Miller Brothers in Love
Page 12
Dusting himself off as he stood up, Wyatt glowered at Stetson for a long, considering moment before he spat blood on the floor and stormed out of the barn, Maggie Mae following behind, tail tucked between her legs.
Declan and Stetson shared an awkward moment before Declan shrugged and followed Wyatt.
“We’ll talk later,” Declan said, before pulling the massive door shut behind him.
Chapter 32
Stetson
“I swear, every time you go out to the barn, you come back bleeding. I’m not going to allow you to continue to go out there if this keeps up,” Jennifer joked as she dabbed at the cut over his left eye.
Wyatt had managed to land one really good punch during their tussle in the barn, damn him.
Stetson was feeling bad, but not because of the fight. He was actually feeling pretty good about that. Well, at least the part where he’d come out on top in a fistfight with Wyatt. That had never happened before, so yeah, that part felt good. Awfully damn good, if he was being honest with himself. Even if he’d had to punch Wyatt with his knuckles that he’d already hurt working on the tractor, he didn’t care.
But his jab about Shelly and Sierra dying – that wasn’t his finest hour. Now, just minutes later, he was already starting to regret saying it. If Wyatt wasn’t such a dick, he’d totally apologize to him for it.
Too bad Wyatt was a class-A dickwad.
No, what Stetson was really feeling bad about was that he’d ruined Jennifer’s mood when he’d walked in the door with blood streaming down his face. She’d bounded out of the office when she’d heard the back door open but her happiness had vanished when she’d caught sight of him.
She’d dragged him into the kitchen and plopped him down at the kitchen table, giving her the height advantage for once, and then had proceeded to dote on him. Stetson had visions of having to turn a corner of the kitchen into a first aid station if the injuries continued.
“So what happened?” she asked gently as she dabbed at his eye.
“Oh, you know how brothers are,” he answered, hoping to downplay what had happened. Actually, he preferred not to discuss it at all. Females didn’t tend to understand the intricacies of male relationships.
“I’m an only child, so no, I don’t know about brothers,” she murmured, peering closely at the cut. “This might need stitches…”
“We show each other our love by wanting to kill each other,” Stetson said, ignoring the stitches comment. He’d heal without stitches. He had before. “It’s complicated.”
“Sounds like a dangerous relationship.”
“It usually is,” Stetson agreed blandly. “Where’s Carmelita?”
“I think she’s changing bedding or something,” Jennifer murmured. She was bent over, her button-up pearl snap shirt falling away from her chest as she looked closely at his eye. Stetson enjoyed the view, forgetting for a moment how to breathe. If she didn’t remove that delectable chest out of reach real quick, he was gonna pop a button on his jeans.
Or simply grab her and make love to her on the kitchen table.
His impulse control wasn’t real high today.
“Well,” she said, thankfully – or horribly, depending on how you looked at it – straightening up and putting her hands on her hips, “it’s right on the border. We could try and see if we could get away without using stitches on it. We need to get the bleeding to stop, and then I’ll use some Krazy Glue to seal it up.”
“Hold on, you’re going to glue my head back together?” Suddenly, the idea of stitches didn’t seem so bad after all.
“That’s what a hospital uses when you go in with a cut,” she said with a shrug, washing her hands in the kitchen sink. “They use a fancier name for it, but it’s basically super glue. If the cut isn’t too severe, it works much better than stitches. Heals a lot faster, with less pain.”
“Sometimes you medical people are sure weird,” Stetson grumbled, holding the cotton gauze up to his eye that Jennifer had forced into his hand.
“Hey, I’m not the one who just got in a fistfight with my brother.” She grinned teasingly at him, and Stetson felt himself smiling back.
Smiling. After he and Wyatt had rolled around on the barn floor, beating the hell out of each other, Stetson found himself smiling.
Wasn’t that just the damnedest thing.
Chapter 33
Jennifer
Dinner was turning out to be a rather quiet affair. When Carmelita had come back downstairs, her arms full of laundry, she’d taken one look at Stetson’s eye and launched into him for daring to fight with Wyatt. Jennifer couldn’t help noticing that Carmelita had just assumed that the fight was with Wyatt, without even asking any questions first.
Smart woman.
Stetson had taken it all like a small child, only occasionally trying to interrupt and defend himself, but quickly realizing the futility of it and falling silent again.
Eyes bouncing between them like a spectator at a tennis match, Jennifer was pretty damn sure that this was a “discussion” the two of them had had more than once.
Hmmm…I definitely need to meet these brothers of Stetson’s. See why they’re so difficult to get along with. Or at least why Wyatt is.
Once the scolding was done, Carma had led them into the dining room where she’d laid out a stunning dinner for them – lasagna, tossed salad fresh from the garden, and homemade garlic bread. She then had disappeared, murmuring something about chores she needed to do. Jennifer had stared after her. “Is she always that obvious?” she’d asked dryly.
“Pretty much!” Stetson had said cheerfully.
That had been the last of their conversation for quite a while, actually. Jennifer wasn’t sure if it was because the food was so amazing, there was no time for talking, or if Stetson just didn’t have anything to say to her.
Finally, he spoke up. “You never told me why you became an accountant,” he said, piling a third helping of lasagna onto his plate. How could he eat so much and still stay in such good shape? The Miller brother were a sight to behold.
“I didn’t?” she asked, confused. She thought they’d already discussed all of this.
“Nope. You told me why you quit the nursing profession, but you didn’t tell me why you then chose to become an accountant. It’s not like that’s a given or something – if you don’t like the medical field, you automatically become an accountant.”
“Oh. Yeah. No, you’re right. I guess that does seem like a strange switch, from the outside. It made perfect sense to me, but then again, your own actions usually do.” She took another sip of her wine, letting the warmth spread through her. “I’d gotten into the nursing profession because I wanted to help people. I figured out that I don’t like poop and blood all that much, but I still like to help people, so I decided that I could do it by becoming an accountant.”
“Stealing people’s farms away from them is helping them?” Stetson cocked an eyebrow at her in disbelief.
She glared at him. “I don’t go around holding a gun to people’s heads and taking their stuff from them, first of all,” she informed him tartly. “They have to have missed payments with the bank, which is not my fault. Second, like I said, working for Intermountain in the audit department wasn’t really my dream job, or the reason I went to school to become an accountant. They were just the ones hiring when I graduated from Boise State, and I have a crapload of student loans I need to pay off. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
They stared at each other for a long minute as Stetson chewed his lasagna in silence, his face a wall of stone. No emotion leaked through as his jaw moved rhythmically, eyes locked together in a silent struggle.
Finally, he swallowed and then nodded. Just once. “You’re right,” he said gruffly, looking down at his plate as he spoke. “I’ve been looking at Intermountain as the enemy for so long, it’s rough…I don’t change my views with a snap of the fingers. But…” He heaved a huge sigh and looked up at her, his cheeks tinged a littl
e red. “I…I did miss the payment. That $176,000 is the bank’s money, not mine. No matter how I got into this mess, a man still pays his bills.”
Jennifer was sure that the pain Stetson had just endured from having to swallow his pride like a piece of jagged glass was probably sharp and cutting and terrible. Although he didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry,” they were implied, and she already knew him well enough to know just that alone was a mighty big step for him.
She nodded, deliberately choosing to let it go and move on. She wouldn’t win any brownie points by pushing the topic further, and an implied apology was almost as good as a stated one.
Almost.
“To answer your question,” she said, going back to the start of the conversation, “I wanted to become an accountant because I wanted to help people, plus I’m fairly good with numbers and organizing stuff. I may not like blood or poop, but I do like spreadsheets and numbers. It’s logical – something that I can quantify.
“You haven’t met her, of course, but Bonnie Patterson is my best friend. We met in an accounting class at Boise State and we quickly became best friends because we both look at the world in the same way. We realized when we met that we were both getting into accounting for the same reason: So we could help small business owners with their books and taxes. Most normal people don’t run a business because they love pushing paper around. You may or may not have some experience in this arena.” He flashed her a grin at her quip and she pushed herself to smile back, a smile tinged with sadness and frustration.
“But instead of being able to help small business owners, we’ve both ended up at jobs that we hate, working for people we despise. It’s kind of depressing how different our careers ended up being, compared to what we’d wanted to do. It’s hard to stay optimistic when the whole reason for your career choice ends up being not at all what happens in that career.”
She shrugged and took another sip of her wine. She looked up at Stetson and said with a forced cheerfulness, “Well, enough of that. No one wants to focus on the negative, right?”
He ignored her horribly blatant attempt at changing the subject, and instead said softly, “I don’t know how you stay so cheerful all the time. You said earlier that it’s not hard to stay optimistic when so much of your life has gone your way, but honestly Jenn, it seems like so much of it hasn’t.”
She opened up her mouth to protest, and then closed it again with a snap. She stared at him. He stared back.
Finally, she sputtered, “Well, sure, if you focus on all of the bad things that have happened, life sucks, but you know, I’ve had lots of wonderful things happen too.” She began listing them off on her fingers. “I was able to graduate from high school a year early by taking accelerated and summer classes, which meant I could get a head start on my secondary education. I have very supportive parents, even if they’re a bit overbearing at times. I realized quicker than most that I needed a career change, instead of wallowing in frustration and misery for decades. I met Bonnie while going to BSU for the second time, and we ended up being roommates for years. She’s like a sister I never got to have, and if I’d gone straight from high school to college and studied accounting straight out of the gate, we probably never would’ve met. So in some ways, I have Paul to thank for meeting Bonnie.”
Stetson shook his head, a small smile dancing around his lips. “You are the very embodiment of making lemonade out of lemons. If I had half your optimism and happiness, I probably wouldn’t have punched Wyatt today. You…you’re like this alien being come to earth. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“Alien being?!” Jennifer repeated with a snort of laughter. “Hey Romeo, anyone ever told you that you need to work on your pickup lines?”
“I’ve never had any complaints before,” he said with a grin and a wink that ended with a groan. He reached up to touch his eye tentatively.
“I think your first clue should’ve been the fact that you’re 26 and single,” she pointed out, ignoring his grunt of pain. Maybe next time he’d think twice before getting into a fistfight with his own damn brother.
“Hey, you’re 24 and single!” he protested, his cheeks heating up.
“Which is waaayyyy younger than 26.” She grinned at him, which was when he realized that she’d been teasing him.
“Damn you,” he growled. “Come here. I’ll teach you to be nice to your elders.” He reached over and snagged her arm, pulling her onto his lap. She laughed up into his face.
“Elder, eh? I guess it’s progress that you at least recognize that part.”
Which was when he swooped down onto her mouth and began plundering it with his tongue. All laughter quickly died away and she kissed him back, moaning with pleasure as she did so. All day, she’d been waiting for this moment, hoping against hope that he’d see past all of her flaws and still want her.
And somehow, he did.
For Jennifer, the kiss was straight out of a fairytale. She felt lightheaded from the excitement and the wine as the world narrowed to just the two of them. She focused on the point where their lips met, relishing the sensation of his tongue pushing at her lips. A chorus in her mind cheered when she relented, opening her mouth. Everything in her celebrated that brief moment where nothing else in the world mattered.
Slowly, languidly, she pulled back and opened her eyes, her hand drifting lightly over his chest while Stetson’s hand slid down her back. She felt his palm fall slightly into the hollow of her back before it settled on the curve of her ass. The pressure of his hand was perfect. Firm and demanding, but not so insistent as to be controlling.
He brought his other hand up to her face. He rested his palm on her cheek and his long fingers, rough against her soft skin, curled just a bit around the back of her head. His eyes burned through her for just the briefest of moments before he bent and pulled her in for a second kiss.
Jennifer let him explore her mouth with his tongue again before pressing her tongue back against his. She reveled in the newness of this man’s body. In response to what was happening, her body began to radiate a rhythmic warmth in time with her pounding pulse.
He pulled away suddenly. The abrupt end shocked her. Her eyes shot open, and she looked up at him in confusion. She saw nothing but fire.
“Come with me,” was all he said, his voice husky and breathless. His obvious desire was contagious and undeniable. She nodded her head, unable to speak. Stetson pulled her through the house and up the stairs to the bedroom, his impatience rolling off him in waves. Walking to the end of the massive bed that was centered in the room, Stetson turned to face the trailing Jennifer.
She took in the room in a theoretical sense – she saw dark cherry wood dressers and nightstands and a bed frame that all matched, a rug at the foot of the bed to warm up the wood floors – but it was a hazy kind of awareness that only served to keep her from bumping into the dresser as she walked towards him. At gunpoint, she wouldn’t have been able to say if there was a single painting or mirror on any of the walls.
All that existed was Stetson.
He smiled. She’d really liked his smile earlier in the day, but she loved this smile. There was something sinfully fun promised in this smile.
He grabbed the edges of her shirt and pulled, the pearl-snap buttons popping their release up her front. She was starting to realize the benefits that came from snap buttons – maybe country folk were onto something.
But even as she felt lust and desire begin to thrum through her veins, panic started to seep in around the edges. It was just about to get bad. Maybe she could hurry him along through the bad part and he could still want to have sex with her.
It was totally possible, right?
Stetson sat down on the end of the bed, giving her the height advantage for once. It was rather nice, actually. He reached around her and unsnapped her lacy bra, letting the light-as-air fabric fall to the floor. When someone was as small as she was, they didn’t need much in the way of boob support, dammit.
Well, if she could just cover her tits from his gaze, maybe he wouldn’t notice how tiny they were and be turned off by them. God only knew how many times she’d heard from Paul about how she wasn’t large enough to really make a man happy. She didn’t need to hear it from anyone else.
He slowly peeled her fingers off her chest, one by one, kissing each finger until she was laid bare to his gaze. She trembled a little, moaning in distress. This was when it’d start – the derogatory comments. The obvious statements about not being woman enough for a real man.
“So perfect. So beautiful,” he whispered and then he leaned forward and suckled on one nipple and then the other as she stared down at his lighter locks on top in shock. He couldn’t mean it. Why, she looked like she’d been bitten by mosquitoes! That wasn’t sexy. It was okay if he ignored her breasts and moved on to the good stuff, but he shouldn’t try to bullshit her so blatantly.
Panic and anger were overwhelming her, washing over her, drowning her in their wake.
Why was he lying to her?
“Don’t lie!” she shouted, pushing at his shoulders, shoving him away from her. It was probably the shock of it that allowed her pushing at him to actually move him. He hadn’t been expecting it.
Good.
She covered her tits again with her hands as she glared down at him. His eyes were wide as he stared back.
“Wha–what?” he stuttered.
“Don’t lie to me. They’re not perfect or beautiful. They’re tiny – a child’s size. They’re not even worth looking at!” She spat out Paul’s favorite criticism of them before Stetson could say it first. It hurt less if she was the one to say it – she’d figured that out a long time ago.