Page 27 of Waiting in Wyoming
Dylan grinned at her. “But did youlike it?”
Meyra thought for a moment. Had she liked it? She’d liked kissing Calloway Grady before. She had definitely been attracted to him. She had talked to Miranda about how Calloway had made her feel. Everything she could think of—Miranda was a criminal profiler. She understood people far better than Meyra ever would. Miranda agreed with her—Meyra had definitely beenattractedto Calloway.
But was she attracted to Brandt, too?
Her fingers started to tingle as she imagined pressing her hands against his chest like she had in the lobby. Brandt had felt very strong beneath his sweater. She’d wanted to touch him.She’d definitely wanted to see if his muscles were as nice as they’d felt. Again. She’d run her hands over his chest that last time. And her lips burned, when she thought of his pressed against hers that way.
She hadn’t felt like this with Calloway. Not really.
Her cheeks got really hot. “It felt really different, Dylan. Not like kissing a guy has before. I didn’t even remember we were in the lobby. His family had just left and then he was there. And he kissed me. It didn’t last very long. Just one second—but it felt like so much longer.”
“Did you want it to last longer?” Dylan just looked at her for a moment. “You know what happens next with a guy, right? I mean, you’re not like a twenty-five-year-old virgin or anything?”
“Yikes. The things I hear around this place.”
Meyra turned. Daisy was there. Her closest friend in the world. “Brandt kissed me. Again. He said he has been waiting for years. And he wasn’t waiting any longer. He has aplan.And I kind of…really liked it when he did. And, no, Dylan, I am not a virgin.”
“Hallelujah. Around this place, you just never know. I mean, I know Devvie isn’t a virgin. We, uh, really liked the boys who lived next door for a while there. They were twenty-one and twenty-three at the time, and she was eighteen, and I was twenty, and well—things happened. But Dahlia and Dorie, totally clueless. But you two are older than I am, so…” Dylan liked to talk. A lot. She was also really, really smart, like Charlotte. Like genius smart and everything.
People just didn’t always realize that, Meyra thought.
“No. I am not a virgin,” Meyra told her. She was used to this kind of talking. Her sisters and her cousins had talked this way forever, with their friends, too. “And I have dated other guys before, too. I just…it felt really different when Brandt kissed me. But it didn’t last very long, and it could have been somethingI imagined. But he did say he was thinking about…carrying me away or something.”
“How utterly romantic,” Daisy said, sighing. Then she frowned. “Or…maybe it’s just barbaric, instead? I guess it just depends, right? On context? Reception? Whether you really want to be carried off and everything? Guys can be so confusing.”
No kidding.
“Possibly. I think this calls for an experiment,” Dylan said.
“What kind?” Meyra wasn’t sure she wanted to know, actually. Not with that look in Dylan’s eyes.
“Kiss him again! Just go right up to him and lay one on him. I mean, this dude says he has a planfor you? Well, is that something you want to just be a passive participant in? Not me.”
“I would definitely not want to be passive participating with that gorgeous man, either,” Daisy said. She grinned, looking like Dylan for just a moment. They did resemble each other a great deal. “I’d be all in if he wanted to carry me away in an all hot, sexy captor kind of way. He has cousins, right? Or his brothers were definitely gorgeous men. Dylan’s right. If he has a plan for you, what do you think it is?”
“Getting her naked as fast as he possibly can, maybe?” Dylan asked. “That would be a lot of fun, Mey. Go for it. You’re off the clock, right? Sneak up there and have some fun.”
“It takes a bit more planning to seduce a man like Brandt than that,” Daisy said. “And…let’s talk about this so-calledplan,anyway.I mean, what exactly did he say? Word for word.”
“I don’t exactly remember. I think I was shocked.” Meyra thought about his words for a moment as Daisy grabbed cookies out of the cabinet and Dylan pulled juice from the refrigerator. “He said he has waited for years. Since he realized I was older than he thought. And he isn’t going to wait any longer, and he has aplan.”
“The way I see it,” Daisy said, dropping the cookies to the table. “You have two real options. You can let him follow this plan for you—without your getting a chance to say what happens. Or you can…come up with a counterplan of your own.”
“But how would I do that? I don’t even know what I want to happen next. I never…even thought about him that way. Until…recently.”
Her cousins just blinked at her like she was crazy. Dylan looked at Daisy. “Is she serious?”
“She is. As far as she’s concerned, Brandt was just her sister Marin’s friend. Although how she could have missed how…utterly delicious he is, I’m not sure. Of course, she has spent most of the last two years in the kitchens, and he’s been in and out of the county for that whole time. He’d be gone sometimes for weeks.”
“Out of sight, out of mind, maybe?” Dylan was looking at her like Meyra was an alien from a different planet or something. “I mean, how could you forget a man likehim? He so beats Cowboy Truckie Tyler by a million miles.”
Dylan had a war going on with her sister Dusty’s fiancé’s brother, Fletcher Tyler. Dylanhadstolen his new truck—so Meyra half understood, but she had been rescuing Devaney from a mad killer, so it was kind of justified in Meyra’s opinion. “I like Fletcher. He is really nice. And he did protect me from that evil Brad.”
“Who was that?”
“The guy who tried to kill Dusty and Nikki that night,” Daisy told her. “He ran them off the road, and Dusty was hurt, and Slater Davis carried her to help. Brad was Hunter Clark’s assistant.”
“Okay. I think I remember reading something about that. But how was Truckie heroic? Because I just don’t believe that.”