Just Let Go… Read Free Page A

champagne. And you deserve a whole bucket of flowers. Roses.”
    Dreamily she smiled up at him because of all the boys she knew, he was the first one to understand the frilly secrets of Gillian’s heart.
    She’d never seen him like this, so full of ideas and the future, his eyes glittering with excitement. And it was the idea of loving her that brought this big change about. Love truly was a miraculous thing. It could move mountains, it could touch stars and just the thought of it could turn him into the lover she knew he could be.
    She brushed at the grass, realizing that his plan sounded a lot more fun than a quick roll in the chiggers. “You want to wait for prom night?”
    He nodded, reaching for her shirt and firmly buttoning it closed. “I do.”
    “Then we wait,” she said, feeling a little disappointed, and a little relieved.
    With that decided, he took out the old pocket watch from his jeans and checked the time. “I have to head home.”
    “I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”
    “Sure,” he said, kissing her first on the nose, and then more urgently on the lips. Then he pulled the watch from his pocket once again. “Here,” he told her, handing it to her, his face solemn.
    “Why are you giving me this?” she asked, nervous at the seriousness in his voice. “You’re going to stay, right?”
    He laughed. “For a week. This is for you to count down the time. I can’t give you much.” He pressed it into her hands. “Take it.”
    She fingered the worn metal, the scratched glass, and beamed up at him, touched by the gesture. “Really?”
    “Sure. Be good.”
    “Aren’t I always?” she asked, not quite as happy about that as she should be. “You’re going to rent a tux?”
    He glanced over, eyes unblinking. “Sure.”
    “You’ll look nice in a tux. Nearly as good as you’ll look without it,” she teased.
    “You have a very dirty mind,” he teased in return. So normal, so happy, so perfect.
    “Thank you for noticing.”
    As he started over the hill, Gillian held the watch close to her heart, and fell back onto the grass, not caring too much about the chiggers at the moment.
    Five more days, and then they’d be making love. She should buy some sexy lingerie. Sexy, but not trampy. Maybe white. A soft ecru that matched her skin.
    Maybe after that, she could get him to change his mind and stay. A little white lace, some dramatic cleavage. A man’s biological urges were a powerful force. She pulled her shirt away from her chest and checked. Feeling more confident, she silently thanked God for giving her perky tits and a curvy ass that would never go fat.
    Prom night. Five days till paradise. And she wanted to make their night together just as special for him as it was going to be for her.
    Looking back, she should have realized the truth, but Gillian had never been skilled at reading signs that didn’t point in her own fortuitous direction. Five days later, all that changed, but at least then she had someone to blame.
    Easy-loving, easy-lying, easy-leaving Austen Hart.

1
     
    B ROKEN HEARTS WERE A familiar cause of mayhem in Tin Cup, Texas. Arnold Cervantes had broadsided his girlfriend’s F-150 with his riding lawnmower after he learned she’d been stepping out on him with the landscaper. When Doc Emerson filed for divorce, Mrs. Emerson had laced her husband’s tapioca pudding with a laxative, a charge that was ultimately overturned by Judge Lansdale, who was the second cousin to the defendant. Oscar Ramirez had flown his wife’s plus-sized unmentionables in the Memorial Day parade after she refused him certain sexual favors which Harley considered his right, but which were also illegal according to Texas state law.
    In the three years since Gillian Wanamaker had been sworn in as sheriff of Tin Cup, she’d seen a lifetime’s worth of passion, foolishness and general human stupidity. In Gillian’s humble opinion, people needed to practice more self-control and show a little concern