The Baddest Virgin in Texas

by Maggie Shayne

  "You aren't the only one," Lash said.

  Jessi looked right at him, those brown eyes locking on to his like laser beams. "That's right," she said. "Once this thing is over, you can be on your way. I know you can't wait."

  Lash took the blow she dealt and didn't even rock backward under the impact, which he thought was admirable. "Actually," he said slowly, forcing the words out, "I was thinking about staying on."

  There was, in that instant, a flicker in her eyes. Lash thought it might have been hope, or joy, or something. He thought maybe he'd caused it.

  But it died quickly, and the sadness was back in her eyes, or worry, or stress, or whatever it was. Darkness. That was what he saw. And she said, "Sure you are. And I'm thinking of running for mayor."

  Lash gave his head a shake. "You don't believe me," he stated flatly.

  "You shouldn't say things you don't mean, Lash."

  "I meant it."

  She held his gaze for a long moment, and Lash couldn't look away, even when he felt curious gazes on him. Speculative eyes. Hostile ones.

  Finally, Jessi broke eye contact with a shrug. "Hell, it doesn't matter to me one way or another."

  But it did. And he knew, dammit, he knew what he had to do.

  "We'd best get a move on, Lash," Garrett said, pushing away from the table and snatching up his hat.

  Lash nodded, his eyes on his boss's baby sister. "I'll see you later, Jessi," he said. Hoping she'd get the message. They had to talk. He had to do right by her.

  But Jessi refused to so much as look at him as he stood near the door with his hat in his hand. And he had to give up, because he didn't want to have to deal with her brothers until after he'd fixed that pretty little heart he'd stupidly managed to break. And he was being pretty obvious here.

  He plunked the hat on his head, nodded to the others and headed out the door.

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  He tried to put the pain he'd seen in her eyes out of his mind by throwing himself into the rustling investigation up to his eyeballs. He and Garrett interviewed ranchers from one end of the county to the other. They examined tire tracks and hoof tracks, and Lash had an impromptu lesson from Garrett in making plaster molds of them for future reference. Almost as if Garrett might be taking seriously Lash's words about sticking around. Hell.

  He knew Jessi was doing the same, throwing herself into her work. By the time Lash and Garrett got back that night, the contractor she'd hired was out at her place in town. The guy was already raising hell with that garage. When Lash drove by on his way home, he saw crews of men. Muscular types, working shirtless. All of them tanned and rippling, the bastards. Jessi stood nearby, overseeing their progress, and never hesitated to correct them or boss them around. The lawn was a mess of lumber and sawhorses and pickup trucks and power tools and extension cords. These guys were pros, and they were going to town on the clinic. All of which made Lash suspect Jessi was deliberately hurrying the process along, just to divert her mind from the way he'd broken her poor, innocent heart. He was truly a slug.

  He pulled over, not really thinking about what he was doing or why. He sat in his car for a very long time, parked right across the street from her new place, and stared at the activity as the sun went down—like a kid hoping for a glimpse of a sweet at a candy store, but without the wherewithal to go inside. And all the while, the preacher's voice rang in his mind with Bible verses telling him the right thing to do.

  No matter how tempting Jessi's advances had been, this was his own fault. He wasn't an animal. He could have said no, done the honorable thing and walked away from her. He'd wanted her as badly as she wanted him. Thing was, he was experienced, and she was innocent. He was older, and supposedly wiser. He was the man, she the woman. His role should have been to protect her, watch out for her, not to take advantage of her innocent feelings for him.

  He'd crushed her. And no matter how he looked at it, there was only one way to fix this mess. Hell, marrying and settling down wasn't the way he'd planned to live his life, but it wouldn't be so bad. He liked Jessi. She was attractive—no, she was gorgeous—and smart. Fabulous in bed. God, more than fabulous. For a while there, she'd robbed him of his will to live without her body wrapped around his. And Quinn, Texas, wasn't such a terrible place to settle down, if a man was forced to settle down somewhere. And her brothers—hell, they'd come around. It wouldn't be so bad.

  He sat there. She'd seen him, he knew that, but she pointedly ignored his presence. After a while, the contractors packed up their equipment, leaving the bigger items in the garage, then cleared out.

  Jessi glanced across the way at him, shook her head, almost as if she were exasperated, and turned to walk into her house.

  It was time. Taking a deep breath and stiffening his spine, Lash wrenched open the door of his car and strode purposefully across the street and up the walk to the little house, eyeing it the way a newly condemned man eyes his prison cell. Silently he said goodbye to his dreams of roaming free and unfettered, wherever the wind would take him, and resigned himself to the mundane life of a married man. He felt pretty damned proud of himself for making this supreme sacrifice.

  He knocked on the little door, knowing in his heart that the joy in Jessi's pretty eyes when he told her what he'd decided to do was going to be all the reward he needed.

  Jessi opened the door and saw Lash standing there, looking at her as if she were a kid with a boo-boo and he had the only Band-Aid in town. She frowned, tilting her head to one side.

  "Look, Lash, you said it was a one-night stand, and I agreed, okay? I don't remember offering seconds."

  He lowered his eyes. "I just want to talk."

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Talk, then."

  "Can I come in?"

  She heaved a sigh, shrugged and stepped back, away from the door, so that he could come inside. He did, looking around the place and nodding in approval. "Wow. You've been busy."

  And she had. She'd scrubbed the place spotless, hung new curtains, had the furniture professionally cleaned, stored most of Marisella's personal things and moved in a whole lot of her own. She'd decided not to rent the house to strangers after all. She'd use it herself when she felt like it. And she'd stay at the ranch when she didn't. So there. In fact, she was going to do exactly what she wanted, when she wanted, where she wanted, from now until she died a spinster at eighty-something.

  Mostly, though, all the work had been to pass the time until she could get rid of this gnawing worry over the possibly faulty condom. It would be two weeks before a pregnancy test could give any sort of accurate results. Once she got past that, and the stupid thing read negative—as it most certainly would—she'd be rid of this nervous energy. Until then, all she could do was direct it into something constructive, just to burn it off. It was the only way she could sleep at night. And even then, she tossed and turned, and slept in fits and starts.

  The cottage was hers now. She'd made it hers. Forest-green curtains matched the new slipcovers on the sofa and chair. White throw pillows with green ruffles littered the sofa, and there were matching throw rugs on the hardwood floors, for accents. She'd placed a few of her treasures around the room. Knickknacks she'd collected over the years. Bowls full of flowers here and there. The shelves on the wall where Marisella used to pile her collection of trinkets were now Jessi's bookshelves, lined with most of her veterinary books. She'd even brought her PC over and installed it on its own desk, in the corner near the window that overlooked the front yard. That way she could work on her plans and budgeting and still be close enough to keep track of the workers outside.

  She watched Lash look around the place, saw the approval in his eyes, and thought he'd better blurt the apology he'd been practicing, beg her forgiveness on bended knee and ask for the chance to start over with her pretty darned fast, or he'd find himself out on his ear.

  "I've been worried about you," he said.

  "No need for that. I'm
just fine." She paced to the small sofa and sat down. Might as well resign herself to the fact that he would only get to his apology in his own good time.

  "You don't look fine," he told her, and he stood in front of where she sat, looking down at her almost worriedly. But it was a paternal, or big-brotherly, sort of worry. "You've lost weight, haven't you?"

  She shrugged and averted her eyes. Worry would do that. It was only three or four pounds. Nothing to get excited about. In fact, it was rather reassuring. Pregnant women gained weight, right? That she'd lost weight only added credence to her firm belief that she couldn't possibly be carrying Lash Monroe's baby.

  Lash cleared his throat, drawing her gaze back to his again. He was holding his hat in his hand, now. Worrying the brim with kneading fingers. Ah, the apology must be forthcoming, she thought. Maybe she ought to make him kneel.

  "I wasn't fair to you before, Jess. I mean, it would have been different if you were … you know, experienced, but you weren't, and I should have known that."

  She shrugged and wondered when he'd get around to apologizing and asking for a second chance.

  He turned slowly, taking a deep breath and paced to a nearby chair, one right across from her. Finally, he sat down and met her gaze again. "I take full responsibility for what happened between us, and I've decided to do the honorable thing and face up to the consequences."

  She drew a swift gulp of air and lifted her brows. He couldn't possibly know about the condoms, could he? "Consequences?"

  "Yes," he said, nodding firmly. "Look, just because I never intended to settle down, doesn't mean I can shirk my responsibilities. I screwed up, and I have no one to blame for that but myself."

  Jessi frowned at him. "You act like you robbed a bank. We had sex, Lash. Pretty incredible sex, actually. Last I knew, incredible sex wasn't a capital crime."

  He lowered his chin and his eyes simultaneously.

  "Did you come here thinking you had to do some sort of penance?"

  He nodded. "Something like that."

  Jessi sighed hard and shook her head. "You're confusing the hell out of me. Just say what you came here to say, all right?"

  "All right. I will." He stood up, took her hands in his and drew her to her feet. "Jessi, I'm going to marry you. It's really the only thing I can do to make this right, and I'm willing to do it."

  She blinked in shock, feeling as if he'd slapped her. Her jaw dropped. She snapped it closed, drew a breath, resisted the urge to slam him upside the head and gave her own head a shake to clear out the confusion. "Let me get this straight," she managed. "You made a mistake by sleeping with a virgin. You feel guilty about it, and figure you have to pay for your crime. And marrying me is your sentence?"

  "W-well, I don't know if I'd put it like that—"

  "But that's the way you did put it, Lash. That is exactly the way you put it."

  "No, I didn't. What I meant was—"

  "What about your precious freedom? What about you not being a 'settling-down kind of guy'?"

  He shook his head, looking confused. "I'll give all of that up, Jess. Look, I know I broke your heart, and I'm just trying to make it right."

  "You broke my heart?" She blinked up at him, then shook her head and turned to pace away. "Gee, it's the first I've heard of it. But thanks for being willing to sacrifice your life out of guilt, and thanks all to hell for being so very generous in offering to do hard time as my husband to make up for it." She whirled on him, hands clenched into trembling fists at her sides. "I oughtta knock your teeth out, you arrogant, pious, self-righteous snake in the grass!"

  "I—I—"

  "What makes you think for one minute that Jessi Brand would even consider marrying a man who sees her as some kind of punishment? Hmm? What makes you think I'd settle for a man who doesn't love me?"

  "But, Jessi, I thought—"

  "Well, here's your answer, Lash. I wouldn't marry you if you were the last mammal on the planet. I wouldn't marry you if I were ninety years old and still single. I wouldn't marry you if you got down on your damned knees and begged! Now get the hell out of here before I throw you out."

  He took a step toward her. "Jessi, you don't understand what I—"

  "Get out!" Her hand closed around the nearest item handy, which turned out to be a fake Aztec vase, and she hurled it at his head. He ducked, and the vase smashed against the wall beyond him. Jessi spun around in search of more ammunition.

  "Just think about it, okay?" he said, heading for the door. "Just give yourself some time to calm down and think—"

  A second item sailed over his head, a porcelain figurine of some sort. It sailed by him and smashed into the door. He yanked the door open before all the pieces hit the floor, ducked outside and closed it fast behind him.

  "Damn you, Lash," she muttered. Then she sank onto the sofa, and lowered her head into her hands. To think she'd believed such an insensitive, dense S.O.B. could actually fall in love with her. God, she'd been an idiot!

  She shook her head and refused to allow the tears burning in her eyes to spill over. "You're the one who's the fool, Lash," she whispered. "You could have had the best damned woman north of the Rio Grande, and you blew it, you jerk. You blew it all to hell."

  Lash sat in his rather battered convertible, feeling as if he'd just been through a war, but with no idea what the fight was about, or on which side he was supposed to be fighting.

  What the hell was wrong with Jessi? Why wasn't she glad he wanted to do the right thing by her?

  Hell. Nothing was going the way he'd expected.

  Even his own feelings were out of whack. He ought to be relieved that she'd let him off the hook. Relieved that he wouldn't have to make the supreme sacrifice after all, that he could continue with the freewheeling life-style he held so dear. That she wouldn't marry him if he was the last mammal on the planet.

  So why was he feeling such an acute sense of disappointment? And why was he getting this urge to go back there and try everything he could think of to make her change her mind?

  This was insane. Made no sense whatsoever. None. She was supposed to melt into his arms, maybe cry a little bit with joy. She was supposed to kiss him and tell him how happy he'd made her, and how miserable she'd been these past few days.

  And she had been miserable. The rings around her eyes, the weight loss that made her cheeks slightly hollow, the sleepless nights and lack of appetite and fake smile, all pointed to that. But maybe she had some other reason to be upset besides him. Maybe he hadn't broken her little heart after all.

  So if he hadn't, then what was wrong?

  Jessi went back to the ranch that night. The next day was Sunday, so she didn't expect her construction crew to come around. And it was good to spend the day at home with her family. She felt a little battle-scarred, but maybe wiser than before. And she knew that the way she was feeling was partly her own fault. She'd seduced a man, thinking she could change him.

  And that was always a mistake. Hadn't she seen enough talk shows to know that by now? She guessed a woman had to live it to really understand. You can't make someone love you. You can't change a drifter into a devoted husband just by luring him into your bed. It can't happen. Men don't change.

  Breakfast was the usual boisterous occasion, with Ethan making a mess of his food, dropping lots of scraps to the floor, where Ol' Blue waited, frowning when the quick cat got to the bits of food before him. He was going to have to mend his lazy ways if he hoped to compete for table scraps with Pedro around.

  "Goggy!" Ethan chirped, flailing his hands excitedly and aiming his crumbs at Blue, or so it seemed.

  Blue shifted his position so that he was lying under the table beneath Ethan's feet, big brown eyes pleading for sustenance. When Ethan only stared back, the irritated old dog actually barked. Ethan laughed out loud. "Goggy eeet!" He tossed more scraps. Blue caught them as they came down, and it was the cat's turn to look irritated.

  "There's more color in your cheeks this morning, Jess
," Wes observed. "You feeling better?"

  "Sure. It was just a bug. It's practically gone."

  He nodded. "Glad to hear it. I was getting worried."

  "You guys always worry about me. It's wasted energy. I'm tougher than any of you."

  "Hell, Jess," Elliot said, "I'm beginning to believe it. Have you guys seen what she's done to that place of Marisella's?"

  "I stopped by there yesterday," Garrett said. "It's looking great."

  "I knew you could do it," Chelsea said.

  Ben, quiet as always, got up from the table to go into the living room. When he returned, he carried a very large, flat cardboard box with a huge bow on top. He set it in front of Jessi.

  "What's this?"

  He shrugged. "I got to thinking, if Penny were here, this is exactly what she'd have done. So I did it for her."

  Jessi blinked fast, so she wouldn't cry. Poor Ben was still hurting so much. And there didn't seem to be any way she could help him get over the pain of losing his young wife. It was always in his eyes, even on those rare occasions when he smiled.

  She took the cover from the box and set in on the floor beside her chair. Then she pawed aside the tissue paper. Inside was a hand-tooled hardwood sign, gleaming with layers of painstakingly applied shellac. It was arched in exactly the shape of the big wooden arch over the ranch's driveway, and the lettering was the same, as well. The words Texas Brand curved across the arched top, and in the area beneath it read Veterinary Clinic. Another line below the first two read, "Jessica Lynn Brand, D.V.M."

  Jessi's eyes brimmed and the tears she'd been battling spilled over. "Oh, Ben…"

  "I figured if you couldn't have the clinic here on the ranch, you could take a little bit of the Texas Brand to the clinic."

  She set the precious gift aside, pushed her chair away from the table and slung her arms around her big blond brother, hugging him hard. "You're the sweetest man alive, Ben."