by Nikki Logan
‘No. Not after what I just saw.’
‘Earlier today I might have disagreed with you on that point,’ she murmured. ‘But with what I felt just now…’ She turned and stared down at the old Calhoun mine. Then she brought her eyes back up to his and pressed her fist between her breasts. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s passion in here…somewhere…just looking for the right voice.’
Maybe? Jed watched Ellie’s blue eyes glitter in the low light thrown by his SUV. Was she serious? Underneath the neatly pressed outfits and perfectly groomed hair, the woman oozed sensuality, but obviously didn’t know it. The way she’d danced as the sun set… He’d never seen anything as moving. How someone could be one hundred per cent focused and one hundred per cent absent at the same time. Off…somewhere…otherworldly.
He recognised the feeling, though it had been a long time between sensations. He’d had it back when he was a kid and learning to horseride with his dad. The first time he’d galloped—petrified but exhilarated—alongside the man that he admired and respected so much. The man who only came home to him from duty on weekends and whose time and attention on those days was the whole world to a boy of six years of age. It was a feeling that had had to sustain him for a very long time after his father died.
Until he eventually forgot how it had felt.
Until years passed between incidences of remembering it.
He almost envied Ellie the experience she’d just had except for the fact that his own body had responded vicariously to her complete immersion. He’d seen her experiencing the thrill for the first time. He’d felt it in the tight grip of her fingers, the way she wanted to fly away from him but didn’t at the same time.
It fed a need in him that he’d barely acknowledged. It stirred his blood in a way that probably wasn’t helpful out here in the privacy and dark. Under a rising moon. This whole night had gone a totally different direction than he meant. He hadn’t prepared himself to feel…drawn.
He cleared his throat. ‘I have a confession to make. I brought you out here to show off a bit of Larkville, to help you see that the country has its merits, too. And to get you loosened up a bit so you might enjoy dinner rather than viewing it as something to be endured. But I’m glad that it has affected you so strongly,’ he continued. ‘And I’m thankful I could experience a little bit of it, through you, too.’
They stared at each other wordlessly for moments. The growing awareness in her gaze intrigued and frightened him at the same time.
‘You still up for dinner?’ he risked.
For three hard heartbeats he thought she was going to say no. But then she tossed back that hair she was so ashamed of and took a deep breath.
‘Depends,’ she said, and Jed realised he’d do just about anything at all to keep this connection they’d unexpectedly formed between them alive a little longer even if it was a mistake. It had been too, too long.
Her eyes twinkled. ‘Will there be bats?’
* * *
No bats.
But something delicious was bubbling away on the stove when they walked back into Jed’s cottage half an hour later. They’d had to pry Deputy away from the men lazing around the Calhoun hand quarters—he was in his doggie element—but he was happy enough to be back in front of his own fire now.
So was Ellie.
‘Sure gets cold fast at night here,’ she said.
‘Yep,’ Jed agreed. ‘As soon as that sun sinks behind the mountains…’
Excellent. Talking about the weather. A new social low. Conversation had been pretty sporadic since returning from the Double Bar C but, for the life of her, Ellie couldn’t manage anything more fascinating.
When had she got this nervous? And why?
‘Give me ten minutes—I’ll just serve up…’ Jed cleared his throat. ‘Washroom’s through there if you want to freshen up.’
She did, but there’d be a mirror in there and if she looked in the mirror there was no way she was walking out with her hair hanging loose around her shoulders. And given how Jed would almost certainly feel if she came back with it perfectly pulled back, Ellie figured it would be best all round not to go in at all.
Plus it felt pretty good having it down. Kind of…risqué.
Her eyes automatically went to Jed, but she dragged them away when she realised what they’d done. Risqué and Sheriff Jed Jackson didn’t belong together in the same thought process.
At all.
They went instead to Deputy. Much safer territory. He was such a good-natured dog. She’d thought he was just plain dopey but he couldn’t have been to make it into the canine squad, even as a tracker, if he wasn’t smart. They had to be pretty focused and resilient. Her heart squeezed… Though apparently every dog had its breaking point.
Just like humans.
Whatever kind of a dog he used to be he approached life much more simply now. She certainly understood that desire.
‘Ready?’
Jed pulled up two seats at the timber breakfast bar. Then he added a bottle of wine and two glasses to the two steaming bowls already there.
‘We’re eating here?’ she queried.
‘Yup. A meal doesn’t have to be fancy to be good.’
She frowned at him. ‘I feel like I need to let you know I’ve had good food before. Despite my—’ idiosyncrasies ‘—rule.’
‘Good dining is about so much more than the taste.’ He held one of the two tall seats out for her to perch on. Then he held an empty glass up and raised an eyebrow. She nodded—barely—and he splashed two inches of white wine into the glass. She wiggled more comfortably on the seat, starting to enjoy the pageantry of this meal, coming as it did so close on the heels of one of the most exhilarating experiences of her life.
‘Texan wine?’ she tested.
‘Naturally.’
He slid a plate towards her and she took an anxious breath. But he’d been careful; she had a bit of everything on her plate but nowhere near the quantities on his. He wasn’t out to overwhelm her. She appreciated that.
She peered closer. ‘What is this?’
‘Cuisine à la Jackson. Texan ribs, risotto and salad.’ He smiled. ‘A tribute to my past and my present.’
She could see something Mediterranean in the colour of his skin and eyes, bleached by generations of cold Atlantic winters. That side of his family came endowed with old legend and crazy anecdotes and he shared some of them as Ellie tried the moist risotto and the tangy salad. But when she got to the lone rib on her plate she hesitated.
‘Just like Texans do,’ he said, anticipating her question. ‘With your fingers.’
‘I don’t think I’ve eaten with my fingers since I was four,’ she joked, lifting the rib to her mouth.
‘About time you rediscovered the art.’
Ellie tentatively wrapped her lips around the sticky goodness.
Her eyes rounded at the divine taste. ‘Ofmigof…!’
Ribs were good. Really good. Rib muscles were constantly being worked out just breathing, so it made sense they’d be lean and tender. That meant that they got a tick in her ‘good fuel’ box. But in this case they also got a tick each in the boxes marked ‘yum’ and ‘plain fun to eat.’
She nibbled her way along one piece of bone, then licked her fingers individually. Jed reached over for the flat-iron pan the ribs had come out on, his muscles bunching under his shirt. He tonged another one up and lifted an eyebrow.
She only hesitated for a moment. ‘What’s it cooked in?’
He placed one more rib on her plate and shook his head. ‘Old Texan secret.’
‘Come on. I’m more Texan than you are—’
Ellie hid the accidental slip-up behind his full laugh. A mistake like that was not like her, she was normally so guarded with her words. She glanced at her wine—only an inch missing. How relaxed had the bats made her? Or was it Jed?
In the end she barely noticed the passing of time, or food over her lips. The conversation roamed all over the p
lace and she was most rapt by the accidental snippets of information about the Calhouns—any one of her sisters or her brothers. Her Texan sisters and brothers, she allowed, thinking of Alex and Charlotte and Matt. Though Matt was as Texan as she was, technically.
Then, barely realising it had happened, she found herself curled up on a sofa just like her own, a cup of steaming hot cocoa in hand. Cocoa. The drink that got no ticks in any of the boxes except the one marked ‘sigh.’
‘Jed, I have to admit—’ and admitting she was wrong took some doing ‘—this has been a pretty awesome evening.’
‘Even the food?’
‘Especially the food. I never quite got why people insisted on eating when they got together but…’ She looked at him curiously. ‘It’s kind of nice. Relaxing.’
‘That’s the cocoa.’
She barely had the energy for more than a low chuckle. ‘Right. That must be it.’ She shifted more comfortably on the sofa.
‘So you didn’t hate it?’
She stared at him, recognising genuine anxiety flirting at the back of his careful expression. ‘On the contrary. I’m not sure when I’ve ever been this relaxed and comfortable with someone. Thank you.’ She ignored the squeezing sensation deep inside.
‘Are you thanking me for dinner? Or for being comfortable to be around?’
She tipped her head onto the thick-stuffed top of the sofa and let it rest there. ‘Both?’
Confusion battled it out in his silent gaze. ‘For what it’s worth, the feeling’s mutual. Though I wouldn’t have expected that when I first met you out on the road to the Calhouns’.’
She groaned. ‘You got me at an especially difficult time. End of a long drive, a bad week.’
‘Drowning in steer.’
Ellie laughed. ‘And the steer.’
‘Why the bad week?’
Could she tell him? She wanted to—a lot—but until she’d spoken to Jess it really wasn’t her secret to share. How ironic since she was the secret.
She leaned over and placed the last of her hot cocoa on a side table Jed had dragged over next to the sofa. Then she brought her eyes back to his. ‘Back home I’m…expected to uphold a certain standard. A level of output. It’s a crazy kind of pace.’ Though it’s quite handy when you don’t think you have much else of a life to lead. ‘But add a few emotional upheavals to the mix and it all gets a bit overwhelming.’
Upheavals—suitably broad and non-specific.
‘Who expects it? This standard?’
She blinked at him. ‘Everyone. I’m Eleanor Patterson.’
‘You say that like you’re the First Lady, with obligations to the whole country.’ He shifted his leg slightly to point the soles of his shoes towards the fire and it brought him a hint closer to her. ‘Define “everyone”?’
‘My parents. My brother and sisters. The people who count on me to work their events, to attract a crowd, to make them money.’
‘What about you?’
She frowned at him. ‘What about me?’
‘Do you have high expectations of yourself?’
‘I do. But not unrealistic, I don’t think. I have a good idea of my strengths and weaknesses. It’s not all bad.’
Suddenly his gaze grew more intense. ‘Throw me a couple of strengths.’
When had he moved that close? ‘Okay. Well… People call me driven. Focused. Tireless. They’re all good things.’
‘Depends how you look at it.’ Jed stared steadily at her. ‘You don’t look tireless to me. You just look tired.’
For absolutely no reason, the compassion in his lined face was like a sock to her guts, robbing her of air. Her chest squeezed in, collecting into a tight, painful ball. She held his eyes.
‘I’m exhausted,’ she confessed. Exhausted by life. Exhausted by faking it. Exhausted by all the angst and worrying over something she couldn’t control in any way.
Like whether or not she was a Calhoun.
He turned his body front on to her and took her hand between his.
It wasn’t a come-on. It was humane compassion, pure and simple, but it wasn’t something she could let herself do. She pulled her hand free and then, without meaning to speak, words were leaving her lips. It suddenly seemed extra important to her that Jed understand it wasn’t him she was afraid of touching.
‘I don’t like physical contact because I was always so self-conscious about how I must feel to people,’ she blurted. ‘How frail.’
How skeletal.
He didn’t react, but she was starting to expect that from him now. Jed Jackson was a man who was careful to think before he spoke. Plus the deep shadows in his gaze gave him away. ‘You don’t want to seem fragile?’
‘I’m supposed to be strong.’
He slid one hand along the back of the sofa and his eyes were steady on hers. ‘You can’t be strong all the time. It’s okay to ask for help.’
His body language was obvious, his message clear. He was there to lend her strength if she wanted it.
But she had to come to him.
She stared at the big barrel of a chest just a foot away from her, imagined resting there. How had they got there, the two of them? At the place that a virtual stranger could ask her if she wanted to absorb some of his apparently endless strength and the place that she was actually considering doing it.
But there they were and it didn’t feel weird, just…foreign. She hadn’t had someone touching her in a long time but it had been even longer since she’d been the one to initiate contact. Beyond the necessary courtesy with the necessary people. Beyond her sister’s life-sustaining hugs that she only allowed because it was Alex. Beyond the quickly evaded clinch at the conclusion of the endless first and only dates she went on to make her mother happy.
Heart hammering, her eyes slid to the soft denim shirt covering his broad chest. It did look extremely comfortable. And it was so close.
She was as slow to move as trust was to come but, once she started, momentum took over. She reclined into the sofa back, against the length of Jed’s arm, her breath suspended the entire time.
He did nothing. No words. No actions. He didn’t trap her within the curl of his arm or force some kind of intimacy for which she wasn’t ready. He just sat quiet and undemanding and understanding as she grew accustomed to the feel of someone’s body against hers.
‘There’s a reason I took Deputy in with me,’ he rumbled from next to her. ‘More than just him needing a home.’
His pause wasn’t an invitation for her to speak, it was an opportunity for him to gather his thoughts. Something about the slight stiffness in the body pressed so warmly against hers told her that he was rewarding her vulnerability with one of his own.
Making this easier for her by making it harder on himself.
Ellie inched in closer to the crook of his arm. Why she thought such a tiny gesture would bolster him… Yet, it seemed to work.
‘Police presence was massively increased in Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks,’ he started. ‘The NYPD got an influx of new recruits wanting to make a difference, to defend their city. For a while there we had rookies coming out of our ears but, by the time I was promoted to the canine unit, the enthusiasm to serve had waned, yet the required service level stayed high.’
He stared into the fire.
‘As captain of the unit it was my job to oversee training and rosters and staff development as well as dealing with budgets and resources and procedures. It was my job to deal with the expectation of management, too. Sometimes those two things didn’t fit together at all.’
‘Expectations and resources?’
She felt his nod in the slight shift of his torso. ‘I made some decisions that I wasn’t all that comfortable with.’
Ellie changed the angle of her head so that she was looking up at him. Mostly into that gorgeous jawline. ‘Did that include Deputy Dawg?’
The hard line of his jaw flexed. Pronounced creases formed between his brow. ‘Deputy’s handler…O
fficer O’Halloran. She and Deputy were inseparable, she was as good a trainer as Deputy was a tracker, but she was no more suited for the front line than he was. I knew that even if she didn’t. I knew she was misplaced from before she’d even arrived in the section.’
‘But…?’
‘But reassigning her would have meant my team was down by one and the others had already carried her for the weeks it takes to train up a new handler and dog pair. And it would have compromised our output at a time we were being hammered for results.’
He paused for so long, Ellie thought maybe he’d changed his mind.
‘So I sent her out while we scouted other units for likely replacements. Despite knowing she wasn’t ready—that maybe she never would be. I exposed her and Deputy to risk before they were ready.’
Ellie’s breath tightened in response to the sudden tension in Jed’s body and she remembered his earlier words. ‘The waterfront.’
‘She died there, Ellie. And Deputy was beaten half to death defending her. And both of those shames were on me. My lack of judgement. My haste.’ He swallowed again. ‘My weakness in not standing up to the game-playing and the bull dust from higher up the food chain.’
‘You were doing your job,’ she murmured, though it wasn’t a whole lot of consolation.
He threw up his hands angrily. ‘My job was to look after my team and my district and make informed, careful decisions. Not to throw a rookie to the wolves.’
His frustrated outburst over, his hands dropped back down and one fell lightly onto her shoulder, but Jed was so lost in his memories he didn’t even notice. And, for the same reason, Ellie couldn’t bring herself to protest. Plus the small and surprising fact that she didn’t entirely mind it.
‘Is that why you quit the department?’
‘I let that team down as badly as I would have let Deputy down by leaving a working dog to rot in some public-relations role. Me stepping aside made way for someone who deserved the stars on their shoulder.’
‘That sounds vaguely familiar,’ she murmured, lifting her eyes to seek out his. He dragged his gaze back from the spot on the far wall he’d been pinned to and lowered it to stare down his cheekbone at her.
