He never would have figured Annie to hide herself away in such a place as this. But he supposed when a fortune in diamonds hung in the balance, a person could do just about anything.
Like serving a full sentence rather than go for parole, so that once I was out I didn’t have to check in with anyone on a regular basis.
Rick laughed when he found out where Annie had lit out to. The medium security facility that had been his home until two weeks ago was called Wyoming.
If he believed in crap like fate and destiny, he’d figure it for a sign. But he didn’t go in for that New Age bullshit. He trusted no one and believed only what he could see. And he counted on nothing, so he was taking everything one step at a time.
He hadn’t told his mom anything about where he’d been headed. She’d fronted him most of the money, anyway. Plus, he had some cash put away from before he went to prison. He borrowed a few hundred from Squirrel, too. Pathetic bastard was always eager to please. Rick had enough, he figured, for a few days stay at that no-tell motel, and to get his ass to Mexico once he got his hands on the gems.
It shouldn’t take him that long to persuade Annie to hand over the necklace.
He slowed as he neared the center of the town and saw her store on the first pass. Branchton General Store. Well that sure as hell was creative. As he passed, he turned and looked. There she stood, just on the other side of the glass of the front door, turning the hanging sign from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. Their gazes met for the barest of moments, and then he motored past.
He didn’t think she recognized him, wouldn’t have even thought he could be here, on her doorstep so to speak. His cock stirred to life with that fleeting glimpse, and it was all he could do not to turn the car around and pound on her door, then pound into her.
He would, but first he needed to case the area.
There’d been a truck stop restaurant out on the interstate, nearly all the way back to Laramie. He’d eat there, then come back. He’d hide the car, walk to Annie’s, and spend a couple of hours casing the place.
Mrs. Smith only had the one address for her baby girl, and it hadn’t taken much muscle on his part for her to give it to him. Weak-willed spineless bitch.
So he knew Annie lived in a tiny apartment above the store. If he was satisfied that things checked out, maybe he’d break in and surprise his little sister-in-law. They could have their reunion party right there in her bed tonight.
Yeah, that sounded like a real good plan.
Maybe he’d take her with him, and maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, before too many more hours had passed, he sure as hell was going to take her.
Chapter Twelve
Uneasiness crept up her spine.
The road had become familiar to her, and Annie found it easy to allow her mind to wander just slightly as she drove out to Jesse’s ranch. It hadn’t taken her long after closing the store to get herself ready and out the door. It had only been ten after five when she got into her car and headed out of town.
A shiver wracked her as she descended the stairs to the empty lot behind her building where she kept her car. She couldn’t say why she felt nervous, on edge. She just did. It was the kind of feeling she hadn’t felt since leaving New York City. She felt as if danger surrounded her, and she needed to move quickly. As if eyes watched her every move, tracked her.
She felt like she’d been back in Queens.
She hated that feeling, couldn’t understand how she’d been able to live like that for so many years. She never wanted to live like that again.
Something about the way that man looked at me as he drove past the store frightened me. She’d immediately directed her gaze to the car’s license plate. Seeing the familiar cowboy on the bronco comforted her. She’d thought the symbol a horse, but had, of course, been corrected soon after getting her own Wyoming license plate.
Jesse’s lane came into view, and Annie exhaled, and then immediately laughed. She hadn’t realized until just then exactly how unsettled she’d actually been.
Maybe it was to be expected. Maybe the reality of having taken two lovers upset her psyche.
So what if it has? I’ll get used to it. She felt the smile take over her face, and knew it was a raunchy one. She would get used to having Jesse and Grant both, because no way in hell would she give them up.
At least not until the time came for everyone to move on. Which she hoped would not be anytime soon.
The front door opened before she turned off the car.
Just look at them. Who could ever imagine that those two handsome hunks could be turned on by me?
Annie experienced another ‘pinch me’ moment, just a flash of seconds when she wondered if this was all a dream.
One look into the eyes of her lovers and she left her musings and her car behind.
“’Bout time you got here, woman,” Jesse said as he rocked back on his heels. The motion drew Annie’s attention down to his feet, which were bare.
“Time’s a wasting,” Grant agreed.
“I thought everything was slower paced out in the great wide West,” Annie chided them as she walked toward the porch. “If I wanted break-neck, I’d have stayed in Queens.”
“Thank God you didn’t,” Jesse quipped.
“Yeah.” That was her feeling on the subject, too. Thank God she’d found the courage to grab a life for herself. She would never know why that ad for a general store in a small town in Wyoming had drawn her. She’d never know what had made her believe that if she just reached out, she could have a life completely different than all she had lived to that point, when all she’d ever known, really, had been a pathetic kind of hopelessness.
“Hey.”
Annie came back to the present and noticed her men looking at her with twin expressions of concern. She’d come to a standstill only a few feet from the porch steps.
“Hey,” she answered back. Her smile had slipped. Realizing that, she bolstered it.
“We’ve got pizza and wine. How about we put the first in the oven, the second in some glasses, and celebrate the end of the work week?”
She tilted her head at Grant’s suggestion. It sounded good, but usually they couldn’t wait to get her naked.
“We have all of tonight and all tomorrow. We don’t want to scare you away by giving you the impression that all we’re interested in is sex,” Jesse explained.
Not even two full weeks, and already her men could not only read her moods, but understand them. “No need to worry about scaring me away,” Annie replied truthfully.
“But still.” Grant smiled as he said that.
Annie felt herself begin to frown and deliberately relaxed her facial muscles to prevent it. She had defined her relationship with these two men as friendship before the sex entered into it. She supposed if she wanted to maintain their friendship when the sex became history, some time spent together chatting and drinking wine was in order.
“What kind of wine?” she asked as she moved to join them.
“We’ve got red, white, and Zinfandel. We didn’t know which you preferred.”
“Cowboys who drink wine,” Annie teased as she reached the top of the steps. “Who would have ever guessed?”
She stretched up to kiss Jesse, a light, playfully teasing brush of her lips with just the barest stroke of her tongue. Then, because she was an equal-opportunity sort of gal, she treated Grant to the same greeting.
“Hey, we got couth,” Jesse complained good naturedly. Opening the door to his house, he held it for her.
“Yeah, we shower once a week and everything,” Grant added.
“Well, aren’t I the lucky one?” Annie tossed back. Usually, she got to play straight man to their vaudeville comedy routine. Not too often they let her have the punch line.
“Nah, we’re the lucky ones,” Jesse said.
“And with the right amount of wine, hoping to get luckier.”
Laughing at Grant’s quip, she held up the small canvas backpack-style bag she
carried.
“I hope so, because I brought my toothbrush and a change of clothes.”
“No pajamas?” Jesse asked.
The teasing banter gave way to a ripple of arousal. Annie licked suddenly dry lips, and met first his gaze, and then Grant’s.
“Hoping I won’t need them. Hoping if I get cold in the night, the two of you will take care of it.”
“Count on it.” Grant’s voice sounded husky, and heat lit not only his eyes, but Jesse’s, as well.
Good to know she wasn’t the only one aroused. She felt her smile forming, a full smile this time, and rejoiced in the smugness of it.
“Now that we have that out of the way, let’s drink some wine.”
“Out on the back deck,” Jesse directed.
Annie set her bag down in the hallway and headed for the back deck. The nerves that had attacked her earlier had been completely vanquished, replaced by a subtler, and perhaps just as annoying, sensation.
Determined to keep things light, Annie pushed away the feeling of having just come home. Dreams of happy ever after and picket fences were for other women.
Women who could offer the ones she loved a future.
* * * *
The pizza had been reduced to crumbs. Not wanting to have to wash plates, Jesse had used paper. But since wine didn’t taste quite right in plastic, he’d used his mom’s good crystal. The sun fired the sky a soft pink-orange and the heat of the day, what there’d been of it, had passed. They’d been making small talk, just sharing each other’s company. But he had in mind to share something more, so he let the silence linger for a few minutes more before he began.
“I’ll never forget the day I found out my folks were gone.” Jesse let the memory take him. This he allowed rarely, and only with a select few. Those he didn’t know so well, those he held at arm’s length, had no idea that he still mourned, that he still thought about that day when his world changed forever. His past was a part of him, had made him the man he’d become. If he wanted to give Annie all of him—not just his body, but his heart and his soul—then he had to give her this, too. And if he wanted her to share her inner demons, then he needed to prove to her that sharing would be safe.
“Grant and I had camped out by Stillman’s Creek. It’s about a half day’s ride south of here. Camping out was something we did often back then. Just another Saturday night for us.”
“We’d talked your dad’s foreman into giving us a bottle of Jack,” Grant remembered.
When Jesse met Grant’s gaze, he knew his best friend understood his mood and his thoughts. Jesse smiled, because not every part of this memory was painful. He hadn’t allowed the tragedy of what had happened to taint the memory of what had been.
“Two young men, nothing but open skies and a bottle of booze,” Annie said softly. “That’s a story written in one form or another a thousand times every year.”
“Well, it was our first time with the liquor,” Grant allowed. “But not our last.”
“We awoke with the sun, feeling like we’d been rode hard and put away wet. We threw up most of what we’d guzzled the night before.” All these years later, Jesse could close his eyes and see that morning play out, clear as if it had just happened.
Grant picked up the tale. “We headed back to my place because Jesse’s folks weren’t expected back until later in the day. They’d gone to Cheyenne to celebrate their wedding anniversary with a weekend at a fancy hotel, and a night on the town.”
Though it had been his parents who died, Jesse knew Grant suffered from their loss, too. Grant had been as close to his folks as he was to Grant’s.
“We knew Mom would fix us something for our hangovers,” Grant continued. “Then the house came into sight with the sheriff’s car in the driveway. We set our heels to our horses and raced for home.”
“But I knew,” Jesse said. His voice quieted as it inevitably did when speaking of that morning. “Call it intuition, call it what you will, I knew the moment I saw that black and white car sitting there that something bad had happened to my folks, that they were gone. Later, when the shock wore down, I thought it was right they’d died together. Maybe that sounds strange, but I don’t think either one of them would have wanted to go on without the other. They were that much in love.”
“I’m so sorry you lost them. From what you’ve shared, you must have been a very close family.”
Annie’s words were a balm on a wound not quite as healed as he liked to believe. When she stroked his arm and then linked fingers with him, he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it.
“I’ve never lost anyone I loved like that.” Annie’s declaration fell into the silence. Other than to tell them she’d been widowed when they first met, she’d never talked about her past.
Jesse caught Grant’s gaze. He hadn’t planned it, but after the lost look he’d seen on Annie’s face so many times in the past, the opening was just too good to pass up.
“You’re a good woman with a good heart, Annie. You’re warm, and giving, and passionate as hell. But when we first laid eyes on you, the wounds you carry with you were almost visible. They’re there, they’re real, and Grant and I can both see them. Tell us about him, Annie. Tell us about you, and about what happened to put that haunted look in your eyes.”
Her admission had been involuntary. He knew that even before she closed her eyes in the wake of his request. Would either of them push her if she refused? One look at Grant and he knew the answer to that, for both of them, was no.
She opened her eyes. Embarrassment played across her face. “I don’t know how to answer that without…well, without risking your respect for me.”
“There is nothing you can say that would do that,” Jesse said.
“Not one damn thing,” Grant agreed.
“Let’s see if you say that in a few minutes.”
Jesse hated like hell to see the trace of fear in her eyes. He still held her hand. He rubbed the back of it with his thumb, squeezed her fingers, the only way he knew to let her understand that he was there for her, and not to judge her.
“I married Jim to escape my father’s house.”
“I happen to know for a fact you’re not the only woman to have ever done that,” Grant said quietly. “I can name at least three girls we went to high school with who did the same.”
“Yeah, but did they discover they ended up marrying a man just like the one they were trying to escape?”
Neither he nor Grant said anything, just let their patient silence speak for them.
“Well I did, but I didn’t know what I could do about it. My mom just took the garbage her husband spewed, and I’m ashamed to admit that for a long time, I did the exact same thing.
“When we moved to Queens, things just got worse. Jim had been a successful jewelry salesman in Albany. He thought that in New York, he’d immediately rise to the top, that in the more cash heavy market his commissions would naturally soar. Only that didn’t happen and he started to drink.”
When she stopped talking, when a single tear slid down her cheek, Jesse’s heart broke for her. On the heels of that sadness came quiet rage.
“Did he hit you, sweetheart?”
Grant’s voice held suppressed fury. Jesse never doubted Grant was every bit as much in love with their woman as he. But it was good to hear the evidence of it.
Annie’s nod was jerky, her eyes staring, unseeing he’d bet, at the ground. “Just once. Just once. He was dead a couple of days later.”
“Once is one time too many,” Jesse hoped to hell she wasn’t suffering any kind of misplaced guilt because of that bastard’s death. And then a sudden thought had his belly clutching.
“How did he die, Annie?” Jesse had to ask, because he realized he didn’t know. But if Annie had fought back after being attacked and the result had been her husband’s death, he’d move heaven and hell to help her see she should feel no guilt for that.
When her answer came, her voice sounded nearly toneless.
Her hand turned cold, and he rubbed it gently.
“During a holdup. Jim worked at one of those tony stores in downtown Manhattan. The kind that always had lots of expensive baubles. But the last time I saw him was the night he hit me.”
“Because you walked out on him?” Grant guessed.
For a long moment, Annie didn’t answer. Then she said, quietly, “No. I was in the hospital because his punch sent me down a flight of stairs in our apartment building. I’d hit my head in the fall and was unconscious for a couple of days. I was seven months pregnant.”
She looked up and the misery on her face burned a hole in his gut. “I awoke from surgery a widow, my baby dead, and my womb sterile.”
Chapter Thirteen
Annie didn’t fight it when Grant scooped her up into his arms. She hadn’t meant to let the memories pull her into the vortex. Though it happened less and less, there were still times when remembering would simply break her. She never knew when it would happen, either. She would literally be fine one moment and weeping uncontrollably the next.
She wished it hadn’t happened now. The last thing she wanted was to reveal her past to her lovers. The past belonged in the past, and her lovers were the here and now. They were today.
“God, sweetheart, I am so, so sorry.” Grant’s words, just above a whisper, brought unexpected comfort, comfort she hadn’t realized she craved. In the aftermath of her loss, there’d been no one to hold her.
Until today.
“Shame the bastard’s dead,” Jesse said. “Deprives us of the pleasure of beating the shit out of him.”
With shock, Annie realized this was the first time anyone had not only offered her sympathy but had stood staunchly at her side, on her side. Her mother hadn’t even bothered to visit her in the hospital. Finally free of an abusive husband when Annie’s father died six months before, her mother behaved even more the prisoner, rarely leaving her house.
Special Cowboy Menage Collection Page 46
