by Evie Nichole
He rolled onto his back and started laughing. “As if they don’t just do it in the barnyard like wild animals, right?”
The joke seemed to normalize things. It was sort of strange. Jesse turned onto her side and threw her leg over his hip. They were mostly naked there on the grass in front of her pasture fence. Was this the way it had been in the old days? Was this part of the charm of living out in the middle of nowhere? They would be able to see a car or horse coming for miles. There would be plenty of time to get dressed and be presentable even if someone decided to come calling. It was very—liberating.
“I love you,” she whispered suddenly. “I think I have since I was pretty young, but I wanted to wait to tell you until you could at least make an attempt to take me seriously.”
“I take you very seriously,” Cal told her with every bit of solemnity she could have wished for. “And I think I’ve loved you since before it was politically correct, so I think we’re both on the same page here.”
“Do you think our family will have trouble accepting this?” Jesse could not stop thinking about Avery.
He seemed to guess her thoughts. “You’re talking about my mother.”
“Mostly. But what about your brothers?” She could not help but think about some of Laredo’s comments in the past. “It’s got to be weird for them anyway. Don’t you think?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” Cal sat up suddenly. “I suppose we’ll have to ask.”
“Ask?” Jesse could not help it. She plucked a handful of grass from beside her and threw it at him. “Are you crazy? Why would we ask? Do we need permission?”
“No. I didn’t say we should ask for permission.” He pulled a piece of grass from his chest hair and flicked it back at her. “I said we should just ask if they’re weird about it. That’s not asking permission. That’s saying this is how it is. Now, how do you feel about that?”
“I’m going to say that’s splitting hairs,” Jesse decided. Maybe she didn’t want to know after all. “I don’t want your family deciding that they get to choose who I love or not.”
“Sweetheart, nobody is going to keep me away from you anymore,” he told her fervently. “Nobody. I’m tired of people thinking they can tell me who to talk to and who to love and who to be with. It’s going to stop. That’s what I know.”
“Cal, your mother is going to pitch a fit.” Jesse picked up her T-shirt and pulled it on over her bra. “Are you really prepared for that?”
Actually, was Jesse really prepared for that? She had already lost one set of parents and then a man who was apparently both more and less to her than he was supposed to be. Avery was the last excuse for a parental figure that Jesse had. She did not want to imagine that moment when she saw Avery turn completely away from her in disdain. It would hurt. It would not matter if Cal or even if the whole family supported Jesse. Knowing that Avery Hernandez wanted nothing more to do with her would put a little hole in Jesse’s heart.
“It’s going to be all right,” Cal told Jesse softly. He touched her shoulder and then kissed it. “Although I wish you could just run around naked all day long, because your skin is absolutely kissable.”
“Wait.” Jesse gave him a look of mock severity. “Are you only with me because you love my body? Is this about having a hot young chick who makes you look like some old virile bull?”
He gave her a lazy grin. “Wait. Are you referring to yourself as a heifer?”
“Going to kill you. Right. Now!” She tackled him back onto the grass and began kissing and tickling him all at the same time. She didn’t even care how much grass got stuck in awkward places she would never admit to. The only thing that mattered was right here and now.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cal yawned and stretched and then rolled over to pull Jesse back into his arms for a thorough kissing. He loved going to sleep with this woman beside him only slightly less than he loved waking up with her beside him in the morning. Or perhaps it was dead even. He didn’t know and didn’t care. He was too busy enjoying himself for that crap to matter anyway.
Jesse stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes. He kissed her cheek and nuzzled her neck. It was almost impossible to stop touching her. He needed the contact. He needed to know that she was there beside him.
“Are you awake?” he whispered.
She yawned. “What time is it?”
“I haven’t looked.” He didn’t even want to think about it.
“I should probably get up and go bring those horses in,” she said sleepily. “You kept me up half the night though. So, maybe you should do it as punishment.”
“I will happily take that punishment,” he joked.
She seemed to sink into her thoughts, and Cal could not help but wonder if they were good or bad. It was very hard to tell without a good view of her expression. He gently ran the tip of his nose over her ear, and she giggled.
“We’re going to have to figure out this whole living situation thing,” she finally told him. “I don’t really want to give up my house. But then there’s really no reason for you to give up yours either.”
“Your house is more like a home,” he observed. After saying the words out loud, he realized just how true that was. “I live in my house, but it’s basically still my mom’s place.”
“What does that mean?” She squirmed onto her back and stared up at him with a frown. “You live there. Don’t you have stuff? Tell me you don’t still sleep in your childhood bed!”
“No.” At least he had remedied that. “I moved into the master bedroom because I was in the bunkhouse. Remember?”
“Oh my goodness, Cal!” She poked his chest and made a face at him. “Your parents didn’t take their stuff with them?”
“I told you!” Cal said defensively. “When my mother finally got Dad to say he’d move to the city, she whisked him off to a brand-new house furnished by a top-shelf designer. There was no room for ranch furniture or anything not brand spanking new. When I moved into the master bedroom, I carefully boxed up all of their stuff and moved it into what used to be your room.” He remembered that onerous task with irritation. “I swear I even had to pack up her jewelry box, her bathroom crap, and even her clothing. My mom was determined to leave the ranch life behind for good!”
“Wait a second.” Jesse sat bolt upright in the bed. “Did you just say that you packed up all of your mother’s stuff?”
“Yeah, why?” Cal could not imagine why women felt it was necessary to keep so much shit. “I put every single item in a box and put it in your old room. I sure as hell wasn’t going to have her kill me later because I threw something away that she wanted. I figured I didn’t need the space anyway and eventually she would come clear it out.”
“Do you know what this means?” Jesse started pounding on his arm. It wasn’t like she was punching him, but she didn’t hit like a girl.
“Hey!” He sat up and wrapped his arms around her to keep her from beating him up any further. “What is going on with you?”
“If your mother stole stuff from my mother, then she probably had it in her room at the ranch. Right?”
“But you said she had the handkerchief with her at the hospital,” Cal pointed out. He wasn’t sure where this was going. “So, anything she took would have gone with her.”
“Maybe,” Jesse allowed. “But I’m willing to bet that the handkerchief was like a trophy and any journals would have been dirty little secrets she wanted to hide.”
“You think those journals are in my mother’s crap at my house?” Cal asked, aghast. “Right now? You don’t think my mother took them with her?”
“Don’t you think it’s worth a look?” She was already pulling out of his embrace and throwing her legs over the edge of the bed. “Oh my God! That has to be where they are! That has to be it!”
Jesse was buzzing about the room pulling on a bra and panties and the rest of her clothes while Cal was still sitting there in her bed like a bump. Finally, she turned to look at him
with an expression of pure confusion.
“I don’t want to get out of bed,” he moaned in his most pitiful voice. “If we get out of bed, that means we have to pretend to care about the real world and do grown-up, responsible things.”
“Are you hearing yourself?” She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. Is this actually Calvin Hernandez complaining about doing the responsible thing? I thought Cal was doing the responsible thing before he was walking.”
“Which is why I’m tired of it now!” he griped.
It was so tempting to grab her and pull her back into bed. He didn’t want the real world to come charging back into their lives. He wanted to live in a world populated by dreams of making love to his sweetheart all night long.
“Cal!” Her voice held just a note of exasperation, but it was enough to get him moving.
He gave her the grumpiest look he could muster, which considering the night he’d had probably wasn’t very grouchy. “Fine! I’m moving. See? I’m out of the bed.”
But anything he said was totally lost on Jesse. She had already shoved her feet into her boots and was clomping down the hallway toward the kitchen. Cal hurriedly got dressed and headed for the bathroom first. He needed to splash some water on his face to at least make sure the sleep was fully flushed from his system.
“Cal!”
The shout pulled him out of the bathroom and had him running down the hallway at a pretty damn good clip. There was actual frustration and maybe even panic in her voice as she called for him once again.
He sprinted down the hall and found her in the living room. She was pointing out the front door and looking as if she were about to spit nails and use them to pin someone to the wall.
“What’s wrong, Jesse?” Cal demanded.
She pointed again, and he finally looked. The sight that greeted him was not catastrophic, but not good either. Every single one of Jesse’s horses was milling about the front yard between the barns and the house. Behind them, it was possible to see that an entire section of fence perhaps thirty feet long had been flattened to the ground. The wood appeared to have been splintered.
“How does that happen?” Jesse demanded. “Do tractors and trucks just randomly wander about under their own power flattening people’s fences?”
Cal exhaled heavily. Then he wrapped his arms around Jesse’s tense body and kissed her firmly on the forehead. “Let’s go do some wrangling, and then we’ll figure out what happens next. All right? At this point, let’s just be glad it’s breakfast time. They should come running into the barn.”
“Dammit!” Jesse grumbled. “I just painted that fence and repaired some boards. Seriously! Can’t vandals ever pick the crappy sections of fence that need to be replaced anyway?”
Cal couldn’t help but chuckle as he followed her out the front door. As soon as Jesse’s boots touched the gravel, the horses began to come closer. Most of them were trying to get some of the treats she usually carried in her pockets, but it was plain they were hungry.
“I’ll go bang a grain bucket in the barn!” Cal called out.
He jogged his way over to the barn. He was so involved in what was going on with the horses that he didn’t see the blow until it was too late. Something caught him across the shoulders, and he went down hard on one knee.
“Cal!” Jesse’s shout roused him and kept him conscious as the next blow smacked him in the back of the head.
“You bastard! This was supposed to be mine!”
Cal tried to process the words as he raised his hands to catch the next blow from what turned out to be a section of two-by-four from the fence. Lurching up toward his attacker, Cal let the blow hit his hand. He snatched the two-by-four just as he reached out with his other hand and grabbed the calf of the man standing in front of him. Cal yanked the guy’s legs out from under him. The man crashed to the ground.
Cal was still feeling horribly stunned. He barely managed to fling himself on top of his attacker just as he heard Jesse come barreling into the barn. She snatched up a manure rake sitting by the wall and smashed the end of it down on the stranger’s back. Of course, this had the effect of sending the tines of that rake whizzing past Cal’s nose with a scant two centimeters of space between him and a face full of metal, but at least the attacker stopped squirming.
“Stop right where you are!” Jesse said firmly. Her voice brooked no argument. “Don’t move a muscle or the next hit will be a stab right through your shoulder. You got me?”
“I got you.”
The words held a tang of bitterness that sounded old and hard. Cal slowly raised himself off the ground. His head was throbbing, and he felt as though someone had buried a knife between his shoulder blades. He had to grab the top of the nearest stall to keep himself from falling over.
“Okay.” Jesse was still brandishing the manure fork as though it had a wicked sharp blade on the end and not just tines. “Now, I want you to get up very slowly and turn around.”
The man did as he was told. Cal was a bit surprised by the sheer breadth of the guy. He was at least six foot two inches and perhaps two hundred and fifty pounds or more. His shoulders were huge. Underneath the black T-shirt he wore, he was sporting some serious musculature. And as soon as the stranger turned around, Cal felt as if the man had smacked the breath right back out of Cal’s lungs.
“Damn,” Cal whispered.
Beside Cal, Jesse was in no better condition. She was now gaping with her mouth hanging wide open and her blue eyes big as saucers. The man’s swarthy complexion was enough of a coincidence, but add in the wavy black hair and you had Hernandez brother number six.
“What?” the man asked in a snide voice. “You’ve never seen anyone else who looks like me? I find that hard to believe, considering this area is full of my brothers.”
“Half-brothers,” Cal said automatically. “And watch your tone. Jesse and I didn’t even know you existed until twenty-four hours ago.”
Cal could see the man’s reaction even though he tried to hide it. The guy’s face tightened just a bit, and his eyes flared with surprise. Then he quickly tamped it all down. Had he honestly believed that they had known about him all these years? Obviously, this was the child of Amelia Collins and Joseph Hernandez. As far as they’d known, he had been adopted out into a family somewhere else in the region. They hadn’t gotten as far as searching for him.
The man cleared his throat. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Seriously?” Jesse put the rake down and glared at the guy. “What is it you do believe? What Captain Weatherby has been telling you? Is that what you believe? You believe that we’ve excluded you from the family all these years and pretended that you didn’t exist?” Jesse stabbed her finger toward the man. “My mother is dead. You were born before she married my father, who is also dead. And she was staying with family members who are also all—conveniently for Paul Weatherby—dead.”
“I spent years in foster care!” the man said bitterly. “Years. You have no idea what that’s like.”
“Maybe not.” Cal wondered if the guy had any real ideas about what life with the family had been like. “But I will tell you that the information we had suggested you were adopted.”
“My adoptive parents divorced.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “They gave me back to the state.”
Jesse turned her head sideways. For about the millionth time, Cal wished he could read her mind. “How old were you?” she asked. “Because my friend Melody, who was the granddaughter of the relatives our mother stayed with while she was pregnant with you, was in foster care her whole life. She was in and out of group homes and never adopted.”
“Yeah, but now she has a ranch,” the man shot back. “She has the Farrell place free and clear.”
Cal shook his head. Weatherby had certainly done a number on this man. “Melody wouldn’t have had squat if Paul Weatherby had been able to finish convincing her to give him her inheritance for nothing. If my brother hadn’
t done her a favor by looking at her estate case, she would still be living in the one-room, bug-infested apartment she couldn’t afford and working sixteen-hour days at a café to make ends meet.”
“Our point is that you aren’t the only one who’s been screwed over by this whole situation.” Jesse’s tone was beginning to soften. “What’s your name?”
“Adam,” the man finally said. “Adam Connolly.”
“Well, Adam Connolly, it’s good to finally meet you.” Jesse put her hand out.
Cal watched the man carefully. If he made one move to grab Jesse or harm her in some other way, Cal was going to rip his arms and legs off, and Cal didn’t give a damn whose kid he was.
“You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t shake your hand,” Adam Connolly said snidely. “I’m a little bit disgusted by the spoiled princess of the Hernandez clan.”
“You must be joking,” Cal snorted. “Jesse isn’t a Hernandez and never was. She’s a Collins. And my mother never let her forget it. You need to leave. If you don’t want to be civil and try to discuss this like rational adults, then you need to go so that we can clean up the mess you obviously made. For a guy who claims that this is all supposed to be his, he did a bang-up job of trying to screw it all up.”
Adam started to say something else but then muttered a nasty word or two about spoiled brats and left through the barn doors. Moments later, they heard a four-wheeler fire up, and Adam Connolly was gone.
Cal turned to Jesse. “He’s riding an ATV.”
“So?”
“That means he came here from Flying W land.” Cal wondered what this was going to mean for all of them in the end. Whether the Flying W had sent Adam or he’d come on his own, the heir had made his appearance, and now they had no choice but to deal with it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Do you think it’s safe to leave my house?” Jesse could not help but fret. “What if he tries to burn it down? Or the barn? Oh God, what if he burns the barn down?”
