by Tijan
through the barn. Even though it had been chilly and raining earlier that day, the barn’s insides were overheated from machinery and too many bodies.
Just behind Jake, a tiny Jersey calf laid her head down. Her long, oval, doe-like eyes closed, and her gleaming rubbery nose nestled against her mother’s leg.
“What’d you say to Julia?”
She fought back a grin. He wasn’t wasting time. “I said a little about some stuff and nothing about a lot.”
“You’re not going to tell me?” Jake sighed. “Julia’s in a mood. We were supposed to go to Mae’s Grill tonight, but now she wants to go home. She wants to get the house cleaned for Kathryn tomorrow. She’s visiting from the nursing home.”
“Julia and I are fine.”
“Then how come she’s been twitching like she’s got Tourette’s?” Jake rubbed a hand over his jaw.
“Julia’s guilt has nothing to do with me.”
“What does that mean?”
“You can think on it.”
“Are you going to be at Mae’s Grill?”
“Probably. Maybe not. I haven’t planned my evening.”
“That group of yours will be there.”
Dani heard the tone. He wasn’t talking in a general sense. He was talking about someone in particular. She didn’t hold back her grin now. “If you’re talking about Jonah, then I wouldn’t know. I haven’t talked to him tonight.”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She leaned forward. “It’s really none of your business. Your job is to make Julia happy. Go. Make her happy.”
“Way she’s going, she’s just going to work herself into a frenzy.”
“Well, you’ll do what you do and you’ll calm her down. That’s your role, right?” She suddenly had no idea why she was even talking to him. There was no reason. “Did you have something to say to me? I came in here to avoid talking to people.”
He didn’t answer. He just looked at her.
She nodded, moving around him. “Go find Julia, Jake.”
The talent contest was done, and others must’ve had the same idea as her. The other barns filled up, and she grew tired of trying to push her way through another to see the poultry. She surrendered and headed for the beer gardens. It wasn’t long before someone spotted her.
“Hey!” Kate waved her arms. “Dani!”
Aiden laughed, then groaned, touching her forehead. “Ooh—I shouldn’t have had those drinks in between the acts.”
“It added entertainment. I liked it.” Bubba curled an arm around his wife.
Kate already had a beer for Dani when she got there. She nudged it across the table. “Drink up! You’re behind! I have the night off. Jake’s on call, so he can’t drink. But I sure can. And after that gig, hell yeah, I’m drinking tonight.” Her gaze trailed beyond Dani’s shoulders, and she snorted.
Jonah was at the entrance, and a toned brunette rubbed against him. Jonah remained still, leaning against the wall as he watched. Her coy smile added in the seduction, but Hawk and another friend seemed to enjoy the show more.
Aiden groaned. “Where do these girls come from?”
As if by some unspoken agreement, all heads turned in Dani’s direction. She knew they were looking at her. She could tell from the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t move. She was frozen, her own eyes glued to a person who pushed his way through the crowd. Four others followed behind, and Dani felt her world shut down.
Her arms started to tremble.
Lori grabbed her hand. “Hey.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice. “You okay?”
“Dani?” Both Aiden and Kate were watching. Their smiles faded, as did everyone else’s. Kate asked, “Dani, what is it?”
Aiden followed Dani’s gaze, but turned back with a frown. “Who is it? Is it Julia again?”
“Worse.” She bit down on her lip, and her mouth dried up. “My ex-fiancé.”
Boone had just walked into her beer gardens.
It wasn’t one of those moments when a person feels the eyes. He didn’t look up like he sensed her presence. He looked up to skim the room, and his gaze passed over her. He crossed the room, heading into the parallel corner of where she sat. The room started to swim, Dani felt like she was being pulled under the surface, but her eyes fell down the length of his arm. He was holding hands with a woman, a redhead. Dani’s lips curled up in a sneer. Boone looked so happy. An empty table opened, and his group quickly nabbed it. The redhead sat beside him and caressed his arm.
Dani needed to look elsewhere. The woman slid her hand to his waist. He sat sideways to where Dani sat. She was getting the whole view. Then the woman’s hand dipped even more south, and that was enough.
Dani shot out of her chair.
Boone. He was here.
She started for them, but rational thinking clicked back in, and she took an abrupt left. She went outside instead.
He was so happy. He was—her chest felt tight—what she wasn’t.
“Hey, wait up.”
Dani ignored Jonah, almost sprinting for her car. Just as her hand grasped the door handle, Jonah grabbed her other arm. He whirled her to him, her back now against the Mustang.
“Whoa.” He caught her face. “Whoa. Whoa.”
She tried to look away. He didn’t allow it. He forced her to look up at him, and what he saw—he cursed. “Hey.” He gentled his tone. “What happened? Tell me. What’s wrong?”
“I can’t.”
Dani tried to shove him away, but he grasped her other arm and leaned against her, trapping her.
He murmured next to her ear, “I’m really sorry to do this. This is against my character, but letting you drive out of here in this state is worse. I can’t let you do that, not until you talk to me. What happened in there? What did you see that the rest of us didn’t?”
Didn’t he know?
Dani tried to slide out the side, but Jonah trapped her again. He settled his legs on either side of her. Every inch of his body was plastered against her now.
Dani’s chest rose up in short breaths. “You know.” She tried to shove him back. He didn’t budge.
“I don’t. I was at a different table. Remember?” His breath teased her ear, and Dani couldn’t suppress the full-body shiver. “What happened back there?”
Her voice hitched on a sob. “Let me go.”
She was crumbling. She was under the water again, sinking deeper and deeper.
“You’re going to run.” He was soothing her. His thumbs began running up and down her arms. “I don’t want you to run. Tell me what happened in there.”
“I’m fine.”
“Dani.” His hands slid down, landing with hers. His fingers slid down hers and intertwined them. “Tell me what happened.”
“Really.” She pulled her hands from his, and tried to push him back again. “I’m fine.”
Even she didn’t believe herself.
Jonah cursed. He tipped his head back and met her gaze. Then his eyes slid to her lips, and Dani was hot all over. She felt the cut of his jeans, his hands as he caught her hands on his chest, his abdominal muscles. She watched him, her body responding on its own. Jonah slid one of his hands up her arm and curved against her back, moving its way underneath her shirt against her naked skin.
Dani glanced from his eyes to his lips and back.
His eyes never moved, they were steady on her lips. His other hand had started a slow pattern on her back, and Dani closed her eyes, feeling his hand brush against her shoulders and back down to circle her waist. It moved to the front and rested atop her stomach.
He leaned in.
She sucked in her breath. This… This wasn’t what she expected to happen.
Jonah touched his lips to hers. Gently, they tasted each other. A slight nip and then another. Dani tasted back and felt her arms move of their own volition. They wrapped around his shoulders. He deepened the kiss, and she felt his tongue slide inside.
Her insides were melting,
but a sudden burst of laughter drenched them like a bucket of cold water. They were both brought back to reality.
Jonah moved back. Dani let go, her hands falling back to her sides.
She raised her fingers to her lips. “Oh God.” Her voice ripped from her throat. She had forgotten about Boone.
“Not really, but close.”
“Not that.” Dani flushed. “It’s—my fiancé is in there.”
“What?”
“My ex-fiancé is in there. He just walked in with another woman.” How? Why? Who—so many questions ricocheted in her head. “I don’t know how he knows I’m here. We never talked about our histories.”
The memories were slamming back to her, all at once. Her last night in the hospital, when Boone whispered his love. “Dani.” He held her hand, cradling it like it was the most precious thing against his chest.
He asked her to marry him.
She said yes.
His friends burst in from the hallway. They all wanted to celebrate.
She murmured now, to herself, “I was too weak.”
“Dani? Too weak for what?”
She heard Jonah’s voice, but she was still in the past. “I tricked him. I lied, and then I convinced him to go out with his friends.” She felt horror sliding through her veins, chilling her. She focused on Jonah. “He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. I didn’t want to marry him. I made him go out for a beer. He didn’t want to go, but I was in the hospital. I said he needed to celebrate. He was only going to be gone for thirty minutes, enough to appease his friends.”
She left him that night.
She left a note on her bedstand.
“What is he doing here?” Her mind was buzzing. Her lips were still tingling from Jonah’s kiss.
“Do you want to go talk to him?”
“No.”
“What do you want?”
She looked at him, right at him. “I want to steal something.”
And he held her gaze. “I’m in.” He didn’t blink, not once.
Jonah had given her his confident, cock-sure smirk when she handed over the keys. She hadn’t wanted to drive, to tell the truth. She wanted to sit back, not think, and watch the stars and trees fly by. Any other moment in her life, Dani would’ve been unsettled by the contentment that sat with her as Jonah drove beside her. Any other moment, but she wasn’t thinking about that.
“What are we stealing?”
“There’s a photograph of my mother in Julia’s house. I want it.”
“A picture? Are you serious?”
“Very,” Dani said. “Julia said a bunch of her stuff was burned, but I think there’s a picture somewhere.”
“I’d hide it in the flour container if it was my place. Don’t know too many guys around these parts who bake with flour. Now, a fish fry is a whole other story.”
“You’re not a chef?”
Jonah shrugged. “Who am I to say anything? But this is Craigstown, remember? We’re not real ‘with the times,’if you know what I mean. I get flack for the river. I’m supposed to be a firefighter or a cop or…I don’t know, a lumberjack.”
“A lumberjack?”
“Manly jobs, not snorkeling for mussels. Last Thanksgiving, my grandmother sat me down and informed me it’s time I go into the family business. I should be competing with those CEOs and not be a nature-loving hippie.” He shook his head with a sad chuckle. “I love my grandmother, but she’s crazy.”
Family business? That’s right, she’d forgotten about his father. “What’s the family business?”
He signaled and turned the car onto a gravel road. “My dad has a few different companies, but his biggest one is construction. He does commercial.”
“Bannon Corp.”
She blinked rapidly a few times, startled. The name was posted on billboards, at building sites, and sponsored just about every charity event in the local area. They owned a good portion of the nearby metropolis.
“Yeah,” Jonah said dryly. “It’s not really something we advertise around here. When Mom died and we lived with our dad, I learned that we were considered the black sheep of the family. And when I went into my field, I became the family’s disappointment.”
“I can’t believe I never put two and two together.”
He shrugged again. “Bannon Corp is so big, I think people get immune to it. It’s just there, and no one’s really noticed it. Plus, I’ve never said anything. Only one girl asked me if we were related to that company.”
“Did you lie?”
“Didn’t have to. Aiden lied through her teeth for me.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable. Sibling protecting sibling.
“But all these companies that want to build on Falls River, do they know who you are? They have to run in your father’s circle.”
“Some of them know it upfront. My dad’s warned them about me or something. I’ve gotten a few job offers. Mostly from guys who are looking to get into dad’s social circle. But,” his eyes sparked, “some don’t believe it until afterwards, when I’ve ripped their proposals to shreds. One guy commented that I had the Bannon streak in me after all.”
“Your father is a billionaire.”
“My father and my grandfather and my grandfather before that. Not me. Trust me. I’m very much not a billionaire. I’m content where I am. Besides—Aiden wouldn’t ever talk to me again if I went to the dark side.”
“The dark side.” Dani had a sudden image of Aiden scolding her brother, hands on hips as she yelled at Bryant to stop picking on his sister.
“It’s kinda how we grew up thinking. Learned later that our mom was ostracized when she left our dad. We didn’t know, you know.” He glanced over. “We thought our dad was dead.”
“And here I thought it was only my family that was screwed up.”
“I think most families are messed up in some way. Wouldn’t be a family if they weren’t.” As her old house came into view, Jonah asked, “Should I cut the lights? Is anyone home?”
“I don’t think so.” Dani squinted, trying to see her house clearer. It was her house, but it wasn’t. Half the house looked new, but it was still her home. The other half still supported the building she grew up in. “Jake mentioned he was going to Mae’s Grill. The house should be empty.”
“Do you have a key?”
“I know where Julia hides the spare.”
For all of the perfection Julia and Aunt Kathryn proclaimed, they kept losing their keys. All throughout their lives. Dani could never figure out how they’d lose ‘em, but they did. Erica thought it was hilarious, and whenever (the little it happened) she fought with Julia or Aunt Kathryn, the spare key got moved.
Dani felt a grin tug at the side of her mouth. She forgot. Erica had been funny at those times.
She told Jonah to pull the car in the back and into a partial road that was hidden by a cluster of trees. If anyone arrived home, her car would still be hidden from sight. It had no way out except through the driveway, but that could be done without light.
Making sure not to slam the doors shut—just in case—neither spoke nor whispered as they approached the darkened home.
She was scanning everywhere. She wanted to see what was still familiar to her, what had been there when she was.
The broken swing still hung from the tree. The treehouse still
