Naked Love

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  Maybe he’d seen her struggling and this was a friendly call. So far she’d been lucky. With the exception of the Thursday morning brunch club refusing to sit in her section, she hadn’t felt unwelcome. The community around her mom had given her a warm welcome, but given Ken’s frown, she thought her luck might be about to change.

  “Ms. Moore,” he began and then sighed. “Hey, Abby. Damn, you look good. Have you aged a day since high school?”

  She’d so aged. His voice had softened, but she noted he wasn’t moving any closer to her. No welcome-home hugs. “You look good, too, Ken. What are you doing out this way?”

  His face flushed, another sure sign this wasn’t going to go well. He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, she got his hard lawman voice. “How long do you think you’ll be staying here, Abby?”

  “As long my momma needs me.” She wasn’t seventeen years old and desperate. She couldn’t be bought off for a thousand bucks and the promise of being left alone.

  “Do you have any idea how long that will be?” He stepped toward her.

  She held her ground. “She had surgery. I’m going to be here probably six weeks. Maybe eight.”

  “That’s a long time,” he said with a frown. “Shouldn’t she have a nurse? Why hasn’t her insurance brought in a professional?”

  How little they knew about her. “I assure you there’s no one they could bring in who could do the job better than me. I’m a registered nurse with fifteen years of service under my belt. My degrees have degrees, Ken. Do you know how I managed that? I managed to get my degree while raising a child alone and working thirty hours a week to support us. So you tell your boss Ruby Echols that the girl she shipped away is not the woman who came back.”

  His jaw tightened and she knew she’d rubbed him the wrong way. She talked to doctors like that all the time and they rolled their eyes and usually did what she told them to because those men were perfectly confident in themselves. That was what she’d learned. It took confidence to be able to listen to other people. Ken looked hard and mean as he stepped into her space.

  “My boss is the sheriff of this county and you better not forget that, little girl,” he began.

  She heard the sound of another car coming down the road, but she knew she couldn’t count on anyone to save her. Not from the law. She kept her eyes on the deputy. “Like I said, I’ll be here until my mother is on her feet again.”

  He loomed over her. “And like I said, your momma needs a professional, someone who isn’t related to her.”

  “You mean someone who doesn’t make Ruby Echols mad.”

  He stopped, his eyes looking down at her. “You know it strikes me that we could work something out, Abby. That old lady doesn’t have to know you’re still here. Not if you promise to stay in this trailer. Hell, I wouldn’t even leave you alone. I’d come and visit you.”

  She could bet he would. She fought back tears. Damn but would this ever stop? She wasn’t safe here.

  He stared down at her. “What do you say, Abby? You want to stay here, you gotta pay the price.”

  “Is there a problem, Deputy?” A hard voice broke through her fear.

  Abby looked over and Jack Barnes was standing in her momma’s tiny, well-kept yard. He was big and solid and she kind of wanted to run over and throw herself into his arms.

  She didn’t, but she wasn’t sure if she’d ever been more grateful to see a man than she was to see Jack.

  Ken glanced over at Jack and took a step back. “Now, Mr. Barnes, I was discussing a situation with Abby here. Get back into your truck and move along.”

  “Is that what he’s doing, Abigail?” Jack asked. “Is he having a normal discussion with you? A consensual discussion?”

  She had two choices. She could keep the peace or she could throw herself behind that big, broad body and let him protect her. Would she be getting him in trouble? Would she be making Jack Barnes’s life worse for stopping to help her out?

  “Abigail…” His deep voice broke through the questions running through her mind. “I want to know what’s happening. Do you understand me? I don’t want some bullshit because you think we should avoid conflict.”

  Ken turned toward him. “Mr. Barnes, there’s zero reason for you to be here.”

  “Except that I want to know what’s happening with Abigail,” he replied, his voice steady.

  There was a moment when she wasn’t sure what was going to happen, when she worried she was about to get Jack Barnes into serious trouble. And then Ken stepped back, his shoulders coming down and his whole demeanor changing in a second.

  “Nothing at all, Mr. Barnes,” Ken said. “Just checking in on an old friend. Abby, good to see you. Think about what I said.”

  She stared at him, not giving him a single word. He didn’t deserve one. She stood there with her stupid hammer in her hand and wondered why the hell she’d thought this could work.

  Jack moved in, taking Ken’s spot, though he turned his back to her, watching Ken as he got into his car. He was a big bulwark between her and the cop. He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched the deputy drive away.

  Abby took a deep breath.

  Jack turned to her. “You all right?”

  She nodded.

  “But he wasn’t being pleasant, was he?”

  She felt tears pierce her eyes. Shame, that old nasty friend, flushed through her. She managed to shake her head.

  Jack Barnes stepped in, crowding her, but not the way Ken had. Somehow she knew she could back away and he would let her go. He wasn’t trying to take something from her. He was trying to give, to give her comfort, to let her know she wasn’t alone. His hands came up and he used his thumbs to brush away her tears.

  “You call me if he comes around again. You get in the house and lock the door and call me, you understand?” Jack’s voice was low, deep and solid.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  His jaw tightened and for a second she could swear she saw a flash of something hot in those green eyes of his. “Damn it, Abigail. You’re killing me.”

  He turned away and looked down at the porch.

  “I was trying to fix it but I couldn’t get the board off.” It was way easier to talk about the stupid steps than it was what had almost happened.

  He held out a hand. “Let me deal with it.”

  She passed him the hammer because she was done trying for the day. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “I wouldn’t turn down some iced tea. Give me ten minutes and I can have this fixed.” He got down to one knee and allowed her to step up and into the trailer.

  She practically ran to the fridge. Her mom was still asleep, and that was a good thing. Sleep was healing, and it also meant she hadn’t witnessed that terrible scene with the deputy.

  She stopped at the sink. What the hell would have happened if Jack Barnes hadn’t gotten out of his truck and intervened? Would she have been forced to use that damn hammer on the deputy?

  She took a deep breath. It had been a very long time since she’d been that intimidated, worried that something very ugly was about to happen to her.

  One breath and then another and another, and then she turned and got some ice and poured his tea. All the while she could hear Jack hammering. How was that such a soothing sound?

  He was an overwhelmingly large man. He could do anything he wanted to her. It was only her and her momma here, and no one would hear her yelling at this time of day. Yet she felt not an ounce of hesitation as she poured a second glass and walked back out.

  He was putting the last of the nails in. “This place is falling apart.”

  “You’re telling me.” She handed him the glass and sank down on the steps.

  They were barely wide enough that he could sit beside her.

  She tried not to think about how nice it felt to have his hips brush hers.

  “I don’t think I like that deputy,” he said, his eyes staring ahead.

  “Well, there
’s something we have in common,” she replied.

  He drank down his tea and then stood, passing her the glass again. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card, handing that to her, too. “Thank you, Abigail. And you remember what I said. You find yourself in this position again and you call me. My cell phone is the second number. I don’t care what time it is. Day or night, you call me. You tell them you’re calling me. You understand? You tell them Jack Barnes is going to want to have a long talk with any man who tries to hurt you.”

  She nodded slowly, looking down so he wouldn’t see how affected she was by his words.

  His hand came out, gently lifting up her chin, and he shook his head.

  He sighed and stepped back. “Like I said, you’re going to kill me, Abigail. I’ll have someone out tomorrow to look at that lock on the door.”

  She started to argue, but his eyes went dark. “Yes, Jack. Thank you.”

  He turned and got in his truck and drove off.

  And she watched the truck until he turned on to the highway, wishing all the while he would have stayed.

  4

  “Right through there,” Christa said, waving a hand toward her garage.

  Sam stood in the kitchen while a cheer went up in the living room, letting him know the Longhorns had scored. Christa and Mike’s house was full of football fans, and apparently low on indoor fridge space since the hostess was sending him out to the garage.

  “I just want a beer. Should I be worried that I’m about to be viciously murdered?” He couldn’t tell if Christa was trying to get him to move some stuff around her garage or maybe introduce him to a serial killer who lived in there.

  The way he’d been going hard after Abby, it really might be the latter.

  Two weeks had passed since the day he’d met Abby and he was fairly certain he was crazy about that woman. She was the one, but he couldn’t get Jack to understand that sometimes a woman required proof that two men were better than one.

  Jack was maintaining his distance. He was insistent that Abby would be utterly horrified if she realized what they wanted. So he’d allowed Sam to hang out with her alone.

  “Yes, through there, and no you will not be murdered, though you might think about murdering me for wasting so much of your time,” Christa said, biting her bottom lip. “You have to understand. She’s my best friend. I had to make sure she was ready. When I opened that box…well, she’s ready. At least in a fictional sense. Check the box marked books.”

  Now he was interested. He moved into the garage and found the box Christa was talking about. It was obvious this was one of the boxes Abby had been into. The tape had been removed, making it easy to pull it open and get to the goodness on the inside.

  What the hell?

  He stared at the box of books, and everything inside him stilled.

  Not everything. His cock suddenly wasn’t still. That sucker grew to what felt like an impossible length, but once it had reached its limitation, even that stilled in shocked awe at the bounty sitting before him. Sam knew that if his dick had a face, it would probably have the same shocked expression on it as the one attached to his head.

  Books. Lots and lots of dirty books. That was not what he’d expected to find. Well, except for the fact that the box had been marked books. But he’d thought she would have like Oprah books.

  He was fairly certain Her Twin Doms by one Ms. Cherry Sparks didn’t have the Oprah seal of approval. Nor did Their Virgin Fuck Buddy by one Dakota Cheyenne.

  There were numerous books by a woman named Amber Rose that also seemed a bit on the salacious side.

  Were they all written by strippers, because he knew a couple of strippers who had those names.

  After a moment of looking at the books on the top, he managed to find the strength to see what was beneath.

  It just got worse—or in his opinion, better.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed quietly, since he didn’t particularly want anyone to know he was out in the garage pawing through Abby Moore’s belongings. He was supposed to be out here grabbing a couple of beers from the fridge. That’s what Jack thought he was doing.

  But damn, he’d wasted weeks of his time.

  If it had all been lust, he would likely have shown up on her doorstep and seduced the lady, but he felt something for her. If this was more than mere lust, then he had to think about Jack. He might be able to screw a woman on his own, but if it became serious with Abby, he would never be able to do that without Jack. He’d made the decision to keep his hands off Abigail Moore until he could bring Jack into the picture.

  Thus had begun the roughest two weeks of Sam Fleetwood’s life, and considering his childhood, that was saying something. He was caught between a rock and a really, really hard place. He managed to arrange several meetings between the two. They’d all had dinner at Christa’s Café on Wednesday night after Abby’s shift ended. It had been a simple thing to invite her over, and once Jack had realized she was hungry and likely eating all by herself, he’d been the one to invite her to stay. Sam had been able to wrangle an invitation to the Wades’ traditional Saturday football watching, and he’d complained until Jack went with him.

  Abby Moore was worth fighting Jack’s antisocial tendencies over.

  Sam hadn’t figured he’d be fighting so hard. Every single time he managed to manipulate Jack into spending time with her, Jack obviously enjoyed it, and then pulled away the minute she got in her car and drove off. Jack had admitted that she was beautiful and loving and sweet, but he’d been burned too many times before. Despite his best arguments, Jack wasn’t even willing to approach her about the possibility of dating them because he assumed she would be shocked and appalled at the thought of a relationship with two men. Sam knew the argument. He’d heard it himself many times. It was all right for a night or two, but most women weren’t willing to risk community outrage by dating both of them. Jack had been sure Abby wouldn’t even consider a covert sexual relationship with them.

  Jack had turned into Eeyore on the subject.

  Sam grinned as he looked down at the box of books. Jack was going to have to rethink everything once he saw what Abby considered great literature. Sam shook his head at the ridiculous covers on the books. These were women’s books? Everyone was naked.

  What had she done? Had she typed ménage into the search engine at Amazon and bought everything that came up?

  He couldn’t help himself. He read the back cover of one and then another and another. Most were about one woman and two men. It was perfectly reasonable in his mind. Despite the salacious covers, they seemed to be about love, and one woman and two men constituted a romance in his world.

  Then he got to the really wild stuff.

  “What the hell is she thinking?” This particular one seemed to be about a woman servicing five men. Five? Where did one woman put five cocks? A strange sense of outrage flashed through his system. He was a reasonably tolerant man. Hell, he had shared women with his best friend since they were seventeen and the woman across the street introduced them to sex, but now he felt like a prude. The thought of Abby playing around with five damn men annoyed the hell out of him. He could feel his face setting in a stubborn line as he repacked the box. His honey was going to have to be satisfied with the two cocks she was going to get. He wasn’t getting into anything wild, like sharing his wife with some stranger. It was him and Jack, and that would have to be enough for his dirty little Abby.

  Sweet little Abby. Hopefully curious Abby, because he would bet a lot that these books were as far as Abby had gone into ménage world.

  He smiled as he got the beers he’d been sent out here for. A light joy overtook him as he realized Abby wasn’t going to be shocked by what they wanted from her. Hell, it was her fantasy. If he was wrong and she’d been in a relationship like it before, then she would know what was coming. He wasn’t sure why it hadn’t worked out before, but he knew one thing for sure. He and Jack wouldn’t screw this up. He popped the cap
off his beer, took a long, satisfying swig, and headed back in to start the seduction of a lifetime.

  * * *

  Jack tried his hardest to concentrate on the big screen. He shifted on the sofa, aware that his eyes kept moving to the woman curled up on the recliner across the living room. He was sitting in the Wade house surrounded by their friends. When he and Sam had shown up, they’d been introduced to the five or six other guests the Wades had invited, but Jack couldn’t remember their names to save his damn life. All he could think about was Abigail Moore.

  Everywhere he turned these days, the gorgeous redhead seemed to be there, looking at him with her big, wounded, love-me, protect-me eyes. Lately, when he tried to go to sleep, those eyes haunted him.

  The truth was, it was getting harder and harder to resist her, though he wasn’t about to tell Sam that.

  He sure as hell wasn’t about to tell Sam that he’d talked to Barry Houseman, who lived in the trailer across the street from Abigail’s mother. Barry lived there with his wife and three kids and every one of them now had Jack’s number in case they saw anything that seemed wrong happening across the street.

  “Find what you needed?” Christa asked Sam as he walked back into the living room.

  Jack and the rest of the group sat watching the Longhorns play. There were chairs and barstools huddled around the big screen. Jack and Sam had staked out the couch early. Mike and Christa cuddled on a love seat. There was a secretive smile on Christa Wade’s face. Jack took in the sight of his best friend. Sam practically skipped back in the room, and that set off a warning bell. Sam had been in a shit mood for weeks over Abigail. Now he looked like a kid given the toy he’d wanted for Christmas. He really hoped Abigail hadn’t done something to give Sam hope. The last thing he needed was Sam with a broken heart. He’d wander around the ranch like a kicked puppy for months.

  “I found everything I could ask for, Chris.” Sam’s grin told Jack he was in trouble. “I really appreciate the heads-up.”