The Virgin's Revenge: Rancho del Cielo, Book 4

by Dee Tenorio

  Susie’s pause this time didn’t seem sleepy at all. Her eyes had narrowed to intensely alert slits. “Excuse me?”

  Amanda shrugged. “That’s what I overheard. Cole said Locke forced him into this. This being me. Locke wants Cole to marry me and keep me safe since everyone on earth knows I’m incapable of doing much more than converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.”

  “When are you going to stop letting the way your brother treats you color the way you see yourself?” Susie demanded suddenly, eyes flashing and tone fierce. “No one decides what you can or can’t do but you. Who you are and what you’re capable of accomplishing is up to you.”

  Amanda stared at her friend, surprise setting her back in her seat.

  “You think I was born this way?” Susie demanded. “Just popped out thinking to myself, when I grow up, I’m going to open my own store and everyone is going to cheer in the streets while I do it? That I didn’t have to fight past people who said I couldn’t do anything? That I didn’t have what it took to be successful? Of course I did!”

  “I know, but—”

  “But what?”

  “But you’re…you.” Amanda knew she sounded lame, especially in the face of Susie’s growing fire. “I’m me.” Me, who has never done anything. Never had the confidence to think she could get much accomplished. Susie, on the other hand, could probably be dropped in the ocean and still come out of it with a net full of fish and a pissed-off grumble as she stomped onto dry land.

  “So? Is there something wrong with you I’m not aware of? Even if there was, it’s not like people with difficulties are incapable of going after what they want.”

  “I know that.” She did. The trouble was…she didn’t know what she wanted. Until this thing with Cole and Locke, she’d never had the nerve to reach out for anything at all. Could never decide one way or another what path she wanted to take, forever undecided and trapped by it. “It’s not just Locke,” she admitted softly. “It was never that he told me I couldn’t do something. I can’t have you thinking he held me back on purpose.”

  “He didn’t help, though,” Susie grumbled.

  No, he didn’t. When she’d stopped making choices, Locke had done what he always did. He picked up the slack. Yes, he steered her into the most reasonable options—college within driving distance, insisting she stay within the family home to cut costs—but taking care of everything until she felt suffocated.

  Or was it jealousy that fed her resentment?

  She blinked, shocked, only at herself this time. Was that what bothered her so much? Locke’s decisiveness digging like a piece of glass under her skin, a constant reminder that she had none?

  I’ve got no courage, she thought, less in answer to Susie’s question and more to her own. If she had it, she’d have moved out years ago. Decided what she wanted to do with her life. Told Cole how she really felt about him. She rubbed the sore space between her brows with the back of her hand.

  Susie sighed, then dropped to her haunches in front of Amanda. “Look at this.” She held up one of the glossy lingerie catalogs she’d brought over to show Amanda. “You did this. You took a risk for me, helped me come up with the entire layout, design and direction. I could never have put this together without you, and you did it without a second thought. You’re talented and generous to everyone but yourself. You’re wicked smart, and you could be anything you set your mind to. Why can’t you believe in yourself enough to try something for you?”

  Amanda took the small catalog and stared down at it. The front cover was black, with a woman’s nearly bare body draped across a chaise lounge, her golden skin almost glowing as it emerged from the shadow’s embrace. Her pale hair was pulled into a loose knot on the top of her head, tendrils trailing from her nape. A long string of pearls traced the line of her spine while her arms bent to cup her own breasts beyond the camera’s view. At her hip, an elaborate design of seed pearls and ribbon draped the curves of her ass, revealing everything and nothing at all.

  There was no way to see her face, but Amanda remembered taking that picture well. She’d been fantasizing at the time, her face pressed to the top of the chaise, hot and flushed, as she pretended that Cole was the one taking her picture instead of Susie. Her body looked incredible, far better than it had in the proof. She stared at it, almost a little mesmerized.

  She could almost see the Amanda she wanted to be in that picture. It was an illusion, she knew, but a tangible one. A reminder of what could be. A woman not crippled by indecision or confusion. That picture was of a woman who knew what—and who—she wanted.

  Susie went back to the couch. “You look so good on that thing, we should probably distribute it somewhere there’ll be a ton of men hanging out.”

  Amanda’s head swiveled to face her friend. “Uhhhh…aren’t we marketing to women?”

  Susie’s smirk did not help. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “The sarcasm isn’t necessary, you know.”

  “Apparently, it is. Women don’t mind coming into the shop, but men are more likely to use the website or the order form to get what they want.”

  A queasy feeling settled in the bottom of Amanda’s gut. Ohhhh, this was a bad idea. Really bad. She’d thought the catalog would only be available in the store to established customers, most of whom were women. Or sent to possible vendors who’d never meet her. Not bandied around town where her brothers could possibly be embarrassed by it.

  “Oh, come on. I’m kidding. Like I really want my ass plastered all over town. But you have to admit, getting Cole to see this thing would blow his mind—” Susie’s mouth curled with a touch of feminine evil, “—I guarantee you he’d at least be walking funny after finding it. It’d be all he could think about. And a man who can’t stop thinking about you naked is a man who’ll stop at nothing to get you that way. At the very least, he’s going to be a lot easier to trip into your bed.”

  Susie was teasing, but the sentiment didn’t settle well on top of the idea of her brothers seeing her half naked. “How about I just club him over the head with a crowbar? Keep it really romantic.”

  “I’m not sure that would work,” Susie replied thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure guys have to actually be somewhat conscious to get it up.”

  Amanda glared but Susie remained unruffled. She simply crossed her arms defiantly. “You’re the one who wanted to torment the men in your life. I can’t have a little imaginary fun with the idea?”

  “Yeah, I know.” And she still did want to torture them at least a little bit. “I wish there was a way to make them all understand without resorting to plots that make me feel like I’m in a dirty I Love Lucy episode.”

  Susie’s dark eyes lit up. “Changing your mind about the revenge plan?”

  “No.” Yes.

  “Because you can, you know. You can completely call this whole thing off and approach Cole like a regular woman would.” Susie folded her hands behind her head and leaned back into the couch, happy with herself and probably thinking she’d effectively scared Amanda straight—mainly that she didn’t really have the balls to pull out every stop for what she wanted.

  For a second, it worked.

  Until Susie said those wrong three words.

  A regular woman.

  Now didn’t that phrase just bite the wrong nerve? She was a regular woman, something even her best friend seemed to have forgotten. A regular woman with regular wants and needs. A regular woman who just didn’t have the option of going after the guy she wanted in that regular way because all the other women who’d done that had gotten shot down the second he thought they might get too close to him. That they might want the man as well as the sex.

  This regular woman didn’t have a prayer of getting the man, so she was determined to get the sex, any way she had to go about it. If that meant letting the catalog out, so be it.

  Maybe Cole was on to something about Jackmans not being able to handle losing, because Amanda heard a challenge in Susie’s words and co
uldn’t make herself give in. She couldn’t quit when she was so much closer to being with Cole than she ever had been before. Sure it was crazy, but really…who was going to know it was her other than someone who’d already seen her naked? And since the point of this whole mess was because no one had seen her naked, why not? Most everyone in town only thought of her in jeans and sweaters or T-shirts. When occasion called for it, dresses. No one ever thought of sweet Amanda Jackman as sexy. Or capable of being sexy.

  Well, they were all going to find out the truth now, weren’t they?

  “Leave me the box.” Amanda put her wine firmly on the table and picked up the catalog to look at it more critically. Tastefully done, beautifully lit, and the lingerie was beautiful. The pictures were risqué but nothing to be ashamed of. Not by her, Susie or her brothers. “I know exactly where to put these.”

  Susie’s watery choke was rather satisfying. “What?”

  “I said, I know exactly where to put them.” Right next to the free calendars with bikini chicks on custom cars in Burke Halifax’s garage. They’d be gone in no time. No time at all.

  Chapter Nine

  Cole frowned at the lines of code in the terminal dialogue box. “Now how’d you come up with that?”

  “You talking to your program again?” Burke asked as he came out of his office, stopping to glance at the screen over Cole’s shoulder. His black brows drew together, as if squinting his eyes would suddenly break the code for him.

  “How else should I get it to tell me its secrets? And you do want to tell me your secrets, don’t you, baby?” Cole spotted the error and replaced the keystroke. Another quick test and—“Yes! Got it!”

  “I have no idea how you understand this stuff. Or how you can stare at it for…four hours straight.” Burke lifted his watch for Cole to look at. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry,” Cole admitted with a grin. “But trust me, four hours is nothing. I’m practically a surgeon with ‘this stuff’. It takes time to do it right.” All the same, he could use a break. “We’ve got the hardware in and now the software’s been uploaded. Did you make that book of UPCs I asked you to?” Every item and service the garage offered needed to be fed into the system, each one categorized for how often the clients repeated the service and which other services they might use.

  “This baby is going to take in your clients’ emails and/or street addresses and send them automated notices for upkeep, which isn’t too different from what other systems can do, but this one is going to take into account the rate that your clients return and what services they use. From there, it will extrapolate from the information in the databases when they’ll need a reminder and generate a customized deal from the ones you create in the database that best matches a service they’ll need. So the guy who commutes two hours each way every day is going to be reminded to come in at a different rate than the girl that only drives her car ten minutes to school and back each day, and both of them will have a different special offer on their reminders than your customization clients, who’ll draw from a list of specialty services. This is a big improvement over you yelling at Billy to stuff envelopes every couple of months.”

  Burke smiled and clapped Cole on the back almost hard enough to compete with the Jackmans. “And I don’t have to do anything for that to happen?”

  “Just have to make sure to ring up every service you provide.”

  “They’re used to doing that.” Burke nodded. “You sure this won’t be too complicated for them?” Burke’s staff was comprised of five incomparable mechanics and fabricators. They weren’t exactly technical whiz kids unless it involved making a car do something cars weren’t meant to do. Like dance.

  Cole nodded. “That’s the beauty of it. This touch screen interface is simple as possible. All the work is done in the code. It gives prompts when more information is needed and automates everything else. Once we get all the services and their prices entered, we can start training.”

  Burke studied the new touch screen with the gleaming eyes of a man who’d found his new dream television. The neat freak, as his wife so lovingly called him, was in technological heaven. He was in a different kind of heaven as well, with said wife and the baby they had on the way. Five years they’d been married, and they’d been friends their whole lives before that. If anyone had insight into Cole’s situation, it’d be Burke. But how the hell did you ask a guy what gave him the balls to make his best friend his wife?

  “You got something on your mind, Cole, or you just like staring at me?”

  Cole grinned. “Well, you do have a certain ugly charm.”

  “Bet your ass I do.” Burke finally looked at Cole sideways. “But something tells me you’re not interested in asking me to dinner.”

  “I would, but we both know Cass is the jealous type. She’d skin me alive if I got you a steak and not her.”

  “No shit,” Burke agreed. “So does this have something to do with a certain leggy blonde who thinks car makers should consider HEPA filters for their engines?”

  Cole laughed. “Tell me she didn’t say that.”

  “You think I could make that up?” Burke turned away from the console and leaned his elbow on the counter, a slightly perplexed expression on his face. “No offense or anything, but don’t you usually have these kinds of conversations with those twins you’re always hanging out with?”

  “Her brothers?” Cole asked pointedly, and Burke nodded.

  “Sorry, I should have thought of that.”

  “It’s all right. Truth is, the bigger reason for not talking to them about this is that the two of them are better at making women throw things at them than dating them.” This was it, the moment he decided if he was all in or not.

  For her, you’d do anything, Locke rumbled in his head. You’ve always done anything for her. Now you know why.

  And he was right, damn him. Even wonder if there was some other way to look at his future.

  “How’d you know you wanted to be with Cass? You know, that way?”

  “The in-bed kind of way or the for-the-rest-of-my-life kind of way?”

  Cole bit back a chuckle. “I have the in-bed way figured out.”

  “Good, because if you didn’t want to be with her, I’d be really worried about you. Amanda seems sweet.”

  “Yeah, most people think that.”

  At that, Burke outright laughed. “Sweet is overrated, trust me. Much better to have a woman with spirit. They kick your ass a little from time to time, but believe me, it’s worth it.”

  Cole nodded. He knew that. Even without dating her, twelve years with Amanda in his life had gotten that point across almost too well. “But how did you know you loved her enough to promise her the rest of your life? How did you know you could keep a promise like that? That she would?”

  Burke gave him the respect of actually thinking about it before answering. “I’ll admit, I was a jackass about it at first, so I know where you’re coming from. Cassie was my best friend, and I was sure she wanted more than I had in me to give. But I’ll tell you something, Cole, something I’ve never told another living soul.”

  Cole waited, breath held.

  “I didn’t know if I could promise her the rest of my life. Things happen to us, we change. All kinds of crap that people smarter than me can make sound good in cards and movies. I was scared shitless that I was going to break her heart and rip out everything good in her. Which would rip out the only good thing about me. That’s what finally decided me.”

  “So you did it to keep the only good thing in you…in you?”

  “No, stupid. Her.” He said it so simply. An absolute fact. “I’m an asshole, Cole. I know it, you know it. The whole damn world knows it. I’m not nice, I’m not cuddly, and I’ll stick a tire iron up your ass if you piss me off.”

  More facts. “Good to know.”

  “Cass is the best part of me. If I lose her, I’m lost, period. I can’t think about what a day without her would be like, muc
h less the rest of my life. So if that means spending the next seventy years making her happy to be next to me, that’s what I’m gonna do. Once I finally understood that, promising Cass I’d love her was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Best thing too.”

  He completely believed it, Cole could tell. Burke would never be the giddily happy kind of guy, but the satisfied, completely content look in his eyes was impossible to doubt.

  “That answer your question?”

  Cole nodded. “Thanks, Burke,” he added, his voice so thick he had to clear it with a cough. “Gives me a lot to think about.”

  Burke smacked him soundly on the back of one shoulder. “Don’t think too long. Women aren’t the most patient souls in the world when they get an idea in their heads. I don’t know Amanda too well, but even I can tell that’s a woman with an idea or two.”

  “Burke, man, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Probably better if you don’t. How about instead we get some late lunch, then you can get started on that training you were talking about.” Burke walked out from behind the counter. “Billy, you’re gonna pick up lunch!”

  He stopped when there wasn’t an automatic, “Yes, Boss!” Billy might drive Burke crazy, Cole knew as well as anyone else within earshot of the garage on any given day, but the kid never failed to reply. Not even when he was in enough trouble to wonder if Burke would boil him alive.

  “Maybe he already went off to find something?” Cole asked, putting his tools into his bag. Nothing like the big bag Locke had stuffed under Amanda’s kitchen sink, of course. His own tools fit in a small case, with a special hole cut into the foam for the box of precision screwdrivers. The hardware had been a simple install, and now that everything had cleared the first debug, he was looking forward to testing out the various levels of information.

  Burke moved out from behind the register counter and followed the L-shaped waiting area to the seating where clients could watch the work going on in the garage. He barely got past the turn before coming to a disgruntled stop.