Yes, I’m being a little bitch, but I give zero fucks. I thought, after our little moment when we arrived at the farm, that there was hope for us. But I can see we’ve regressed again, perhaps even farther back than even the dismal place we left in college. We’re like two little kids right now, fighting over the same toy. The only difference is the toy is an expensive farm, and I still want to be inside her.
We ride back to the house in silence. Maybe I should just leave. This has devolved into a pointless situation. While I’d love nothing more than to be balls-deep inside her, making her scream as I thrust relentlessly, this drama isn’t really worth my sanity—or my professional reputation. This deal already stinks of nepotism, what with me representing my brother. I don’t need to fuck this up further by stirring up old feelings with Rory. Maybe this itch is just never going to get scratched.
That fucking blows. And not in the good way.
By the time we’ve pulled up next to my truck, I’m ready to throw in the towel and finish this deal with as little interaction as humanly possible. Rory, on the other hand, has other plans. When I make to climb inside my vehicle, she grabs my arm. I still, willing away the ridiculously large wave of desire rolling over me from a simple touch.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Away from here. I think we can agree this is pointless, don’t you? Neither of us is going to change our minds.”
“I told you I would go over every inch of this land and every financial statement until you change your mind. I intend to keep that promise. I know that’s a little difficult for you, but surely you could manage this one little thing?”
Nice. Another jab, another hit at our past. And yet, if I try to ask her about it, try to put the past behind us once and for all, she’ll sidestep it once again. I’m getting rather sick of this bullshit.
“Rory!”
A man is running across the yard toward us. He’s roughly our age, maybe a little older, and tan, with curly brown hair swept carelessly over his forehead. He steps toward Rory with a familiarity I immediately loathe. There’s just something about him that screams dickhead.
“Mike, hey,” Rory says without sparing me a glance. Or maybe it’s that she deliberately doesn’t look at me. She turns entirely toward him, but there’s a tension in her that implies she’s bracing herself for something.
Something I should already know.
It takes me a few seconds. “Mike Lipton? Is that you?”
“Hey, Jackson. Man, I thought that was you.” He sticks a hand out for me to shake, which I do grudgingly.
Mike was two years ahead of me in school—four ahead of Rory—and, well, fat. In childhood, anyway. Then he came back junior year of high school fucking ripped. Huge. He became an instant legend for freshman boys like me.
And suddenly, no one was making fun of the fat kid anymore. Girls lined up to help him get over his childhood trauma. It continued even after he graduated and got a job as one of the assistant football coaches. I shit you not, it was that clichéd.
I graduated and then went to Georgia Tech, two years ahead of Rory. Even after I left high school, I still heard all the rumors about the guy—and all the women he supposedly screwed.
Rumors that included Rory, my sophomore year of college.
The idea that Lipton might have fucked Rory when I’d wanted her for years drove me absolutely insane. I confronted her over Thanksgiving break, right in the living room of this house in front of both our assembled families.
Naturally, she denied it, said there had never and would never be anything between them. She told me I had no right to ask such questions—technically true since we weren’t together—which only pissed me off more.
It was such a huge fight that we didn’t talk for two years, until my senior year, when I could no longer bear to ignore the fact that she was in the second year at my own college, I was about to graduate, and if I didn’t do something soon, I’d be gone and we’d probably never see each other again. So I made the effort, apologized, and we started talking again, seeing each other between classes, during school breaks.
And I thought we’d gotten past it. I thought we finally had a chance together. Until the night I apparently did something so fucking horrible, so downright despicable, that Rory’s hated me ever since. So wrong she left me in my fucking dorm room, literally right before we were finally going to have sex.
Seeing this fuckface, here, all these years later, downright chummy with Rory, after she vehemently denied those rumors all those years ago? Fucking infuriating.
“Yeah, Lipton. Been a while. You still going after jailbait?”
“You still a douchenozzle? No, I don’t fuck girls, you asshole.”
“Enough, both of you. I’m not in the mood for your territorial bullshit—that neither of you have a claim to, I might add,” Rory snaps. Lipton and I glare at each other, but shut up, because, at the end of the day, this is Rory’s place. Neither of us intends to get kicked off the property. I certainly don’t, now that I know this fucker’s around.
What the hell is Lipton even doing here?
Lipton turns to Rory, completely dismissing me, which sure is irritating as fuck, and says, “We’ve got a problem.”
“What now?”
“One of the idiot workers drove the tractor into two of the trees. Everything has spilled and the trees are in a bad shape.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Rory and Mike head toward the Gator. I follow along behind them, refusing to believe that I’ve just been dropped like a bag of rotten peaches. By the time I reach the back seat, Rory’s already got the vehicle roaring to life. A second later, we’re flying across the field toward where Lipton points.
When we arrive, the tractor has indeed plowed into two of the beautiful peach trees. Its front end has smashed, the trailer it was hauling overturned. Peaches have flown everywhere, clear across the road, under the trailer. Some of them have even been smashed by the tractor itself.
All of those beautiful peaches. All those hours of harvesting. Now pulverized and smushed into the grass.
Rory emits a small noise, like it’s she herself who has been injured. She throws the Gator in park, then jumps out and is running toward the carnage before either Mike or I have even exited the vehicle.
“What happened? Is everyone okay?” Rory asks the workers assembling around the tractor.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” a tall, skinny guys says. “We were a few rows over and heard a shout. By the time we got over here, Mike was already surveying the damage.”
“Who was driving?”
They just shrug, which does little to soothe Rory’s irritation. She stoops down to inspect the damage to the tractor. She can’t even look at the trees, mangled and lying uprooted in the middle of the lane.
But none of this is the worst part. I know, and Rory knows that I know, that this tractor is the one and only vehicle the farm has to harvest peaches.
Chapter Five
Rory assembles the rest of the farmhands to help right the trailer after it’s been unhooked from the tractor. It takes the lot of us heaving to get it flipped over so it’s upright once again.
Fortunately, it’s relatively unharmed; only one of the steel sides has a large scratch going down the length of it, but it’s still functional. We all begin reloading the peaches into the trailer, which is roughly chest high, rectangular in shape, and completely open at the top.
Unfortunately, a good third of the peaches were entirely smashed by the accident. Even many of the salvageable ones are heavily bruised. Not to mention the ruined trees; in all likelihood, they’ll never produce again. I mentally tabulate the cost of all this damage.
There are easily hundreds of pounds inside this giant trailer, most of which have been ruined. That’s thousands of dollars right there, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars. The trailer itself seems fine, but we haven’t tried hauling it out yet. Hopefully nothing is truly wrong with it.
&nbs
p; And then there’s the tractor. It’s undeniably wrecked; the full front of it crumpled when it smashed into the trees. It’s possible that they’ll be able to repair it, but I suspect that since it was so old already, it’ll be cheaper over the long run to just buy a new one outright.
While the ruined peaches are a one-time loss and the trailer appears to be fine, the downed trees and tractors are a permanent financial hit. They’re gone forever. The potential production of the farm has now been decreased, perhaps fatally.
The tractor is the main method of moving the peaches from the fields to the barns so that they can be readied for sale. If they can’t get another vehicle to move this massive trailer, then they now have to haul the produce manually to the barns. That’s going to take a good portion of the day, hours which would otherwise be spent picking peaches. Peaches that will now rot because they can’t be harvested in time.
All of that, in theory, affects the listing price of the property.
My being here makes that undeniable. Rory’s brought me here to convince me to increase my offer; this mishap should make me decrease it even further. Christ, this is now even more complicated than just five minutes ago.
Similar thoughts run through Rory’s mind; she glances at me repeatedly as the group of us work to return the peaches to the trailer. I say nothing, now torn between wanting to smooth things over with Rory and the fiduciary duty I have to my brother to tell him what just happened.
Yet more evidence I should have remained at the office.
By the time we’ve returned all of the peaches to the trailer and salvaged what we could from the downed trees, a few hours have passed and the sun has begun slipping below the tree line. In the twilight, there’s little time to figure out what can be fixed with the tractor—and whether some other way of hauling the peaches might be devised.
Rory gets down on her hands and knees—hard not to imagine her doing that for a different reason—and begins sliding under the tractor.
“What the hell are you doing?” I say, tone sharp in the rapidly fading light.
She makes some muffled response, but it’s unintelligible from under the vehicle. I bend down myself to hear what she said, uneasy when I notice a few metal parts dangling above her head.
“Hey, get out from under there.”
“Relax, Jackson. It’s fine.”
“I highly doubt sharp objects hovering a few inches from your head is fine in any sane capacity.”
“Oh, calm down. I repair this heap of junk all the time; it’s just pieces of the rotor.”
“A rotor I’m fairly certain belongs inside the engine block, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, yeah, smartass.” Rory continues her inspection. This time, I have no problem hearing the muttering and swearing.
I fold my arms over my chest, growing tenser with every additional second she’s in there. Rory starts tapping on the various parts of the engine, which shriek in protest. She shouldn’t fucking be in there.
“Does she usually fix this thing?” I ask Lipton, practically snarling at him.
He raises his brows at me, but says mildly, “Yeah, she does. Of course, the front end of the tractor has never been smashed before like this, so the job has never been quite so large. You and I both know the thing’s toast; she just has to convince herself.”
My eyes narrow slightly at that statement, at the slightest off tone of his voice. But then the tractor gives another large shriek as the front end begins crumpling and I forget all about Lipton.
“Rory!” I shout in warning, but she can’t see the piece of shit is collapsing. I throw myself on the ground, dragging her out from under the vehicle just as the engine crashes down on where her head had been mere seconds before. Rory screams. “What? Are you okay? Rory, say something!”
I roll her over to discover blood is already seeping through her shirt from a hideous gash running up her forearm.
“Jesus Christ, Rory.” I surge to my feet as I haul her off the ground. When it becomes apparent I have no intention of lowering her to the ground, she snaps out of her shock, squirming and shoving at my chest.
“Put me down!”
Figures she can’t be writhing for another reason. I head toward the Gator, snapping at Lipton to hurry up so he can drive. The rest of the farmhands stare at us in astonishment; I pay them no attention as I settle myself on the passenger’s seat, a protesting Rory in my lap.
“Let go of me. How dare you! This is ridiculous. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” I snap, eyes transfixed on the blood welling out of the gash. If I don’t do something quickly, she’ll lose too much before I can get her to medical attention. I shift her into my left arm so that I can begin lifting my shirt over my head. Good thing I implemented a casual dress policy for my office on Fridays.
“What are you doing?” Rory shrieks, craning her head around to stare at me. Almost instantly, her head whips back around and her entire body locks up with tension. “Don’t take off your shirt!”
“We have to stop the blood flow.”
“It’s not that bad!”
“Don’t be absurd. It’s flowing down your arm and all over your lap. We need to apply a compress on the way to the hospital.”
“I’m not going to the hospital!”
“Oh, so you are absurd, then. Good to know. That gash is easily going to need ten stitches.” I shift her to the other side of my lap so that I can change hands and finally free myself of my shirt. Then I pull her stiff body back into my chest and lean forward, so I can wrap my arms around her and press my T-shirt to her arm.
She whimpers. Without thinking, I make soothing noises into her ear, whispering that she’ll be okay because I’ll take care of her. And then my brain finally catches up with my insane ramblings, and I freeze.
Rory’s gone immobile in my arms. Her breaths come in rapid little pants. I can’t focus on anything else. Only an instant before I might have believed it a reaction to the pain, but now I think it might actually be a reaction to me.
Fuck.
I need to erase this realization from my mind right the fuck now because the very last thing I need is to make this situation even worse by pressing a suddenly-hard cock into her back. Rory shifts slightly on my lap. A small moan escapes her.
She’s hurt, you fucking savage. Now is definitely not the damn time. She hates your fucking guts. She doesn’t want to deal with any of your stupid shit right now.
Rory moves her hand to cover mine, where I press firmly against her wound. “I’ve got it, Jackson,” she says quietly, and that might just be the first time in a decade she’s said my name as anything other than an epithet. Fuck, I missed that.
I don’t respond. I’m not able to. All I can think about is the fact that I finally have her in my arms, and she’s horribly injured. Terribly in pain. I never should have let her under that damn tractor. I should have been the one to inspect it—not that I know fuck-all about tractors. It should be me with this injury, not her.
Lipton does the first useful thing I’ve ever witnessed him do and drives us back to the house at the speed of light. He’s barely parked the Gator when I launch out of it, still holding Rory curled against my chest, although now she’s strangely quiet. Too quiet.
The calm ends the moment I carry her over to the passenger seat of my truck. “Put me down. You’re not taking me anywhere!”
Ignoring her, I rip open the door and set her on the seat. She immediately attempts to climb down, but I block her. Rory’s head whips up to glare at me, but before she can open her mouth, I say, “I’m taking you to get this fixed. This is going to happen whether you like it or not. If something ever happened to you, I’d loathe myself for the rest of my miserable existence.”
I say it so calmly, so deliberately, that Rory’s mouth snaps shut. She studies me, eyes searching mine, and a flash of something almost like vulnerability, like hope, shoots across her face before she quickly hides it and turns to face the windshield. I
stare down at her for another moment, shocked that she capitulated so quickly.
But it’s not like she can drive herself anywhere in her condition, with blood dripping down her body like that. And judging by the increasing pallor of her skin, she must be aware that she does indeed require medical attention. Perhaps this is pure practicality on her part. Or she could finally, finally be warming up to me.
And maybe Disney dreams really do come true.
I hurry around to my side of the truck, reminding myself of the fact that the woman next to me, despite years of my attempting the contrary, wants not one thing to do with me.
Chapter Six
I don’t take Rory to the hospital.
I do her one better; I take her to my brother, Griffin. Yes, this is a good idea. No, Rory isn’t going to like it.
Griffin’s my younger brother, the third oldest in my family of six hooligan boys. I came second, and Grif came behind me a year later, leaving the twins and the baby to follow along in the next three years after that. Axel’s the oldest, and it shows.
But Griffin’s always been a do-gooder. Middle-kid syndrome, and all that. He’s always wanted to please others, so he picked a job he thought would please the most: physician.
And while I’ll never, ever admit this to him, he’s damn good at it. I’d much, much rather he look at Rory’s wound than some crackpot resident at the trauma center that’s half an hour away. Being a small-town doctor has its perks, which means I know that even this early on a Friday evening, Grif’ll be at his apartment.
He’s boring like that.
Besides, I no longer have a shirt, which means I can’t exactly stroll into a hospital. And no way in hell am I going to sit in an emergency room, waiting God only knows how long for them to get her into an exam room. And, knowing Rory, she’ll move heaven and earth to make sure that I’m nowhere near the room during the examination. Waiting to find out if she’s okay would kill me.
Monster (King Brothers #1) Page 3
