by Soraya Lane
“Jack, stop,” she called out, pushing the quilt off and carefully standing. Maddison hobbled through the living area, following him into the kitchen.
Jack was standing with his back to her, hands splayed palm down in front of him on the counter, his big body half folded forward. She could see how deep his breathing was, knew that he was struggling, that he was doing his best to stay in control.
“Jack, I’m sorry,” she said, voice low as she gingerly walked toward him. Maddison placed her hands on his back, gently let them rest there. “All I wanted was to have some fun and come over and see you. I never meant for this to happen.”
He didn’t reply, stayed silent, but she knew he was listening.
“I can’t even imagine how you felt when you found me. But you did the right thing for me, and we both know that you did the only thing you could for your mom that day.”
He swung around then, grabbing hold of her elbow to stop her from falling over. His gaze was dark, his usually chocolate brown eyes swirling with black. Angry. “How can you be so sure?”
“I know it in here,” she whispered, touching her hand over her chest, finger tapping to her heart. “And if you’re honest with yourself? You know it in here too,” she told him, placing her palm warmly against his chest, over his heart this time.
Jack continued to stare at her, never blinking. She was about to move, about to step back, when Jack grabbed hold of her. Hard. One hand kept a tight grip on her elbow, the other slid around her waist, tugging her forward so quickly she didn’t have even a second to resist.
His mouth crushed hers, forced her into a kiss that she was powerless to refuse away from, and one that she couldn’t have ended no matter how much she wanted to. Jack’s lips were soft one moment and rough the next, his tongue dipping into her mouth so carefully and then so insistently, making her desperate for more. She was gripping onto his shirt, refusing to think about the pain in her leg, surrendering to him in every way she could.
Jack was relentless, like a man possessed. Maybe he was trying to run away from his memories, wanted to take his mind off his anger, needed an outlet. Whatever the case, she didn’t care. All she cared about was this. Feeling his lips locked on hers, his body pressed firm against her. Because this made her forget everything.
But she didn’t have time to relax into it and enjoy the moment. Jack grabbed her around the waist, tugging her even closer, lifting her off the floor and leaving her with nothing to do other than wrap her legs around him. Let him take her weight. His mouth never left hers and neither did his hands, even when he sat her on the counter, leaning further into her, one hand on her bottom, the other at her waist, not letting her retreat one inch.
Maddison moaned, pulling him even tighter to her. So much for keeping her hands off Jack.
The phone rang, startling both of them. She refused to let him pull away, clutched at his shirt over his shoulders, to keep him in place and focused.
“No,” she murmured, even as he stroked the side of her face and stepped back.
“You want your mom coming over here to see if you’re okay?” he asked, voice low. “Because I’ll put money on it that’s who’s calling.”
Maddison sighed and put her palms flat to his chest to push him away. “Fine. Answer it.”
He grinned and turned around, reaching for the phone. She couldn’t get enough of him. No matter how much she tried to tell herself that she couldn’t ruin the relationship between their families, if things didn’t work out. Because as soon as she so much as looked at his lips she was a goner.
If only she had the guts to yank at his shirt until the buttons popped and have her wicked way with him…
“It’s your mom.”
He passed Maddison the phone. How the hell had he ended up kissing Maddison like a man possessed again. Not listening to the part of his brain that usually steered him in the sensible direction.
Jack watched as she spoke to her mom, reassured her that she was fine, that she was just going to stay put for the night at Jack’s place.
The night. The last thing he needed was her here for the night. Although maybe it would give them a chance to discuss what the hell was happening between them.
Bullshit. He was lying to himself and he knew it. Because when it came to Maddison, all he could seem to think about was…
“Is it okay if I stay?”
Jack cleared his throat. Teach him to have his mind in the gutter. “Sure.” It wasn’t like he could say no without sounding like a prick.
They stood, staring at one another. She was probably as confused as he was.
“So, um…” Now it was Maddison clearing her throat.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Yes.” The smile was back on her face, eyes dancing like he’d said something way more interesting than he had. “What shall we cook?”
He’d been planning on a quiet night in, something easy when he was exhausted from a long day working. Not with Maddison in the kitchen with him. Not with exhaustion being the least of his worries.
“You mind if I let the dog in? She’s kind of used to hanging out inside these days.”
“Why would I mind?”
Jack chuckled. “Well, she’s kind of smelly, and I don’t recall your family letting your working dogs in the house.”
“Don’t you remember how I used to sneak our dog into my room at night?” Maddison laughed as she shuffled back into the center of the kitchen.
“Yeah, and I recall your mom having a fit when she found out.”
“Go get the dog. I’ll take a look in your fridge.”
Jack watched to make sure she was okay hobbling on her own, before heading to the back door and whistling for Rosa. She was never far away, and he liked the company. Up until now he’d preferred the conversation with Rosa than with his dad. Now the old dog was all he had.
“Hey girl,” he said, dropping to his haunches to give her a pat. “Best behavior, okay?”
The dog gave him a look and trotted off, obviously seeing Maddison in the kitchen and wanting to know what was going on.
Jack groaned. He was happy on his own. If he married Maddison, it wasn’t going to be about love. It was going to be about convenience. About companionship and helping one another out. Which meant he had to stop giving in to lust, because she’d take more from that than he would, and he didn’t want to hurt her.
Jack walked back into the kitchen and found her reaching into the back of his fridge. He went up behind her, touched her arm to let her know he was there. He’d just wanted to make sure she wasn’t hurting her ankle, but now he was wondering if touching her had been a smart idea.
“How old are these olives?” she asked.
“Ahh, I have no idea.”
She pulled them out anyway. “They’ll do. They keep for ages anyway.”
Maddison hobbled a little, placing them on the counter and going back to the pantry.
“You’re walking better.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking over her shoulder and smiling. “It’s better when I’m not thinking about it. And I think the anti-inflammatories have worked.”
And he’d be better off it he wasn’t thinking about her.
“You have raisins in here anywhere?” she called out, disappearing into the walk-in pantry.
“Not sure.” Didn’t sound like something he would buy.
“So I’m pushing my luck for capers?” she asked, walking out with a jar of something he couldn’t remember purchasing. “I know there’s no chance of actual caper berries, so I’m trying to improvise here.”
“I don’t even know what they are, so yeah. Definitely pushing it.” He walked in behind her. “What are you cooking anyway?”
“Chicken Marbella,” she announced, sliding past him like she was doing her best to keep her distance, to not touch him. “I need white wine too, and white vinegar. Would you mind putting the oven on for me?”
Jack did as he was told. “You don’t have to c
ook, you know.”
“What else are we going to do?”
He cracked up at the same time as her face turned beet red. He could think of plenty other things. “You’re absolutely right. Cooking is exactly what we should be doing.”
Maddison opened a few cabinets until she found what she was looking for. She pulled out a large dish, then opened the chicken thighs she’d found in his fridge and placed them in. She looked up when he held out the wine bottle.
“Is it too early for a glass?” he asked.
“No,” she said with a laugh. “What’s the old saying about one for the pot and two for the cook?”
He grinned and uncorked the top. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m liking that saying a lot.”
Maddison held her glass up when he passed it to her. “I think a toast is in order.”
“Yeah? For being alive or for taking one of my nine lives?”
Her smile was soft, gentle. “Old friends reuniting,” she said, touching their glasses together. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been back, and it’s about time I had some perspective.”
“Meaning?” He took a sip and leaned forward, elbows on the counter as he watched her. She was back to preparing the food, like she was trying to stay distracted, keep herself busy.
“My boss keeps calling me. She can’t stand the fact that I’m actually taking some time off, despite everything that’s happened to me lately and the fact that I never, ever take vacations.”
“Is it worth it?” He had to ask.
“I used to think so,” she told him, washing her hands and reaching for her wine again. “I love what I do most of the time, but I’ve lost that balance. It’s what I want and it isn’t at the same time, and I know that doesn’t make sense at all. I just feel like I’m in this gray area of not knowing what I want or where I want to be.”
Jack watched the way she moved around his kitchen, enjoying the fact that he was sitting back and being cooked for. Part of him wanted to get as far away from Maddison as he could, to protect himself. But the other part? That was telling him to forget about everything else and just enjoy her company. The last few years had been all about hard work and no play, which was maybe why he was finding Maddison so damn tempting.
“When are you going back?” He was almost hoping she’d say never.
Maddison bunched up her shoulders. “Soon, I guess.” She sighed. “I was supposed to be here for as long as I needed to be, have a decent amount of time off, but suddenly everything’s supposedly falling apart without me.”
He stared straight into her eyes as she leaned forward, elbows on the counter, glass stretched out in front of her. “Did it ever cross your mind to say no?”
That made her laugh. Jack watched as she shook her head at him. “I think there’s a reason you’re your own boss here, Jack. You probably wouldn’t do so well as someone’s employee.”
“You reckon? I’m not sure being on my own is something I enjoy. Not anymore.” He was flirting and he knew it. And it felt good.
Maddison’s eyes darted away from his. “I’m gonna tend to this chicken,” she said, expertly changing the subject. But as she turned, he saw from the look on her face she had a heap more to say.
Jack waited. Because he knew Maddison, or at least he had known her, and when she pulled her deep in thought face he knew better than to rush her.
“I know I said it before, Jack, but I’m sorry it was you who had to find me earlier.”
He shrugged, not wanting to think about it. He’d freaked out then gotten over it, but it had sure shown him that he was right. That he didn’t ever want to be in a position like that again, and certainly not with his own flesh and blood.
“Don’t shrug, because I know it took you back in time,” she said, voice soft and low.
Jack grunted. She was right, but it didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it.
“Does it mean you don’t want to get married now?” she asked.
His eyebrows knotted in surprise. Jack clutched his wine glass. “If we did it, we’d have to set boundaries.”
She smiled and turned away again, hiding her face. Like he’d managed to keep within his boundaries so well earlier. That’s what she’d been thinking, it had to be, because it was exactly what had gone through his mind when he’d said it.
“I’ve been working on my list,” she said, sliding a dish into the oven, fiddling with the timer and joining him back at the counter.
“You have?”
She laughed. “No, not really. But I think you’re right about the whole agreement thing.”
Jack had expected her to tell him off, to say it was too impersonal – to talk about contracts and rules. But then they were talking about a marriage of convenience, not a real romance. Or at least they had been. “Are you about to tell me we can’t do what we did before?”
He winked, trying to make fun of the situation, and it worked. Maddison reached for the bottle of wine, topping off both their glasses, shaking her head. “We’re not driving so why not, right? Although I should probably stop at two given the pain meds I’ve taken.”
“Sure.” She was avoiding answering his question and he wasn’t going to ask her again.
“Have you ever thought about your dad. I mean…”
Jack held up his hand. “Can we not talk about him? I was liking this evening just fine, but discussing my father is going to put an end to anything good.”
Maddison took another sip of wine, slowly moving her head from side to side. “Can you just hear me out? Let me ask you this, and then if you don’t like what I have to say we don’t have to discuss him ever again.”
The last thing Jack wanted was to talk about his father. Period. He was gone and he didn’t need to consult the man, discuss him or think about him again in his lifetime. Yet here Maddison was wanting to ask him questions about the jackass. “No, actually, I don’t want to hear you out, but I know you well enough to know that you’re going to say it anyway.”
“Have you ever been in love, Jack?”
He stared at her long and hard then. He hadn’t been expecting her to change the subject so thoroughly. In love? No. In lust, plenty of times, but never in love. So why didn’t he want to admit it to Maddison. “I don’t think so, no.”
Her smile told him that she knew it was a definite no. “I thought I had, Jack, but now I don’t think it was ever love. Not really. Not when I look back on it.”
Jack wished he knew what she was trying to say, because he had no idea what this had to do with his dad, or if they’d actually changed topic completely.
“When my mom talks about my dad, I know that I haven’t been in love. Because I’ve never been with a person truly prepared to put me first. I’ve never been so passionately in love that I’ve known my life would never be the same without that person.”
Her eyes glistened with tears now. Jack watched as she deftly wiped them away, blinking and looking sideways for a beat.
“When you put it like that,” he said with a chuckle, hoping to lighten the mood, “then I’ve definitely never been in love.”
“What I’m trying to say is, what if it had been my mom that day? If it had been her in that accident.”
They were going back to a place he wasn’t prepared to go, that needed to be locked away for good. “It would never have been your mom, Maddison, and I don’t know what you’re trying to get at, but can we just drop this?”
“If it had been my mom though, maybe my dad would have become someone different too. Not in the same way, but maybe it would have changed something about his personality, too. Maybe your dad was just so heartbroken, so lost without his one person in the world, that he couldn’t help the man he became. Maybe it triggered something that he’d been struggling with for…”
“Enough.” Jack could hear the cool, hard edge to his tone, was struggling to stay in control of his anger. He wanted to bellow at her to stop her talking about this. “So what if that was the
case, Maddison? It makes the reason I don’t want children even more justifiable, don’t you see that?”
“Even if it was a marriage of convenience? If you weren’t in love?”
Jack shut his eyes, took a deep breath. “What if I did fall in love? What if I repeated the mistakes I’ve already lived through?” It was something that he thought of constantly, that he might repeat the cycle that had almost broken him as a kid. “What if I couldn’t help the man I became? What then?”
“I don’t believe you could ever do that, Jack,” Maddison said, coming closer and placing her hand on his arm, fingers firm against his skin even through his shirt. “You’re a good man. A kind man. And I know you well enough to believe otherwise. If you were in the same circumstances, it might change you, but it wouldn’t turn you into that man.”
He cleared his throat. “You want to know who I am? I’m a man who doesn’t want to be a dad, Maddison,” Jack told her, knowing exactly what she was doing, trying to change his mind. “No amount of flattery or talking about the past is going to change that. It’s not just something that I can change my mind about, because it’s part of who I am.”
Maddison leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, her lips soft, warm. “It’s not just about me wanting to be a parent, Jack,” she whispered, “it’s about me telling you that you shouldn’t deprive yourself of being one, just because you’re scared. Whether it’s me or someone else one day, I don’t want to see you making a decision you’ll look back on and regret.”
Maddison shouldn’t have said anything, but everything about Jack screamed dad. He was one of the strongest, gentlest, most genuine men she’d ever encountered, and it broke her heart to see how much his father still affected him.
“How’s dinner looking?”
His deep voice pulled her from her thoughts. This conversation was clearly over and she didn’t want to ruin things by pushing it. “Maybe you could put the rice on?”
Jack stood, looked at her one last time like he was waiting for her to say something else, then walked into the pantry. She took her chance to watch him, to absorb his tall frame, wide shoulders, dark hair that was an inch longer that he’d used to wear it. His dark locks curled slightly at the ends. It was cute, kind of endearing. Maddison refocused on the window. She stared out at the ranch, looked at the cattle grazing in the far distance.
