There was a laugh, but it held no humor. “Fine. Tell me something bad about yourself.”
Honesty. He was actually glad she’d given him the opening. It was best to put his cards on the table. “I spent some time in jail. You should know that right off.”
Her eyes flared with obvious surprise. “Jail? I thought you would tell me something dumb like you care too much. You know, like on a job interview where they ask you about your flaws and you turn it into a strength? Jail? Why?”
“I did eighteen months in a youth center for stealing a car. I was trying to fit in with a group of boys who had formed a tight-knit group.”
“A gang?” She asked the question, but he didn’t sense any judgment in the words.
“Yes. My mom had died and my father left without a word. I was living on the streets and I thought being in a gang sounded better than being on my own. I stole a car as part of my initiation. Turns out I am a horrible criminal, and I got caught not a mile from where I’d stolen it.” He shook his head. “It was a minivan. It smelled like old milk, but it had been LoJacked so dumbass me went to juvie.”
“Eighteen months? That’s a long time. How old were you?”
“I was thirteen.”
Outrage replaced the surprise on her face. “Thirteen? They sent you to juvie for a year and a half and you were only thirteen? That’s ridiculous. Who the hell was your lawyer?”
Damn, but he wished Cade had seen this side of Gemma. It might make it harder for him to turn away. “I was a big kid. At thirteen I was a tad under six feet, and I always built muscle fast. I also already had this.” He scraped his hands over the scruff of his beard. He shaved every day but by afternoon he always had some stubble back. “And I was a street kid, darlin’. I couldn’t afford a lawyer past the one they appointed to me.”
“You shouldn’t have spent time at all for a nonviolent offense,” she argued.
“I think they wanted to make a point, and I didn’t have anyone who would fight for me at the time. I was damn lucky they found a foster parent for me when I got out or I would have spent the rest of my teen years in a halfway house.”
“Is that where you met Cade? In juvie?”
He laughed at the thought. “No, honey. Cade was as straight as an arrow. I met him in the foster home. He lost his parents and his sister when he was nine, but he needs to tell you that story. We were raised by a woman named Nancy, and she saved me. She and Cade. They became the family I never had.”
She stared out at the party starting to take shape across the yard. Why wouldn’t she go over there? What kept her apart from everyone else? He wanted her to be honest with him, but he knew patience was going to be the key with Gemma Wells.
“Is that why you share? How does it work?” She shook her head, her eyes widening. “I meant that in a nonmechanical way. Emotionally. How does it work? I mean, is it casual?”
Oh, how he wanted to explain the mechanics to her. He was damn fine with mechanics. “Sometimes it’s just sex. We’ve had a couple of relationships, too. Nothing that lasted more than a year or so. We lived with a woman once. She moved on because she said it didn’t look good for her career to live with two men. She was a doctor.”
“Ah. He’s opposed to evil career women.” She looked over to where Cade stood laughing with Zane and Cam.
“That’s not really his problem, but again, it’s his story to tell. His past was rough. I might have gone to prison, but at least I got out. Cade gave himself a life sentence a long time ago. Give him a little time.”
An almost serene look came over her face. “Nope. He doesn’t like me. I should know. I get it all the time. Look, I appreciate this. But you two share and I recently came out of a relationship, so it wouldn’t work.”
“You recently came out of a relationship?”
She nodded. “Yes. Like six months ago.”
“That’s not recent. Six months is moving-on time, baby. As for Cade, well, we’ve also had relationships separately. And honestly, if he sat down and talked to you like this, I think he would see you for what you really are.”
“And what’s that?” The question sounded more like a challenge.
“He would see that under all that hardness, you’re soft inside. You’re trying to protect that part of you that you’re afraid will get you in trouble. You’re afraid of everything. You’re scared of anyone getting close because you’ve been hurt. I don’t know if it was one spectacular ache or a series of minor ones, but they affected you. And they affected him, too. If he sat his ass down for ten seconds, he might see how much alike you are.” He frowned. Everything he said was true, he simply wasn’t sure it would help Cade. It might make him run even faster.
She stood up. “Look, I don’t know if you think you’re some sort of amateur shrink, but think again. I am who I am. I’m not hiding away or anything. If you think you can come in and change me, you’re wrong.”
It was time to figure out if this could potentially work. No relationship with him could work without some softness. “Sit down, Gemma.”
She stared at him for a moment and then made the decision. She sat back down, her mouth set in a mulish line. Rather like Cade. Why the hell was he here? He must like stubbornness.
“I’m willing to put up with a lot of shit. It’s expected in a relationship, and quite frankly, I know I’ll be the easy one to deal with. But I expect honesty, respect, and some politeness. I get that you won’t always be polite. I won’t either. I want passion, and that doesn’t always leave room for courtesy, but I expect you to start being more polite to the people around you. This isn’t New York. This is small-town Colorado, and you’re going to put people off with the gruffness. You had to be that way in New York. You don’t here. I’ve told you I’ll be honest, so let me state this flat out. Any relationship with me is going to involve a little discipline. I tend to keep it to the bedroom, but if you’re mine and I catch you being blatantly rude to the people around you, I’ll likely spank you.”
It wasn’t only her face that flushed this time. Her whole body went bright pink. And her pupils dilated. Her breath hitched. “That would be assault.”
No, she wasn’t scared at all. “Only if I did it against your will. If you were mine, we would have all sorts of rules. They would be set up so we both know how to make each other happy. We would talk about it. You could stop me, but you wouldn’t want to. I would make sure of it.”
She went quiet, and Jesse decided she’d had enough honesty for the day. It was time to back off and let her think about it. And it was time to go and work on Cade. He stood up and handed her the small package. It was addressed simply to Gemma Wells in Bliss, Colorado. The elderly mail carrier had asked he and Cade if they knew who she was. Jesse had jumped on that chance. And now it was time to let the whole thing go and allow Gemma to make the next move. It would be frustrating, but he wasn’t going to push her.
“Think about it. That’s for you. I told the mail carrier where to send anything else you get. If you want to talk some more, you come and see me.” He started to walk away. He could smell the delicious aroma of sizzling steaks.
“I like baby and darlin’. I wouldn’t have said I like darlin’, but I like the way you say it. It’s the accent, I think. And for some reason, baby sounds sweeter than babe. But not honey. My mom calls me hon. So does Stella. Honey makes me think of maternal women trying to feed me.” She stood up, clutching her package.
He didn’t even try to stop himself now. He hugged her, wrapping his arms around her and letting himself breathe in her scent.
“Are you smelling my hair?” Gemma asked.
“Yep.” Honesty.
“You’re kind of kinky, aren’t you?” She said it with a laugh. “And I shouldn’t have called you the Sweet One.”
He pulled back. “You have no idea, baby. And I can be very sweet. You just have to get me in the right mood. Good night.”
He turned and walked away, more hopeful than he’d been moments before.
Chapter Three
Cade watched from his place at the grill. Jesse had started his whole herding thing. It was the way he handled a woman he was seriously interested in.
Damn, was Jesse going to fall for Gemma Wells and finally leave him behind? He wasn’t an idiot. Jesse had been ready for something serious for the last few years. Cade was the one holding them back.
Jesse would never understand why Cade wouldn’t, couldn’t do the whole relationship thing.
“Jesse seems interested in the new girl.” Zane Hollister flipped over the steak he was grilling, his eyes trailing back to where Jesse was hugging Gemma. Really hugging her. Like rubbing himself all over the woman.
“Looks like it.” Cade glanced around. Shouldn’t there be some beer around here somewhere?
“Hmmm.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”
Zane shrugged. “I thought you two were, well, partners.”
They were, but Jesse didn’t blindly follow him. It would be easier if he did. Jesse tended to prefer to take a backseat, allowing Cade to make most of the day-to-day decisions because he didn’t care, but when he put his foot down, the man didn’t move.
What the hell was he going to do if Jesse put his foot down over Gemma Wells? Would he be forced to make the decision he’d dreaded for the last couple of years? Would he leave and not look back? Would he finally be alone—like he’d always known he should be?
“We’re best friends. We’ve shared a woman before, but that doesn’t mean we always will.” He’d never expected to share a family. He’d kind of expected to be that sort of sad-sack best friend who hung around way too much and creeped out Jesse’s wife. And then they’d come to Bliss and Jesse had started talking about a real family, a shared wife, and kids they both raised. Fuck. He loved Bliss, but it terrified him, too.
“You don’t like Gemma?”
Cade stared back her way. She clutched the package in her hand as Jesse walked away. It was the softest he’d seen her, her blonde hair nearly glowing in the light from her porch. She was a little thin, and not in a healthy way, but she had curves in all the right places. If she did belong to him and Jesse, he would cook for her, make sure she filled out those sweet curves.
He couldn’t think that way.
He was terrified of her. She was exactly his type—the type to rip his heart out when things went bad. “I don’t know her. I don’t throw myself in the way Jesse does.”
Jesse was walking toward him with a grin on his face. Gemma turned and disappeared inside her house.
Zane tested the steak, cutting slightly in the middle. “You’ve been here for a couple of months, and you haven’t even tried dating anyone.”
“Oh, I’ve tried. I don’t think you’ve noticed, but there’s a distinctly low available female to male ratio in this town.” He and Jesse had actually been interested in a couple of women. They’d hit town and it had seemed like they were kids in a candy store. The town was full of attractive, sweet women who looked like they could use a man or two to take care of them.
The trouble was every woman they got interested in was unavailable for one reason or another. Lucy Carson reminded him of his sister who’d died in the same car accident as his parents. Hope McLean had flipped his switch, but she was married to James Glen and Noah Bennett. He’d been attracted to Holly Lang, one of the waitresses at Stella’s, but he’d decided to keep his head on his body after a single, deeply confusing conversation with Alexei Markov where he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to keep the balls of his eyes off the Russian’s girl or his grill. Either way, the dude sounded serious, so he was giving both a wide berth. And he’d heard some horror stories about how thorough the doc could be during a physical when he was pissed off. Yeah. Holly was safe from his roving eye.
Then the new girl comes into town, with her honey blonde hair and swaying ass, and she turned out to be such a hot mess. Fuck. She moved him in a way the others didn’t. He kind of liked a woman with the right amount of psycho chick.
Things with a woman like Gemma Wells would go one of two ways. Either she would view them as nothing but a hot fling or she would want way more than he was willing to give. The first would please him but hurt Jesse, and the second would hurt them all. Why her? He loved intelligent, ambitious, creative women, and they tended to see him as a Neanderthal.
Bare-Chested Ape Man. Yep, that was him.
The fact that he came with a built-in partner, ready for a permanent ménage, had totally aided in his quest to find a little sex. He could see the personal ad: Bare-Chested Ape Man seeks incredibly intelligent mate to share with his over-the-top Dom partner. Must like being topped in the bedroom and small spaces since neither makes a decent paycheck.
Yes, he would get a ton of hits on that one.
“You look morose again.” Jesse stared at him, a frown on his face.
Great. Now he was Morose Bare-Chested Ape Man.
“He’s waffling,” Zane said. “I’ve seen it a hundred times. Done a bit of it myself.”
Zane Hollister was one of the happiest men Cade had ever met. He was also one sarcastic bastard, but he seemed like a guy who had it all together. “You waffled about marrying Callie?”
The big guy’s eyes went soft as he looked over to where Callie and Nate were playing with their twins as they talked to a couple of women Cade didn’t know. “She’s pretty much perfect, you know. The first time I met her, I was in a bad place. I was a stupid asshole and chose my career over her. I chose my friend over her. The second time, I was in an even worse place, and I was practically certain I was bad for her.”
Cade felt himself smile. Not because he was happy that Zane and Callie had trouble in the past, but because it was easy to be shocked by it. They all seemed happy. The Harpers, Stef and Jen, all of them. But every family had its own problems. The strong ones came through it. His family never had the chance. He’d made sure of it. His family had died. All of them. “What made you realize you could be good for her?”
He was merely curious. He wasn’t good for anyone, but he was interested in how Hollister had known.
A wide grin crossed Hollister’s scarred face. “Who said I am? She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I might not be good enough for her, but I try every day to be the best husband I can be. Now I have the twins and I have to be the best dad, too. I didn’t even have a dad, but I have to step up to the plate, you know. I have Nate to rely on. Nate did have a dad. We talk it over. We figure out what Nate’s dad would have done and do the exact opposite.”
Jesse laughed. “I think I learned that lesson young. My dad walked out. The most important thing about being a father is to be there for your kid.”
Cade felt the pit of his stomach roll. His father hadn’t walked out. His father had fought. His father had tried so hard before the water had taken him, before his eyes had gone a glossy blank.
He forced the image down. Jesse was thinking about kids? Cade thought about them, but in a vague, undefined way. Kids were something that might happen in the distant future.
But he was almost thirty. The distant future might be here now.
He didn’t like to think about the future. Today was what he had. He’d learned that a long time ago. Parents, even when they loved a kid, didn’t always show up for baseball games and school plays. Sometimes, parents walked out the door and they didn’t come back. Sometimes kids walked out the door only to discover the ones they loved and left behind were gone forever.
He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to give Gemma a chance, no matter how pretty she was or how much she moved him. He had to acknowledge for the first time that he might never be ready. There might be something inside him that was simply broken. He’d used Jesse as a crutch. If Jesse wanted to move on, then good for him. It wouldn’t have worked long term anyway.
He was surrounded by working ménages, but he didn’t think it would work for him. He might have some issues. And damn Gem
ma Wells for making him see them.
He’d been fine. He’d been happy. He’d been settling in, but no, now Gemma was forcing him to think.
“What’s wrong with him?” Zane asked.
Jesse had found where the beers were stashed. He took a short sip, keeping the shit-eating grin securely on his face. “That’s his thinking face. Don’t worry about it. It won’t last too long. Cade prefers to shove his problems as far under the surface as possible. Every now and then he’s forced to confront them, and that’s the look he gets.”
He shot his best friend the bird and decided he’d had enough of this damn party. He stalked off toward the car.
He heard Jesse groan and begin to follow. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” He wasn’t sorry, and he wasn’t wrong, either.
“I am sorry about putting it out there like that. It felt like we were among friends, and I was teasing you a little. Okay, a lot.”
He rounded on Jesse. Cade might be avoiding his past, but Jesse was sorely overestimating their future. “You think I didn’t see you with her? What are you doing? She’s not a good-time girl. She’s going to get serious, and she’ll do it fast. What the hell is going to happen when she figures out what you make for a living?”
Jesse’s eyes rolled. “Not every woman in the world thinks a man is nothing more than a dick and a paycheck. Besides, she’s not exactly a catch herself. She doesn’t have some great job.”
And that wouldn’t last forever. She wouldn’t let that degree go to waste. Not for any real length of time. She’d spend the winter here in Bliss with her mother, but by the time spring rolled around, she would be in a big city somewhere with a high-powered career. She wouldn’t go to her company’s parties with two mechanics on her arm. “She will. She’s going to leave.”
“Maybe we can make her want to stay.”
“God, that is naïve. It’s not going to happen.” He hated to bring it up. Hated that he had to be the asshole who tore down his friend’s hopes. “She won’t stay here because of us. What is that woman going to think when she finds out you spent a good portion of your teen years in prison?”
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