by Megan Crane
He’d thought of nothing but the flash of temper in her dark brown eyes when he’d issued his orders. He’d had piles of work to get through on the trip here but had spent far more time than he cared to acknowledge studying the way her jeans clung to the sweet, taut curve of her hip. And he seemed to be the only person in the vehicle who was bothered by anything, which, in turn, bothered him that much more.
Jonah couldn’t explain any of it.
He glared out the window at the wide place in the road his twin unaccountably called home, and focused on that indignity instead.
“Look at this place,” he muttered. “What the hell is he thinking?”
“Paradise Valley is widely held to be one of the most beautiful places in the world,” his fake girlfriend replied. “Maybe that’s what he’s thinking.”
Her voice didn’t sound rusty from disuse, though she hadn’t done anything but smile politely since she’d met him at his airfield in Dallas. Her voice sounded the way it had in his office that day. Smooth, with hints of the personality she wasn’t quite sharing with him. And he had the strangest sense that if he wasn’t careful she could slide in and around all the barriers he kept around him to keep other people at arm’s—
Hang on. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t dating Gracelyn. He’d hired her to perform a task with very clear parameters.
You are to act as my girlfriend and I’ll pay you triple your salary to make it worth your while, but you need to remember at all times that you’re my employee, he’d told her curtly when she’d sat down across from him the seating area in his office. When she hadn’t turned and run out of the room, or started talking about lawsuits and/or psychiatric help after he’d told her he needed a girlfriend. That means I make the rules.
I’m unlikely to forget that, Mr. Flint, she’d replied, with that flash in her dark eyes he’d been unable to get out of his head since. Yet her voice had remained perfectly courteous and damn her, he’d been fascinated. He still didn’t know why.
For starters, you need to call me Jonah. He’d imagined he’d seen a kind of heat in that level gaze of hers then, though she’d blinked it away.
And what are the physical requirements? she’d asked in the same cool tone. Because I’m willing to do many things to succeed in business, Jonah, but the boss isn’t one of them.
He hadn’t known what he’d enjoyed more in that moment. The way she’d emphasized his name—an obvious poke at him, when he couldn’t remember the last time someone other than Jasper had dared—or the fact she’d thrown that card on the table first and fast?
Some people in this company and hell, all over this country, spend a whole lot of time contorting themselves to try to get in my pants, he’d murmured instead of answering her. I think I might be insulted.
I have this thing about not wanting to sleep with someone who signs my paychecks, she’d replied, that sulky mouth tipping over into a little smile that he could feel in his pulse, in his blood, everywhere. He still could. I call it ‘aversion to prostitution.’ I know, I know. I’m weird.
Later, Jonah would reflect on the sad fact that this bizarre conversation was the most fun he’d had with a woman in years. And he hadn’t exactly spent that time working on his chastity belt. He liked sex. But it had all started to blend together, like so many of the workouts he seemed to do on autopilot these days.
Gracelyn wouldn’t blend, he’d understood immediately, right there in his office. She didn’t. Gracelyn felt like a burst of electricity and Jonah had gotten much too used to the dark.
But then, back in their first meeting, he’d only considered her for a long moment.
It has to be convincing, he’d finally said. I’d imagine all that really means is potentially kissing me in public, at its most extreme. Can you handle that?
She’d studied him instead of answering. Then, as the moment stretched out, it had occurred to Jonah that she might actually turn him down. He hadn’t had the vocabulary to describe the half-baffled, half-furious thing that had rolled through him at the notion. Nor could he recall the last time he’d worried that someone might reject him. In work or play.
Yes, she’d said. Eventually. Succinct and to the point, her expression unreadable. I think I can handle that.
He stared at her across the backseat of the Range Rover now, the little western town Jasper had claimed was the jewel of Montana forgotten as he focused on her instead.
It was a little too easy to focus on her.
“You’re playing my girlfriend,” he told her, with perhaps unnecessary roughness, but he decided she could take it. That she would. “That means you don’t disagree with me.”
“Have you ever had a girlfriend before?” she asked dryly, but sat a bit straighter when his eyebrows rose. “I’m sorry. I meant, yes, Jonah. This is a terrible place. Awful. The Rocky Mountains are hideous in all directions and that river was much too wide and picturesque in all of this annoying September sunshine. What a nightmare.”
“Better,” he murmured, his attention moving to that too-smart, too-sulky mouth. “But without the attitude, please. My brother knows I would never date a woman who argues too much.”
“Why not? Afraid she’ll win?”
She looked faintly astonished at herself, as if her mouth was working of its own accord, and maybe that was why he reached over and took that pretty little chin of hers in his hand. He told himself he was teaching her something when he held it fast.
That the fire that roared through him at even that little bit of contact was a mild thing. A tiny flame. Barely more than a spark and hardly worth noting.
And that he was a freaking saint for not touching that damned mouth of hers.
Or tasting it. At length.
“I don’t want a debate.” He said it slow and even rougher, so there could be no mistake. “I want a date.”
“But the debate part is why a date is fun,” she argued, and her voice went a little hoarse. There was a hectic thing in her dark eyes that he could feel clawing into him, as well.
Jonah knew he should let her go. He knew he was letting the emotions only his twin ever stirred up get to him. That this was stupid and worse, breaking the guidelines he’d laid down himself. They weren’t where anyone could see them tucked up in the back of his Range Rover with its tinted windows. This wasn’t public, or for Jasper’s benefit.
But he only shifted closer to her. He could smell the faint hint of perfumed almonds that he assumed was her shampoo and it should have worried him, the deep, hard punch of lust that slammed through him at the delicate scent.
“Debating is what complicated women do when what they really want is to get naked,” he told her instead, lazily, and he still held her in his grip while he did it. “They want a man who can keep up with them verbally. They think it means he can do the same in bed. They want to be convinced.” He forced his attention away from that mouth, but those eyes of hers weren’t much of an improvement. Too dark, too clever. A little too hot on his. “I’m more straightforward.”
“Are you?” she asked softly. “Or is it that you’re one of the ones who can’t keep up?”
And if he didn’t know better, because it would mean she had some kind of death wish, Jonah would have said she was teasing him. Maybe even flirting with him.
The only thing more insane was that he was doing the same damn thing.
“I either get naked or I don’t,” he corrected her, and he was still holding onto that delicate jaw of hers while he said it. He was still much too close. “And I don’t talk around it.”
“I’m trying to imagine that. The famous Jonah Flint flinging off his clothes in a romantic restaurant, rather than having the usual charged, innuendo-laden conversation the rest of us mere mortals like to call banter and sometimes even foreplay. I feel certain that kind of display would have made it into the papers, don’t you?”
He didn’t understand what moved in him then, or why he still hadn’t let go of her, or why, if he was as straightfor
ward as he’d just claimed he was, he didn’t do something about the need that clawed at him. He could think of three things he’d like to do, then and there, that would take the edge off. But he didn’t.
“I don’t date much—”
“What a shock.”
He ignored her dry tone. “I have mutually beneficial evenings, most of which take place in private.”
“Be still my heart.”
“I don’t play games, Gracelyn.” Was that the first time he’d called her by her name? It was the first time he’d said it, while he was touching her, and that jolted through him. He saw it in her, too. The awareness he’d felt in his office shimmered between them. It filled the Range Rover, blocking out the little town on the other side of the windows, and that needy thing dug into him, deeper and harsher. “Want to revise the parameters we set?”
Our physical relationship will be a performance, she’d clarified primly, sitting across from him on the leather couch where his accountants talked numbers and he’d conducted all manner of boring business meetings. Is that correct? Something for your brother’s benefit, to convince him you’re capable of relationships even while you disapprove of his. To summarize.
He hadn’t liked the way she’d put that. But. Yes, he’d gritted out.
So, in private, we will remain perfectly professional with each other. Business colleagues, nothing more.
You will remain my subordinate, yes, he’d said. Maybe he’d needed the reminder.
In a professional sense, she’d retorted. Of course.
And they’d agreed.
She looked dazed now, as if she’d forgotten all of that until he’d mentioned revising it, and then she tugged her head back. Jonah let go of her chin a second later, and he told himself he was glad. That he’d been pushing her, hoping she’d balk. That this had to work within the boundaries they’d set in Dallas, or it wouldn’t work at all.
That the need and the fire in him had nothing to do with anything, and should be ignored.
“No,” she said, too quickly, which he shouldn’t feel like a victory. “I don’t want to revise anything.”
The Range Rover pulled up to the curb of an old train depot, tricked out into something much newer and more appealing, with the name FLINTWORKS stamped into its side. Jonah scowled at it. Then back at her. His for the next two weeks, and he liked the feel of that a little too much. His.
“Fine,” he said shortly. “Then, resign yourself to your role as my significantly less argumentative girlfriend. Do you remember why we’re here in this ridiculous place?”
There was something like mutiny in her dark gaze then, and he expected her to balk, but she nodded instead. “Tell me.”
She glanced away and pulled in a breath, but she was composed and distant all over again when she looked back at him a moment later. She even smiled that same polite, professional smile he’d seen in his office when she’d shaken his hand and thanked him for considering her for this project, like it was freaking corporate contract.
And Jonah told himself that was just as well. That she should hide behind her professional mask, if she had one. That it was better. He decided he could blame Jasper for that, too.
“We’re here to break up your brother’s inappropriate engagement,” she said, her tone completely unobjectionable. Jonah might think it was for the best, but that didn’t stop him loathing it. “In the tradition of many a concerned relative, I’d imagine.”
“Correction. To stop his engagement before it starts. Jasper plans to propose two weeks from now at some cavity-inducing small town rodeo event, which apparently holds some emotional significance for the two of them. I shudder to think why. I, therefore, plan to have him safely back in Texas and deprogrammed before he can make that kind of mistake. He already married one cold, money-grubbing bitch. I can’t stand by and watch him do it all over again.”
Jonah stared at her until Gracelyn nodded her assent, almost as if he wasn’t paying her for her obedience, and when she did he jerked his chin toward the car door.
“Come on, honey,” he murmured, the endearment coming out of nowhere and nearly making him smile, especially when she flinched in surprise at the sound of it. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter Two
‡
Gracelyn didn’t think Marietta was ridiculous.
She dutifully climbed from the SUV, then stood there on the sidewalk in the September sunshine with the mountains scraping into the bright blue sky and the pretty little town a happy, vibrant thing all around her. If she’d grown up in a place like this, maybe it would have encouraged different behavior on the part of her immediate relatives and maybe she wouldn’t have left them in such a hurry, she thought. Maybe she would have gone back since. Maybe everything would be different.
Maybe she wouldn’t be swamped with an emotion she didn’t recognize, deep and dark and melancholy, as she took in the big, big sky that stretched out above her. She felt wondrously small and precious beneath it, in a way she hadn’t in over a decade. The sensation washed through her and she swayed slightly on her feet.
It filled her up. It was as big as all that arching blue, vast and breathtaking. It felt like grief.
Homesick, a voice inside of her stated, plain and matter-of-fact, the way her grandmother Betty might have if she’d been standing at Gracelyn’s side. That’s what you call it. That’s what it is, love.
Homesick, of all things, when Gracelyn had never looked back. Not once, in all these years. When she’d never missed a single thing about the place she’d come from. When the only things she’d kept with her from those dusty, heartbreaking years were the old boots on her feet right now and a few of her grandmother’s fattiest and best recipes.
She couldn’t be homesick. It didn’t make sense. She’d never liked her parents’ home very much, for one thing, which was why she’d gone to live with her grandmother when she’d been ten. That and her parents’ arrests. This was nothing but an unexpected reaction to being back in Montana after so long. It had to be that, however surprising. Because Marietta was nothing like the battered old town—in truth, a wide, unmarked area on the map at the end of a country road featuring little more than a collection of failed farms and ruined lives—she’d been forced to call home.
The houses and storefronts weren’t all boarded up, for one thing. There was the grand old hotel they’d be staying in just down the street. And there’d been enough cars parked as they’d driven down Main Street to suggest actual commerce, rather than a handful of sad, broken old men telling each other lies about their prospects outside the local bar. She’d seen mowed green grass and the kinds of flowers in the fronts of the buildings that spoke of care, of dedication, of pride. Marietta wasn’t a ghost town. It wasn’t dead. If Gracelyn listened closely, she could almost hear it thriving. The only thing she’d ever heard in the place she’d grown up was that bitter wind, blowing in cold from the northern Plains and leaving nothing but emptiness and regret behind.
She pressed the heel of her hand against her chest and told herself she didn’t remember a thing.
Not those endless Sundays, filled with the mandatory church service that was the family requirement for sampling her grandmother’s cooking in that careworn farmhouse a hundred miles from nothing. Not the long, lazy summer afternoons bleeding into endless evenings while she waited for something, anything, to change, to get better. Not all those years running half-wild with her cousins in the fields and down to the creek. Or the silly songs her cousin and best friend Bex had created to make the barn chores bearable. Or that particularly sweet scent of the changing season that hung in the air over the prairie after a long, hard winter, when spring still seemed like a far-off fairy tale wise folks knew better than to believe in.
Gracelyn didn’t remember, damn it. She refused.
But then Jonah climbed out behind her and Gracelyn stopped thinking about her painful past and all the people she’d left behind her on a ramshackle plain far to the east. Because Jon
ah Flint was formidably attractive and deeply problematic, but still a far more appealing prospect than her personal history. And she’d agreed to touch him and kiss him in certain public scenarios before she’d known that a simple touch of his hard fingers to her chin could send her spinning.
Her chin. And he wasn’t touching her any longer, yet she was still spinning.
Gracelyn made herself smile up at him. It was much harder than it should have been through the big sky cartwheels and old regrets inside her head, and he didn’t make it any easier when he only stared back down at her, intense and grim. And, there was no getting around it, too damned beautiful to bear.
She’d assured herself that he was one of those executive types who’d look stiff and vaguely silly in casual clothes. Too much the corporate shark to take to faded jeans and cowboy boots, or the soft button down shirt he wore that strained against the smooth muscles of his biceps and clung to the hard planes of his chest. But instead, he looked . . . good. Entirely too good. His hazel eyes were hot, his mouth was firm, and everything else was hard and muscled and mouthwatering.
And she had the great hardship of having to pretend she was his girlfriend and getting paid for her sacrifice besides. Boo freaking hoo.
She told herself that was why she felt so overheated, despite the hint of crispness in the air, far more fall than leftover summer this far north of Dallas. That it was her upcoming performance that was getting to her, not her panicked worry that she might slip and forget she was supposed to be pretending.
Jonah reached over and took her hand in his. And this was an act, she reminded herself as their palms scraped together and sent wildfires storming through her, burning away all the shadows of her past, as if they were little more than mist and he the heat of a red-hot, high summer day. He watched her as if she fascinated him, as if he could see every single thing she’d hidden away inside her, if he studied her long enough.
And some part of her believed that he could. That he already did.
