of her truck before she remembered that she had his keys. “I’ll send the sheriff out in the morning,” she yelled. “He’ll have your keys.”

      “Hey,” Jud shouted, and started running. “You can’t—”

      But Miranda was behind the wheel with the motor roaring before he’d covered half the distance. She backed into a plume of dust, skidded onto the pavement and gave Jud a wave as she passed him, already doing forty-five.

      She didn’t slow down until she reached the driveway at the farm. And only then did she acknowledge the tears running down her cheeks and dripping off her chin.

      CHAPTER TWO

      December

      Four years later

      TRADITION IN HOMESTEAD, Texas, demanded that every bridal couple drive away from the ceremony in a suitably decorated vehicle. Noah and Greer Kelley would be no exception. While their reception—a hoedown and barbecue—continued in the town park, friends of the happy couple went to work on Project Newlywed. The groom had parked his truck in plain sight as a decoy while trying to hide his bride’s red Blazer, a futile effort that gave the decorating committee the opportunity to embellish two vehicles, instead of one.

      “I brought tin cans,” Miranda told the crew surrounding Greer’s car. “Plus string and crepe paper.”

      “We’d better hurry and get this done, then.” Wade Montgomery, the sheriff of Loveless County, surveyed the Blazer. He held a can of shaving cream in one hand and a white shoe polish applicator in the other. “I can’t imagine Noah’s going to wait much longer to have Greer to himself. I remember thinking I’d never get Callie away from our wedding reception.”

      Kristin Gallagher wrapped a ribbon around the antenna and tied a bow at the top. “I imagine Greer has some ideas of her own,” she said, with a glance at her husband, Ryan, who was assisting Wade with the shoe polish.

      Miranda caught the sexy grin Ryan sent his wife in return and felt her cheeks heat up. There had been a rash of weddings in Homestead recently—all her friends seemed to be pairing off, leaving her the odd woman out. An old maid was what she was, an old maid who still lived with her mother.

      But this old maid was the town mayor. Miranda couldn’t help being proud of what she’d accomplished, for herself and for the hometown she loved.

      “What can I do?” Ethan Ritter took the bag of tin cans Miranda still held and set it on the ground. “Kayla’s going to come looking for me any minute.” Ethan was another recently married citizen, a man who, more than most, deserved some lucky breaks in his life. And his wife, Kayla, definitely counted as good luck.

      Once the group had done its best—or worst, depending on how you looked at it—the participants stood back for a moment to admire their handiwork. Miranda happened to be facing the Loveless County courthouse, so she was the first to notice a man approaching from the far side of the square. A long, lean drink of water he was, wearing boots and jeans and a chambray shirt under a leather jacket, but no hat on his head, cowboy or otherwise. The sun sat low in the sky behind him, leaving his face in shadow. He walked with a distinctive limp and she knew of no one in town who’d been injured lately. Obviously he wasn’t a local.

      “Who’s that?” she asked, of no one in particular.

      “I don’t know,” Ryan said, squinting into the sun. When she glanced at Ethan, she found his eyes hard, his mouth set in a straight line. “That’s my brother Jud.”

      Miranda put a hand over her belly button, just at the spot where her stomach had suddenly shrunk into a tight, throbbing ball. Four years felt like no more than four hours, as humiliation flooded through her. How could she face Jud Ritter