At Whit's End (Wells Ranch, #4)(75)
“As much as I love her, she’s not welcome on dates. I left her back at the ranch bunkhouse. The guys are pretty good to her, especially on spaghetti night, so she won’t miss me too much.”
Whit adjusts her seatbelt, stealing a glance at her house as I turn the truck around.
“No babysitter issues tonight?”
Her nostrils flare, lips held in a thin, unyielding line. “Not yet. But the night is still very, very young. Although I didn’t tell Jonas I was going on a date—he thinks I’m going to a book club meeting.”
“Are you in a book club?”
She gently nods. “An online one, but we have a Zoom meeting to drink wine and talk about romance books once a month. It would be fun to start something similar locally.”
“I’ll start a book club with ya. Not the best at reading, but I can skim the words and look at the pictures.”
Laughter wracks her slender body, and her palm shoots up to cover her mouth, a blush settling over her cheeks. And she looks over at me with a smile so full of light I feel like a kid who won the biggest prize at the fair.
“If the type of books I read had pictures, it would be straight-up porn,” she says.
Oh. Damn. Okay.
There’s been plenty of clues between her mention of naughty books and all her enamel pins talking about cocks and book boyfriends and reading making her wet. But I didn’t think it was quite like that.
“Does that make you uncomfortable?” she asks.
“It makes me uncomfortable to think about how often I see Kate reading books that look like yours while we’re all around the kitchen table eating breakfast.” I swipe my hand across my mouth. “But I’m really damn curious about you reading them.”
“They’re a fun escape. It’s nice to get my mind off work or Jonas or my family. I just want to read about a hot guy washing his girl’s hair and cooking her favorite meal after giving her back-to-back orgasms.”
Those words flow directly from her mouth to my mental list entitled Things Whit Likes:
Coffee with two sugars
Enamel pins
Reading
A hot guy to wash her hair and cook her favorite meal (need to find out what this meal is!!)
Back-to-back orgasms
The other ranch hands complain so often about women needing to come with a manual, I really thought this shit would be harder than it is. But Whit’s handing me everything I need to know on a platter.
My eyebrows waggle in her direction. “Ooh. Well, now I’m even more interested in being part of your book club. Especially if the club is only me and you. Clothing optional—no, clothing forbidden, actually.”
She scoffs, but there’s fire in her eyes. “That’s not a very gentlemanly way to talk to me on our first date.”
“Hey, you’re the one who got me thinking about orgasms.”
“Please.” She tilts her head, calling me out with a single look. “You couldn’t bring yourself to say hi when you dropped Jonas off yesterday because all you’ve been thinking about since the weekend is orgasms.”
“And who is responsible for that?” I pull my hand from the steering wheel momentarily to point at her, while simultaneously squeezing our joined hands with the other. “Okay, change of topic. What else do you like to do?”
“At this point, reading is the only hobby I have time for because I can pull out my Kindle and sneak in a few pages whenever I have a free moment. Consider it a testament to how much I like you that I didn’t bring it with me tonight.”
“You told Jonas you were going to book club, and you didn’t bring a book?”
She tucks her tongue into her cheek. “As if he pays that much attention. He zoned out the second I said ‘book.’ Anyway, aside from hanging out with my ten-year-old, what do you like to do?”
I recoil. “That makes it sound like I’m a creep. Um, I hang out with Betty, go to rodeos, fish, spend time with my mom.”
“One day when Jonas is an adult, I hope ‘spend time with my mom’ is on the list of things he likes to do.” She squints at the setting sun, pulling down the visor and giving a shoulder shrug. “I don’t have high hopes, given our current relationship and the relationship I have with my parents. But it would be cool.”
“You don’t have a good relationship with your parents?”
“I mean…they’ve never done anything wrong. And when Jonas was a baby, I wouldn’t have survived without them—Alex has never been particularly helpful. He wasn’t there when Jonas was born, and I wish I would’ve listened when Blair told me to leave him off the birth certificate. But anyway…” An indifferent sigh slips from her lips. My mind is reeling over the fact that her shitty ex wasn’t even there for the birth of his kid. Hell, if I could go back in time, I’d fucking drag him there myself. Whit continues, “My parents and I aren’t really close, you know? They’ve always felt more like…familiar strangers.”
“Familiar stranger is exactly how I would describe my dad.” I wring my hand around the steering wheel, and the truck lurches onto the gravel road leading into the drive-in theater. “I don’t think you need to worry about having that kind of relationship with Jonas. You care way too much to let it happen.”