by Jordan Marie
Knocking Boots
Jordan Marie
Copyright © 2019 by Penny Dreams LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including but not limited to being stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, groups, businesses, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Designer: Robin with Wicked By Design
WARNING: This book contains sexual situations, violence and other adult themes. Recommended for 18 and above.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Title Page
Blurb
Foreword
1. Jansen
2. Ida Sue
3. Jansen
4. Ida Sue
5. Jansen
6. Maggie
7. Ida Sue
8. Cyan
9. Petal
10. Jansen
11. Ida Sue
12. Maggie
13. Jansen
14. Ida Sue
15. Jansen
16. Ida Sue
17. Jansen
18. Ida Sue
19. Jansen
20. Ida Sue
21. Jansen
22. Ida Sue
23. Jansen
24. Ida Sue
25. Jansen
26. Ida Sue
27. Jansen
28. Ida Sue
29. Jansen
30. Jansen
31. Jansen
32. Ida Sue
33. Jansen
34. Ida Sue
35. Jansen
36. Ida Sue
37. Jansen
38. Ida Sue
39. Jansen
40. Ida Sue
41. Jansen
42. Ida Sue
43. Jansen
44. Ida Sue
45. Jansen
46. Ida Sue
47. Gray
48. Jansen
49. Ida Sue
50. Ida Sue
51. Jansen
52. Ida Sue
53. Jansen
54. Jansen
55. Jansen
Epilogue One
Epilogue Two
Read More Jordan
Links:
Lucas Brothers Book 5
* * *
By:
* * *
Jordan Marie
I’ve always heard, don’t fall in love with a cowboy.
I should have listened.
* * *
I’ve sworn off men.
They’ve never given me much in life, except a bun in the oven and grief.
My kids are my life and all that truly matter.
* * *
Until him.
* * *
Jansen Reed is a living fantasy straight from the old west.
Sexy drawl, tight jeans and that glint in his eyes that makes my knees weak.
He promises me the ride of my life.
And serves it up—on the kitchen table.
* * *
Something about Jansen makes me want to believe in fairytales again.
But, I’m not the kind of girl who gets a happy ending.
Never have been.
There will come a day when my cowboy will ride away, leaving me shattered.
I’ve accepted it and eventually I’ll make him realize it, too.
Too bad I can’t convince my kids….
* * *
You thought you knew this family, but boy are you in for a surprise. Travel back in time with the Lucas family and discover that these kids are just like their mother when it comes to matchmaking.
Can be read as a complete standalone book. Happy Ever After guaranteed.
To my very own Cowboy. Thank you for giving me the ride of my life for thirty years now.
I love you.
Foreword
I know you guys who have followed this series were anxious for Blue and Meadow’s story. I started it, but that story is a little emotional and after writing Rory, I needed a break. I’ve been suffering a bit of writer’s block and slowly Ida Sue began talking. Her story wasn’t what I was expecting. When I first wrote the other books, Ida Sue was comic relief for me. Now, she’s real. I want to hug her and spend time with her and don’t tell my husband, but I want a Jansen of my very own.
This book was a bear to write. I had to align all the ages, timelines, etc. I drove my girls crazy working it all out. I did some updating on The Perfect Stroke, because Gray thought in it that his mother and Jansen had a free and open relationship. I soon discovered that was not what Jansen and Ida Sue wanted—and Jansen wouldn’t let it happy at all. He’s very territorial.
I hope you guys enjoy the story. As always, I’d love if you reach out to me and let me know! I love hearing from you guys. My links and contact info is in the back.
* * *
Xoxo
J
1
Jansen
“You’re new to these parts.”
I look up to see a man close to my own age walk out of the store front where I’m standing.
“Yeah. Just got here today.” I lean up against the post, light up my cigarette and let my eyes wander again to the woman standing ten feet away from me. She has a small child on her hip and holding the hand of another toddler. Both children are girls and look like spitting images of the woman—especially the older child.
The woman herself is beauty, classic beauty. She’s got soft golden hair that reminded me of a field of wheat growing in the Texas sun. Her skin was soft, you could tell just from looking at it and she had beauty that made you sit up and take notice. Christ, I definitely was and that hadn’t happened in years.
At forty-four, I’d met enough women that beauty didn’t normally phase me and I was old enough to know that more times than naught, that beauty didn’t go past being skin deep. Something about this woman made me want to know if hers did.
I guess even at my age, I could still be stupid.
“You lookin’ to settle down, or movin’ on?”
I frown. This guy definitely is a nosy S.O.B. You gotta wonder if all people in this small town of Mason are like him. If they were, that’d be reason enough for moving on.
“Not sure just yet. Guess it depends on if I can find a job,” I tell him, taking another draw on my cigarette and letting the nicotine ease the kinks out of my body.
“What type of work do you do?” he asks.
“Little of this and a whole lot of that,” I respond with a shrug.
“Mommy says smoking is bad for you.”
I look down to see the little girl the woman had been holding hands with looking at me. It’s unfamiliar, mostly because I haven’t felt like smiling in a hell of a long time, but I feel the urge to do so pull on the corners of my lips. I bend down so that I’m more at eye level with the girl, shove my Stetson up on my head a bit and give her my full attention.
“I reckon she’s probably right.”
“She says if you smoke your balls rot off and you die.”
Shit.
I haven’t laughed in a long time either, but as rusty as it sounds, I do it.
“Did she now?” I ask, still unable to contain my humor.
“Yep. That’s what she told Black and Blue. Black was smoking in the hayloft. Momma told him that smoking would make his balls rot off, but if he kept sneaking up in the barn loft to do it, it wouldn’t matter none.”
“It wouldn’t?”
“Nope, cause, he’d catch the whole place on fire and he wouldn’t have to worry about rotting his balls ‘cause he’d burn them off.”
“Well, I reckon she probably had a point,” I laugh, almost being able to picture it.
There was a time in my life that I wanted to have children, a whole house full. Turns out that wasn’t in the cards for me. Maybe smoking did rot my balls, because I’m as useless as a prized gelding. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but then again, it was probably worse when my wife decided to leave after ten years of marriage. Having a child was more important to her than staying married to a man who couldn’t give her that. Old bitterness, which I buried but can’t seem to forget, moves around inside of me. I loved that woman, broke my back to give her a good life and in the end, it wasn’t enough. Offered to adopt all the children she could ever want or need. That wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted her own. Part of me understood it, but I kept trying.
Hell.
I probably would still be trying if I hadn’t come in from the field early one day to find her lying on the bed, legs up in the air rutting with the owner of the bank. I can’t say as it surprised me a hell of a lot, even if it did hurt. I just remember thinking that explained how I kept getting extensions on my damn mortgage.
I walked away from my spread there in Wyoming, and my wife. Ex-wife, even after all of these years that’s a sour pillow to swallow.
All of that explains why, at my age, I’m drifting around Texas like a tumbleweed with no direction or purpose.
Life sucks then you die.
* * *
“Ah’ course to be fair, she tanned his backside so he’d know what it felt like to be on fire.”
“Of course.”
“Black said it worked too, cause he felt like he was on fire any time he tried to sit,” the girl adds, still going. “You ever had your backside on fire?”
“It’s been a while,” I laugh.
“Your momma do it cause you smoked?”
“Something like that.”
“Lotus Petal! You get your hind end back over here and quit talking to strangers,” the woman yells.
“Okay, Momma!” she yells back.
One thing about it, God has blessed the women in that family with good lungs.
“I gots to go now,” Lotus Petal calls back over her shoulder. “See ya’ later, Mister.”
“Later, Darlin’.”
“That’s Ida Sue Lucas.”
“Pardon?” I ask the man.
“Ida Sue. That unruly child belongs to her. She’s one in a hundred.”
“She does seem like a special kid,” I agree, standing back up and ignoring the pops and crackles I hear as I do it. Being a cow poke is a rough life—especially rough on the body.
“I meant she’s literally one in a hundred. Ida Sue keeps poppin’ them out. Course she ain’t had another one since the baby was born. We’re all takin’ bets on when the next man will move in. Probably won’t be long now. She never lets more than a couple of years go before her belly starts stretching with the next one.”
“I reckon that’d be her business,” I mutter, not wanting to talk about it.
“I guess so. It’s shameful though. Nine kids and only two of them have the same father. I expect that’s because they’re twins. That one you were talking to was Petal. She’s nothin’ but an untrained mutt. Wild as a damn mink. All of those Lucas children are. Every last one of them.”
“I see,” I respond, my voice tight. I turn to walk off the steps of the small covered porch along the front of the general store.
“Hey, where you going, I thought you were coming in!”
“Decided to take my business elsewhere,” I tell him, not bothering to turn around. It’s either walk away or beat the asshole. I don’t know the Lucas woman, but no woman deserves to be gossiped about like that. Whatever her story is, that little girl seemed happy enough. If he’s an example what this town is like, maybe I should leave Mason in my rearview mirror.
2
Ida Sue
“Down in the valley, the valley so low. Hang yourself over, hear the wind blow…”
I softly sing the old song into Marigold’s ear, keeping her held to my body tightly as I rock on the old rocker. I’m out on the front porch, it’s warm, overly so for it to be January. I finally got my crew down—well all except Marigold and the way her eyes keep drifting shut as I sing, I figure that will be soon.
I love my kids. I love every moment with them and I don’t regret having a single one of them. I also don’t regret having my tubes tied once I had Marigold. I’ve known for a while that happily ever after wasn’t in the cards for me. I figure I was cursed the day I was born, and I can’t outrun the way I was raised. My parents weren’t worth a damn and they didn’t exactly take great care in protecting their children. I was born into a certain way of life and even if I wanted to, people wouldn’t let me be anything else.
In the end, I didn’t care so much. I haven’t done too bad for myself, despite the hell that I’ve been through and I did that without anyone to lean on. Of course, when you don’t have anyone that makes it easier. You have to learn to stand on your own and I have since the moment I found out at seventeen I was pregnant with White Hall. I’d been living under a bridge at the time with some friends. I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant, but my parents had kicked me out a year earlier. It didn’t matter that I was just sixteen. It didn’t matter that I had been raped. All that mattered to them was that I accused the son of one of their close friends of rape. Then again, not much about me or my siblings mattered to my parents. They kicked me out, calling me a slut—a word that was ironic considering the way they lived their lives.
Slut.
That one word seemed to burn into my soul at the time.
There are days it feels like it always will.
Sometimes you make choices to try and live up to words that cut you open.
Still, the entire thing left a hole inside of me. One I kept trying to fill with a different man and a new child. I believed the lies men told me, because I desperately needed to. Lies told in the dark always have a way of finding the light, however. Eventually, I finally realized that there are no fairytales in real life. Life is what you make of it. There is no Prince Charming riding in to save the day.
You save yourself.
Still, life hasn’t been all that bad and neither have my choices. I love Texas and despite how I’m treated by most of the people here, I love Mason. The good far outweighs the bad. And although there might have been a few men in my past—although not as many as others think—there was at least one decent one.
Orville Sanders was a man among men, even with his atrocious name. He always made me smile and I loved him. Then again, I loved all the men who fathered my children—even if they didn’t deserve it.
Orville came into my life after I had Magnolia—right after his brother left town because he wasn’t ready to be a father. Orville was older, sweet and he might not have been much to look at, but he was damn good to me and my kids. He brought me to his farm, took care of me and my brood and didn’t ask for one thing in return.
Eventually, we kissed and that kiss turned into another and another… until eventually, I moved into his bedroom. He wasn’t the heart-stopping, romantic love I’d always wanted. He was steady, dependable and it was love of a different kind—one I trusted. Even then, I remember feeling scared that it would all change some day. I’d learned the hard way that men don’t stay. But, Orville was different. He was also the only man to stay around when I got pregnant. When Green was born, he was as proud as a peacock, strutting around with his feathers stretched out. He didn’t change, even as I braced myself and waited.
What’s more, he didn’t make a difference between any of my children. Green might have been his by blood, but you’d never know the others weren’t as well. He loved them all.
When I had Black and Blue he insisted o
n adding on to his already massive farmhouse and when he did, he put my name on the deed. I didn’t want that. I asked him not to, but he did it anyway. He wanted me to know that no matter what, I’d always have a home for me and our children. It was the happiest I had ever been in my life.
I loved Mason because it had become home. I finally felt like I was building a life that would make my children happy. Everything wasn’t perfect. I still heard the whispers in town. They thought—and still do—that I used Orville to get his home. They all gossiped on how I slept with other men and had their babies, even while living with poor Orville. How he was too nice and he kept me anyway. It didn’t matter it wasn’t true, that they had no proof. All I had to do was thank the guy who cleaned our gutters and pay him. Then, suddenly we were carrying on a torrid affair.