by Gigi Moore
Bailey loved her in his own way, but his stubborn, disciplinarian manner prevented him seeing past his own viewpoint to notice Tamara’s real needs. She was a girl, not the rough-and-tumble boys that Jeremiah had raised, and she needed tender loving care
When silence reigned for several moments and no one answered Bailey’s question, he cursed under his breath and said, “Has that ol’ coot been shooting off his mouth?”
Tamara arched a brow. “Shooting off his mouth about what?”
Bailey grumbled some more then asked Jax to pass the flapjacks. Jax dutifully complied, and when Tamara realized that Bailey wasn’t going to answer, she sighed and went to the end of the island to take a seat adjacent to Jax and her father.
Jess watched the flush of color in her cheeks as she fixed her own plate, his heart breaking at Bailey’s obvious snub. He felt bad for Tamara, and if Bailey wasn’t the oldest and respected friend of his father, Jess would have made a point of calling the ol’ man out for his uncouthness. Well-regarded elder or not, Jess’s protective instincts wouldn’t allow him to be completely silent on the issue and kicked into gear. “I’m curious too, Bailey. What would Dad be shooting his mouth off about?”
“Who knows? He’s always poking his nose where it don’t belong. Could be anything.”
Jess exchanged a look with Jax, Maria and Tamara that plainly said, Are you buying any of this bull crap, because I’m sure not.
Tamara reached over to grasp Jess’s closest hand in hers and squeezed, giving her silent thanks.
Jess squeezed her hand back before he felt the heat of Bailey’s dark gaze and looked up to meet the disapproval in the older man’s eyes. He refused to break eye contact first, standing his ground for himself and Tamara and Jax too.
If he backed down, there’d be no peace for any of them. No matter how things turned out between the three of them, Jess wanted Tamara to be able to walk with her head held high. He didn’t want her feeling shame for what they had shared together, or what they felt for each other, whatever that was. As confused as he felt, shame didn’t factor into his emotions, and he didn’t think it ever would. He couldn’t be ashamed for feeling the way he did about Tamara or for making love to her with his brother. She deserved to be worshipped and taken care of by at least two men, better that the two men be the ones who knew and loved her.
Bailey finally broke the stalemate and turned his stare on Jax. But if he thought he would find Jax anymore diffident than his brother, he had another thing coming. Jax met his gaze head-on like Jess had.
After a long moment, Bailey pointed his fork at Jax and then Jess before making a jabbing motion in the air. “I know what you two boys are up to, and I don’t cotton to it. I just want you to know that.”
Jess exchanged a look with Jax who shrugged as if to say the jig is up.
“Nothing to say for yourselves?”
Jess wondered exactly which part of the equation Bailey had an issue with—the age gap between Tamara and him and Jax or the threesome. It couldn’t be his and Jax’s race, not when he had fathered Tamara with a black woman.
He cleared his throat but before he could say anything, Tamara jumped in with, “Why don’t you direct your condemnation at me? I’m just as much at fault as either of them if you’re talking about what I think you are.”
For the briefest of seconds, Jess wondered if Maria had said anything to Jeremiah or Bailey about what she had seen, or whether Bailey and probably their dad had put two and two together on their own. Admittedly, she looked uncomfortable fidgeting in her seat next to Bailey. But the expression on her face wasn’t guilt as much as empathy when she exchanged a helpless look with Tamara.
“The three of you hanging out to all hours, God knows where, doing God knows what. Don’t you have any shame?”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Tamara murmured, but she didn’t sound half as convincing as Jess would have liked.
He hated that Bailey succeeded in cowering her and making her feel like less than a woman of worth. She didn’t deserve that. If Bailey had been anyone else, Jess might have been tempted to knock him right on his butt, broken leg and crutches or not.
“Bailey, you need to pull in your horns a tad before you say something you’re going to regret,” Jess said, as deferentially as he could, which wasn’t a lot considering the way he felt. Now that he didn’t have Jax to direct his anger at, Bailey would do just fine.
“And who’s going to make me if I don’t?”
“You know, you’re being one right ornery cuss, and there’s really no need for it,” Jax said. “We’re all adults here. Let’s just live and let live.”
“I thought we were all adults.” Bailey looked at his daughter and scoffed. “But it seems despite the years that have passed, some of us haven’t grown up one iota.”
Tamara tossed down her napkin and stood from her chair, fists automatically landing on her hips and Jess had an eerie sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t they just lived this scene several evenings ago when he had still been deep in the dog house?
“You know what? I’m about sick and tired of you judging me. I didn’t come back here for this, and I don’t have to take your abu—”
“Why did you come back?”
“Because…” Tamara gaped, exasperated as she threw up her hands. “You have to ask?”
“I just did, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t think you could be any more clueless or obnoxious than when I was a teenager. But clearly I’m wrong.”
Bailey jabbed the air with his fork again. “You watch your mouth, missy.”
“Or what? You’ll ground me?” Tamara did a little air-jabbing of her own with her forefinger. “I’ve got news for you, Dad. I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m certainly not your little girl to boss around and tell what to do.”
“Is that how you saw things?”
“I saw things as you made them.”
“If you think that then you’re more immature, short-sighted and selfish than your mother.”
“Don’t you dare compare me to that woman! I didn’t walk out of here and desert a three-year-old despite the temper tantrum you threw that made you resemble one.”
“Ay caramba! Basta! That’s enough!” Maria slammed her palm down on the island top, and all gazes flew to her. While she had everyone’s undivided attention, she pushed back from the island and stood up, panting and clearly fuming.
Jess didn’t think he had ever seen her more angry.
“Why do you do this?”
“It’s a long story, Maria,” Tamara mumbled and Bailey said, “You don’t understand the history.”
“Whether I do or not, I do not see the reason why a father and daughter would tear into each other so. It is not right. And to not speak to each other for so long…” Maria paused to shake her head, tsking. “It is not right,” she repeated.
Jess knew Maria didn’t like to see people she cared about at odds. She got upset when he and his dad got into it. But they always made up, and at least they hadn’t been estranged for eighteen years. He thought how small the consolation when he considered all the time Tamara and Bailey had wasted being angry with each other. He could easily see how unreasonable their feud looked to someone who wasn’t as intimately involved as he, Jax and their dad.
Marie put her own fists on her hips, looking as fierce as Tamara despite her petite proportions. “So now you have nothing to say for yourselves?”
“Thanks for trying to run interference, Maria,” Tamara said. “You’re a sweet woman, and you didn’t deserve to be subjected to our family feud.”
“Ay, please.” Maria waved a hand. “It is nothing that does not happen in all families. The thing is to get past it. Life is too short to hold grudges, si?”
Tamara leaned in to give Maria a peck on the cheek. “I’m going for a walk.”
Jess watched as she headed for the back door through which Bailey had burst not ten minutes ago. His heart told him to follow her and his head told h
im she needed time alone.
Well, so much for him and Jax sitting down with her to talk.
Maria turned on Bailey now. “See what you did?”
Bailey stood up from his chair with some difficulty, quickly situating his crutches under his armpits and glaring at Maria before turning his gaze on Jess and Jax. “I love you boys like my own blood, but you best believe I’m going to be watching you two like a hawk for as long as Tamara’s here.”
Chapter 18
Tamara blindly ran from the house. Tears of frustration and anger that blurred her vision so much she didn’t realize she had gone so far away from the main house. Then the lively whoops and shouts of several cowboys roughhousing in the roping and riding area drifted through the mental fog to finally reach her.
The man just never failed to put her on the defensive and make her feel lower than a bug on the bottom of a shoe.
What had she ever done, really, to earn his mistrust, besides what any other red-blooded teen girl had done?
Before Noah, she’d really never given her father a moment of grief to speak of. She’d gotten straight A’s all through school, she hadn’t used drugs, drank or smoked, and before Noah—a man she had at the time considered would be her first and only lover—she’d been a dutiful virgin. Yet with all this, her father treated her like Hester Prynne. Why didn’t she just sew a scarlet letter on all her clothes now before she went back to New York? Come to that, why didn’t she just go home now before she royally cussed the man out?
Life is too short to hold grudges.
Maria’s words came back to haunt her and made it difficult to swallow over the boulder in her throat. She knew the truth of the words, but she couldn’t bring herself to go back into that house and apologize when she had been insulted and wronged. Granted she wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t deserve this kind of condescending treatment—no one did.
“What the—?” A lasso looped over Tamara’s head and shoulders then tightened around her waist before she could blink. Arms imprisoned against her sides, she turned as much as the binding would allow and saw Jax with the other end of the lasso in his hands, easily reeling in the slack and pulling Tamara toward him.
Grinning against her will, she toddled to him, stumbling the last couple of feet before falling against him—apparently right where he wanted her if she could go by the hard bulge in his jeans. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“This is the roping and riding area, sweetheart. And I think I done caught myself a right wild little filly I want to ride.”
If her arms had been free, she would have punched his arm. Instead she settled for a good-natured, “You fresh ass.”
Jax just chuckled, the dimples-revealing grin he aimed her way melting her insides and making her wet.
She did not need him to turn her on right now. She did not need her judgment clouded.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trying not to think of how good his cock had felt inside her last week, trying not to think how right his lips had felt against her back.
Damn her father for being such a judgmental tyrant, and he’d only gotten worse with age, still able to make her feel like a brainless nympho. It wasn’t as if she had had all that many lovers since she’d left the ranch, just enough to make an informed decision about the kind of man she did and didn’t want in her life.
Make that the kind of men I want.
She looked at Jax and licked her lips. She couldn’t help herself, something about his devil-may-care demeanor just doing it for her, making her heart flutter and her mouth water. And then she had the opposite side of the coin, the level-headed but just-as-sexy Jess to look forward to making love with.
How could a woman choose between them? But a better question would be why should she have to choose just because society, specifically her father, subscribed to an antiquated set of ideals about what a relationship between a male and a female should be?
She had to admit she broke more than a few taboos being with Jess and Jax, and wondered which one bothered her father the most. Knowing him as she did, it didn’t take much for her to displease him, at least not as it concerned her sexuality.
Is that the way you saw things?
Tamara frowned as that bit of their argument came back to her. Her father had sounded genuinely surprised that she’d seen him as a bossy dictator.
Did he sincerely believe the brow-beatings he’d given her as a child had been for her own good, or more that she’d needed them to shape her into the intelligent, responsible woman she had become? Would she have had the drive to be successful and herself had it not been for her father’s strict and watchful parenting?
No way in hell did Tamara want to admit that her father could be right about her, especially about what he considered, her out-of-control libido. Did her reaction to Jax and Jess indicate she’d lost control of her libido? She’d never been so wanton with a man before, much less two. She’d never hungered like this for anyone else. In fact, she’d been called frigid and undersexed by at least a couple of lovers.
Tamara shuddered as Jax leaned in to circle the shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue.
Yep, she still hungered, and she felt far from frigid, especially where it involved either Jax or Jess. Just being in the same vicinity as either of them sent her temperature soaring.
Jax chuckled, sending even more tremors through her body when he bent his head to nuzzle her neck, Tamara turned her head to see if any of the other cowboys watched her and Jax but they remained at least several yards away, sitting and balancing on the fence surrounding the roping and riding area and paying her and Jax little heed. They watched and cheered on the action inside the corral where a cowboy attempted to stay on the back of a bucking bronco.
Tamara arched her neck and closed her eyes, moaning as Jax nibbled and sucked her throat. She didn’t let her hormones take her too far before she pulled away from him, panting and not wanting to give her father anymore ammunition than she had already.
“I know we can’t, not here,” Jax murmured and leaned his forehead against hers as he collared her nape with one hand. He took a deep breath. “You’re a dangerous woman.”
“You’re a bit of a curly wolf yourself,” she said and smiled at Jax’s look of surprise. She shrugged in response. “You can take the girl out of the country…”
“Well, you proved you can still ride a horse.”
“Among other things.” She licked her lips and smiled as Jax groaned, curved an arm around her and gently squeezed.
“Better stop before I ravage you right here, ranch hands and wranglers be damned.”
“Don’t forget my dad.”
Jax shook his head. “He’s always been a might cantankerous, giving Pop a run for his money. But since you got back, he’s gotten worse. And I don’t know what that’s about.”
“Old age?”
“Yeah, he’s getting up there. But there’s something else up with him I just can’t put my finger on.”
Tamara hated to admit it, but Jax would know whether or not something went on with her father better than she would. She conceded the point that he and Jess had been around her father more and longer than she had. Her dad had helped Jeremiah raise Jax and Jess. And Jeremiah had helped raise her. “Maybe it’s regret,” she said, wondering as she did whether her father had ever felt regret in his life. She hated to be so hard on him, but she swore his stubbornness could try the patience of a saint sometimes.
“I’m sure there’s that. What father wouldn’t regret depriving himself of his beautiful daughter for the last eighteen years?”
“Do you really think he still cares?”
“I think he never stopped caring. He just has a hard time showing it.”
Jax sounded so sure, and Tamara wanted to believe him.
She knew her father wasn’t a total heartless bastard, and had to admit the good times at the ranch for her had far outweighed the bad. That last day, those last moments just stuck
in her craw and overshadowed everything else. It still hurt her to this day that her father hadn’t even come to the airport to see her off. “You remember the day I left?” she blurted.
He tightened his hold on her as if to brace himself for what she would say next, and finally responded, “How could I forget?”
“He never showed up, Jax. He never even said good bye.”
“I think it would have hurt him too much to watch you go, to lose you.”
“But he didn’t lose me. Or at least he wouldn’t have if he had bothered to show a little sensitivity.”
“You know that goes both ways.”
She glared at him, her first reaction to lash out before she realized he hit the nail on the head and stood there wincing as if he waited for her to tear into him for expressing his opinion.
“You’re right,” she said, heart filling with not a little respect for his taking a stand. How could she not respect him for speaking his mind, for speaking the truth, especially in the face of her womanly, righteous indignation?
Tamara remembered those last days of silence, how she barely spoke to her father except to deliver the most essential information about her trip to New York or talk about her studies—nothing personal, nothing that could have led to a conversation about Noah. Her father had banished the man she’d loved, and she’d wanted to punish him for taking Noah away from her, wanted to punish her dad for shattering her illusions of his unconditional acceptance, love and support. Before the Noah incident, she’d been the recipient of all three, but after they became strangers. And the less she spoke to him, the easier it became for her to act as if he didn’t exist so that by the time she went to New York sans his farewell, her dad didn’t exist to her.
She guessed he’d written her off the same way she had written him off.
“I left believing he didn’t care, leaving so many things unsaid.”
“I know we sent you off on a guilt trip what with all the bratty bawling and clinging. That couldn’t have helped either.”
Tamara laughed. When he put it into perspective, she couldn’t reconcile the Jax and Jess of today with the two little boys who had cried at her departure. She guessed that meant she had gotten over the whole age gap, not that it had ever stopped her from screwing them to begin with. More than a deterrent their youth seemed to spur her on.
