by Jeanne Allan
“I don’t care if you’re the king of Siam,” J.J. yelled, cutting him off. “Pull out my car!”
Luke trotted up as a strident whistle pierced the air. The brunette, still wearing the towel, hung out Luke’s bedroom window. “Anyone who stands up to the general is a keeper,” the woman yelled. “Don’t let her get away.”
“Sara Anne Remington,” the man in the tractor roared. “You get back in that house until you’re decent.”
The woman made a face, pulled in her head and slammed down the window.
The man climbed down from the tractor and glared at JJ. “As for you, young lady, I don’t know who the heck you are, but my boy wanted you stopped so I—”
“Be quiet.” JJ. had registered the hazel eyes.
The man stood ramrod straight. “What did you say?”
“I said be quiet. I don’t care if you’re a general or—or an admiral or whatever, you can’t come marching in here and call Luke a boy. He doesn’t have to prove he’s a man by going around shouting at people until he makes their heads ache, and he doesn’t have to polish stupid little medals or march around in army boots or try to browbeat people just because he’s some dinky little general. He—” A gloved hand pressed firmly over her mouth cut off J.J.’s diatribe.
“Be grateful O’Brien doesn’t have any elk antlers handy,” Luke said. “In her hands, they’re lethal weapons.”
J.J. shoved aside his hand. “I’m sick of hearing about those antlers.” And even sicker at having jumped to Luke’s defense.
“She’s a beauty,” General Remington reluctantly acknowledged, “but if she were my wife, I’d have her doing push-ups until she learned a little respect.”
The woman who’d been stacking hay laughed as she walked up. “Luke, I think you better get your wife away from your father before she punches his lights out. Dad and Sara and I can feed the cattle. As for you, Lucius Remington, behave yourself. Just remember, you might have two stars, but I have three.”
“You have three...” J.J. couldn’t take it all in. Too many people, too many emotions, too many things she understood nothing about Taking one embittered look at her car firmly embedded in a bank of snow, she started toward the gate.
“Where are you going?” Luke easily kept pace with her.
“Denver.” She refused to look at him.
“Damn it, O’Brien, would you stop for one second? Mom said you came tearing down the road as if you were in the Indianapolis 500, you ran into the house and right back out again. Why didn’t you stop when I yelled at you? What the hell is going on?”
She spun around to stand toe-to-toe with him. “I returned the painting. That’s what’s going on.” No way she’d tell him of the thousand and one emotions churning within her. Or of the jealous rage brought on by the sight of his sister. He and Sara could share a good laugh about that.
Luke grabbed her shoulders before she could take off again. “You brought back the painting?” he asked blankly. “Why?”
“You know why.” He could play the innocent all he wanted, but he wasn’t fooling her. J.J. knocked aside his hands and headed down the road. Snow filled her shoes and clung to her stockings. Her feet felt like solid ice. Or they would have if she had any feeling left in them. Too bad her heart couldn’t be iced down.
Her emotions had yo-yoed from jealous despair at the sight of a half-naked woman in Luke’s house to giddy relief upon hearing the woman was his sister. All because of a man who didn’t love her. The painting proved that. Outrage at the sneering message had served as an anesthetic partially blocking her pain, but now pain overrode her anger. J.J. wanted desperately to get home and lick her wounds.
Luke caught her arm. “Would you stop running away?”
She wrenched out of his grasp. “I’m not running, I’m walking away.”
“The hell you are.” Luke scooped her up into his arms and retraced their steps toward his house.
She kicked wildly to break free. “Put me down, or I’ll—”
“Attack me with elk antlers?” Hindered by the awkward, writhing burden held to his chest, Luke failed to see the patch of ice. His foot slid out from under him.
Feeling Luke totter, JJ. shrieked and grabbed his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Her abrupt movement proved too much for Luke’s precarious balance. They toppled to the ground, J.J. landing half on Luke’s body and half on a pile of warm, brown dirt. A foul odor engulfed her. Not dirt. “No, no, no!” she wailed, pummeling Luke’s arm with her fists. Her blows bounced harmlessly off his sheepskin coat.
Luke jumped to his feet. “I think we’ve been down this road before.” His eyes gleamed with suppressed laughter.
JJ. stood, ignoring the hand held out to help her up. “Since I met you, I’ve been pushed around, mauled by a psychopath, snowbound, attacked by vicious animals, coerced into delivering a baby, held at gunpoint, and driven into a snowbank, not once but twice.” She added savagely, “Obviously I’m a slow learner.”
“If you want me to apologize, I—”
“I want you to get out of my life.” She’d give anything to exit on that line, but a passing breeze emphatically reminded her of her present condition. “I’m going in the house to take a shower and get dressed in whatever I find that halfway fits me. Then I’m going home. In my car. Because you and that crazy general you call your father are going to pull it out of the snowbank immediately.” She spoke coldly to his right ear. “I’m going to replace all these clothes with new ones, and you will receive the bills for them.” She started for the house.
“I know you’re a little upset right now, JJ., but you’ll feel better after a shower. Then we can talk.” Luke spoke in the reasonable, patient tones of an adult attempting to cajole an unreasonable child out of a bad humor.
JJ. didn’t stop to think. Spinning around, she shoved Luke as hard as she could. Her action took him totally by surprise, and he fell backward, his face a study in astonishment as he landed in a soft, brown pile. JJ. stomped across the yard and into the house, passing Luke’s sister without a word.
Slamming the bathroom door, J.J. wrestled open the window and tossed out every single item of clothing from her body. A lone, deciduous bush grew beneath the window. The heavier items plummeted through the bare branches to bury themselves in the snow. The top branches snagged her underwear. Pale pink silk waved in the breezes.
She took her time in the shower, filling the bathroom with warm steam and hoping she was inconveniencing every single, infuriating member of the Remington family. She had not the slightest shred of compunction about conscripting the female soap and sundries arrayed beside the sink. When the water finally ran cool, and every square inch of her body had been scrubbed practically raw, J.J. turned off the shower and stepped from the tub. Wrapping towels around her hair and body, she headed for Luke’s room to pilfer his wardrobe.
Luke lay stretched out on his bed. His damp hair told JJ. he’d used the basement shower. Ignoring him and the traitorous lurch in her stomach, she ransacked his dresser drawers until she found a sweatshirt and sweatpants. Luke watched her in the mirror over the dresser. She scowled at him. “Get out. I want to get dressed.”
“I won’t see anything I haven’t seen before.”
Her fingers dug convulsively into the soft clothing. Moving one of those stupid cows would be easier than budging Luke. JJ. marched across the room, snatched his cowboy hat off a bottom bedpost and slammed it over his face. “Don’t even think about peeking,” she snapped.
“I don’t have to peek.” The hat muffled his words. “Every square inch of you is branded on my eyelids.”
Luke’s words conjured up images too painful to remember. Ruthlessly shoving them aside, J.J. quickly shrugged into the borrowed clothes. She wanted more from Luke than desire. Her purse sat on the dresser. She yanked a comb through her hair and smeared lotion on her face, all the while using the mirror to keep an eye on Luke.
He shoved back his hat to study the painting now p
ropped against the foot of the bed. “At the gallery opening, you stood in front of this so long, I thought—”
“You thought I should be like that poor woman. Uprooted, dragged out to the back of beyond, nothing but a drudge and someone to warm his bed and raise his kids.”
Luke drew his brows together in a broodir.g frown. “Is that what you see when you look at her?”
“Never mind what I see. You see a woman who can only be happy if she’s her husband’s servant, his plaything, his possession. You sent me that painting to tell me that’s how a real wife is supposed to be. Docile, compliant and subservient.”
Luke stood up and strolled over to the bedroom door. His back to J.J., he said, “My parents have been happily married for over thirty years. I expected to model my marriage after theirs. I screwed up.”
J.J. meticulously replaced her belongings in her purse. “We both screwed up. We wanted different things from marriage. Any idiot could have seen we were wrong for each other.”
Luke crossed the room to lean against the wall next to the dresser. “We need to talk.”
“I’m through talking.” Escape was the only thing on her mind. The bedroom door wouldn’t open.
“I locked it and took the key. You’re not leaving until we talk.”
J.J. gave the doorknob a vicious shake. The lock held. She slumped against the door, resting her forehead against the solid wood. “There’s nothing left to talk about.”
She couldn’t imagine why Luke had locked her in the bedroom with him. He knew he could persuade her into his bed. Did he intend to try to persuade her into staying married—on his terms? J.J. didn’t know if she had the willpower to fight him. And herself. Her heart wanted JJ. to throw herself in Luke’s arms and believe everything would somehow work out. Her brain urged her to run before it was too late. “Open the door, Luke,” she said tightly.
Luke didn’t move. “The first time I saw you, you were listening to a woman and taking notes,” he said. “I was struck by your intensity and your empathy. Then I saw your mouth, and a desire to kiss that mouth hit me so hard, I barely listened to the man talking to me. I was scheming how to meet you when Carl noticed the horse acting up. Before I could warn you, the horse broke free. Afterward, I saw what I’d knocked you into and knew I’d never get to nibble on that bottom lip or get to press kisses on that sexy beauty mark.”
The composed words were rubber bullets thudding painfully into her back. More proof Luke’s only interest in her had been physical. “I should have known you wouldn’t forget the beauty mark.”
He wasn’t through. “After I knocked you down, I expected hysterics. Instead I could almost see your brain clicking away, analyzing what had happened. Your total acceptance of the situation, my actions and the unpleasant consequences for you knocked me for a loop. I think I fell in love with you the second you started laughing.”
“You fell in love with me?” Whatever she expected Luke to say, it wasn’t this. Never this. Wondering if she’d heard him wrong, JJ. slowly turned, clinging to the doorknob behind her.
“I know what you’re thinking. It was crazy. I knew nothing about you except you’d focused on the critical aspect of the incident and discarded the rest as irrelevant. Based on that, I decided I was going to marry you. I thought you were the type of woman who’d never sweat the small stuff. I was sure you wouldn’t fuss if I couldn’t get away for a weekend because of an emergency on the ranch, or if I used the kitchen to save baby calves. You wouldn’t mind if our kids were covered with bandages and dirt as long as they were happy and healthy.”
“You never told me any of that,” she managed to say.
Luke smiled ruefully. “Would you have believed me if I told you I’d fallen in love in the blink of an eye? I barely believed it, and after you kicked me out, it was easy enough to persuade myself I’d been blindsided by a kissable mouth, that subconsciously I knew I’d fallen for a beautiful face and I’d given the owner of that face the qualities I wanted her to have.”
Hope fled like air from a collapsing balloon. “Well,” J.J. said in a voice that barely wavered, “now you know I don’t have those qualities.”
“The only thing I know is I’m a fool.” Luke swung around so he faced the mirror. “You know what I see in here? Ad Parker.”
“Ad Parker?” She stared uncomprehendingly at the rigid veins in his neck.
“He wants to control Birdie, because he’s afraid she’ll leave him. Like I wanted you dependent on me. The very strength that attracted me, scared the hell out of me. You didn’t need me.” Luke turned back toward her. “I apologize for all I’ve put you through,” he said formally.
How could he not know she needed him? Needed him to accept her, to trust her. To love her. “Yes, well, I guess, it’s over,” she stammered, hardly knowing what she was saying.
“I know that. Instead of tying you to me, I drove you away and into Alexander’s arms. I can’t change what’s past, but I won’t interfere in your life anymore.” His voice held no inflection. “You have my blessing on your marriage with Alexander. I’ll sign whatever divorce papers you send.”
“I don’t want your blessing.” Luke’s words failed to clear her muddled head. Why had he told her he’d once loved her, now when he seemed to be saying it was too late? Did Luke love her or not? If he’d given her even the slightest hint he loved her, that he no longer expected her to fit his rigid notions of a wife, that he wanted the kind of woman she was, JJ. would have dashed across the room and into his arms.
He said nothing.
J.J.’s self-restraint exploded. She’d begun to hope, and he’d flung those hopes in the same kind of barnyard piles he’d shoved her into. She dug in her purse for a pencil and notebook. “You’ll find my pantsuit, coat and shoes outside. Brands and sizes are in them.” Scribbling a few lines, she ripped off the top page and walked over to stick it into Luke’s shirt picket “My sizes and favorite lingerie store. Burton likes sweet and girlish white lingerie with lots of lace and ruffles and bows.”
“If Burton thinks you’re sweet and girlish, he doesn’t have a clue what makes you tick.”
“Unlike you?” J.J. asked in an acid voice.
Luke stepped nearer until his body barely touched hers. “Unlike dumb cowboy me.”
“You know nothing about me,” J.J. managed to say. His body heat penetrated her fleece clothing and warmed her skin. Breathing filled her head with his scent.
Luke framed her face with his callused palms and stared down into her face. “I know everything I need to know about you,” he said with quiet conviction. Dropping his hands, he dragged her across the room to stand in front of the dresser. He propped the watercolor against the mirror. “This is who you are.”
J.J. lifted her eyes to Luke’s face in the mirror and willed her mouth not to quiver. “She bears no resemblance to me.”
“Not on the outside, no.” His eyes captured JJ.’s in the mirror. “On the inside. You’re both the type to face up to everything life throws at you. You fight fear to do what has to be done. Compliant? Subservient? Not this woman. She’s as ready to defend her family as you were to defend Birdie.” His voice altered subtly. “And me.”
She knew what he referred to. “I wasn’t defending you,” she quickly denied. “Your father irritated me, is all.”
“When my dad calls me his boy, he does it with pride. A pride he made me earn, so it means something to both of us.”
Who cared about his stupid old father? Not J.J. Not when hope kept slipping back into her heart. “He’s as bossy and opinionated as you are. Your mother’s life must be hell.”
Luke shrugged, dismissing her words. “Every time Dad pins on new rank, Mom promotes herself. To remind him she’s not about to take any guff from him.”
“I don’t know how she stands him.”
“She loves him. And when you love someone...” Laying down the painting, Luke turned J.J. to face him. A quizzical smile played across his mouth. “You don’t
want my blessing. You returned the painting. A man has to give his wife something for a wedding present.”
Smiling wasn’t fair. J.J.’s stomach turned triple flips. She fought the discombobulating sensation. “Ex-wife,” she managed to say.
The outer corners of his eyes crinkled. “I guess I’ll have to buy you lingerie.”
“You can’t give me lingerie.”
“That’s not what you said earlier.” He tapped the piece of paper sticking out of his shirt pocket. “You ordered lingerie, you’ll get lingerie. No ruffles and bows and not white. Pink and blue and pale green and turquoise to match your eyes.” He lightly skimmed her cheekbones with his thumbs.
“My eyes are aqua,” she blurted out, holding her head still. Her skin tingled.
Luke ran a finger back and forth over her lower lip. “Aqua, then. Nightgowns and panties and those smooth, silky, slinky things I liked...?”
“Teddies,” she muttered involuntarily. His every word acted as a physical caress. Desire shimmered over JJ.’s skin and surged through her veins. She fought to keep the increasing heat in his hazel eyes from melting her good sense. Did Luke think he could seduce her into becoming his kind of wife? “What do you want from me, Luke?”
“C‘mon, O’Brien, figure it out. You’re a lawyer.”
A clump of snow in her face couldn’t have cleared her head faster than Luke’s taunting challenge. JJ. batted down Luke’s hands and ducked under his arms. Dam him, she was a lawyer. A good one. One who’d had extensive dealings with reluctant witnesses. Luke Remington was going to tell her what kind of game he was playing, or she’d turn in her law degree.
J.J. knew from experience when direct questions didn’t work, one used unconventional methods to dig out the truth. Putting a few feet between her and the arrogant cowboy who eyed her as if she were a prime steak, she said obliquely, “I suspect your pie-baker will be moving to Denver in the not too distant future.”
Luke’s eyes darkened with exasperation as he braced a hip against the dresser. “Susan and I are friends. Don’t worry about her.”
