King's Country (Oil Kings #4) - Marie Johnston Page 0,93

Dawson King.” She brushed her lips along my jaw. “You’re pretty hot in a tux, did you know that?”

I skimmed my hands down the back of her silky dress until I cupped her butt cheeks. I gathered the material of her skirt, hitching it higher and higher. “I want to peel this dress off you with my teeth, but first I’m going to take you against the counter in it. What do you think about that, my dear wife?”

She tapped her chin. “Hmm. I think there’s no better way to put the King–Cartwright feud in the grave than fucking on the island in a wedding dress and a tux.”

“Time to make it official.”

Chapter 17

Kate

I parked outside of Creek Coffee. I’d messaged everyone for their order. Except for Aiden. He had the same drink everywhere. Coffee. With cream. He didn’t drink coffee often, but when he did, it was the same.

Breezing in, I nodded at the table of older men who played cards most mornings at the coffee shop. Taya grinned from behind the counter.

“Kate! Nice to see you. That time of year?”

I laughed. “Sure is.”

Grabbing coffee on the morning the guys worked cattle had become tradition. Dawson provided the early-morning brew, and I picked up the midmorning stash. It gave me an excuse to get out of the pens.

I didn’t mind working cattle. It wasn’t like I did more than wave my arms to keep cattle from escaping the group and avoiding the corrals. An entire day of being with Aiden, except we didn’t get to really talk. An entire day of that dragged on.

I enjoyed chatting with Kendall, Eva, Savvy, and now Bristol. But the coffee shop offered an escape. A way to feel like I contributed more to the family than waving my arms around.

Regardless, coming to King’s Creek to hang out with the rest of the family during the spring and fall were my favorite times of the year. Aiden and I tried to drive together. An entire hour with my husband. Often he drove, which meant he wasn’t working. Almost as often, he fielded phone calls, but when he wasn’t immersed in business, I prattled on about work. He listened.

For a woman who’d spent her youth and adult years listening to others, it was like someone yanked my plug out and nothing but rambling spewed out. The people I dealt with at work. Cool facts I’d looked up during my shifts for the patrons. Gushing over my coworkers’ vacation stories. I was a reference librarian. I had more interaction with patrons than my coworkers, and if any career could compete against the medical field for TMI, it’d be mine.

“Yeah, I have some, um . . . discharge, coming from . . . Do you have books on STDs?”

“Can you help me apply for a job? I got fired from the gas station last week because my boss thought I stole money from the till. They think I did it for drug money. But I’ve been clean since my husband caught me in bed with his brother, who’s also his cousin . . .”

“I need to buy a plane ticket and the print’s so small, can you read it off for me? Here. Here’s my credit card. Just put that in.”

So, it was nice to have someone listen to me for a change.

Taya was ready at the register by the time I reached the counter. There was a younger girl behind her, making a smoothie for a drive-through customer.

“Ready?” I asked, holding my phone with the list of everyone’s request. It was substantial, but I never called ahead. The coffee shop was my solace. It wasn’t that I was a city girl—the trailer park I’d grown up in could hardly count as urban sophistication. It was just that I accepted I wasn’t cowgirl material for more than a couple of hours. I wore the boots for practical reasons, and I’d used them enough that they made me look legit. But the jeans, the hoodies? They weren’t me.

Or they were more me than I cared to admit. But I’d worked hard to blend into an environment that wasn’t crass and rambunctious and unrefined. I worked hard to remember where I’d come from and to keep from going back. And to convince myself that I didn’t miss it at all.

I rattled off the orders, paid, and went to sit in the corner opposite the card players. The hazard of a job that was so quiet: I required more solitude