Love in Deed: A Silver Fox Small Town Romance (Green Valley Library Book 6)

by Smartypants Romance

  I fell in front of Jedd, landing right on my backside. Seeing the shock in his eyes, and hearing the plea in his voice, I couldn’t get away from him fast enough. I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away. I’d done that with Howard. I’d given him everything—every piece of me—and look what I was left with.

  Nothing.

  Despite the pressure of Jedd’s lips, despite the feel of him under me, despite the desire racing in my heart, I must not give in to him.

  He’ll leave. I have wanderlust.

  And I’ll be left behind once more.

  I crossed a line when I crossed the yard, and I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again, so I simply remain in the house and ignore Jedd for the remainder of the day. But true to his MO, he seeks me out, letting himself into my house in the evening.

  “Care to explain what happened out there?” He corners me in my hallway.

  “Have you no sense of privacy, personal property, or space in general?” I scold as he pins me to the wall, crowding said space.

  “You want space?” Jedd questions, and then immediately responds. “No.”

  I blink up at him.

  “No, I’m not letting you push me away. And you aren’t running from me either.”

  “I can’t run,” I state, and his eyes narrow at me.

  “Beverly,” he warns.

  “I…I shouldn’t have done that.” I tip my head in the direction of the yard.

  His prosthetic arm rests against the wall near my head while his fingers cup my cheek and then curl into my hair.

  He’s always touching me, my head laments.

  You like his touch, my heart argues.

  His knee slips between my thighs.

  “What was wrong with what we did? We kissed. You got off on me. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Do you need to be so crass?” But he isn’t wrong, and normally, I like his naughty thoughts. But dirty thinking is what got me into the mess with Howard…and into the mess earlier today with Jedd.

  They aren’t the same men, whispers somewhere through my head, but I don’t listen. My hands come to his shoulders, ready to force him back.

  “Always ready to push me away, only you really want to pull me forward,” he teases, his deep, sleepy voice lowering as his fingers trace around and around my ear. I want to lean into his palm, but I hold still, fighting the will to inhale him. I’ve memorized his scent. I’ll hold it in my memory for years to come when he’s long gone.

  Just like Howard.

  Not like Howard.

  Howard smelled like cigarette smoke and cheap perfume and the back seat of cars.

  Jedd doesn’t smell like that.

  Fresh air. Wood shavings. Promises.

  “What did we do? I kissed you. You kissed me. Did you not like it?”

  My eyes close as his fingers pause. He’s leaning into me. The heat of his body radiates near mine. The desire to give in to him rises again.

  “You don’t need to be afraid of me.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I bite as I lie, and my eyes snap open. I’m deathly afraid of Jedd and the way he makes me feel physically—all twisted up and yearning. Yearning when I don’t feel the right to yearn.

  Seventeen years.

  “Then quit fighting me. Or better yet, let’s fight. Let’s knock down and drag this out, and wrestle until we’re so wrapped up in each other we can’t draw another breath.”

  Sweet butter on biscuits.

  “I got out of control.” My voice lowers as my thumb stretches for the button on his flannel shirt.

  “That was nothing, honey. Out of control is how I feel about you, the things I want to do to you, but there’s no rush. I want to understand, and I don’t want you running off.”

  Jedd’s eyes drift down to my fidgeting fingers, and he brushes aside my sweater, slipping it off my shoulder. My attention focuses on his face as his finger traces the line of my collarbone. His face lowers, and his nose rubs along my neck. My eyes close again, and for a moment, I forget all my reasons for denying him. My fingers spread and grip his shirt. My legs open wider over his thigh.

  “Jedd.” I intend to hiss, but his name comes out as a plea, and he wraps his hand around my neck. I know what’s next. He’ll pull me to him, kiss me again, and I’ll want it when I shouldn’t.

  “I like the feel of your skin against mine.”

  Melting margerine. My core pulses. My heart gallops.

  “Jedd, I can’t do this,” I mutter, tightening my hold on his shirt, fisting my fingers.

  “Yes, you can, honey. Nothing’s stopping you but your head,” he whispers, only the ruggedness in his voice croaks.

  I should tell him the truth, but I swallow against the thickness in my throat. The lump is like a wedge of bread, choking me with honesty.

  “Want me to marry you?”

  My breath hitches as my knuckles turn white with fistfuls of flannel. “Because of what I said earlier, that I thought I’d only ever be with my husband?”

  “Is that what you want?” His voice rings with questioning candor. “I’ll make you an honest woman. I’ll marry you, Bee.”

  I inhale him, desperate for sincerity in those words, yet knowing marriage isn’t really the reason I’m refusing him. At least, not marriage to him.

  His fingers at my nape massage and rub in soothing strokes like calming a scared cat.

  “Marry me, Beverly.” The full use of my name breaks the spell.

  “I can’t,” I choke on the refusal. My heart breaks at rejecting him.

  “Why not?” he teases, thinking this is a game, and I’m just pretending to be coy.

  “Because I’m already married,” I blurt, and everything stills. Jedd doesn’t breathe. His fingers on my neck pause. His chest heaves once and freezes. His eyes search mine in disbelief, at first questioning me as though I’m teasing him and then scowling when he sees I’m not joking. I only wish it were a joke.

  “I’m still married to Howard.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  [Jedd]

  Is she serious?

  This has to go down as the most awful rejection in the history of rejections. How is she still married? Howard has been gone for twenty years. And how did I not know this about her?

  “Wha…?” I can’t even form the complete word. What in the ever-loving fuck?

  Instead of asking myself the more pertinent question, where did that marriage proposal come from, I’m stumbling to comprehend the fact she’s still married to that asshat. Slowly, I pull back from her, releasing her hair and disentangling my leg from hers. I press my palm flat on the wall, extending my arm, still caging her in, but no longer touching her…and it hurts. It hurts to think she might still be married, still be loving him, after all this fucking time.

  “He disappeared. Left without a word.” Her fingers weakly spread and swirl like a magician. The sound of her voice is weak as she tries to jest. But my heart plummets to my stomach and my gut turns over, and I want to wrap her in my arms and kiss the pained expression right off her downturned mouth.

  But is it the pain of still wanting a missing man or the discomfort of a failed marriage?

  “You aren’t divorced.” The words choke my airway, and I swallow back the internal struggle of wanting to hitch her over my shoulder and run off to Nashville with her—fuck Howard—or just run far away from this situation.

  “He couldn’t be found. People came to the house looking for him. Debt collectors. A motorcycle man. Someone else’s husband. But Howard wasn’t in Green Valley, and I had no idea where he’d gone. I only knew he went off with some floozy from the Pink Pony.”

  The Pink Pony? The place her daughter works? That fucking bastard.

  “You never filed divorce for yourself?” I question. Why hasn’t she let him go? There are ways around his desertion. Get a fucking lawyer. Did I say that out loud?

  “A lawyer is expensive, and I didn’t know where I’d send papers. We didn’t have the fund
s. Every penny we made, we needed. I didn’t want to waste the effort on Howard.”

  My thoughts buck and jolt, ricocheting in all directions. At some point, she did take the effort to find him, though. “What about the night of the accident? You went after him then.”

  Beverly exhales, her shoulders sagging. “Vernon told me he’d seen Howard at The Watershed. I didn’t think I could face Howard without additional courage and—” I raise a hand to stop her. She’s already told me this part. She drank too much and drove.

  “Did you intend to ask him for a divorce then?”

  Beverly pauses, licking at her lips and my brows pinch, the twinge of a headache beginning.

  Did she still want him? What about now?

  “You would have taken him back,” I mutter, answering my own question.

  “I…” She swallows again, her eyes lowering for the hem of her sweater where she clenches at the fabric. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

  It doesn’t fit. The strength I know in this woman? She would have kicked his ass to the curb. My eyes roam over her thin frame. Her tongue alone could have cut him to pieces. There’s something I’m missing here.

  “Are you still in love with him?” My voice rises, the volume enough to make her flinch.

  “He was my husband,” she hisses.

  “He still is,” I remind her. My anger growing, I press off the wall, putting more space between us. I’m not mad that she’s married. I’m not even mad that she didn’t tell me. But how the fuck could she still be in love with him? “Being your husband on paper…as he’s clearly not here in presence…means nothing. If he isn’t here, hasn’t been for twenty years, why else would you hold onto him? Unless you still love him.”

  I’m flabbergasted at the thought. Why do good women love bad men? My sister loved a person who was rotten to her. Beverly has done the same thing. My mama and Hasting. Maybe this is why I’ve had so many one-night stands myself. I don’t trust women. Women are the ones who can’t be trusted as they love the wrong person unconditionally.

  “If Howard Townsen walked in that door right now and said he wanted to come back, what would you do, Beverly?” The volume of my voice doesn’t make her flinch, but I’m loud. Louder than I might have a right to be. If she loves him, I can’t change her mind, but dammit, I want her to love me.

  See, I’m all over the place with her. Marriage proposal. Wanting her love. What am I doing? Like being on the back of a horse that’s bucking and kicking, trying to shake me, I stick. I take the licks and the beating because I’m holding tight to her when she doesn’t want me.

  “I’d…” Her shoulders stiffen, but I can’t hear her answer. I can’t listen to her tell me she loves him. I raise a hand to stop her waste of words. She’d stick to him. She’d return to him. She’d allow him back with his pretty promises and his foolish actions.

  Stay away from my sister. I’d cursed him on the very porch attached to this house.

  Whatcha gonna do about it?

  I’d tell his wife about his infidelities. The ones everyone knew he had.

  My wife will never believe you. Besides, she always takes me back.

  The thought hits me hard, like my ass meeting dirt after I’ve lost the wrangle with a horse under me.

  “I came to tell you I’m heading to Nashville for a few days. I have some horses to look at, maybe pick one up.” This fight still makes adrenaline course through me, but I was done with the subject of Howard. I need to get out of here for a bit.

  Beverly stares up at me, her eyes wide and worried. What does she need to worry about? I’m just the horse man, living in her fucking barn, trying to build something on her withering land.

  Forget that I can’t stop touching her.

  Forget that I like to spend time with her.

  Forget that I’ve fallen head over backside for her.

  “I’ll be back in a few days,” I tell her although I’m not certain why I’m telling her. I have an appointment to view horses, and I was hoping to convince Beverly to come with me. I was hoping to take her away from here for a few days and get her out of this godforsaken house for a little bit, but I see there might be a reason she’s never left it.

  Say something, I want to yell. Explain why you stayed with him. Explain why you aren’t divorced yet. But I don’t scream, even though my insides eat at me. I take a second glance at her eyes, and my heart begs: Tell me you want to run away with me.

  But I don’t ask her because I already know she won’t leave. She hasn’t yet. She’s been sitting here waiting…but for what?

  Grady’s Seed and Soil is my first stop even though it’s out of the way of Nashville.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” I yell at my best friend, who blinks back at me as he bounces back in his rolling office chair.

  “Good afternoon to you, too, Jedd,” Vernon says to me. He smirks as he tilts backward, hitching his hands behind his head. “Nice to see you.”

  “Don’t you ‘good afternoon’ me. How could you not mention Beverly is still married to Howard?” Vernon tips in his seat, reaching for his desk to prevent him from falling off the chair while at the same time his feet hit the floor for stability.

  “What the fuck?”

  “My sentiments exactly,” I reiterate. I swipe a hand down my face and glare at my old friend.

  “I had no idea,” he states, trying to reassure me as he sits forward and rests his elbows on his thighs.

  “How could you not know?” I glare at him as if he holds all the answers.

  “I just assumed they were divorced. He left her.” Vernon’s eyes avoid mine, drifting to the stack of mayhem on his desk. His office is a mess, with receipts littering his desk and file folders askew in a desktop file organizer. His computer is on but flips to the sleep mode, and a tractor slowly crosses the screen with his logo.

  “Vernon, did something happen between the two of you?”

  His dark, tired eyes turn to mine, and he sighs. “Beverly and I were friends, but I didn’t know all the personal stuff about her.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking, Vernon.” I pause, narrowing my eyes at him. He hasn’t had it easy over the years, sticking with a drunk woman who’s abusive in both action and words. “Tell me Vernon’s personal stuff. Who was Beverly to you?”

  “We were just friends,” Vernon repeats, sitting upright and forcing his thick hand into his even thicker hair. He holds the cluster back as though he could manbun it, and I’ll throat punch him if he does. Manbun? Who came up with that?

  “Friends shmemes, Vernon.”

  His bushy brow hitches, wrinkling exposed his forehead as he continues to hold back his hair. “What are you, five?”

  I’m going to act fifteen and go all adolescent crazy on this man if he doesn’t share something with me.

  “We were just…two lonely adults.”

  “Did you sleep with her?” My heart falls to the floor, spilling out of me like an oil leak.

  “No, man. I’m married. I would never do that to Abi.”

  “But?” I pause, not suggesting he should have slept with Bee despite his marriage, but there’s still something missing.

  “Look, she used to come into the store with Ewell, Howard’s father. They were tight, and when Howard left Beverly after Ewell died, she came in more often. Working that farm alone with a small girl wasn’t easy. The boys liked being over there. There wasn’t any screaming at them when boys were boys, running, wrestling and making a ruckus.”

  He releases his hair and leans his body forward, returning his elbows to his knees and clasping his hands.

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  My breath catches, the air intake stopping my lungs.

  “What did you do?”

  “One little kiss, man. One innocent, I-forgot-who-I-was kiss.”

  “Then what?” I demand because there’s still something more.

  “She felt guilty, and I felt guilty. That’s all that
happened. When I’d heard Howard was back, I’d told Beverly. I never thought she’d…I didn’t ever think she’d…” Drink and drive. Vernon scrubs at his face with two hands and then forces them away like he’s shaking them dry.

  “I’m sorry, man,” I mutter.

  “Me, too. So very sorry.”

  And I know he is.

  Chapter Twenty

  [Beverly]

  Why?

  The question haunts me over the next few days.

  Why am I still married to Howard?

  The simple answer was because of the cost of divorce and the inconvenience of chasing a man who didn’t want to be chased. When I was first home after the accident, I watched a ridiculous amount of daytime television and nothing scared me more than divorce court programs. The arguments. The accusations. I shiver with the recollection, but now…I’m wondering why I’ve let all this time pass without pursuing it. I might lose this farm. I might lose my home. But cutting the final hold Howard has on me is something I can afford to give up, especially if I want wishes of a healthy, happy home like Tripper Hanes states to close each Nailed episode.

  Ironically, it was during an episode of late-night Rehab Dad that spurred the thought to pursue my rights.

  “We never know what we’ll find when we tear into an old wall. Sometimes, we have setbacks like a leaking pipe or an insect infestation. But other times, there’s a reward, like this.” The camera zoomed in on a hidden fireplace, sealed over with plaster wallboards. I could see the potential beauty in it once it was cleaned up and restored.

  Potential. Clean. Restore.

  All I want is to know I tried.

  When Naomi comes to visit on Wednesday, I startle her with my announcement.

  “I need you to drive me to an attorney’s office.”

  My sister’s eyes, so similar to mine, although more trusting than suspicious, stare at me.

  “Which attorney?” she questions after a long pause during which she watched me hunt for my jacket, check my appearance one more time in the mirror, and reach for a manila file folder containing one sheet of paper—my marriage license.