by Abby Knox
God, she was beautiful. Even ordering a glass of water with lemon, she radiated grace and sweetness. He truly loved her beyond reason. If she changed her mind, he would just have to do his best to win her back. There was no one else for him, but life sure was making it difficult.
“I called Mama Jane,” she said, as Jack took a seat across the table from her.
“And?” He did his best to smile.
“It went much better than I anticipated. Much, much better. She took it shockingly well, actually, considering how much she hated me rushing into things with Alex. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. Maybe it’s the fresh air of Santorini, or that boy toy she’s got catering to her every whim. She’s like a completely different person… Hey, what’s up with you?”
“I fixed a date. Justice of the Peace says he can do it next week.”
“Great! I found a dress, and shoes. I looked at flowers, but you know what? I think I’d much rather have a homemade bouquet straight from the wildflowers from the farm… Jack? Look, I know none of this is typically what the grooms are interested in, but what is going on with you? Is it the court order of protection?”
“Yeah…kind of. The hearing is an hour after the wedding. I couldn’t change the time, and the justice said that was the only slot he had open next week. I’ll understand if you want to wait. The hearing’s going to put a damper on the festivities…”
“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Jackson Clay, you know as well as I do that court order is a bunch of bullshit, and I am going to be there for you, whether you like it or not. We’ll get married and deal with this situation like a grown-up, married couple. And then we will go home, where you shall bone me until I’m unable to sit or walk.”
He was trying to figure out how to deliver the worse news, but the server and her giant platter of pie slices interrupted his thoughts.
“What did you order?”
“I told you I don’t like cake. We’re pie tasting, for our wedding.”
The server named all the pies as she set them each on the table. “Cherry, blueberry, apple, strawberry rhubarb for the lady, and—oh hey, Jack…”
“Hi, Ever.”
“These are for you,” Ever said, setting in front of him slices of lemon chiffon, mixed berry, and peanut butter Oreo.
When she was finished unloading the massive platter, Ever tucked it under her arm and placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I hear my favorite customer is getting hitched to my old classmate.”
Jack put on his gregarious face again and engaged in small talk with Ever. Of course, she was about the same age as Maggie. Ever then went on to point out that the Justice of the Peace they were using was also her older sister.
“If you’d like to come to the wedding and be a witness, we’d love to have you,” Maggie said. God, he loved her spontaneous and generous spirit. He didn’t love her ability to read him, because when he looked across the table and caught her eye, he could tell she saw right through his friendly exterior. She could see something else was wrong. Oh, who was he kidding. He loved everything about her, even the fact that she could read him like a book.
Ever laughed. “Can I bring my fiancé Logan? That might light a fire under his ass to set a date for our wedding. Hey, Jack, you know Logan, he works down at the feed store.”
“Yup. Good man.”
“Well, now we’ve got the three of us connected five different ways, and that is how we play Middleburg Bingo, am I right?”
Maggie and Ever laughed and chatted some more. It was nice to watch his lover talk to another young woman. Her face changed as if she was finally feeling trusting around someone in town. Someone who didn’t want something out of her. He was glad she would have a friend at the wedding.
But now he’d have to wait until the drive home to tell her the very bad news. It was too bad she’d probably be canceling the wedding. Because this peanut butter pie was the god’s honest best damn pie he’d ever tasted. Second only to Maggie’s, Jack thought lustfully, regretting that he’d only briefly plunged into her with his mouth the other night. Now he’d probably never have that chance again.
Chapter 11
Maggie
Jack had been acting super weird ever since he had met Maggie for lunch at the diner, and now he was quiet on the ride back home.
She asked him what was wrong, and he shook his head.
“Jack, what happened after I left you at the courthouse? One second we were kissing, an hour later you were silent as stone at lunch. Talk to me.”
There was no aw shucks crooked grin or eye crinkle. Something was serious. Awfully serious.
“I got some bad news, Maggie.”
“I could tell. Spill those beans, please.”
He took a deep breath and kept his eyes on the road. Still, she bored into him with her eyes. She wanted to judge the seriousness of the situation by his expression. She hated that he was so stressed about something. She didn’t want him feeling stressed, ever.
“Couple of things happened. I looked into the protection order, and it turns out that not only am I not supposed to come within 300 feet of Chet Easley until the hearing, but I ran into a prosecutor there who said Chet is also going to press assault charges against me.”
She took a deep breath and sighed. If that was all, there was nothing to worry about. She had witnessed every altercation in which Jack had lost his temper, and all of those incidents had been directly provoked. She would fight for him. They would fight these charges together.
But there was more.
“And in the clerk’s office, I also had a run-in with that lawyer of Chet’s.”
“Oh god, you didn’t clock him again, did you?”
“No,” he said, failing to see the humor she was laying down. “Chet’s suing me.”
“What an asshole. Well, the judge will have to throw it out. It’s ridiculous.”
Jack didn’t say anything else the rest of the ride home. Maggie could hardly blame him. He had just received a lot of bad news and was needing some space to mull it over. She let him be in his silence, despite it making her a little crazy.
She was a talker. She liked to talk. She wanted to hash it all out and come up with a plan. But the vibes she was getting off Jack were that he just needed to be in his own head. And why shouldn’t he? He was a grown-ass man who had made quite a nice life for himself on his own this far. He probably already had ideas on what to do next.
But when Jack’s silence extended all the way through mucking the stables all afternoon, Maggie grew from concerned to scared.
After showering, Maggie threw herself into cooking dinner while Jack took Rolo out to walk the fence-lines. Watching the shape of her man on a horse, riding away, made her heart skip a beat but also yearn for his return.
Silly girl, she thought, as she heated up the olive oil in the pan on the stove. He’ll be back in an hour. After he eats his dinner he’ll feel better and then later, we can eat dessert off each other.
Despite the bad news they’d received today, and despite Jack’s bad mood all afternoon, Maggie was giddy.
She was getting married. She had found her safe place and it had turned out to be in the literal same safe place she had known her whole life.
Pork chops in the oven, she started improvising a cheese sauce to go with asparagus she’d picked from the small vegetable patch that was fenced off from the pasture.
Destiny had a way of working itself out, and it had barely been a month since she’d crawled back to Middleburg with her tail between her legs. It wouldn’t be easy fighting off Chet and his fancy lawyers. It would be quite a first challenge of their union. But that’s marriage, right? If they could get through this, they could get through anything.
And once all this nonsense goes away, maybe we can take a honeymoon. They’d probably be broke after this, and Lord knows it was hard to find help you could trust when you needed to leave your farm so you could travel. But that was far into the future, and n
one of that mattered anyway.
Chops, asparagus, side salad, and hasselback potatoes were all piping hot and ready, barely leaving room for beverages on the small kitchen table. There was a pint of ice cream in the freezer for later. Maggie wasn’t much of a baker, so she hoped he didn’t mind dessert being an afterthought for the rest of their married life.
She poured some wine for her and chilled Jack’s bottle of Bud in the freezer.
Sipping her glass of wine at the kitchen table as she waited, she fantasized about what life might look like while she was barefoot and pregnant, learning how to make biscuits for her man in this farmhouse kitchen that she loved so well. The idea never thrilled her before, but what a difference love could make.
Jackson
Jack eyed the breech in the fence where he suspected a fox had gotten through at some point today. He’d have to watch the chickens extra carefully. Maybe best to sell off the chickens. He knew it would break Maggie’s heart to let go of the hens, but they would fetch a good price and he was going to need money for lawyers.
Lawyers on several fronts.
And that was another thing. Could he drag Maggie into this mess? She didn’t deserve to start out her life being hobbled by legal troubles. She was still young and free, and deserved to be living it up in the city, finding her niche, finding a use for her art history degree—or whatever weird thing she was good at. True, she was really good with the animals.
Jack knew, though, she was too good for him.
He was going to have to let her go. It wasn’t fair to her, neither to start out a marriage with trouble, nor to ask her to wait until the trouble was over. She should be in Paris or some other place, absorbing all the fine art that she had studied. Not milking goats with an old man who was about to be in deep shit.
He patched up the fence as best he could with the limited tools he had taken with him on Rolo. It would do for tonight, he decided. He would be back out the next day to replace the whole section. Maggie was a strong woman. Independent. Mind of her own. She would be fine. It would be selfish to keep her for himself.
The breakup would probably hurt him way worse than what it would hurt her, anyway.
After getting Rolo settled into his stable for the night, Jack looked at the house and could see the lights on in the kitchen. It was far away, but he could see Maggie bustling around in the kitchen. He couldn’t help it, his cock stirred at the distant image of this amazing woman making herself at home here, taking care of him, sharing his food and his bed. He had had the stupid fantasy of her puttering around with a round belly, him arguing with her to stay away from mucking out stables while pregnant, her disagreeing, him convincing her to obey by laying her across the kitchen table and mouthing her luscious core until she relented.
He was such a selfish bastard. Who did he think he was?
Not quite ready to have this conversation with her that he dreaded, Jack climbed the ladder into the hayloft and busied himself with piles of hay for the baler. The pitchfork was an extension of him, taking out his frustration of his current situation.
Maggie
“There you are.”
Maggie’s breath caught as she spied her lover in the hayloft, stripped of his shirt, sweat clinging to his tanned chest and shoulders.
He stopped and turned, and for a brief second his face was not the face she recognized. He looked troubled. Haunted. He tried to recover. “Hey, what’s up?”
But the crooked smile didn’t come as easily this time.
“Something is on your mind and I need to know what it is.” She topped the ladder and hopped into the loft. The sweet hay and the heat up here, combined with the intensely hot man in the room, made her lips wet as all get out, despite the fact that she’d come up here to confront him about his weird negative vibes today.
“Lot of work to do, Maggie.” He was breathing heavy.
She winced. “I know that. I’ve been helping you, remember? But you’ve been working all day. So hard. Why don’t you come in to dinner? We can have dessert in the shower.”
Jack wiped at the sweat dripping from his forehead. “This is farm life, Maggie. It’s hard. It’s all day. Maybe you’re not ready for all this.”
His words stung. “Why are you acting like this? We just got our marriage license, we should be celebrating.”
He shook his head. “We can’t stop what we’re doing just because you have every excuse in the book to celebrate a thing. This is real life, Maggie.”
“Why are you being so insulting? I know what I’m getting into. We talked about this.”
Jack turned and got back to work, shaking his head dismissively.
Her heart plummeted into her empty, angry stomach. “What is wrong, Jack?”
No answer.
Well, fine, she thought, marching over to the other pitchfork hanging on the wall. If he was so damn busy, she would help. But first, she would take her top off.
Jackson
“What? Does this make you uncomfortable?”
On the contrary. He very much liked a half-naked Maggie in his hayloft.
Problem was, he was trying to figure out how to set her free without breaking her heart. Coming up here, taking off her top, freshly showered and smelling like that spicy, girly soap she used. She was clouding his brain and mixing everything up.
She stood there, giving him a challenging look. Pitchfork in hand and once again a lace bra that made absolutely no sense for baling hay. But there she was, shirtless in her Wranglers and muck boots, looking like the most fuckable thing on the planet. How the hell was he supposed to break up with her looking like that and his cock as hard as granite?
Maggie didn’t play fair.
He knew how this was going to end.
Jack tossed aside his pitchfork and crushed Maggie in a sweaty embrace before she even had time to drop her fork. When she eventually did, she gave in to the touch of his lips on hers and her hands went to his chest. His mouth covered hers with a force of a man starved of a woman’s touch. Still, the sensible part of him waited for her to push him away. But she didn’t. Her hands grazed over the dampness of his chest, and he felt her hands reach around to his back and pull him in tighter.
He kissed her harder, urgently, his hands in her hair. Her strawberry curls were still damp from the shower. She received his kiss, letting his hands grip her locks and pull her messy bun loose. She was kissing him back, and he teased her mouth open with his tongue. Her massive mop of hair spilled down damply around her shoulders and in her face, tickling his cheeks. Jack smoothed her hair out of her eyes and stopped a moment to look at her face.
She was staring back at him intensely. He let the pause hang in the air, letting her decide what to do next. He knew what he wanted to do.
“Maggie, I have to let you go.” The words spilled out before he could stop himself. Turns out he did have a conscience after all.
“You already did fire me, remember? Because we’re engaged?” Her words teased, but her eyes still showed concern.
He inhaled her scent and breathed in and out against the top of her head, pulling her in close. “Sweet Maggie, I can’t let you start out your life like this.”
She continued to joke. “Well, the barn ain’t the best place for fuckin’, I’ll give you that much.”
“Maggie, why do you have to smell so good and make me so damn hard? I’m trying to tell you not to settle for me.”
Finally, Maggie had caught on. She pulled away a bit and looked him in the eye again. “Settle? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I made a mistake. I’m headed for heaps of trouble. You are young and beautiful and have your whole life ahead of you. I can’t watch you get bogged down in debt to lawyers and whatnot.”
“You may be my boss, but you are not the boss of me. You do not get to make these decisions for me, Jack. I’m all yours, whether you like it or not.”
Before he could respond, she reached back and set her bra free, tossing it out the hay
loft down to the trailer along with Jack’s shirt.
Jack’s pulse quickened at the sight of her beckoning breasts and tight, rosy nipples. He hugged the curve of her waistline and he held her soft, yielding body against his hard chest.
“I don’t want to hold you back,” he whispered in her ear.
“Hold me back from what? This is it, Jack. I’m starting over and I want to start over with you.”
His hands explored the curve of her spine as he buried his face in her neck, kissing and licking the fresh scents that lingered on her warm, wet skin. He felt her sigh and yield against him.
Slow down, Jack. Show her a good time, even if it’s the last time.She deserved that much.
It was all he could do to keep the foreplay going. His cock was like a wrought-iron fence post and working against him. He so badly just wanted to dock in her harbor, he might crash and ruin everything.
Then Maggie set him free. She reached down between them and unbuttoned him, then slowly unzipped his fly. She blinked up at him and said, “It’s OK, just give it to me.”
Jack’s thought process went right out the window, along with both of their pants. He peeled her free of her blue jeans in a heartbeat and drove her backward into the enormous pile of hay. He lay her down and snaked his fingers inside the waistband of her black panties. He had her completely naked under him now. Maggie freed his cock from the confines of his drawers and peeked down between their bodies. She smiled that sexy, mischievous smile again, but before she could wrap her legs around his waist, he dove down and planted his face firmly between her thighs.
The muscles of her hardworking legs tightened with pleasure as he tongued her core. She sighed and let out a tiny moan. He was pleased, but he was about to turn that moan into a scream. He knew this entirely messed up his whole plan to break things off with her gently, but it was her fault for being so tantalizing.
Maggie tasted even more delicious than he remembered. Her tight, deep cave invited him in like a drug and he was instantly hooked. He wanted every work day to end like this, with this woman right here in the hayloft, with the sun on his back, the sweet smell of her sweat all over him and alfalfa in her hair. Her spicy slickness all over his face.
