No, she couldn’t claim to be entirely sure of what she was getting herself into, but determination and the longing for these men and all they could teach her gave her enough confidence to hope Jacob would believe her.
“Spell it out for me, Angel.” The new challenge in Jacob’s gaze as he turned from the sink to face her had her breath catching in her throat. “Tell me why you went looking for Mitch, why you came looking for me.”
She could do this. She could admit to him everything she already confessed to herself. She swallowed, sipped the last of her coffee, and wished desperately for something stronger, all the while holding his gaze and masking her nervousness behind a shield of conviction.
“I want you.” She shrugged and gently set down her coffee mug. “That should be simple enough. I want you, and I want Mitch. Both of you…together.”
“Fucking hell.”
Angel whirled around in her seat at the whispered oath, her gaze slamming into the electrified chocolate of Mitch Dallas’s eyes, and her heart stopped. He stood in the kitchen doorway wearing worn jeans and a Western-style shirt with the top three buttons undone. His straight black hair was longer than she remembered, the back flirting with his collar and the front falling in a curtain around his chiseled face. His expression was one she wouldn’t likely forget in the next millennium. Surprise swirled with what she could only define as a deep-set resignation and something suspiciously akin to fear. But it was the scowl dipping at the corners of his lips that proved damned near enough to send her scurrying for the hills.
“Well, now, apparently one of you isn’t at all happy to see me.” Somehow she managed to keep the hurt from her tone, to sound unfazed by his less-than-chipper greeting. “How are you, Mitch? It’s been a while.”
Not nearly long enough.
Mitch raked a hand through his hair and sighed, knowing he was bullshitting himself even as the thought crossed his mind. Facing her now, he knew it had been far too damned long since he had seen her. Oh, she appeared nightly in his dreams. Hell, her sultry image paid him a freaking visit every time he closed his eyes for more than half a second. Neither could hold a candle to seeing the woman in the flesh.
“You’re wrong.” She blinked at him. Confusion danced in her amazing eyes with a hint of humiliation that he knew his reaction to finding her here created. How could she honestly think any man would be less than happy to see her? Everything inside him kicked into the Tennessee Waltz the instant he stepped into the Shelton house and followed the sound of her satiny voice to the kitchen.
“Oh?” She lifted a brow, the move drawing his attention to the sprinkle of freckles on her forehead. More freckles added color to the milky complexion of her cheeks and painted a trail over the bridge of her nose. Her head tilted ever so slightly when he didn’t answer, causing her mane of red hair to fall like a seductive curtain over one shoulder.
Mitch swore again, this time under his breath, knowing if he attempted to speak to her now he wouldn’t be able to do anything more than stutter. Instead, he shifted his attention to Jacob.
“I got your text.” Three letters, SOS. He hadn’t thought twice about deserting the beer he just twisted the cap off of—number five in his quest to reach a six pack before heading home—and hightailing it to the Shelton ranch. He had expected to walk into a cattle problem or a fight among some of the ranch hands. The idea that he would walk into a kitchen where Angel Dalton sat at a table announcing she wanted him and Jacob never crossed his mind. “You want to fill me in on what’s going on?”
“Angel’s car broke down on Old Santee Road,” Jacob began but stopped when Mitch held up a hand.
Mitch narrowed a look at Angel. “What were you doing on Old Santee Road?”
“Driving.” When Mitch continued to stare at her, she puffed out a breath and added, “I was trying to find this place, trying to find Jacob.” She shrugged. “He found me first.”
“I can’t say for certain without getting further beneath the hood, but my best guess is she threw a rod through the engine block.” Jacob knew his way around a car as well as he did a woman. Mitch didn’t doubt his buddy’s best guess was right on target. “I sent a couple of hands to tow it back here. We’ll put it up in the garage and take a look at it come daylight.”
“And Angel…?” Did Jacob plan to put her in the garage for the night, too? It was damned sure the safest option for all of them, short of putting her up in a room at the Sunset Motel.
“She’ll be staying here at the ranch tonight.”
Mitch knew that tone, recognized the hard-edged determination in his friend’s glare. Jacob wasn’t leaving the options open for discussion. He made up his mind and, in doing so, appeared prepared to send them all straight to hell before sunrise.
Angel cleared her throat. The feminine sound cut through the tension in the kitchen like a serrated blade. “I have a small overnight case in the trunk of my car.”
Mitch looked at her, fully expecting to see her squirm or blush or show some freaking sign of the damaged, frightened innocence he remembered in her after that revelation. In a single sentence, she confessed her full intentions from the start. She came looking for the Shelton ranch, for Jacob and probably him as well, and brought extra clothes with her. Clearly she had meant to stick around, at least for the night, even if her car hadn’t broken down on the side of the road.
Her gaze on him held strong, no fear, no embarrassment. What he saw instead was carefully orchestrated bravery and the allure of a vixen ready to play.
And you, my friend, are delusional.
“I’ll fetch it for you in the morning,” Jacob told her. “For tonight, why don’t you head on up to my room and find a shirt or something to sleep in. It’s the first door at the top of the stairs on the left.” He waited a beat and added, “Mitch and I need a few minutes.”
“All right.” Angel didn’t look at Jacob as she got up from her chair and started to make her way across the kitchen toward the doorway, toward where Mitch continued to stand. Her incredible eyes remained fixed on him. Swirls of things he felt sure he must be imagining in her stare imprisoned him in a trance of promise and temptation.
He shifted, turning sideways in the doorway and leaning his back against the frame to allow her room to pass. She stopped in that space he gave her, tipping her head back to maintain the hypnotic trance she put him in, and sent his nerve endings on a pulsing race of ecstasy when she touched him. One fingernail traced the outline of his jaw so faintly he could have imagined it, too. No way could he kid himself into believing his active mind invented the rush of heat that scorched his flesh or the plea that outlined her sultry tone when she spoke as softly as she touched him.
“It really is good to see you, Mitch. I hope I don’t have to wait another fifteen months to see you next time.”
Her hand fell away, and she continued through the doorway and up the nearby set of stairs to the second floor without another word. Mitch released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, eternally grateful she left it at that. Much more and he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from catching that finger, right along with that head full of red hair, and taking from her everything he had sworn not to touch.
“She listens well,” Mitch commented when he felt fairly certain she could no longer hear him. He turned a hard gaze on Jacob. “I thought we agreed not to go there.”
Jacob crossed his feet at the ankles and folded his arms, a hint of amusement quirking the corner of his lips. “She’s not quite the timid Angel you remembered, huh?”
Mitch pushed away from the doorframe and crossed the kitchen in three long strides. “It’s an act.” He wrenched open the refrigerator with enough muscle to make the condiments rattle in the door. “Got anything to drink around this place?” The milk, orange juice, and pitcher of tea he spotted on the top shelf weren’t exactly what he had in mind. Had he known what he would be walking into by responding to Jacob’s SOS text, he likely would have taken the time to p
olish off beer number five before leaving the Double Horn Saloon.
“Bottom cabinet to your right.”
Mitch reached for the cabinet, arching a brow when a half-drank bottle of his favorite Uncle Jack all but fell into his grasp. “That’ll work.” He retrieved the bottle, twisted the cap, and took a long pull straight from the bottle. “Never knew you to be one to go for whiskey.”
Jacob had never been much of a drinker. The short binge he allowed himself shortly after meeting Angel was the most Mitch had ever seen his buddy drink.
“It softens the hard edges once in a while.”
“Then I suggest you grab a glass and pour yourself a shot, ’cause you’ve got something hard that needs softening right now, brother.” Mitch tipped the bottle toward Jacob, shook his head when Jacob declined, and took another swig.
Jacob sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think it’s an act.”
“Yeah, I got that.” Mitch braced his free hand on the closed refrigerator door and regarded his friend. “And I think you’re letting your dick do your thinking for you.”
“Figured that’s what you would say. Thing is, I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing anymore. She came here or tried to at least. A woman doesn’t come looking for a man unless she knows what she wants.”
“That woman”—Mitch pointed toward the kitchen doorway Angel had disappeared through minutes before—“doesn’t have a clue in a mountain of horse shit about what she’s getting herself into.” If that was true, why did the words leave a bitter taste in his mouth?
“When we met her, I agreed with you. Now…” Jacob stopped and shook his head.
“She’s damaged, Jake.” And what they would do to her, the things they would require of her, would only break her more. Mitch knew it in his mind even if his heart and cock refused to accept it as fact. Yet hadn’t he watched her in her attempts to repair that damage? He had kept tabs on her after walking away from her at the Applebranch Mall that fateful day. He made it a point to never do anything that might alert her to his presence, but he had followed her. By the time he finally forced himself to stop, to get the hell out of Dodge and move on with his life, he had a mental list of the places she frequented, the people she hung with, and a good sense of the direction her life was headed in. That direction never stretched a path from Applebranch to Sunset.
“She’s healing,” Jacob argued, “and doing a damned fine job at it from what I can tell.”
Mitch figured the classes she took in Tae Kwon Do contributed to a lot of that. She not only learned how to defend herself, but she had built a confidence and strength that showed in the way she carried herself and the decisions she made. Decisions like the one that lead her to become stranded on Old Santee Road tonight.
Damn it all to hell.
“We walked away from her for a reason,” Mitch reminded. “No matter how much stronger she is or how much healing she’s done, that reason hasn’t changed.”
“Maybe we were wrong about her. I’m willing to consider it. Hell, I’m willing to consider we might be wrong about ourselves.”
“I still say you’re thinking with your dick and not your head.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I am, but thinking with my head hasn’t gotten me anywhere but miserable since the day I walked away from that woman.”
Mitch sighed, knowing thinking with his head only managed to put him in the same boat as Jacob. “We screw this up and we’re wrong, we could hurt her.”
“We do this right and we’re right, we could have her,” Jacob countered.
“It’s a hell of a risk.” One Mitch couldn’t say for certain he felt willing to take. He had never been able to justify, even to himself, the feeling that came over him the moment he saw Angel Dalton. He had wanted women before her, even yearned for them badly enough to keep him awake at night. But he had never wanted to own a woman, to keep her wrapped securely in his arms even as he delivered the wickedest, mostly unspeakable passion to her that a man could give.
“It is.” Jacob nodded. “Walk if you want, man, but the only place I’m headed is up those stairs. For once, I’m figuring on spending the night with the woman in the flesh rather than another endless one of her haunting my dreams.”
“One night won’t be enough.” If only it could be. What Mitch wouldn’t give to have her tonight, walk away tomorrow, and be free of the demonic needs and reasons that kept him imprisoned these last months.
“No,” Jacob agreed, “but it’s a hell of a place to start.”
Chapter Three
Angel toyed with the idea of eavesdropping but decided better of it. Partly afraid of what she might overhear and half-anxious to use these few moments alone to explore, she topped the stairs and turned into the first open doorway on her left. Jacob’s bedroom.
She let the smile come as she paused to take in her surroundings. It didn’t surprise her to be greeted by a floor strewn with clothes, a nightstand cluttered by papers and empty glasses, and an unmade bed. Her attention faltered there. The sight of the rumpled sheets and creased pillows sent her belly fluttering with equal doses of anxiety and eagerness.
A braver woman might have slipped naked between those navy sheets and waited for company. After the bold way she had greeted Mitch, the way she had touched him, and the seductive challenge she had left lingering in the air, she didn’t think she had enough courage left to pull off that one.
“Baby steps,” she whispered as she turned, spotting the open closet on her right. “You’re doing well. You’ve come this far. You’ll go all the way. One baby step at a time.”
Her smile returned, and she giggled softly, shaking her head as she took in the empty hangers scattered among the few articles of clothing occupying Jacob’s closet. The man needed a housekeeper, someone to tidy up the place.
“Or a redheaded Angel willing to take up that job and more,” she sing-songed. She pushed aside a well-worn pair of jeans, a couple of flannel shirts, and a wool sweater as the words to Keith Urban’s “You Look Good in My Shirt” started to play in her head. The song faded a moment later, replaced by her thoughts when her fingers landed on a silk black shirt with long sleeves and rhinestone buttons.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” She pulled the shirt from the hanger, holding it up in front of her for a better inspection. “Definitely a gift.” She couldn’t imagine Jacob ever buying anything like this for himself. “But a gift from whom?” She decided she likely didn’t want to know the answer.
“That’s neither here nor there,” she told herself as she laid the shirt on the foot of the bed. She toed off her tennis shoes, at the same time catching the hem of her tank-top and pulling it up and over her head. The delicate front clasp of her bra gave her a second’s trouble when her fingers started to shake, but she managed, shrugging out of the straps and letting the lingerie fall to the floor behind her.
Naked but for a pair of satin-and-lace thong panties, she became spellbound by the sight of the bed once again. Nerves warred with arousal, causing her to quiver from the inside out. Despite the chill in the room, sweat broke out on her upper lip. Her nipples beaded to hardened points. Her belly did a dance to rival the beat of the “Boot Scootin’ Boogie.” Moisture seeped through the thin cotton covering her pussy, and her knees felt likely to give way without warning.
“Talk about confused emotions,” she said, doing her damnedest to push aside the angst and latch onto the thrill. She pushed her panties to the floor, stepped out of them, and grabbed the shirt she had selected. She only got two buttons fastened before the door to the bedroom eased open.
Angel tensed, biting her bottom lip as she turned to face Jacob. She watched as his gaze slid down her body and saw when a predatory hunger overtook the gentleness she had come to expect from him.
“You made a good choice.” His voice, gruff from his own obvious arousal, washed over her, sending ripples of need coursing through her. “Black looks good on you.”
Angel tried to s
wallow but discovered she couldn’t because her mouth had gone instantly dry the second the door opened. “It does?”
“Yeah, it does.” Three slow strides brought Jacob standing within arm’s reach of her. She tipped her head back, following the course of the hand he lifted, and leaned into his touch when he tucked her hair behind her ear. “It accents your red hair and milky complexion.”
She tried to picture him in black but couldn’t. Color suited him better, she decided. Even darker colors like the navy he had chosen for his bedroom seemed to accent his comforting, friendly demeanor. In her mind, black spelled danger, darkness, a blanket of exotic thrill like the one she swore she felt falling over the atmosphere of the room now. She didn’t need to look to know where the sensation came from. Mitch exuded the bad-boy vibe from every pore.
“It’s not the kind of shirt I expected to find in your closet,” she admitted.
Laughter glinted in his gaze. “My older brother, Clint, bought it as a gag gift a few years back.” When she narrowed her eyes, showing her puzzlement at how a silk shirt could be deemed a funny gift, he shook his head. “Long story.”
“You like it, though, don’t you?”
The harder inflection in Mitch’s voice brought goose pimples to the surface of her skin even as her pulse raced with a renewed excitement. He moved into view and walked past where she and Jacob stood. She felt him kneel behind her, but she didn’t turn around. Expectation zinged through her system, ricocheting like wildfire from her breasts to her belly to her pussy.
“You like the feel of silk against your naked skin.” Mitch didn’t ask. He told her, and he was right. Not that she needed to tell him that. She could hear the knowledge and even thought she caught an underlying approval in his tone. “Your panties are silk, too. And wet. Damn baby, did Jacob make you cream for him before I got here?”
Ramagos, Tonya - Running from Angel [Sunset Cowboys 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 3
