“Well. I’ll take that If you don’t mind.” He virtually rips the cup out of my hand and crushes it with one of his, a look of satisfaction crosses his face.
“You won’t be needing that anyway.” I sit and openly stare at his brashness with my mouth gaping wide open, who does he think he is? I opt to say nothing and turn around in my chair. Ignoring him for a little bit.
I watch out of the window as we travel through New Jersey. After an hour or so, we pull up outside a McDonalds. As we get off the coach, I feel Kenni’s hand slip to my lower back and remain there. We walk side by side, he opens the door for me and we’re greeted once again by a long queue.
I study the menu for a couple of minutes, it’s pretty much similar to what they do back home. Kenni asks me what I want and I opt for a bacon and sausage McMuffin and, of course, coffee. Kenni once again refuses to accept any money from me.
After they serve us, we take a seat on a shared table. I note Kenni has two McMuffins and I smile at his healthy appetite. It strikes me how calm I am in his presence, given that we have known each other for less than 24 hours.
We head back to the coach this time hand in hand. It’s weird, because no one else knows us on this trip and I expect to get stared at, but people have just accepted us as a couple and nothing is questioned.
As I’m going up the steps to get back onto the coach Kenni insists on assisting me, this entails copping a feel of my arse. I look back at him, giving him a death stare, whilst he’s laughing his head off. It did feel good having his hands on me.
The coach sets off again and I find myself again looking at the scenery of New Jersey whilst the tour guide is telling us all about its history.
“How old are you Luci?” Kenni’s voice drags me out of the daze that I’d been in.
“24. How old are you?” I return his question, eager to learn anything I can about this mystery man and I’m secretly glad that he asked first.
“28 darlin’. I have one sister and I live on my family’s cattle ranch with my mama and daddy in Texas, if you hadn’t gathered that already. Any of that bother you?” He is actually on tender hooks waiting for my answer. I shake my head indicating no and he smiles.
“I have an older brother and a younger sister and I live with my mum and dad.” He nods his head and bites his bottom lip. I can tell he’s contemplating whether or not to ask his next question.
“You don’t have a man waiting for you back home do you?” He is holding his breath and I once again shake my head indicating no, he lets out the breath he was holding and I all but whisper my next question.
“You?” He looks straight into my eyes and shakes his head. I am more relieved than I thought I would be. We talk about our lives growing up and he speaks fondly of his life on the ranch with his sister and his cousin.
He tells me the ranch is 1000s of acres large, I have no clue what he is talking about. He also tells me he is now running the family ranch alongside his cousin Jed and that he was in New York on business, which answered the unanswered question that I had.
We start travelling through Pennsylvania and stop at a buffet place for lunch, $13 all you can eat, exactly my kind of place. We find a table before going up for food. Kenni is once again the focus of attention in his hat and boots and lots of people stop him to talk to him, each time he draws me in close to his side.
The food is amazing, not exactly gourmet but I was starving and it filled a hole. When we get back to the coach I feel a nap coming on but I don’t want to be rude as if reading my mind Kenni pulls my body into his and places my head on to his chest and wraps his arm around me.
“Sleep darlin’. It’s been a long day. I’ll wake you in a bit.” I smile into his chest and breathe in his aftershave which smells truly scrumptious. After a couple of minutes I feel myself drifting off and I’m surprised by how content I feel in his arms already.
I stir an hour or two later to feeling Kenni rubbing his hand up and down my arm lightly, not hard enough to wake me though, just hard enough to provide comfort.
“Hey.” I say whilst moving out from his embrace and stretching. My top rises a little and he moves quickly to pull it down again, so my stomach is no longer on show. I role my eyes at him and laugh.
“Good timing sweetheart. I was just about to wake you. We’re about to arrive at a small waterfall that we’ll be stopping at.” Sounds interesting. I look out of the window and notice we are indeed pulling up alongside a grassed area and looking out of the window I see the little falls, which is absolutely beautiful.
Everyone piles off the coach again to take pictures and stretch their legs. Kenni and I wander hand in hand down the pavement towards the gorgeous little attraction, lost in our own world.
I reach for my phone and ask Kenni if he minds if I take a selfie of us with the falls in the background, he doesn’t, so we snuggle up together and just as I’m about to take the picture he kisses my cheek. The camera goes off and my head snaps to Kenni’s face. I decide to say nothing and we head back to the coach.
As we’re walking back, Kenni’s phones rings. He pulls it out of his trouser pocket and looks at the screen to see whose ringing him, I assume. He subconsciously scrunches his nose up and looks up into the sky before looking directly at me.
“I need to get this.” He kisses my cheek again and drops my hand whilst turning and walking in the other direction a few feet away from me. Giving him his privacy, I wander on a little further, turn and see him deep in conversation with whomever it is on the other end of the phone. He waves me over to him and I’m shocked when he passes me the phone.
“Who is it?” What is he playing at? I must look panicked because he laughs, pulls me into his chest and places a kiss into my hair. I notice he discreetly smells my hair at the same time.
“It’s my mama. She wants to speak to the woman who has stolen her son away from her.” He’s grinning like the Cheshire cat. Hey, what’s he saying? My heart is now going ten to the dozen. I’m going to bloody kill him. I place the phone to my ear and eventually work up the courage to speak.
“Um. Hello?” I say nervously into the phone, not really sure what to expect. I’m instantly calmed by the soothing voice that comes back at me.
“Hello to you my darlin’. You must be real pretty to have captured my sons heart so soon. Just don’t take any of his shit. I’m his mama and god knows I love him, but, even I know he can be a pig sometimes. It’s ok, I don’t want to overwhelm you sweetheart. You can pass the phone back to Kenni now if you want.” Too fucking late, consider me very much overwhelmed. Shit, speak Luci.
“Ok. Thank you, I think. Don’t worry, I’m starting to get the measure of him. It was nice talking to you.” I timidly pass Kenni the phone back and notice that he isn’t looking amused.
“What did you say to my woman mama?” He is looking into my eyes and is laughing hard at whatever his mother has said. He pulls me into his chest, wraps his arm me and places a kiss on the top of my head. His woman? Really……
“Let’s hope you haven’t scared her off mama. OK, love you too mama. Speak soon.” Then he hangs up and puts his phone away. We head back to the coach and get back on. When we sit down I feel the need to cuddle into him again, so I do and then I have to put up with my head spinning with everything that’s going around in it.