“I didn’t know horse training was so in demand,” I say, seizing any topic to get the conversation away from me, while silently wondering where Jason is right now. Did he leave?
Roarke levels me in a probing stare. “Can’t confidentiality agreements be broken?”
So much for talking about him. He’s still in protective best-friend and bear mode, which compensates for arrogance and mean looks. He’s loyal. I like loyal. “Any contract can be broken, but that comes with a price. I write a good contract. I’d have to pay if I break it.”
“If you’re so good at contracts,” Roarke asks, “why are you here?”
I cringe with a question that opens my personal business up to yet another person, but before I can dodge and weave, a male voice—Jason’s voice—answers for me. “To eat cookies and leave.”
I turn to find him skulking in the doorway with his big, overpowering, manly self. “You want a ride back, you need to hitch it right now.”
“I see you’re still a gentleman cowboy hero,” I say dryly.
Martha snorts. “You are something, Jessica, and I need a little something in my life. We all need a little something around this place. Come back tomorrow. I’ll bake. You can eat.”
I press a finger to my cheek. “Hmmm, let me think. I’d say yes, but your grandson—”
“Will be happy to open his kitchen to you,” Martha supplies.
I don’t wait for Jason to say otherwise. “I’d better dig in and start writing tomorrow.”
“And you will,” she insists. “While I bake.” She eyes Jason. “Isn’t that right?”
Jason grumbles something, shares a look with Roarke that screams of curse words, and then grabs his hat, casting me a cursory glance. “Let’s go.” He turns and leaves.
Martha smiles. “See you tomorrow, Jessica.”
“See you tomorrow, Martha,” I say, because I like her. Because as crazy and obstinate as the men are that come with this place, she’s here, her cookies are here, and it’s cozy and warm. It’s a place I label both friendly and arrogant, in a cowboy kind of way, which seems to suit me just fine right now.
I cast Roarke a glance and I almost think I might spy a smile on his lips. Almost. Maybe. Probably not.
I head toward the living room, inhaling the spice and cigars, and I think of the popular cigar bars in Dallas, wondering if Jason once frequented similar versions in New York City. I wonder how he went from here to the big city and came back again. I wonder if he misses the lights, cameras, and action, and most importantly, the game. I wonder if I will miss the game, because right now I don’t ever want to go back.
With Jason nowhere in sight, I exit to the porch, which I didn’t fully appreciate on arrival. It’s wide and sprawling, wrapping the house, with cozy chairs and wind chimes shaped like horses singing a song in the wind. Another storm is brewing inside me and up high in the gray and black of what was once a blue afternoon sky. I stand there and scan for Jason, finding his truck empty. My gaze returns to that tormented sky, a sky that seems to expand a million miles wide, and it’s almost as if that storm explodes inside me. The tears want to flow again, and perhaps they would if not for the sudden warmth at my back. I rotate to find Jason leaning on the wall, his booted feet crossed, his cowboy hat low.
“I didn’t know you were there.”
“You handled the divorce of a pro baseball player,” he comments dryly, pushing the hat back to allow the distinctly judgmental look in his eyes to shine brightly. “Who?”
“You like to listen around corners. I’m not sure what to make of that.”
“You told them because you wanted me to know. Who?”
“I can’t name names.”
He pushes off the wall and saunters toward me. I fight the urge to back up. Why would I back up? Why do I want to back up? I don’t. I stand my ground, but good Lord, my heart is beating too fast. It’s like a bird or bat gave birth in there. He stops right in front of me, and he smells. It’s not a bad smell, the same spice and masculine goodness as before, but it’s invading my space. He’s invading my space. “You’re very close.”
“Exactly the point. You brought up your ballplayer client for a reason.”
“And my point was this: I have powerful clients, and I keep their secrets. I’m not starstruck. At all.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. It is.”
He studies me another few beats and Lord help me, I am looking at his mouth again. My gaze lifts to his, and my God, is he looking at my mouth? No. Of course, he’s not looking at my mouth. He doesn’t even like me. We don’t like each other.
His blue, blue eyes are suddenly pinning mine. “City and country don’t mix, you know that, right?”
“Says who? You?”
“Yes. Says me.”
My chin lifts defiantly. “I guess we’ll see about that.”
“I guess we will,” he says, stepping away from me, the loss of his body heat darn near leaving me chilly, despite the warm Texas night.
By the time I recover, he’s already down the stairs and at his truck door. “You coming or what, city girl?”
I’m coming all right and doing so with a promise. If he keeps calling me city girl, there will be hell to pay.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jason…
I start the engine, the sound and action meant to announce to little Ms. Attitude that we’re leaving, and leaving now. I brought her here thinking my grandmother would see the light and send her on her way. Now they’re baking cookies together tomorrow and I’m not objecting. I’m not sure what to do with that.
Jessica climbs into the truck, and she’s immediately on the attack. “You call me a city girl like that’s a bad thing.”
Talk about feistiness and fire, and this after she confessed to being burned and turned inside out. That’s the kind of fight I have to respect, albeit reluctantly. No wonder my grandmother took to her. They’re two peas in a damn pod, as my mother would have said. I shift the gear into reverse and give her a sideways look. As for the city girl comment being an insult… “It is,” I say, backing up the truck.
“First of all,” she replies, not missing a beat, “there’s nothing wrong with city girls. There was clearly something wrong with you and your city girl model, since she’s no longer in the picture, and no, I’m not digging for information. I don’t want to know. But I’m not her. And besides, how do you know I’m even a city girl? I could have grown up on a farm.”
At this point, we’re already outside the ranch gates. That’s how much she talks. I’ve never liked talkers, but the words that come out of Jessica’s mouth are too outrageous to ignore. That’s my excuse for listening and I’m sticking to it. “If you were, you’d have just said you were, instead of giving me a hypothesis and high-heeled boots.”
She folds her arms under her breasts, breasts which I don’t mean to notice, but I do. They’re rather generous, the kind of generous I find just as hard to ignore as her words. “You know how I ended up here,” she says, without looking at me. “Because we both know that you have a habit of listening in on conversations that aren’t meant for your ears.”
There it is again. That hitch in her voice that I heard when she was talking to my grandmother. The same hitch that I felt in my gut that signaled emotions I understand in ways I don’t plan to share. The hitch that convinced me to let her stay. I fight the insanity of asking for details. “And we both know you’re a city girl.”
“Okay, yes, but that’s exactly why I want and need to be here, not there. Because I need—” She presses her lips together as if biting back the information she doesn’t want to share, that hitch barely perceptible but there again. “Your grandmother is lovely,” she says instead, side-eyeing me, her skin ivory with a hint of red splattering her cheeks, while her blue eyes hold a hint of mist. “I really enjoyed meeting her t
oday,” she adds, trying to sound perky now.
“She’s a piece of work,” I say, repeating Roarke’s words to Jessica and then adding, “Like you.”
“Because I’m a city girl,” she replies. “Which you don’t trust. Obviously, a confidentiality agreement won’t change that fact.”
She’s wrong. Partly. The offer didn’t make me trust her, but I don’t distrust her at this point, either. “I don’t know what made you like you are,” I say dryly. “Maybe it was the city. Maybe someone dropped you on your head as a baby.”
“Haha. Do all cowboys tell bad jokes?”
“Are all city girl attorneys smart-mouthed?”
“Some like me can even be foul-mouthed, so fuck you very much, cowboy.”
My lips quirk. “What’s your grandmother like?” A question I justify as a topic changer in support of my need to know the motives of the person living on this property.
“She died when I was little,” she says. “I don’t remember her at all, so that’s not an ‘oh I’m so sorry to hear that’ precursor. I hate ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ And aside from that, I’m a little jealous of you having yours with you. It must be nice to have her in your life.”
Nothing has been nice in a long damn time, I think, but my grandmother does all she can to try to make us all forget that fact. Information I don’t share. I don’t comment. Instead, I turn down the road leading to the cottage, the road muddy but clear.
In support of my silence, I’m offered a reprieve from Jessica prodding for more about me and my grandmother, when Jessica’s phone rings. She snags it from her pocket, glances at the number and then me. “That would be your grandmother,” she says, answering the call. “Hi, Martha.” She listens a moment. “Oh. That’s fine. Tomorrow.” She pauses. “Oh no. No. I can’t ask him to do that.” Another pause. “I know but—yes—but—I can’t. That’s just—no. Martha—”
She glances at me. “She hung up.”
My cell phone rings. “And that would be her asking me what you wouldn’t.”
Jessica groans. I laugh. “Welcome to what it’s like to have a grandmother in your life.” I answer the line. “Hi, Grandma.”
“She left without a pair of proper boots. And I was looking at the pair I was going to give her. They’re really worn. Can you take her to the store and buy her a pair on my account? My gift to her for filling that empty space at the cabin.”
The empty space that is my retreat, but technically, despite her living in the house behind the ranch, it’s her home, her special place my grandfather built her. A place that reminds her that he’s gone, for five long years now. “I doubt she needs those to write a book and eat cookies.”
“There are snakes. She’s inexperienced in these parts. I need her to have boots. If something happened to her, I’d blame myself.”
And she would. The woman blames herself for my parents’ private plane crashing last year, for reasons that are illogical when she’s usually quite logical. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, honey.” And then in a repeat of Jessica’s words about her, she adds, “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”
I grunt and she hangs up. Grunting, I’ve found, is the best way to respond without responding to my grandmother. I disconnect the line and cut around a pot hole.
“Seems we’re going to get you a pair of boots.”
“What? No.” Jessica twists around to face me. “Jason, I don’t need boots.”
“You actually do need boots.”
“Then help me get my tire out of the mud, if you will please, and I’ll go.”
“She wants to buy them for you.”
“She’s wonderfully sweet, but I’m not letting her buy me boots. I can do this on my own.”
“You don’t know my grandmother. She wants. She nags. She gets.”
“Yes, but—”
“That’s what we all say and she then says her piece again, and we end up doing what she wants. It’s a lot like a batter who stands at the mound, determined to hit a ball, but it curves left and right and finds the glove anyway. My grandma is that ball. Give into it. It’s the easiest way to survive around these parts.”
She gapes at me. “Are you serious?”
“Serious as a rattlesnake right before it bites your city girl ankle.”
She glowers. “I could have done without that analogy, thank you very much, but that said…”
“Just keeping it real for you, sweetheart,” I say, turning into the small town of Sweetwater, our destination quick to find, since it’s just past the only diner.
“I am not your sweetheart, cowboy,” she says, as I park the truck. “And just to be clear”—she opens her door—“you won’t scare me away with rattlesnakes. Surely you were off the farm long enough to know that we have our own version of those in the city.” She exits the truck and shuts the door.
And there it is. Just one of the ways our new city girl guest has surprised me. Not an easy thing to do, but that doesn’t make it a good thing. Because I have been off the farm long enough to know a few things. For instance, I know very well that surprises aren’t always good.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jessica…
The bells on the wooden door chime for my arrival as I enter the store, and I find myself in a fancier version of a roadside travel shop. There’s a 7-11 style side to my right and then a shopping mall side to my left, where there appears to be clothing and, in the far corner boots. I hurry in that direction, hating that I’m aware of Jason’s absence, but determined to pay for my purchase before he can stop me. Obviously, I have conflicting emotions about this man.
Nevertheless, he’s not here, and I’m on the hunt and not for a man. For my boots, which I really don’t want and aren’t in the budget right now, but I’ll deal with it to please Martha, who won’t take no for an answer. I’m still getting paid, at least for two months, but I have to be realistic. I probably won’t end up back at work. I need to plan to be unemployed until I find where I belong, and I’m really not sure what that means right now. No doubt Craig expects me to hold onto my money, not use it to fight him. Enter the book advance. That is my weapon, my fuel to bring a cheater and thief to his knees.
“Hello there!” comes a friendly voice, a pretty petite woman with lush blond waves falling around her young, heart-shaped face. “I’m Debbie. What can I help you with?”
“Hi, Debbie. I’m Jessica. I’m seeking a pair of boots.” I look down at her boots, blue and red flowers on the leather, the design an adorable match to her red dress. “Like yours.” I eye the wall of boots and find a pair with pink flowers. When do I ever wear anything pink? I’m a divorce attorney. Or not. “How about the pink flowers?”
She smiles. “I’ve been eyeing those. They’re adorable. What size?”
“Seven, please.” She starts to turn and I have a thought. “Debbie?”
“Yes?”
“Those will defend against snake bites, right? I’m staying up the road for a couple of months, but I’m not overly savvy on these matters.”
She smiles. “Yes. Of course. And shame on whoever you’re staying with. They should be helping you. It’s the proper thing to do, but no fear. You have me now.” She smiles and rocks a bit on her boots before she hurries away.
Proper. Apparently that matters in a small town, and Martha did try to be proper. She arranged my ride and arrival. Because her grandson is so disinterested that he didn’t bother coming inside, well, that’s not her fault. He’s her grandson. She doesn’t know he really is an asshole cowboy. It’s not a joke.
“Did someone help you?”
At the deep rumble of Jason’s voice, I startle and whirl around to find him so close that I end up with my hand planted on his chest. It lays there and I stare at it like it’s not my hand or my fingers flexing against that hard wall of muscle. Like heat isn’t r
adiating up my arm and across my chest.
“Jessica,” he murmurs softly, his voice low, compelling.
My gaze jolts upward, and the minute I connect with his piercing blue eyes, there’s this crazy sensation in my chest. What is happening to me? What is this?
“Here we are, Jessica,” Debbie calls out, and I yank my hand back and rotate to face her.
“Great. Thanks.”
She ignores me, her attention riveted on the man behind me. “Jason. Hi. You’re looking as fine as sunshine.”
Oh, Jesus.
Apparently, I say that out loud because Jason thumps my shoulder. Asshole indeed.
“What are you doing here?” Debbie asks, oblivious to my reaction, and Lord help me. She has puppy-dog eyes for him and I suddenly wonder if I also had puppy-dog eyes for him when my hand was on his chest. Please tell me no. I need space from this man and his groupie. I take the box in Debbie’s hand. “Thanks.” I swear she doesn’t notice.
“I’m with Jessica, Debbie,” Jason informs her, and he makes it sound like I’m his date.
I’d object, but he’s moved on. “Can you get her that pair my grandmother just bought last week? Those brown ones.”
“You’re with Jessica?” Debbie asks, sounding like a kicked puppy now.
“I am,” he confirms. “The brown ones?”
I sit down on a bench with my back to the both of them and eye the selections and quickly object this time and loudly. “No,” I say twisting around to eye them both. “Those brown boots are ugly as heck. No go on those.”
Jason ignores me. “The brown ones, Debbie, please.”
He has manners and apparently she approves. “Of course. Coming right up.”
I, however, do not approve. “You’re making her work for nothing,” I say, pulling on the boot with the pink flowers, and now I do approve. They’re cute.
“It’s not about looks, city girl,” he says, sitting down next to me, and the asshole pinches my leg just above the boot and hard.
“Ow.” I jolt to my feet and face off with him. “What was that about?”
The Truth About Cowboys Page 6