Read My Lips: Restricted Version

RML: Chapter 6 (R)

Chapter Six


Amber’s eyes followed Lincoln as he exited the stable, completely baffled at what just happened between them.  The warmth that spread through her as soon as he grabbed her wrist still made her skin tingle.  And when he grinned...good Lord, about twenty years faded off his features.  Her heart just about stopped.  He was too freaking handsome for his own good...and hers.

This was not the same man she met down under the willow tree.  That Linc had been cynical and ill-mannered, but this one...Amber was still having trouble figuring out what had changed his attitude towards her.  She didn’t miss the way he kept staring at her mouth, and she surely didn’t fail to notice the way his brown eyes glowed slightly around the outer ring when he smiled at her.

Slowly, her gaze went from his broad shoulders down to his rear, flexing deliciously in those dark jeans he’d worn as part of his tuxedo outfit in the wedding.  Pure female appreciation ran through her.  Yummy.

Amber had never had a fascination for the jean-wearing, scruffy around the edges, country boy type, but now, she could see the appeal in Lincoln Martin.  It wasn’t just his handsome face or youthful grin...or those tight gluteus maximuses.  No, that man wore his heart on his sleeve, and tried like hell to hide it.  He was hurting inside.  And Amber wanted to give him a giant hug.

Or a hot kiss, she couldn’t decide.

Chloe sent her a questioning look, arching an eyebrow, and Amber hastily turned away from her sister.  It was bad enough that Chloe mothered her just as tenaciously as their own mother, but if she believed Amber fostered any romantic notions towards any man...  Well, let’s just say that Amber worked too damn hard to finally get out on her own, she wasn’t about to screw that up.  Chloe would have her packed up and half-way back to Little Rock if Amber so much as hinted at dating while on her own.

Not that it was any of Chloe’s business.  She just didn’t think Amber capable of handling the single scene on her own.

And in all honesty, neither did Amber.  She might get asked on dates while living here, and she might accept a few, but Lincoln Martin was out of her league.  He knew too much about what happened between a man and woman.  Amber felt like a tongue-tied teenager around him sometimes.  Which really wasn’t that far from the truth.  She was several years younger than him.  Twelve, if what she’d read off other’s lips earlier was accurate.  So, when she gets to forty, he’d be fifty-two...when she turned seventy-three, he’d be eighty-five.  They would never share the same decade, and that kind of sucked.  Because she found him to be highly attractive and actually a lot nicer than she’d originally assumed.  Just ornery and childish and extremely thick in the skull.  But hey...he was a man, and she’d never have to see him if she didn’t want to.

What was with the “If you need anything” business?

Amber darted a quick glance at Chloe again.  Had her sister put him up to that?  Lincoln didn’t really seem eager to offer any help if she needed it.

Chloe resumed clearing away the floral arrangements on the tables, but she fostered a self-satisfied smile, and that made Amber frown.  She didn’t need “anything.”  She didn’t need her sister having her watched twenty-four-seven, and she certainly didn’t need good-looking cowboys poking around her, just because Chloe threatened him.  Amber would much rather Lincoln poke around her only if he so desired, but that wouldn’t happen.  

Lincoln Martin honestly couldn’t have any interest or desire in her -- why would he? -- and that was just peachy.  Amber wasn’t going to waste her time and energy going after a man that didn’t want anything to do with her.  Besides, she told herself as she picked up the rest of the broken glass, he’s much too old for me.  Forty!  To think!  

The rumors that would fly from that pairing!  Amber had had enough business with rumors in her lifetime.  She didn’t move five hundred miles just to start more.

Nope...if she ever needed “anything,” she wouldn’t call on him.  She’d deal with it herself, just like she’d always done -- if her family ever allowed her to.

*****

Cleveland Martin, the patriarch of the Martin family, was perched on the top step of the back porch with a cigar in his mouth and a bottle of scotch by his feet.  Two glasses rested with the bottle.  Linc approached him warily, the heels of his boots dragging in the dirt.  His dad, with those accessories, usually meant a Father-To-Son talk, and Linc was too old to still be getting those.

“Hey, Pop,” Linc said, sitting down next to him.  “Mom and Sally kick you out of the kitchen.”

“A man can’t smoke in his own house anymore,” his dad said with a small smile.

“It hasn’t been your home in a long while, but you’re more than welcome to light up anytime you choose.”

His dad chuckled.  “That’s mighty kind of you, Linc, but I’ve got to think about my grandbaby.”  He looked intently at the lit end of the cigar and sighed.  “Looks like I’ll have to give them up, huh?”

Linc snorted.  “I think you’re old enough to do anything you damn well please.”

A small grunt was the reply to that.  He waved at the horizon, mostly the clearing of his old pasture land out past his new, shorter property line.  “You ever go down to the planning department and figure out what they’re adding out there?”

“Yeah.”  Linc flexed his cut hand, feeling the sting, and he took a moment to lift the bloody napkin and study his palm in the setting sunlight.  Shit.  Amber was right.  He’d need stitches.  The slice didn’t reach bone, but it was pretty damn close.  Good thing his momma used to be a nurse.  She’d patch him up.

“What happened to your hand?”

Linc covered it up again.  “Just a small cut from some glass.”  He jerked his chin toward the construction site.  “That’s gonna be an apartment complex, and over to the north, a couple of subdivisions with a strip mall, and the old Keegan place will be a golf course.”

“So, you’ll finally get some neighbors out here, huh?” his dad asked, puffing on his cigar.

“Won’t make a difference,” Linc replied.  “I don’t plan on being very neighborly.”

“No...I didn’t think you would.  You’re gonna turn into that crabby, old man with ‘Keep Off’ signs in his yard, ain’t ya?”

Linc smiled briefly.  “I might.”

“A man can never have too many friends, Linc.”

“I’m old enough to live alone and crabby if I want to, Pop,” Linc said.  His father nodded in agreement, and then Cleveland sat up a bit straighter, and Linc groaned inwardly.  Here it comes.

“Speaking of being old enough,” his dad began.  “I think we should have a drink, you and I.”

“Dad...I’m forty.  I’ve been legal for quite a while.”  Linc rolled his shoulders, trying to ease some of the day’s tension.  “Besides, alcohol has caused enough problems for one day.  I think I’ll pass.”

But his dad was already sloshing two fingers of scotch in each glass and handing one to Linc.  “You know, son.  You were always the smart one, always doing well in school, getting good grades, going through college on a full honors scholarship.  It still amazes me that a dumb shit-kicker like myself managed to have such a bright boy."

"Umm..thanks?" Linc said warily, but he accepted the scotch.  It was the polite thing to do, after all.

"Now, Wilson...he’s smart, too, but your brother was always more of a doer than a thinker.  Working with his hands and preferring to break a sweat than crack a book.  Made him a bit foolhardy at times, like him letting Macie get on that horse and get his butt tossed into prison for negligence, but he always had the courage to do what was right.  He had the balls to admit he’d been at fault for that.  Courage and intelligence...good traits for a man to have.”

Linc’s dad took a moment to puff on his cigar and squint at the setting sun.  Linc stared down into the amber liquid inside his glass.  There was no use hurrying the old man.  Cleveland Martin eventually got to his point...and he did.  With a sip of his drink and a flick of ash from his smoke, he said, “Courage and intelligence...yup.  Good traits.  Too bad you ain’t got them both."

"Gee, thanks, pop...really.”  

“You’re quite welcome,” his dad replied with the same measure of sarcasm.  "Now, on the other foot, along with that remarkable intelligence of yours, you got yourself a bit of a temper that camouflages for courage on occasion.  You get mad enough, you’d dodge bullets, and that gets you in just as much deep shit as your brother tends to collect from not thinking.”

“I do hope you’ve got a point to all this, Pop,” Linc inserted and holding the scotch glass in his good palm.

His father swirled his drink.  “Most of the time, you’re smart enough to keep that hotheadedness locked away.  The older you boys got, the better you’ve both been at controlling your baser instincts, and I know your mother is glad to see it.  You two were so different, yet so much alike, growing up, ya’ll were a challenge and a half for your poor mother.  For the longest time, she didn’t know what to do with either of you. You got the brains and Wil got the guts...”

Linc had never heard this version of the Talk, so he was curious as to where it was going.  Puffing on his cigar, his dad studied him.  “But even with that smart brain of yours, there was one thing you never learned, Linc,” Cleveland said carefully.  

“What’s that, Pop?”

“That the drink doesn’t cause the problems; the man drinking it does.”

Linc breath came out in a whoosh.  Well, hell...  He felt like he’d been sucker punched...by his own father.  “So, that’s your point,” he muttered and thought about pouring his scotch out onto the ground just to be ornery.  Instead, he drained his glass in a single swallow.  His dad eyed him through the smoke of his cigar.  Linc concentrated on the last drop sliding back down to the bottom of the glass.  He knew everything he’d done and said today was his own fault -- he wasn’t that thick-headed -- and he knew it wasn’t because he’d gotten wasted at his brother’s wedding.  It was because he was a dumbass, wallowing in his own brand of misery, and people around him tended to get the brunt of his pain.  Linc also knew he’d already fixed it all, made his apologies.  He set the glass aside and stood up.  “Well, Pop, thanks for the lesson--”

“Sit down, Lincoln.  I’m not done with you yet.”

Linc’s butt hit the step again.  When his father used that tone of voice, a wise man did as he was told.

“Now, I noticed that you upset a couple of ladies today,” his dad went on, pouring more drink into Linc’s glass.

“Did Mom tell you that?”  Linc sighed as he eyed his second drink.  If he had to suffer, then he’d do it in style -- Cleveland Martin style.  “You got another cigar around here?”

Cleveland reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out another one.  He handed it to Linc with the cutter and box of matches.  Linc sniffed the length of the dark brown cigar.  Ah, Padron...only the best for his Pop.  

“I got eyes, son.  They may be old and getting older, but they ain’t blind yet.”

Linc took his time to light the cigar properly and gingerly picked up his scotch to take a sip.  The first burn down his throat had soothed him slightly.  Now, he savored the warmth, mingling with the peppery espresso flavor of the tobacco.  His hand didn’t sting so much anymore, either.  “I already apologized to them,” Linc said.

“Did you now?”

Linc glanced at his dad.  “Of course.”

“And did you ask for their forgiveness, like the Good Lord would want you to?”

Huffing out with impatience and smoke and his bottled-up temper, Linc said, “Don’t go and bring God into this, Pop.  He and I have nothing to do with each other anymore.”

“God created you, son,” his dad replied, stubbing out his cigar under his boot heel.

“You and Mom created me.”

His dad chuckled again.  “Yup, I guess we had a small part to play in that.  But the Lord gave us the means.  He gave us everything blessed and wonderful in this world.”

Linc bit down on his molars, trying like hell to keep the anger inside.  “Oh, yeah?  Then why does He take away everything blessed and wonderful at His whim?”

Cleveland Martin shifted to face Linc.  “You talking about Macie?”

“Damn straight, I am.  She was the most wonderful thing in my world, and He took her away from me.  I can’t believe in a god that would do that.”

His father rubbed the graying whiskers at his chin.  “Macie was a blessing, that is true.  She had spirit in her.  But would you trade your time together, your love for her, just to have her back?”

Linc rolled his eyes.  “That’s an asinine question.  What’s the point of having her back if I can’t love her?”

“So, it’s all about you?”

The temper nearly burst through.  “No!  Dammit!  You’re twisting my words.”

His dad shook his head calmly.  “There you go, getting all mad again.  I’m just trying to understand your motive here.  Do you love Macie enough to give her up?”

“I...”  Linc clamped his mouth shut.  Of course, he loved her enough to give her up, but that would mean giving her up.  Stupid Father-to-Son Talks.  “The question is moot, Pop.  She’s gone.  I can’t get her back.”

“But you’re still hanging onto her,” his dad told him.

Linc fell into himself.  He hung onto her because without that, he’d have no reason to live.  “What else can I do?”

Cleveland drained his glass, set it carefully at his feet and clapped a broad hand on his son’s shoulder.  “Let her go, son.  It’s true that you can’t get her back, and it’s true that you do love her, but you’ve got to love her enough to let her go.  You’ve got to find happiness again...maybe fall in love with someone else.”

A flash of Amber’s smile crossed Linc’s mind.  He pushed it away, just as he tried to push down the lump stuck in his throat.  “I can’t, Pop.  I just can’t...and even if I could, I’m too old to fall in love again.”

His dad glanced out across the yard.  “You’d be surprised what you’re not too old to do.”

“Oh, yeah?  Like what?”

A secretive smile inched onto Cleveland Martin’s lips.  “Maybe learn a little of that courage your brother’s got so much of.”

“Wil can keep his foolhardy courage, as you put it.”

“And yet, Wil fell in love again,” his father reminded him.  “I’d have to say, maybe it’s not so foolhardy after all.”

Linc scowled.  “I’ll stick to my brains, all the same.  I think better that way.”

“Thinking’s not everything, son,” his dad said, standing up and gathering his Talk accessories.  “Sometimes, you’ve got the stop thinking to be happy.”  Cleveland gave Linc a final nod and went into the house.  Linc sat on the porch step, finished his smoke and drink, and stared out at his land until his eyes fell on the construction site across the way.  His dad might have a point.  Those bulldozers and mounds of fresh earth pushed to the side told him exactly what his thinking and brains got him.

If he’d had the courage to get rid of that damned horse after it killed Macie, he might still have his family’s heritage spread out before him...

Then again, a small voice echoed inside his brain, Wil might never had met Sally and fallen in love with her, and you might have never been dropped by a wild-haired, deaf beauty with delectable pink lips...the highlight of your year.

Linc grunted.  He really needed to stop thinking about Amber.  His momma with a sewing needle and a bottle of antiseptic would do the trick.  Gawd, he hated getting stitches.  Elizabeth Martin had a soft touch when she patched him up, but she always figured he had more pain tolerance than he truly did.  Linc cringed, just thinking of that needle piercing his skin.  He’d hold it inside -- he always did -- but getting the flu shot last November just about made him cry.

At least, I’ll forget about Amber for a while.

He stood and entered the house.