The Best Man in Texas

by Tanya Michaels

  “How did you know I would be here?” she murmured softly, as if their regular speaking voices might break the spell.

  “Sorry I found you?”

  “No.” Even the damn fairy wings were worth it if she got this in return. “Just curious.”

  “Giff told me.”

  She lost her rhythm and would have tripped, but Jake held on to her. “Giff? Gifford Baker?” Not that she knew of another one, but still.

  “He’s obviously a better man than I am, because if I lost you… Not that I have you to lose,” he admitted. But he wanted her. That was crystal clear in his steady, unapologetic gaze. “I have something to ask you, Brooke.”

  “Y-yes?”

  “Will you have dinner with me next week? Not because you were assigned a story or because you were ambushed or as a favor to anyone.” He sounded boyishly vulnerable, yet incredibly sexy. “But just because you want to be with me?”

  When had they stopped moving? “I do,” Brooke said. She nibbled her bottom lip, her pulse frantic as she willed him closer. “I want that very much.”

  His mouth brushed over hers, no more than a whisper of contact. Then he found the shell of her ear, making her shiver in his arms. “Do you want to get out of here?”

  Anywhere they could be alone sounded like paradise to her. “God, yes.”

  His eyes glittered with desire. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  OUTSIDE OF THE BALLROOM, in a dimly lit, plushly carpeted corridor, Jake was unable to resist the impulse to kiss her any longer. Really kiss her, the kind of kiss that involved the entire body and no holding back. They were both nearly panting when they stopped to catch their breath.

  “What now?” she asked, moaning softly when he ran his lips down the side of her neck. “Your place, mine? Whose car do we take? Right now, I can’t even remember where I’m parked.”

  “We could just check into a room here.” He was stunned by his own boldness. It was too soon, too risky. What if she was offended by the suggestion?

  But her eyes had heated to molten sapphire, and it only took her a second to respond with a husky “Perfect.”

  The few minutes spent at the lobby counter passed in a dazed blur as he tried unsuccessfully to comprehend his good fortune. Before Jake knew it, he and Brooke were in a darkened room, looking out at the glittery view below, and he still couldn’t fathom how—or even when—he’d talked her into forgiving him.

  “You’re not mad anymore?” he pressed. “That I kissed you?”

  She grabbed the lapels of his jacket. “Actually, I was hoping you’d kiss me some more.”

  He cupped his hand behind her nape. “Anything you want.”

  “Anything?” she purred. “Do you think you could help me out of my…wings?”

  Chuckling, he obliged, also taking the time to shove off his own jacket. Pieces of clothing hit the floor between kisses, and he found himself gifted with an unexpected image that would be forever seared onto his memory: Brooke wearing only a pair of sparkly high heels, a lopsided flower garland and a naughty smile.

  He pressed her to the bed with the newly formed goal of kissing every creamy inch of her. “I don’t deserve you,” he murmured above the flat dip of her navel.

  Brooke would have told him he was wrong, but she couldn’t speak. His mouth was making her crazy. She had no words or coherent thoughts. She had no inhibitions. She had no plan. She had no filter. She was bared to him in every way possible. The sensations Jake had ignited beneath her skin overwhelmed her, surging up and hurtling her into a shattering release.

  She cried out, unnerved by the sheer intensity of what she’d experienced, but then he was kissing her, and the craving that should have been sated built again. Murmuring her name, he slid inside her, not trying to slow her down when she set a savage, frantic rhythm that sent them both over the edge.

  Brooke felt flung from her body. Dots swam in front of her eyes. Her lungs would never have enough oxygen in them again.

  “I love you.”

  She was actually so dazed from the unprecedented, soul-shaking sex that it took her a moment to realize she’d said the words. It was like watching a dubbed movie where the characters’ dialogue was a fraction of a second ahead of their mouth.

  “Oh, God.” She twisted away from him. Have you lost your mind? “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Jake seemed untroubled by her impulsive pillow talk. On the contrary, his smile was bright enough to light up all of Harris County. “I love you, too.”

  “No. No, no, that’s—” She scrambled toward the edge of the bed, taking as much of the sheet with her as possible. “I was momentarily confused by the mind-blowing sex. I don’t… That wasn’t me.”

  “The hell it wasn’t,” he said lightly, his smile not dimming. “I was there. I know.”

  “We got carried away.” Panic was rising within her—all the emotions she’d tried to repress in the name of order suddenly spewing forth. She’d been beyond “carried away” she had been completely without rational thought. She’d ended her engagement less than a week ago, and now she was falling into bed with another man and telling him she loved him?

  It was the nightmare version of herself, the one she’d always feared she might wake up and see in the mirror, the passion-driven dreamer who would make Meg and Didi look like calm analysts in comparison.

  Taking deep breaths, she tried to find that inner calm. “Jake, I do care about you—”

  “It’s more than that.” He tugged on a lock of her hair. “Don’t downplay it and try to make it less than it is.”

  “Don’t rush me! I’ve only known you a little over a month.”

  He quirked an eyebrow but spared her the embarrassment of pointing out that she’d gotten engaged after only two months.

  Then he just shook his head, smiling. “I’m too relaxed to fight. Come to bed, and we’ll sort this out in the morning.”

  She doubted she could be so close to him for that long without jumping him again. He was a detriment to her willpower. And her ability to think. And to the person she’d tried so hard to be.

  “Jake,” she said carefully, “I need time to process. And it’s better if we don’t make love again. For a while anyway.”

  His jaw dropped. “I don’t believe this. We were phenomenal together.”

  “This isn’t a rejection,” she tried to reassure him. Considering that she’d just stepped back into her dress and was casting about the room to find her shoes, he might not believe her. “I just need to—”

  “Squish your feelings down inside some box? To have inhuman control over yourself? I want to be with you, Brooke. But I want to be together, freely and honestly. A relationship with me would not be as cordial and antiseptic as the one you had with…as the one you had before. It would be messy and real and imperfect and deliriously good.”

  She believed him. He did tend to make her feel delirious.

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for that,” she admitted. “You make it sound good—or feel good, at the very least—but I never wanted all that passion and crisis.”

  “Then you don’t want me?” he asked, that hint of vulnerability back in his voice.

  And I put it there. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be responsible for someone else’s emotional well-being, wasn’t sure she could ever be comfortable with someone having that much power over her. “You know that’s not true. I just want to slow down, think it over.”

  “Okay.” He looked away from her. “But it seems to me like you’re always finding excuses. You’re too busy thinking about your life or chronicling other people’s lives or planning out the life you think you want to actually live your life. If you’re not careful, Brooke, it’s going to pass you by.”

  BROOKE TRIED TO TREAT HERSELF on Sunday, sleeping in late and fixing herself fresh waffles with strawberries and powdered sugar. But nothing she did alone was going to be as rewarding as what she and Jake had shared last night. Besides, she couldn’t dredge up
enough of an appetite to enjoy the waffles.

  Last night had been such a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows. Jake made her feel far too much. Too uncertain about herself and her goals, too angry, too scared, too turned on. It was disconcerting.

  But did that mean she was willing to give him up, especially now that Giff had implied they had his blessing? She was free to follow where her heart might lead. If only she were brave enough to give up her death grip on the compass, the map and the GPS.

  When her phone rang, she jumped. Could it be Jake? Whatever else she had yet to decide, there was no question that she wanted to hear his voice.

  But it was Kresley. “Are you watching the local news?”

  “No, why?” Brooke reached for her remote.

  “I don’t suppose you know if Jake’s working today?”

  Brooke’s breath caught as her television flickered to life and orange flames filled the screen. A reporter’s voice-over was explaining that a fire had started in the early-morning hours in one of the units of the Mesquite Bend Apartments, a much older complex than the one where Brooke lived. Because of the lack of rain this year, the woods behind Mesquite Bend had quickly ignited, too.

  Action shots showed firefighters in uniform battling the blaze with water and other materials. It was impossible to tell beneath the many pounds of gear who any of them were.

  “He should be off duty,” she heard herself say. “He might have been scheduled to go in later, but he wasn’t working this morning.”

  He’d wanted to wake up with her this morning, in that hotel bed where she’d had the best sex of her life. If she’d stayed, she might know at this exact moment that he was safe instead of staring at her TV and merely praying that he was.

  “Do you think they called in extra help?” Kresley asked cautiously. “It looks like they could use it.”

  True. And he was trained for this. Was it selfish that she was hoping he was miles away from the scene, instead of hoping that he was on site saving as many lives as possible? Jake challenged her to be brave, but he didn’t seem to realize how much he was asking.

  Any relationship carried with it risk of being hurt. But to fall for a guy who did this for a living? It was like painting a large bull’s-eye right over her heart.

  “Do we have someone covering the scene?” Brooke asked.

  “Yeah, Whalen’s down there.”

  “I want to go meet up with him.” Even if Jake wasn’t there, she felt compelled to take a closer look at what it was he did, who he was.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Kresley asked gently. “It’s not like you’ll be able to help. They’ve got the crowd roped off. And the last thing you want is to distract him if he is there!”

  “I won’t,” Brooke promised. “You know me. I’m not going to cause some big scene, I just want to stand back and watch. It will make me feel closer to him.”

  “Okay. Call my cell if you learn anything more.”

  “Same here.”

  Brooke was still blocks away from the apartment complex when smoke began to tickle the back of her throat and her eyes burned. A black plume was snaking toward the sky, so sinister-looking that Brooke could swear it was a living thing, bent on malevolence. Even though, rationally, she could tell that the fire was smaller than it had been during the newscast she’d seen, it was far scarier in person than on her television.

  Whalen was waiting for her at the perimeter of the crowd. “Kresley said you were on your way. They think some faulty wiring may have caused this, but aren’t sure. The fire chief said it’s now classified as under control.”

  She stared openmouthed at the inferno that had once been people’s homes. “That’s under control?”

  “Well, it’s not spreading anymore. It’s still going to take a lot of work to put out, but they seem to have it contained.”

  Generations of evolutionary instinct were prompting her to get as far from here as possible. “Can we get closer?”

  Announcing that they were with the press, Whalen shouldered a path through the gathered witnesses, some of whom had no doubt lived here. Even from a comparatively safe distance, Brooke could feel the brutal heat against her skin. She squinted against the smoke on the wind.

  “Oh, God, I think I know him.” She couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure but she thought that the young guy who’d just removed his helmet and was talking to a city official was Ben Hoskins, the cute young fireman who’d flirted with her when she came to visit—

  “Brooke?” It wasn’t Hoskins who noticed her behind the tape, but Jake, who was also on her side of the safety line.

  Thank you, God. “You’re okay!” She wanted to run to him, but settled for muttering apologies and “excuse me” as she threaded her way past other people and reached his side. There, she threw her arms around him and covered his face in kisses. “Oh, Lord, I’m glad to see you. I saw this on the news and I—”

  “I’m fine,” he promised her, cupping her cheeks and kissing her squarely on the mouth. “But you shouldn’t sprint to the fire scene every time one breaks out. I wouldn’t be able to work effectively, worrying about you.”

  “But you’re not working now?”

  “I came by on my way home to see if they needed help. I have to get my gear, but then I’ll come back. It’s going to take a while to put this down for good. Why don’t you go home, and I’ll call you tonight?”

  She didn’t want to be at her place, cooped up and scared for his safety. Knowing it was a bizarre request but hoping he wouldn’t mind, she asked, “Could I wait at the fire station?”

  He regarded her thoughtfully. “I have a compromise. What if you waited at my place? Unless you think that’s too weird. I know you’ve never even seen my house before, but—”

  “Thank you,” she said gratefully as they made their way back to where they’d each had to park on the opposite side of the road. “I can’t explain why being there will make me feel better about your safety, but it will.”

  He gave her a key, quick directions and a laughing admonishment not to rifle through his nightstand unless she was prepared to be shocked. She knew he was only making absurd jokes to try to take her mind off of being scared for him. It didn’t work, but she wished it had. She was sick and tired of being scared.

  JAKE WASN’T REALLY SURE what to expect when he walked through his front door. He’d been shocked to find Brooke at the scene of the fire this morning and even more surprised that she’d preferred to wait here instead of in the comfort of her own place. Last night she’d practically fled after they’d made love. Maybe he’d judged her too harshly and she really had needed just some time alone to think over everything. But he couldn’t help wondering, would she have tracked him down on her own like this without the fire? He didn’t want her showing up in his life voluntarily only when she was concerned about him.

  “Hello?”

  “In the kitchen,” she called back.

  His house was so small, it was a matter of feet to cut through the living room into the kitchen. Brooke was scowling into the open pantry, a copper teapot was burbling on the stove and several pieces of legal paper were crumpled into yellow balls atop his yard-sale-find table. And just like that, his chest swelled with the absolute contented peace of home. Hell, if concern was what it took to have Brooke come to him, he could work with that. He fought fires for a living, didn’t he?

  As she turned in his direction, pure happiness to see him washed away her frown. “I’m so glad you’re okay. And thank you for calling me from the station.”

  “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  She gestured toward the pantry. “I had this grand idea about making you dinner after a rough day, but I’m missing at least two key ingredients for every recipe I’ve come up with so far.”

  “I’d settle for a hug after a rough day,” he suggested.

  Immediately the contents of his pantry were forgotten. “I didn’t know big, strong guys needed hugs,” she told him, f
olding into his embrace.

  “We do when it means getting closer to a beautiful woman.”

  She tipped her face up and kissed him so sweetly that Jake found himself yearning for a future of this—walking through a door and knowing that this, that she, awaited him on the other side. Their kiss graduated from tender to playful to outright sexy and just as he was considering carrying her to the couch in the next room, she pulled away.

  “You’ve got to be tired after today,” she said shyly.

  Not that tired.

  “Want to sit down? I was making tea. I could pour you a cup.”

  “Sure.” Maybe their disconnects so far hadn’t been all about her running away; maybe he needed to stop coming on so strong. If fussing over him and taking a minute helped her feel more comfortable with their relationship—nothing in the world would convince him that this was only lust, not after the wealth of relief he’d seen in her eyes today—then why deny her? He could keep from pouncing on her long enough to let her come to him. Probably.

  “So what’s all this?” he asked, glancing from what looked like a dog-eared legal pad, full of writing, to the wadded up pages that apparently hadn’t made the cut.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t have my laptop with me and saw the pad by the phone. I could buy you a new one.”

  He laughed. “Can’t we just work out some kind of trade?”

  “Maybe.” She blushed as she said it, but her eyes sparkled mischievously. “Anyway, I just had some ideas I wanted to write down before I forgot them, and then I got caught up in it. Helped me pass the time.”

  He reached for the pad. “So can I read it?”

  “No!” She cleared her throat. “I mean, some day, when it’s actually in some sort of articulate form, yes. Right now it’s a hodgepodge of shorthand notes and ideas. I like my job at the paper. I know that most of the wedding write-ups I do aren’t Pulitzer material, but there’s a lot to enjoy, including great coworkers and the occasional opportunity to cover a story that’s special. Like the one on you.” Now he felt like blushing. He knew people were reading it, because several people had mentioned it to him, seeming genuinely interested in his travels and asking questions about places he would recommend and places he would want to visit again after he’d seen all fifty states. “Thank you.”