by Addison Cole
“My plan, Mom?”
Her mother put her hand on her leg. “Honey, you know I love you, but you’ve been here for a while now, and I’m just wondering what you’re thinking.”
Jade smiled. “Ah, I get it. You want me to get out. You and Daddy are used to having the house to yourselves, and now I’m in the way?” She wasn’t hurt by the thought; she was just a little surprised by it.
“No, no. It’s not that. I mean, I guess it is a little. Children are supposed to grow up and define their own lives. Granted, you had a bad experience with Kane, but you can’t let that hold you back from starting anew.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked at Jade expectantly.
“I am. I have a number of clients, and I’m trying to figure out where I want to be with all of this. I mean, do I want to stay here in Colorado, or move somewhere else altogether?” Which at the moment seems like a really good idea. Maybe then I could completely forget Rex and his captivating moods.
Her mother nodded, but Jade could tell she had something else to add.
“Mom, what is it? Did I do something? Do you want me to pay rent? What’s really bothering you?”
Jane pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, glancing at Jade and then back to her lap.
“Mom, whatever it is, just spit it out, please.” Her chest tightened just watching the anguish on her mother’s face.
“Let’s take a walk.” Jane nodded toward Earl’s office.
“Sure.” Jade followed her mother out the door, noticing determination in her gait and a quickness in her pace. The knot that had tightened in her chest twisted and pulled. She could remember the handful of times her mother had taken her out of the house for a discussion, and none of them were to relay positive news.
Once they’d cleared the yard and were deep into the property by the cattle field, her mother’s shoulders relaxed, and she slowed her pace.
“Mom, what’s wrong? You’re starting to scare me a little.”
“Honey, please don’t let your father know I said anything. Normally, I wouldn’t talk about family business, but you’re an adult, and with what’s going on, I think you need to be aware—”
Jade touched her mother’s arm to get her attention. When her mother took a breath, Jade said, “Mom, you’re rambling. I won’t tell Daddy. Is he sick? Are you sick?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Her mother looked at her then, giving a little shake of her head and letting out a sorrowful sigh. “We might have to sell the ranch.” She choked on the last word, holding back tears. Her hand covered her chest.
“Sell it? Why? I thought the business was doing well.” Sell their home? The ranch was the only home she’d ever known. She and her brother had grown up there, and her father had owned the property for forty years. The feud. She wondered if not selling the property that they owned with the Bradens had had a severe impact on their finances. The Bradens had plenty of money, but she wasn’t so sure that that was true of her family.
“Your father has worked very hard to take care of all of us. He’s a good man and he runs an honest business. It would kill him to know that I told you about this before he did.”
“Okay, I won’t say anything. You have my word.” Sell the ranch?
“He thought the business would bounce back, and it hasn’t happened. The bank has been very gracious and for three years has fronted us the money to continue, but now…” Her eyes ran over the fields, the cattle, the house.
“Mom, if the property that Dad bought with the Bradens was sold and he received half of the profit, would that enable him to keep the ranch?” She searched her mother’s eyes as she contemplated the question.
“With what land is going for now, there’s a good chance it might, but your father is a prideful man. That property is dead to him.”
But not to me.
“WHAT THE HECK are you doing?” Rex hollered at Treat, who was loading the truck with fencing materials.
“Whatever animal got through the fence in the winter has been back. There’s a twenty-foot section torn out in the lower pasture.” Treat threw another roll of wire into the truck. “Are you all right? You seem on edge.”
“Fine.” Rex was far from fine. He’d stewed all night over the way things had ended with Jade, and what made it even more difficult was that every thought he had carried with it her scent, her taste, the image of her writhing with pleasure as she moaned beneath his touch. He’d spent the night angry and aroused, and it was a deadly combination. Rage surged through his limbs, and no matter how he tried to quell the mounting confusion, it kept ending the same way—as one bursting ball of fury.
“Wanna come give me a hand?” Treat asked.
Treat didn’t shy away from the grueling physical labor, and he was able to use his honed negotiating skills to save them thousands over the course of just a few months. The man was a stealth businessman. Stealth or not, he was in Rex’s line of fire.
“Leave it. I’ll take care of it later,” Rex snapped.
“No, I’ve got it.”
Rex wanted a fight. He was aching to release his pent-up frustrations. “I said, leave it,” Rex challenged.
Treat set the last of the wire in the truck and leaned against the tailgate. “What crawled up your butt and died?”
Rex took a step forward and fisted his hands. He ground his teeth so hard he was sure they’d crack, but he didn’t care.
“Take a breather, Rex.”
Treat took a step toward the front of the truck, and Rex strong-armed him, stopping him in his tracks.
“What the…? We’re too old for this crap, Rex. You have an issue, deal with it.” Treat pushed past him and climbed into the truck.
Rex grabbed him by the collar and pulled him out.
“What’s with you?” Treat challenged him, chest to chest. “You really want to do this over a fence? Fine.” He threw down his gloves and fisted his own enormous hands. “Go ahead. Take a swing. I haven’t had a good brawl in twenty years.”
Seeing his brother ready to fight just to appease him pissed him off even more. He slammed the truck door shut and cursed a blue streak.
“That’s more like it,” Treat said with a pat on Rex’s back. “Spit it out, so it doesn’t coil up and fill you with venom.”
Treat leaned against the truck while Rex paced, sweating in the afternoon heat.
“Wanna talk about it?” Treat asked.
Rex stopped pacing and stared at his brother. “You can’t possibly understand! You have the woman you want, and she obviously adores you. You never have obstacles that stand in your way that are bigger than you. You’re the golden child.”
Treat laughed. “Is that what you think? The golden child? I sure as heck wish I felt that way. It would be a lot better than going through all the crap I’ve dealt with. There are no golden children, Rex. It just looks like it when you’re so deep in your own mess that you can’t see what’s right in front of you.”
“Come on, Treat. You’ve always done what you wanted when you wanted. Women lined up to be with you.”
“They lined up to be with all of us, and the guys lined up for Savannah. We’re good-looking, successful people. You know you’ve never hurt for the company of a woman. They swoon around your muscles like you’re Adonis himself.”
“Right,” Rex sneered. He leaned his hand on the truck and looked at Treat. “I’ve put my whole life into this ranch, for this family. Everything I’ve ever done is for this family.” He ran his hand through his hair and paced again. “Do you know why I don’t sleep with the women in our town?” Before Treat could answer, he said, “Because I don’t want to embarrass Dad. Because I don’t want him to feel like he can’t hold his head up high because his son is a douche bag who sleeps with women and never looks back; that’s why.”
“Rex—” Treat shook his head.
“It’s true, bro. I’ve got no ties to the women I sleep with. Ever.”
“And?” Treat asked.
Rex l
eveled him with a harsh stare.
“None of us do—or in my case, did—Rex. Look at Hugh. He’s got a different woman on his arm every night, and he can’t even remember their names. Dane’s got women all over the world, and Josh, well, we don’t even know how many women he sleeps with—it could be one or it could be one hundred. He’s been snapped in all the rags with some of the hottest actresses and models around. I doubt long-term commitment has ever entered his mind, considering he’s never brought any of them home.”
“Yeah? Well, even if I want ties, I can’t have them.”
Treat shook his head. “Jade. You’re talking about Jade?”
Rex clenched his jaw. He wanted to tell Treat what had gone on the night before, but he was ashamed at how far he let it go before pulling the plug—and he was pissed that he’d been the one to stop them from going any further. They’d finally gotten close, and he wanted so much more, but not like that. Not in a truck. Jade wasn’t some girl from another town. She wasn’t some girl at all. He wouldn’t have sex with her and then walk away, and he couldn’t be with her without hurting his father. The whole situation sucked.
“I should have put two and two together,” Treat said with a supportive smile. “You’re a good man, and you’re loyal. So stop giving me that I’m not worthy crap and stop dancing around the crux of your issue. Either tell me what’s going on with her—or what you want to go on—or let me get back to work.”
Rex didn’t know what he wanted. He only knew what he needed, and what he needed came in a mouthy little package and lived a few miles down the road.
Chapter Eleven
“IT’S ONLY BEEN a few days and it feels like a year.” Jade took a bite out of her pepperoni pizza. She brushed the crumbs from her cutoffs and sighed. “No, you know what it feels like, Ri? It feels like when we were in high school and we had crushes on the Daniels twins, remember? Remember how we’d fantasize about phone calls that would never come? It’s exactly the same thing.”
Jade and Riley sat outside beneath an umbrella in the middle of Weston Town Park, sharing four slices of pizza. It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon, and the park was Riley’s attempt at pulling Jade from what Riley had coined as her friend’s man depression. Jade had too many worries lately. Between Rex and her father’s decision about the ranch, she felt a bit weighed down. She pushed away the thoughts about her family’s ranch and turned her thoughts to Riley instead.
Riley looked silly with her hair pulled up into two ponytails, which Jade knew she’d done just to make her laugh—and it had worked. Now Riley shook her finger at her. “How can you even compare the two? First of all, I don’t remember either of the twins ever saying you were delicious or that they’d waited years to taste you.”
Jade groaned. “I need to stop telling you things.”
“In your dreams. You’re about as good at keeping a secret as a push-up bra. And, by the way, next time we go out to get you laid, please tell me you don’t want the guy before I leave. I feel horrible for leaving.”
“I told you to go. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just, when he touched me, I…” She shuddered and scrunched her face. “He reminded me of an overgrown boy, not a man, and then he’d turned into a whole different person altogether—mean and aggressive, and not in a good way.”
“Oh, and we do prefer men, don’t we?” Riley finished her pizza and jumped off the chair, smoothing down her skirt.
“Why don’t you ever wear the clothes you design?” Jade asked.
“Around here? Right.” Riley laughed. “Where are you working this afternoon?”
“I’ve got a client across town, then a massage for a gelding over off of State Street,” Jade answered. “More important, what should I do about my cowboy?”
“Your orally fixated cowboy?” Riley said with a wink.
“Shh,” Jade said as an elderly couple walked past. “I never said he was orally fixated.”
“No, but given the way he used that wicked mouth of his…I’d say there’s a good chance you’ve got some good loving waiting for you.”
“You’re such a pig.” She shoved Riley as they headed toward their cars. “I need to know what to do. It’s not like I can call him, or stop by.”
“Not unless you want a dead man on your hands. Your father would whip out a shotgun to save his precious little girl from a wicked Braden boy.”
“Thanks.”
Riley put her arm around Jade. “What are friends for? Okay, so let’s see, you’re volunteering at the horse show. That’s one place you’ll see him.”
“True, but we’ll both be busy.”
Riley stopped walking. “Tell me what you want to happen. I mean, you knew what was gonna go down when you let yourself start fantasizing about his ginormous trouser snake. You knew about your dad’s feelings toward the Bradens.”
Jade shrugged. “I thought…I don’t know. I guess I never thought we’d even get together, so I never really took it that far.”
They walked down the footpath toward the feed store.
“Well, Ms. Vet, time to stir up some medicine for your achy-breaky heart or convince the big lug to run off and marry you and live happily ever after in some other town.”
“You are absolutely no help at all,” Jade snapped. What was I thinking? There is no solution to this mess.
“Oh, I think I am. Whose idea was it to come to the park?”
“Yours?” Jade arched a brow.
Riley put her finger on Jade’s cheek and drew it toward the feed store. Jade’s jaw dropped open as Rex climbed from his truck. He stretched his arms above his head as soon as his boots hit the pavement. She gasped a breath and ducked behind Riley.
“Riley! How did you know he’d be here?”
“I’ve listened to you whine like a starving baby for two days straight. It was either this or buy you a pacifier.” She rolled her eyes. “Live here long enough and you know what time your neighbors go to the bathroom. He picks up something for Hope here every Thursday. Like clockwork.” Riley pulled Jade out from behind her.
“Hope?”
“Yeah, geez, where did you grow up? The horse his father bought for his mother when she first got sick. I swear they treat that horse like it’s really their mother.”
“That’s so sad.” The ache in Jade’s heart wasn’t new. She’d known about Rex’s mother dying when he was just a boy, but now, with her new feelings for him, the ache was deeper.
“I know. Now focus. Look at that fine specimen of a man.” She leaned on Jade’s shoulder and spoke into her ear. “Strong, wide back, butt made of stone, thick thighs, good for, well, you know.”
Jade swallowed hard. She knew just how thick his thighs were, not to mention the other thick parts she’d felt against her in the truck. She shook her head to clear away the heated memory. “So you brought me here to…ogle him?”
“Ogling is nice, isn’t it? But no. I figured you could go down there and actually talk to him.”
Jade shook her head and tried to back up, but Riley was standing behind her like a blockade. “No, not a good idea. The whole town knows about the feud, and it’ll get back to my father somehow. Besides, I don’t know if he’ll even talk to me in public.”
“That’s not true. You said he talked to you at the volunteer meeting.”
“Like I said, I’ve got to stop telling you things.” Butterflies swirled in her stomach as she watched Rex walk into the feed store.
“Go talk to him. I have to go back to work anyway.” Riley bent down and kissed Jade’s cheek. As she hurried away, she held her pinky and thumb out and wiggled them by her face. “Call me!”
I could retreat, pretend I was never here. I don’t have to do what Riley tells me to do, although she’s always been right in the past. She told me to leave Kane before I ever opened my practice. Jade was contemplating leaving when the feed store door swung open and Rex walked out carrying a feed bag over his shoulder and a brown bag in his arms. He held the door open for
a woman and her daughter, and when he glanced up the hill, Jade turned her back, hoping he hadn’t seen her.
When she turned back around, Rex was heading up the hill toward her. She clutched her stomach as he closed the gap between them, the bag from the store in his arms. Who gave the butterflies speed?
“Jade.” His face was a blank slate, his eyes just as silent.
“Hi,” she said, feeling her cheeks flush and privately wincing from the heat.
With his silence, Jade felt like a bubble had formed around them and nothing else existed. She wanted to reach out and touch him, anywhere, everywhere, just to know he was real. She wondered if he wanted the same thing.
The silence was deafening. Maybe she misread him. How embarrassing. She had to remember that he’d said being together was a mistake, and unless she wanted to drive a wedge the size of Nebraska between her and Rex, she’d better go along with it. Being able to talk to him was better than being forced to ignore each other forever. She reminded herself that it was only one night. One make-out session, one blissful orgasm. Oh no, stop thinking about that. Friends. I can do this. Focus on being friends. Right. Friends who aren’t allowed to really be friends at all.
JADE STOOD ON the hill in her sexy boots with the sun illuminating her from behind like an angel. Rex took it as a sign. He’d been existing on cold showers and coffee for days, wrestling with how to handle the situation with Jade. Maybe some things were meant to be, like his mother and father and Treat and Max. Maybe he was supposed to be with Jade, even if only secretly…for now.
She wasn’t smiling when he approached. A lump formed in his throat over the way he’d ended things so abruptly when they were together. She looked wicked cute in her tight scoop-neck T-shirt with THOROUGHBRED printed across her chest. His body remembered the feel of her against him. He shifted the bag to cover the evidence.
He wanted to talk to her about what happened between them, clear the air, but after saying her name, he felt a rush of adrenaline, an overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and apologize, throw caution to the wind and stand up for whatever might be. He could take the heat. He would do just about anything for her.
