Dedication
For all those who believe in love—who spread it. You know that love is the answer to everything. This one’s for you.
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
An Excerpt from Getting Lucky
About the Author
Also by Jennifer Seasons
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
“YOU KNOW WHAT your problem is?”
Apple Woodman smiled victoriously, glad she’d finally gotten close enough to Jake Stone for him to hear her from across the short stretch of sidewalk separating them in downtown Fortune, Colorado. Shuffling the bag of produce she’d just purchased from the local co-op, she settled the fabric straps on her shoulder and frowned at his broad, muscular back. Not that she was noticing that it was muscular or anything. “You’re not a nice person.”
There, she’d finally said it. That had been floating around inside her for weeks.
Wow, she felt so much better.
“That hurts my feelings,” the man turned around and had the gall to say, with a blatantly fake hurt-puppy expression on his handsome face.
“You know, if it weren’t against everything I’ve been taught about how a person treated others, I’d kick you in the shins so hard right now.” Annoyance flooded Apple. Most of it was directed at the most aggravating male in the entire known universe. The man had mad skills when it came to driving women crazy.
She should know. Jake Stone had been under her skin and scrambling her brains since before the last ice age. Once, just once, she’d like to have all her mental faculties fully functioning in his presence long enough to tell him exactly what she’d thought of him since kindergarten.
Or, well, mostly everything.
No way would she ever admit that another tiny little part of her was also currently annoyed at herself for considering him “handsome.” She should be so over that about him by now.
Turning her attention back to his tall, broad-shouldered form, Apple scrunched her nose against the sun and shaded her eyes with a hand just in time to see the unrighteous gleam in his eye as he taunted her. “I dare you to even try that, woman. Here, I’ll hold a shin up for you to kick.” He raised a jean-clad leg and waggled it slowly at her. She could only scowl at him, because she was stuck somewhere between flabbergasted and infuriated instead of making some fabulously pithy comeback as she’d prefer. Jake must have taken that as a sign of defeat because a low rumble of humor came from him, and he smirked, dropping his leg back down. “You couldn’t hurt a hornet if it stung you on your ass, sweetheart.”
“You don’t know that,” Apple instantly defended, frowning at him. She conveniently ignored the fact that he’d called her “sweetheart” and the responding quiver that had darted through her lower abdomen.
Sigh.
Back to the point: simply because they’d known each other since forever didn’t mean he actually knew her. Not one single bit. If there’d been a time that she might have wished differently, that time was long past. Like, ancient as the Indus Valley past.
There was only one thing she wanted from him now—and it was purely business. One hundred percent. So on the up-and-up platonic end of things that it was beyond vanilla.
And the damned man wasn’t cooperating. Hadn’t even budged.
Which was ridiculous. It was vanilla, for chrissake. Totally harmless. Who would be afraid of harmless?
Jake raked a hand through his recently cut hair and sighed, his brown eyes oddly restless on her before they slid away. “You’re wrong there, Apple.” His gruff voice held an edge she didn’t understand any more than that look he’d just given her.
“Nice haircut, by the way,” she retorted because it was the only thing she could come up with. Lame, but what else could she expect? He had a way of reducing her to juvenile, brainless behavior.
“You like it?” He shot her a grin and winked, his eyes dancing with sudden humor. Angsty one minute, amused the next. She swore the man’s moods shifted faster than the Colorado weather. “Thought it was time for a change.”
Apple couldn’t help it. She snorted. Right out loud on Main Street with pedestrians strolling by. “Ha! Since when do you do change?” He might not know her as well as she once might have wished he did, but she for sure knew him. He hated change. It was like a dirty word to him. Simply look at the women he dated. They were all exactly the same—and had been since his first girlfriend, Scarlet Floozy, from way back in junior high school (not her actual name, sadly).
That thought had her frown deepening. Why couldn’t he just do what she wanted so she could stop harassing him? Stalking wasn’t her most flattering behavior. But darn it, the blasted man had reduced her to it.
Jake braced his long, heavily muscled legs apart and crossed his arms, his biceps flexing in a rather flattering, masculine way—she supposed. She’d barely noticed. Her eyes were firmly glued to where the ponytail he’d worn for the past twenty years had been. Now his sun-bleached light brown hair was a lush, tousled mass that stopped just short of his collar. She had to admit that it was a little shocking to see him with the short hair. If she’d thought his features rugged before, the new haircut made them even more so.
His brown eyes were locked on her, his expression unreadable. “You’d be surprised by what I can do, Apple. You’ve always underestimated me.”
“That’s because I know you.”
“Now, that’s not nice. My feelings are back to being hurt.”
Which was a total lie. She could see his lips twitching at the corners. “I’ve been nice to you my whole life, Jake. It’s only the past four months that I’ve turned into some crazy lady. But you’ve forced me to it. You know this book is incredibly important to me. I can’t finish writing the history of Fortune without your input—what you know about your family. And you promised to tell me.” Now she was getting all riled up a third time. Grabbing the fabric straps of her reusable grocery bag, she hitched it back onto her shoulder in a jerky motion. “And you absolutely know that being published is my dream, so it’s killing me that you won’t just sit down and talk to me. What’s so damn secretive about people from a hundred and fifty years ago that you can’t share it?”
He opened his mouth to reply, face stubble glinting bronze in the sunlight, and then snapped it shut again.
“Tell me, please.” Her voice sounded pleading even to her own ears. Ouch, this was demeaning. Begging Jake to talk to her. Jesus. Most women begged him for sex. He’d always been popular with the ladies. God, how many times had she seen him get hit on while trying to wear him down at his brewpub over the past few months? Apparently, she was the only single woman in Fortune under the age of sixty-five who wanted what was in his brain instead of his pants.
“Why can’t you finish your book for your fancy publishing house without me? It seems to me that the town librarian ought to be able to research enough to figure it out on her own.” He honestly looked perplexed, she’d give him that.
Like she was explaining this to an elementary school student, Apple took a breath and said in her patient-librarian voice, “Because, dear Jake, I’ve looked
through every public record at City Hall already, as well as searched through every old periodical still at the library. I’ve scoured the Internet. I’ve interviewed every other person whose family traced back to the second wave of Fortune’s settlers. I’ve played amateur sleuth on my own and tried to dig up any crumb of useful information about the first wave of settlers. Who just so happen to be your family. And you and your dad are the only ones left I have to talk to.” Belatedly she realized how insensitive that might have come across with that last sentence and quickly added, “I’m still sorry about your loss.”
Jake braced his legs farther apart and shot her a look full of consternation. “You don’t have to keep apologizing, Apple. My grandfather has been dead for a while now.”
Her shoulders slumped a little. “I know, but I still miss him. He had the best stories.”
Jake’s firm, full lips tipped into a slight grin and she smiled back, the two of them sharing a moment of remembrance for Harvey Stone, prospector and storyteller extraordinaire. “Remember that one he loved to tell about the gold rush of seventy-two and the bear who stole his stash of gold?” he asked softly.
Her eyes lit up, and she chuckled. “You mean the bear that had escaped from the circus and had been caught and trained by thieving prospectors to raid other camps for nuggets?”
“That’s the one,” he replied, his slight grin blooming into a full-on smile.
She laughed outright and then had a thought. Tipping her head to the side, she pondered out loud, “Do you ever wonder how many of those stories were actually true?”
“Nah. Probably less than half though, if I did have to gauge.” He shrugged when she gave him a quizzical look. “Harvey liked to tell stories. I learned when I was a kid to take them with a grain of salt. Who knows, maybe some were true. It would be a kick if they were. But we’ll never really know.”
Apple pressed, “Wouldn’t Verle know?”
A veil seemed to drop over Jake, and he closed up tighter than a clamshell, his eyes back to being unreadable when a moment before they had been warm with memories. “My dad wouldn’t know anything, you know that. He regularly forgets what day it is.”
Now she felt bad. She hadn’t meant to upset him. Apple pressed her lips in a firm line and then tried to apologize and turn the topic back to what she’d hunted him down for: her book. “I’m sorry to bring him up. But back to why I stopped you. I’m up against deadline, Jake. I’ve already spent my advance and would really love to not have to pay it back—”
He raised a hand and frowned, stopping her midsentence. “Wait. Explain to me how your spending habits are my problem.”
Okay, now she was insulted. “My spending habits are just fine.” She had the IRA and retirement plan to prove it. “And I would have turned my book in months ago if you’d have sat down and answered my questions about what you know about that first founding party—and you can’t pretend you don’t know, because I know you do—like you’d said you would. So come on, Jake, for once in your freaking life follow through on something you said you’d do.” She clenched her hands into fists and added on a rush of emotion—no thought—“Damn it, just for once commit to something. Commit to me.”
In an instant his face went pale and his eyes went dark. “Excuse me?” Then his whole body seemed to snap like a stretched wire, and he jerked, nearly stammering, “W-what did you just say?”
What had she just said? She had this unladylike quirk of blurting things out without thinking about them, especially when overwhelmed. So what were her last few words again . . .?
Oh, shit.
She started waving her hands in front of her like an umpire calling safe, her head shaking in vehement denial. “No, no, no. I didn’t mean it like that! I just meant . . . oh, you know . . . maybe . . . spend some time with me.” God, now she was just making it worse. Mouth, shut up now.
Apple clamped it shut and promptly bit her tongue. Served her right, she thought as she winced from pain. A swollen tongue ought to keep her quiet for a while and out of trouble.
But Jake didn’t answer. He just gave her the oddest look before he moved his legs and began walking, pulling away from her. His long stride ate up the concrete. Being on the short side of five foot three, her legs weren’t equipped to keep up, and he had her breaking into a run to catch up to him again. Not even once had he turned around and looked at her.
But then she caught his profile just right and saw that quick grin. And she knew he’d heard her verbal slip—even if he was trying hard to pretend like she didn’t exist. For whatever reason, he simply loved to antagonize her.
Which had her irrationally irritated and circling right back to the beginning of their conversation. Had her back to thinking just one thing about him.
“Did you hear me earlier, Jake Stone? Because I’m saying it again.” Apple planted her feet, rooting herself to the sidewalk under a shady honey locust tree as the past four months of stress and frustration came out at his back in one big rush. “You’re not a nice person!” she ended on a shout, her hands fisted at her sides.
“I beg your pardon!” A balding, elderly man who had been walking by just then spun his head toward her, looking mortified as he leaned on his cane and blinked at her from behind his slipping bifocals.
“Oh, not you, Mr. Parsons!” Reaching out a hand, Apple placed it on his frail shoulder and gave it a quick, reassuring squeeze. “You’re a doll,” she insisted with a smile. God, her stupid mouth sometimes.
“I was talking about that big oaf over there,” she said and tipped her head toward Jake as he opened up the door to his establishment and tossed her a wink, his brown eyes sparkling with mischief.
She forgot all about offending Mr. Parsons as she spun on her flats toward Jake. “I’ll just follow you inside, you know. You can’t get away from me.”
Jake’s collar-length hair shimmered in the September sunlight as he tossed back his head and laughed, the deep sound rumbling in his chest. Then he pulled out a set of keys and jangled them together. “Wanna bet?” he threatened, one brow raised.
Apple narrowed her eyes, her blood beginning to boil. “You wouldn’t dare.”
He smiled then, a slow turn of his lips that transformed his rugged face into something so primal and so sexually charged that she instantly forgot her own name, her mother’s—and her current address too.
Good Lord, Jake Stone had a smile.
Suddenly feeling a little warm—though she decided to blame it on the temperature that was still hanging around the mideighties—Apple cleared her throat and tried not to think too much about how dry her mouth had just become. And then she thought about all the time she’d spent agonizing over his lack of cooperation, and she realized it was a good thing that he didn’t often bring out his smile in full force. It was raw sex on a platter—and it was potent enough to make her want to forgive him every transgression.
Which, of course, she couldn’t.
And now she was back to frowning. “I don’t understand you.”
Placing his hand on the edge of the saloon-style front door of Two Moons as she approached, making it clear she was serious about following him inside, he replied, “I’m a simple guy, Apple. There’s not much to understand.”
Bullshit.
If he was simple, then she was a runway model. And they both knew that being petite and curvy, she wasn’t exactly the stick-figure model type. She was more like the exaggerated cartoon pinup type. And she was fine with her body type. The point was that she was at least honest with herself.
Jake clearly lacked objectivity.
Knowing that he was waiting for her to decide if she was coming inside Two Moons or not, she moved toward him, readjusting her reading glasses as they slid down her nose. “I just wish you would talk to me. Seriously. An hour of your time and then it’s over.”
The moment she brushed past him, her shoulder gently bumped his chest, and electricity darted through her body. Stopping cold, Apple looked up at him, her e
yes wide. Whoa, what was that?
Jake must have felt something too because his brown eyes narrowed, searching her face and coming to rest on her lips—which suddenly felt very, very dry. She swallowed hard as her heartbeat sped up and her breathing went shallow. The way he held his focus on her made her squirmy.
There was no way that a man who housed that kind of intensity could be simple.
No way, no how.
“Interesting,” he said with a heavy breath, his gaze intense. “What have we here?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back, confused and transfixed at the same time. “ ‘What have we here,’ what?” There was no breaking from his gaze. Just. None.
“I’ve wondered about this.” He shifted closer, just a fraction, but it sent fireworks skittering along her skin. She’d never been more aware of another person in her life. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply, almost like he was taking in her scent, absorbing it. Feeding off it. “There it is, right there.” His face seemed to grow more tense, his body too. “I can smell it on you.”
“What are you doing?” she squeaked softly. Smell what on her? She’d showered that morning. At least she was pretty sure she had. Right now she couldn’t remember with his big body so close to her, frying all her signals. Still, she was almost positive she didn’t stink. “What can you smell on me?”
Something seemed to have shifted inside him. He suddenly seemed resolved. About what, she had no idea. But he gave a quick smile of satisfaction and nodded once, decisively. “Chemistry.”
And, of course, he didn’t fill her in on what that was about. Nope, he just said in that low, gruff voice of his, “I won’t do your thing for free, Apple. If I give you an hour of my time, it’d better be worth it. Mutually satisfying for us both.” He had a way of speaking that made him sound like he’d just rolled out of bed after a good romp, all relaxed and gravelly—even late in the afternoon. Knowing his reputation and the fact that he’d been walking to work just now, it was an actual distinct possibility that his voice was indeed postcoitus gravelly.
Somehow, right now that didn’t seem to irk her like it usually did. Not when that voice of his was doing funny things to her insides and her brain was scrambled sunny-side up.
Talking Dirty Page 1
