by Maisey Yates
“So,” Kate said. He had known his reprieve wouldn’t last. “What exactly would this flirting boot camp entail?”
Okay, so she hadn’t forgotten. Which meant he was committed. No turning back now. Anyway, there was no reason not to go through with it. Kate was just Kate. End of story. “I figure since we’re working together on the rodeo, we might as well work on this, too.”
“Why?”
The question of the year. “I don’t want to babysit you the whole time we’re organizing this. And when you go pro, Kate Garrett, there are going to be cowboys all over you.”
“And what? You think I’m so stupid I’m gonna get tricked into bed? Like I don’t know my own mind? Or are you trying to help me get some?”
The tension crept higher, climbing up into his neck. “That isn’t what I said.”
With any luck, him taking control of the situation would keep her from getting taken advantage of. Not that it would be wrong for Kate to get laid.
Even thinking about it threw up a big fat stop sign in his brain, warning his thoughts not to go any further.
Okay, so it wasn’t as if he expected she never would. Or even that she hadn’t. Because, as she had pointed out a few times, she was twenty-three. And you didn’t exactly have to be smooth to get a guy into bed.
But she deserved better than an ass clown like Chad.
“Okay, what you do with my teaching is up to you,” he said. “But forewarned is forearmed. If you want to get better at talking to guys, I’ll help you. And what will help me is if I know that you’ll be more prepared to deal with jerks should any approach you. And that you understand you don’t have to do anything with them just because they asked.”
“Good grief, Jack. I know that,” she muttered.
“Just don’t ever sell yourself short.”
“Why not? Men do it all the time. I don’t understand what all this protecting me from shallow creeps who are only after one thing is about. You are that creep. I mean, obviously, with other women, not with me.”
He nearly choked on his tongue. “That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
There was no way for him to say how it was different without sounding like a total jackass. So he kept quiet.
But Kate wasn’t content with that. Of course she wasn’t. “Come on, Jack. I’m waiting for an explanation.”
He let out an exasperated breath. “It’s just that there are different kinds of women. There are the kind that you marry. And there are the kind that you...”
A hard crack of laughter filled the cab of the truck. “Are you kidding me? Are you trying to tell me that you marry good girls and sleep with bad girls? And that if I keep pushing my breasts out, the boys will think I’m a bad girl and corrupt me?”
“It’s not good and bad.” He had no clue how to dig his way out of this. Sure, it sounded wrong when he said it like that. Maybe it was even bad to think it. But the bottom line was there were women who were fair game in his mind, and then there was Kate. And she was an entirely different category.
“All right, then. What kind of girl am I?”
Jack tightened his hold on the steering wheel. “The type that could get taken advantage of by assholes.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
“That isn’t what I said. Stupid and inexperienced are two different things.”
“You think I’m wholesome.”
Yes. It suited him just fine to think that Kate Garrett was as wholesome as whole grains. “Comparatively.”
“Compared to what? The women you sleep with?”
Heat lashed Jack’s face. “You’re determined to take this the wrong way.”
“Enlighten me. What is the right way to take this? You’re sitting here telling me there’s a certain type of woman it’s acceptable to mess around with and a kind that isn’t acceptable to mess around with, and you’re putting me in the category that isn’t allowed to mess around.”
“It’s not just women,” he said.
“Okay, then. What kind of guy are you, Jack Monaghan? Are you the kind of guy a girl marries? Or are you the kind we’re supposed to want to bang?”
Hearing the provocative words on Kate’s lips made his stomach wrench up tight. “Kate...”
“Go on. Tell me. It’s hardly fair, since you have such a comprehensive assessment of me. I deserve one of you. So tell me, Jack,” she said as he turned the truck into the narrow drive that would take them to the Garrett ranch and on to Kate’s house, “are you the sort of guy that a girl should dream of getting in a tux? Or are you the kind of guy that a girl should think about getting naked with?”
He slammed on the brakes, without thinking, without meaning to. But he could not drive while she talked like that. “Dammit, Katie.”
“For such an experienced man, you’re acting very prudish.”
“You want to know what kind of guy I am, Kate?” He shouldn’t challenge her, and he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. Because she was pushing. And when Kate pushed, he had to push back. Now and always. “Let me lay it out for you. I’m not the guy you marry. I’m the guy you stay up all night with. I’m the guy who doesn’t call the next day. I’m the guy your mama would’ve warned you about if she had stayed around.”
The last words barely made it out of his mouth before Kate grabbed ahold of his shirt and tugged him toward her. “Now you’re being a jerk on purpose,” she said, dark eyes glittering in the dim light, clashing fiercely with his.
“You wanted to know what kind of guy I was. I think that should answer your question.” He felt like a tool. He’d lost sight of what the end goal was in this weird game they were playing. All he knew was that she was pushing, and he was pushing back. All he knew was that his blood was burning, and his heart was pounding faster than it should have been.
“You did. You’re an ass. Question answered.”
She raised her hand as if she was going to hit him, and he caught her wrist, holding her steady, their eyes still locked. She was breathing faster than he was, and suddenly, the anger riding over the heat burning in his blood fizzled out. The heat remained, his heart still thundering hard, steady. And he was still holding on to Kate’s wrist.
The feeling that had surrounded them back at the bar had returned. Deeper. Stronger. And there was no pretending he didn’t know what it was. He could feel her pulse fluttering beneath his thumb, faster and faster the longer he held her.
Fuck.
He released his hold on her and put both his hands back on the steering wheel. “I am. I’m an ass. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said that.”
“Why did you?” she asked, her voice small now.
“I don’t know,” he said, lying through his teeth with the truck still idling in the middle of the driveway.
“It was offensive. Not just what you said about my mother.”
“I know. I didn’t start out meaning to be offensive. Saying it out loud, I realize it’s stupid. But definitely in my mind I think of the kind of women that I would pick up in a bar and the kind I wouldn’t. Or more specifically, the kind who wouldn’t go with me. Of course, saying it out loud forces you to listen to how stupid it is.”
“It is stupid.”
“I know.”
“So,” she said, folding her hands in her lap now like a good student. “You’re going to teach me to flirt.”
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want her flirting with the guys who were part of her group. He didn’t want her flirting with the cowboys who would come in with the rodeo.
And considering what had just happened a few seconds ago, that meant it was exactly what he needed to help her learn to do.
As long as he focused on protecting her, as long as he focused on the right angle, the weirdness between them would evaporate.
It had to. It was an aberration, something he would have liked to blame on alcohol. But he couldn’t, since all he’d had was a Coke.
He could blame it on the full moon or on the way she had grabbed his chin. All things that had passed and would pass.
And since they were going to be working on the rodeo together, he really needed to get a grip.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He eased his foot slowly off the brake, and the truck started rolling forward.
“But chastely.”
“I will give you certain tools. What you do with them is up to you. And does not need to be shared. And none of this should be shared with Connor or Eli.”
Ultimately, he had Kate’s best interest at heart, he really did. But since he wasn’t related to her, he was being slightly more realistic than they would be. They would probably lock her in her room and not care about the fact that she was twenty-three.
“Okay. It will be our secret.”
He turned his truck onto the little road that led to her cabin. And he tried not to dwell on the way the word secret sounded on her lips. Illicit and a little bit naughty. Nothing he and Kate talked about should sound naughty or illicit.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
He breathed a prayer of thanks when he rolled up to Kate’s house. He needed to get home and get his head on straight. Tonight felt like some kind of weird detour out of his normal life. Suddenly, he’d become aware of some different things about Kate. Some things that he would rather have never been aware of.
And with that had come a thick, heavy tension that just wouldn’t clear up.
A new day would fix that. The sun rising over the mountains, bathing everything in golden light, chasing away the shadows that rested on Kate’s face now. The shadows that accentuated her high cheekbones and the fullness of her lips. The darkness that blanketed the whole situation and made it seem fuzzy. Made her seem not quite like Kate. Made him feel not quite like a man who had known her since she was a whiny two-year-old.
He put the truck in Park but left the engine running. “Good night, Kate,” he said, opting to use the name she preferred. All things considered, it seemed safer.
“Do you want to come in?”
His pulse sped up. “Why would I want to do that?”
“For some tea? For a flirting lesson?”
“Let’s hold off on that,” he said, his throat constricting. Right now he needed to get away from her.
“Okay. Thank you for coming tonight.” She took a deep breath. “And thank you for punching Chad in the face. He’s a doofus.”
Jack laughed. And for a moment things felt as though they might be back to normal. The kind of normal they had before the past year or two, when everything he’d said and done had been wrong in Kate’s eyes. “He really is. I hate that guy.”
“I guarantee that he now hates you,” Kate said, opening the passenger-side door and sliding out of the truck. “See you later?”
“You know you will. Probably a whole lot sooner then you’d like.”
She didn’t say anything to that. She simply smiled and slammed the door. He watched her walk all the way into the house. Because he had to make sure she was safe, after all. Not for any other reason.
Once she was inside, he put the truck in Reverse and backed out of the driveway. The air quality in the vehicle had changed since Kate had left. He could breathe easier.
He wasn’t going to overthink it. It would be a nonissue by tomorrow.
The sun would rise, he would be able to put Kate back in the proper place in his mind, and life would go on as it always had.
* * *
PERFECT. JUST PERFECT. Now that she’d made the critical mistake of admitting it to herself, it was as if a veil had been torn from her eyes and she could no longer feign ignorance of any kind. She was attracted to Jack.
Heart-pounding, bone-tingling, heavy-breathing, thinking-about-him-in-the-shower kind of attraction. How she’d spent so long pretending it was anything else was a mystery.
Self-preservation. That was clearly the answer. That and deep denial that ran all the way to her bones. Because nothing was ever going to happen with Jack. Never, ever, ever.
On a personal level, she liked Jack okay except when he was being a pain in the ass. Which was always. So often she liked him only minimally.
Apparently, though, liking him or not had nothing to do with sex feelings.
She let out a heavy sigh and dropped her bag on the floor. She had sex feelings for Jack. And it was undeniable. When she imagined getting in Chad’s truck and doing all that dirty stuff to him, it made her feel vaguely unsettled and more than a little disgusted.
She allowed herself, just for a moment, to imagine she was back in the truck with Jack, the light low, his blue eyes fixed on her. And she imagined him putting his hand on her cheek. His fingers would be rough, calloused from all the hard work that he did. No matter how much Jack tried to pretend he didn’t take things seriously, she knew it wasn’t the truth. He was a hard worker, and everything he had was a result of that hard work.
She was sure his touch, his skin, would reflect that. Then she imagined him leaning in, those eyes that were usually all filled with mischief turning serious as his focus narrowed onto her face.
And then she imagined him whispering all those filthy things to her. Except he didn’t say the words quite the way Chad had. Not in her fantasy. Of course, what he did say was all very vague and murky because Kate wasn’t exactly up on dirty talk.
But she knew Jack would be way smoother than Chad. His voice would go all deep, the way that it did when he talked about something serious, which was so rare it was like finding gold. And it would get a little bit rough, the way it did when he called her Katie.
When she thought of touching Jack, of taking her clothes off for Jack, she didn’t feel disgusted. She felt shaky and afraid, and given that this was only a fantasy, she could only imagine how terrified she would be if she found herself in this moment in reality. But she didn’t want to run away. She wanted to lean in.
Shit, shit, shit. Undeniable sex feelings.
She turned to her couch, bracing her knees against the arm and falling forward over the side. Then she buried her face in one of the throw pillows and let out a long, drawn-out moan. What the hell was she supposed to do with this? Attraction to Jack, of all people.
It was the worst thing ever.
In his eyes she was nothing more than a kid. A kid he had to protect from herself. As though her flirting was tantamount to running with scissors. And he was going to teach her how to do it right. Just more reinforcement of the fact that he did not see her as an adult woman. And even if he did, there was no point in going there. He was the baddest bet around and everyone knew it.
He was an unapologetic manwhore who did whatever he wanted with whoever he wanted and never, ever made a commitment.
She tried not to find that assessment of him exciting. She should have found it disgusting. She should have found him disgusting. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. She never had.
From the time she was a little girl, running wild through the fields until she couldn’t breathe, until the wind tangled her hair into knots, Jack Monaghan had amassed a whole mountain’s worth of admiration in her soul. When the world had been bleak, he’d made her smile. Simple as that.
She wasn’t a child now. She was a twenty-three-year-old virgin who had never even been kissed, who still ran like lightning through the grass and let her hair get tangled into a mess. And no matter how hard she tried to fight it, he still held his claim on that turf in her soul. The way Jack walked around doing what he wanted was more than a little appealing to someone who felt sheltered beyond reason.
Plus, the man was so hot it was entirely possible that women’s clothes incinerated on contac
t. And if that happened, what was a guy to do but say yes?
She clicked her teeth together, annoyance at her own self coursing through her veins. She was making excuses for him. And for her.
So, two things she knew. She wanted him. And she shouldn’t.
The rest she would have to figure out later.
CHAPTER SIX
THE ONLY PROBLEM with the weekday at the Farm and Garden was that it provided far too much time for thinking. Kate didn’t want to think. Not right now. At the moment her thoughts were lecherous and traitorous and she didn’t really want to deal with either thing.
But there had been very few customers today and she’d spent the past forty-five minutes dragging a giant hose around and watering the plants in the back. Which meant thinking.
About last night. About her misguided flirting attempt with Chad. About what a jerk he’d been. About the way Jack had looked when he’d strode up looking like an outlaw ready to start a gunfight. And then he’d punched Chad. She had no idea how something like that could be...sexy. Yes, it had been sexy.
Oh yeah, there was also the fact that she was acknowledging that Jack was sexy now.
Thankfully, there were still no customers or they would all have been looking at her blushing right now.
Then there was the flirting thing. He had offered to teach her how to flirt. With other men.
She’d spent the entire night in her bed tossing and turning, trying to figure out what to do with that offer. It was a weird, patronizing offer. One she would normally have been tempted to tell him to shove up his ass. But given her recent revelation, she was looking at it a little bit differently.
She was attracted to Jack. He had punched a guy for her, and it had been sexy. He wanted to teach her to flirt.
Doing the Jack math on that equation was leading her to some interesting places.
If he was giving flirting lessons, they would potentially find themselves in some interesting situations.
Situations that might give her an opportunity to try to seduce him.
She dropped the hose into the planter that was right in front of her, covering her face with both her hands. Seducing Jack. She’d never even thought of seducing a man before. Much less this man. The idea filled her with a strange kind of tingly horror and an excitement that mixed together so well she couldn’t sort out which one was which.
