The Cowboy's Baby: Devlin Brothers Ranch

by Joanna Bell

  Like I said: I was only able to be magnanimous on some evenings.

  "Show's tonight?" Lacey asked as I did my best to scrape the shit off my leg with a broken broom handle. She knew damn well the show was that night, but she was trying to play it cool – for my sake, I think.

  "Uh-huh."

  "You ready?"

  I almost said yes before remembering I was trying to be a little more honest with people about what I was feeling.

  "Don't know. As ready as I'll ever be, I guess?"

  Lacey was hanging around, the way she did when she wanted to say something but wasn't quite sure how to say it. It was only when I was on the way to the truck that she called after me.

  "Jackson!"

  "What?"

  My boss looked me in the eye. "You're not going to mess it up for her, are you? You're not going to..."

  "Make a scene?" I replied, not managing to hide my annoyance. "No. You think I would do that? It's what I told you – I might not even see her. And if I do, I just want to ask her a question."

  "And what if she doesn't have an answer?"

  I opened the truck door. "Then that's my answer. Why are you defending her, anyway? I told you what she did."

  Lacey put her hands on her hips. "I know, I know. I just – I hope you know what you're doing. This girl – this woman – has already caused you enough pain. It would be crazy to let her cause any more."

  I pulled the door shut and rolled down the window. "You're right. But I have to ask. I have to know. I want her to look me in the eye and then if it's like you said and there's no answer, I'll know once and for all that she was never the person I thought she was."

  "Well," my boss hesitated for a moment and then seemed to accept what I was saying. "OK. I hear you. And I, uh – I want you to know that you're a good man, Jackson. I'm sorry if that's cheesy but I'm not sure you know it so – yeah, just wanted to say that. I hope you find what you're looking for tonight."

  "Thanks," I replied shortly, not because I was irritated but because her words had just hit me like a goddamn ton of bricks. Two words in particular: "good man."

  Lacey Sharrock was many things, but she wasn't a liar. She wasn't a lightweight, either. What she said meant something. It meant so much I had a lump in my throat the whole drive down the dirt road to the highway.

  ***

  The gallery was in a part of L.A. I was entirely unfamiliar with – the part that people who aren't from L.A. think L.A. is. Lush, meticulously manicured lawns owned by anonymous film producers with big, shiny, white teeth and cars that cost more than a regular man makes in 5 years. My truck stood out like a dusty old sore thumb amidst all the perfection.

  And the most fucked up thing, when I finally found the gallery and sat in my truck for a few minutes to watch the tastefully dressed rich people making their way inside? A fleeting moment of pride. Not in myself or what I was doing, but in her. Because she'd made it, there was no doubt about that. Crowds that size, made up of that particular kind of people, don't come out for those who haven't made it. Not in L.A.

  It's funny how someone screwing you over can do surprisingly little to change how you feel about them.

  Why are you here?

  My internal voice kicked in as I watched the wealthy Angelenos stroll into the gallery.

  I was there to – see Hailey's work?

  Liar.

  I was there to see Hailey.

  And what do you think that's going to accomplish other than stirring everything up again?

  There wasn't a good answer to that. There was an answer, it just didn't make me look good. I was there because I missed her, it was that simple. 5 years, a broken heart and a personal life that resembled a nuclear blast site. And there I was, waiting for the architect of all of it to make an appearance.

  You don't have to do this to yourself.

  That was true. I rubbed my eyes and drew in a deep, weary breath. I was like a smoker hankering for a cigarette, unable to stay away from what he knew was bad for him.

  "Fuck this."

  I made the decision quickly, turning the truck back on and looking out the front window to check that the road was clear to do a u-turn.

  And then, suddenly, there she was. There was Hailey. There was the girl who wrecked me the way jagged underwater reefs wreck supertankers. I closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them again, she was still there.

  She was laughing. The gentle breeze carried the sound of it to my ears, a bespoke torture. It was difficult to breath. My chest felt tight and heavy, like it was full of something that needed to be expelled. Like I was drowning miles away from the ocean.

  Her hair was up, exposing her slender neck. Something inside me weakened. No. That's not it. Some part of me didn't 'weaken.' I was weak. Because what kind of man feels a pang of tenderness in the broken, charred remains of his heart at the mere sight of the woman who threw it into the flames in the first place?

  I turned the truck back off again. Jesus, she looked so good. She look so happy. I don't even blame myself for doing what I did next. It may have looked like a choice from the outside but really, there was no choice. You would have had better luck asking the sun not to rise the next morning than you would have had telling me to stay in my truck, to drive away, to keep going and never look back.

  "Hailey!"

  She turned and I watched recognition slowly dawn across her face. For a few seconds she was completely still. And then, inexplicably, she started walking – and then running – towards me. For a brief, wonderful instant I thought that everything was going to be OK. I even opened my arms a little, ready to sweep her up and spin her around and bury my face in her neck.

  But then she got closer and I saw that her mouth was twisted into a grimace, her dark eyes alight with fury.

  Wait. She was furious? At me?

  There was no time to ponder the vicissitudes of human emotion, though. Hailey ran right up to me, put her hands on my chest and shoved me, hard.

  "Get the fuck out of here!" She hissed, before shoving me again. "Go! Now! I mean it, Jackson. Get the – get out of..." she trailed off, panting, almost incoherent.

  And suddenly, an answering anger rose up in my own chest. Who the fuck was Hailey Nickerson – the girl who left without a word of explanation or a single goodbye – to be shoving me? To be ordering me to leave? Shouldn't she be begging my forgiveness?

  I grabbed her wrists and threw her hands off my chest...

  Chapter 25: Hailey

  I stumbled backwards, shocked. Was it him? Was it really him?

  "Don't touch me," I sputtered, unable to process what – who – I was seeing.

  "Then get your fucking hands off me!" He spat back.

  Jackson Devlin. After all those years. I knew right away it couldn't be a coincidence – the show was widely advertised, a simple Google search would have provided all the necessary details of time and place.

  "Why are you here?" I asked a moment later, when the feeling of not being able to breathe lessened. "Fucking up my life once wasn't enough?"

  "You fucked up your own life, Hailey!" He replied at once. "Don't you – don't you dare put that shit on me."

  I couldn't even respond to that. It was too much. All I can say is that in that moment, if I'd had any kind of size or weight advantage on him, Jackson Devlin might very well have been in trouble.

  But there was no physical advantage. There was just Jackson, standing in front of me like a vision from another life. He looked the same as ever. Well, almost. As I looked closer I noticed smaller changes, a tan and a certain faint weathering on his face that, because he was who he was, just made him look better. More imbued with a gravitas I was certain he hadn't earned.

  His hands, never pristine, looked rougher than I remembered. He had dirt under his fingernails. His stature was the same, though. That same casual projection of I-own-this-space-completely masculinity.

  "Hailey?"

  I turned around. Candy. She was alt
ernating between looking at her phone and staring at Jackson.

  "Is everything –"

  "It's fine," I replied quickly, desperate to avoid attention. There were actual photographers and reporters at the gallery, and the last thing I needed was any of them getting wind of a 'situation' with the artist and her ex on the street outside. "Everything's fine, I'll see you inside."

  Candy looked Jackson up and down and then shrugged. "OK. Don't be long, alright? There's an art journalist from Paris who wants to talk to –"

  "I won't be long."

  Candy retreated and I turned back to Jackson. To my shame, what I felt next was something like love. Gone was the aggressive stance. All 6 feet, 4 inches of my faithless Montana cowboy suddenly looked as beaten as bedraggled kitten you might find shivering in a ditch on a cold spring day. His shoulders sagged forward. His head hung low. With one hand, he was covering his eyes. Was he – was he crying?

  Without warning or logic, my heart swerved quickly, helplessly away from the anger of just a moment before.

  I thought I was over him. OK, I thought I was mostly over him. But even the parts that weren't over him still hated him – right? Hated him for what he did? Hated him for letting me go so easily and coldly, changing his number like I was just some one night stand?

  "Jackson?" I said, being careful not to let a single note of tenderness into my voice.

  He remained where he was, his hand over his eyes, his shoulders hunched up.

  After a few more moments of silence he suddenly let the hand drop and looked right at me, an expression of devastation on his face. And then he said a few words that shouldn't have shook me to my core but did anyway, because I never could control my own heart around him.

  "I missed you," he said, still looking me right in the eyes. "Oh my God, Hailey. I missed you so fucking much."

  There was no anger in his voice, none in his body. His eyes were red. He was as close as I have ever seen to human wreckage.

  And I couldn't deny him. I should have. Even as I put my arms around him and pulled him close I knew he didn't deserve any of it. I knew the only person who deserved anything – an apology, in that case – was me.

  Sorry for breaking your heart in the cruelest way I could think of, Hailey. Just wanted to say that. Are we cool now?

  But there was no apology. There was only the sudden feeling of Jackson Devlin lifting me off my feet, burying his face in my neck and holding me tight against him.

  A flame, searing and bright and thought lost forever, sparked suddenly and violently to life in my belly.

  Don't ask for explanations. I don't have any. I should have told him to get lost and walked away. I knew it even at the time. So many 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts' – my life was full of them. For a brief moment outside the Jefferson Gallery in Los Angeles, none of them mattered. They didn't matter less, to be clear. They didn't matter at all.

  When Jackson pulled away slightly to look at me, I saw the same fire burning there in his cold blue eyes. I could hardly breathe.

  "Hailey –"

  That's as far as we got with conversation. He pulled me tight against him and we kissed each other like starving animals thrown fresh meat. I wrapped my arms around his neck and drew him down closer, aching with lust, lifting one leg up off the sidewalk so I could wrap it around him.

  "I have a hotel near –" I whispered when we came up briefly for air. "We can go –"

  "No," he replied, taking my hand and pulling me away from the gallery. "No, I have – I have somewhere."

  All I remember about walking down the sidewalk is the tingling weakness in my knees. The obvious, slick warmth in my panties. And the absolute, total lack of concern in my heart or my head for anything except how much I wanted Jackson Devlin inside me again.

  Chapter 26: Hailey

  Jackson unlocked the door to his apartment with one hand, because the other one was up my shirt, cupping one of my breasts, pinching my nipple at the exact pressure that lies halfway between a pinch and a rub.

  "Fuck!" He yelled after a few failed tries.

  "Here," I whispered. "Let me try."

  But all that did was free his other hand up. I leaned my forehead against the door and sighed heavily as he stroked my breasts and pressed the prominent bulge in his jeans against my back. It all felt so perfectly, naturally right. Our bodies still fit together like they were made for it, still moved towards each other as if pulled by some unseen force. The nagging, aching warmth between my legs was acute by then, almost painful.

  I turned around to face him and reached for his belt buckle, but he took my wrists in his hands before I could get anywhere.

  "No. Inside."

  I looked up and caught his eye. "Jackson –"

  "I know. Where's the key?"

  We barely managed to get the door closed behind us. I yanked my shirt and bra off and Jackson spun me around to face the wall, pressing me against it with the weight of his body and bending his head down to kiss my neck.

  It felt like it used to feel, but it also felt different. He was angry, I could sense it. So was I. But all the anger in the world would not have been enough to stop the inevitable. I arched my back and pushed my ass back against him and he groaned and tightened his grip on my breasts.

  "Jackson!" I cried when his fingers just kept getting tighter. He didn't relent. Instead he just pushed me harder against the wall.

  "Don't talk," he whispered in my ear, and there was no softness in his tone. "Take off your pants."

  What I want to say is that I turned around and slapped him across the face for talking to me like that. For presuming to use that tone with me after all the pain he'd caused.

  But what I actually did was fumble with the zipper on my pants for a few excruciating seconds before finally managing to open it and pull them - and my panties – off.

  "Jesus Christ, Hailey."

  I moved to turn around. To reach for him. But he held me where I was, facing the wall. And then he stepped back. I listened to the telltale sound of his belt buckle jingling and it was almost as if the past 5 years had never been. As if we were back in his trailer in Sweetgrass Ridge, about to make sweet, hot, joyful love on his ratty old sofa before eating canned chili for dinner.

  "You look so good," he whispered hoarsely, stepping back towards me and placing one hand flat against my belly before running it up to my breasts. "You look so fucking good, Hailey."

  I gasped at the sudden feeling of his stiff cock pressed against my back and parted my legs without even noticing.

  "Jesus. You still do that? You used to do that all the –"

  "What?" I replied, gripping his wrists as he played with my breasts.

  "Open your legs like that. It used to drive me fucking crazy when you did that. It used to make me want to fuck you so fucking hard."

  He ran one hand up my neck and pushed a single finger into my mouth.

  "Is that what you want? You want me to fuck you?"

  "Uh-huh," I replied breathlessly, gently flicking the tip of my tongue down the length of his finger, aware of exactly what that would do to him. "Yeah."

  "Tell me." He took his hands away so the only point of contact was his cock and my lower back. "Tell me, Hailey. Tell me you want me to fuck you."

  Before I could answer he grasped my hips, held me still, and slid the head of his cock down over my ass. I didn't even have to think about the response. All I had to do was let my body do exactly what it wanted, which was to arch itself back, to bloom like a welcoming flower for Jackson Devlin.

  I let out another tortured little cry when he pushed the swollen head of his cock between my lips but refused to go any further.

  "Say it," he whispered in my ear. "Tell me what you want."

  "Y-you," I whispered, whimpering as he held himself right against my opening. "You, Jackson. Please. Oh – please. Jackson –"

  "Tell me!"

  I took a shaky breath. "I want you to fuck me. Please. I want –"

  Bu
t I never got to finish that sentence, because before I could he guided himself into me, slipping each perfect inch into me with excruciating slowness until I was completely, utterly full and the words turned into a low moan in my throat.

  "Goddamn that feels good," he breathed into my neck. "You're so wet, baby. You're so warm. Mmm –"

  I couldn't speak, not at first. It was too much. He was too much. Jackson was well-endowed, I both knew it and had experienced it. But it was so long since I'd been with any man. So long that he was the last one – the only one – I'd ever been with. My body forgot how to handle him. It forgot that feeling of sweet impalement.

  My breathing coordinated with his slow, deep thrusts. At the deepest point every time I would let out a tiny little half-sigh, half-cry. Nothing was ever going to feel better than Jackson did, buried completely inside me, stretching my entire soul open to take him.

  I craned my neck back as the pleasure built deep and low in my belly, at the exact spot inside me where it almost erased my thoughts it felt so good.

  "You're gonna come, aren't you?" He asked, running the tips of his fingers over my exposed throat. "You're gonna come all over my cock, aren't you, baby? I can feel it already. I can feel you getting all tight in there, my love. Is that what you want? You want my cum inside –"

  "Yes!" I cried, shoving my hips back against him and placing my hands flat on the wall, bracing myself. "Yes, Jackson. I – yeah. I want – please, Jackson. Please..."

  He always loved it when I begged. He loved savoring me in that state, basking in his own ability to get me there with easy, confident skill.

  "Mmm," he groaned, gripping my hips and speeding up his rhythm slightly. "Mmm. Hailey. Your pussy feels so good. I'm going to fill you up soon, babe. I'm going to fill you – oh Jesus. Oh, fuck. Hailey..."