“Shh,” I chide softly. “Martha’s napping on the couch.”
“Why?” Concern etches his brow. “Does she feel bad?”
“No. Because she did Pilates at six this morning and baked for hours.”
“Pilates?”
“You didn’t know she does Pilates?”
He scrubs his jaw. “She doesn’t.”
“She does. And how do you have my phone number?”
“The rental application.”
I’d complain about his access to my life and history that was intended for Martha, but I do have quite a lot of access to his life and history, too. “Were you calling to declare how amazing I look in the brown boots or was there another reason?”
He storms over to me, rounds the island, and shackles my arm, turning me around to face him. “You know damn well why I was calling you and I don’t want to play these games. I won’t play these games.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jessica…
His grip on my arm doesn’t soften, nor does his jaw. “I mean it. I will not tolerate this.”
“I left you plenty of cookies.”
A muscle in his jaw clenches. “This isn’t a joke.”
“No kidding. You’re about to cut off my circulation.”
“You need to pack up and leave. Now. Tonight. I’ll get your tire out of the mud. You get yourself out of town.”
I glare at him. He cuts me with those icy blue eyes. This is not the man I’ve dealt with before now. He’s harder, sharper. Darker. “What is it that I did that created this reaction? This right here, right now. What happened?”
“You stole my privacy.”
“I didn’t steal your privacy. I came here for privacy.”
“You need to leave,” he bites out like I didn’t hear him already and he’s serious as a damn heart attack, but so am I.
I’m not laying down on this. “I have a lease.”
“We’ve discussed why that’s not the case. Consider it void.”
“What’s going on here?”
At the sound of Martha’s voice, Jason doesn’t let me go. His eyes burn into me. “Your baking buddy here leaked a story about me to the press.”
My eyes go wide. “What? No. No, I didn’t.” I cast Martha a pleading look. “I swear to you, I swear to you on all I am and will ever be, that I did not do that.” My attention shifts wildly to Jason. “Jason, I wouldn’t. Think about it. Does a publicity hound keep her phone turned off? You know my situation. You know I’m on leave and writing a book. I’ll call my office and you can confirm—”
“Losing your job simply means you need a paycheck.”
“I have a paycheck. A book deal. I didn’t do this.”
“Jason,” Martha snaps. “Let her go. Let her go right now.”
His expression tightens, but he does as she says, turning to the counter and pressing his hands to the surface. Hands shaking, I grab my phone off the counter and turn it on before handing it to him. “Check my call log. Check my email. Check my text messages. I didn’t do this.”
“You could have cleared the evidence or used another email.”
“I don’t even have my MacBook with me.”
“You had it last night,” he says. “And plenty of other times.”
“Surely if something published or whatever happened, I’d want to stay plugged in,” I argue. “And I haven’t looked at my phone or email once today. Ask your grandmother and then check my phone. If I did this, then surely in all these unplugged hours something would be there that I didn’t delete.” I slide my phone to Martha who is now across from us. “Check it for him, please. I beg of you.”
“Of course,” she agrees. “Let’s prove him wrong, honey.” She picks up my phone and looks at Jason. “She’s been with me all day. With the exception of the last ten minutes I just tried to take a nap when you came in here acting like a turd.”
I blanch. Turd?
I’d laugh any other time. Right now, I’m fighting for the roof over my head. “Thank you, Martha.” I turn to face her, ignoring Jason’s glare burning a hole in the back of my head.
Martha begins messing with my phone, which rings in her hand. “Craig,” she says, looking at me.
“My ex,” I say, deciding that man has a knack for bad timing. “Hit decline.”
Martha’s brow furrows. “Are you sure, honey? You were committed to him. Is there no hope—”
“None,” I say tightly. “Remember? His secretary in my bed. Not with me.”
“Oh yes,” she says and hits decline. Her eyes go wide. “Oh my.” She looks at me. “He just said something horrible to you in a text message. Can I block that?”
Jason grimaces and I can almost hear his silent, “fuck,” before he grabs my phone from Martha’s grip and hands it to me. “Let’s go outside and talk,” he says softly, his agitation still present, still nails on a damn chalkboard and now I’m starting to get angry. I didn’t do this. He didn’t even ask, he just accused.
“Yes,” I say tightly. “Let’s do that. Let’s do that now.”
“I’ll put on some fresh coffee,” Martha offers, and her voice has lightened as if she knows I’ll be back and all will be well. Actually, she didn’t say the coffee was for all of us. Maybe it’s just for them. Maybe the two of them just agreed that I have to go.
Jason steps back and motions me forward. I fold my arms in front of my chest and start walking. I don’t look at Martha. I can’t bear seeing how upset I know she must be right now. I adore her. In such a short time, she’s become like my own grandma, and I imagine most people here at the ranch feel the same. I exit the kitchen and Jason is fast on my heels, but he doesn’t step to my side. The jerk walks behind me, stalking me, and there is no doubt that’s intentional.
Relief washes over me as I reach the foyer and tug on the doorknob, but Jason catches the door. Suddenly he’s not just behind me, but his big body is crowding mine. I swear he inhales, as if he’s the one drugged on my scent now, but it’s my imagination. More likely he’s a Game of Thrones fan and trying to breathe dragon fire on me. Meanwhile, a man who hates me more than ever is making me tingle all over. I really hope that’s all about anger, though I’m not quite sure how anger settles that low in my belly.
No fire follows, though. He opens the door and forces me to step around it to exit to the porch. I dart forward and whirl around to face him. He shuts the door and that’s all the invitation I need to launch into my own defense. “I claim whatever I do right, wrong, smart, or stupid. I admitted to my firm that I told that client he was a cheating bastard. I didn’t do this. I’m tired of you judging me by everyone else. I don’t know who burned you, I don’t know if it was ten million people, but none of them were me. Stop judging me by them.”
He steps directly under one of several dangling star-shaped lights, his hands settling on his hips in what is becoming a familiar move. “The timing, Jessica. The timing.”
“You know what, Jason? Screw you. Screw you and screw you some more. I came here to heal, bake cookies, and move on with my life, not take your shit.”
“It’s my house.”
He hits a nerve with that. He hits ten nerves. That reason I don’t cry is right there, making me want to cry, and the only way I fight tears is anger. “Does that make you feel like a big person, Jason? Throwing that in my face? Making me feel like I don’t have a home?”
His gaze cuts left, muscles in his neck knotting before he looks at me and scrubs his face. A low curse follows and he walks to the railing, pressing his hands on it, chin to his chest. It’s not the reply I want. It’s not enough. My cell phone chooses that moment to ring and with one glance down and the discovery of Craig’s number, I hit my limit.
I growl low under my breath and answer it. “Stop calling. Stop texting. Yes, I know my mother showed up there. Yes, I know she made a scen
e, but if you wouldn’t have been sticking things in the wrong places with the wrong people, you wouldn’t have had to deal with her at all. You’re an asshole, and you know what else? A thief. I’m now homeless and you have my money. I want my money. I’m going to sue you, and I don’t care what kind of mess I have to make for you or the partners. You are—”
Jason takes my phone from me and disconnects the call. “He’s not worth it.”
The phone starts ringing in his hand again, and I don’t know what comes over me. I grab it, turn, and chuck it into the rain and mud as far and wide as I can. It hasn’t even landed when I turn back to Jason with a bad thought. “That part about the money. Yes, he stole my money, but I’m fine. I’m here. I have my book deal. I didn’t sell you out.” Suddenly, all the ways he’s probably been burned, cut, and burned all over again slides inside me, softening the frazzled anger controlling me moments before. The plane crash. The timing, as he’d mentioned, only weeks before the anniversary. “Please believe me,” I add.
“I know you didn’t do this. I believe you.” And then he stuns me by adding, “I’m sorry. You’re right. I judged you by other people. And you’re also right that I’m an asshole.”
I blanch. “Did you just apologize? Or did I hear wrong?”
“Are you rubbing it in my face?”
“No,” I say, “though you would deserve it, but no. That’s not my style.”
“It’s not, is it?”
“No. No it’s not.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “Should I repeat that again?”
“Maybe a few more times.”
He smiles. “I’m—”
“Apology accepted,” I say, “and no, you’re not an asshole, because assholes don’t apologize. Craig is another story. He’s the asshole and I won’t call you that anymore, I promise.”
He arches a brow. “No more asshole cowboy?”
“Well—let’s be clear on that point. No more asshole cowboy unless you really deserve it.”
“Duly noted. Don’t be an asshole or stick anything in the wrong place with the wrong person.”
My cheeks heat at the realization that I really said that and he heard. He smiles and chucks me on the chin in what could be a brotherly gesture, but whatever. Our laughter lifts and catches in the wind chimes and the rain, and I do believe it’s the sound of a truce.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jason…
The wind blows rain onto the porch and Jessica yelps and darts away from it and right into me. “Easy,” I say, catching her elbows before she goes down again. And holy hell, I’ve stayed single and alone far too long to have this woman this close. “You okay?”
“You didn’t ask me that when I was in the mud.”
“I was too busy trying not to laugh.”
Now she laughs, a soft, sweet feminine sound that radiates through me and heats my blood. She heats my blood.
“Says the man who claimed he wasn’t laughing.”
“Did you see me laugh?”
“Yes. It was in your eyes.”
“And what do you see in my eyes now?” I ask when I should be walking out of here and finding the troublemaker who leaked my story to either hurt me or get rid of her. But I’m not. I’m standing here, too damn close to her, too damn in this moment and the one where she dropped her towel, flashing ivory skin and pink puckered nipples while shouting at me.
“You tell me,” she says softly, but she doesn’t move away.
“You usually tell me exactly what we both think.”
Her lips quirk. “Do I?”
“Yes. You do.”
“As you can tell from me throwing my phone, my self-control isn’t exactly my strength at the moment.”
My gaze lowers to her lips, and fuck, I want to kiss her. Kissing her is trouble sure to turn into more trouble, and yet—thunder crashes overhead as if God himself is warning me to get my shit together. I drop my hands. “Good thing I have enough for both of us.” I step back from her. “I’ll get your phone.” I pull my hat down lower and head out into the cold rain, my version of a cold shower, and not the first I can thank Little Miss City Girl for inspiring.
A shower her phone didn’t make necessary. “I got it!” she shouts, picking it up from a step on the porch.
I slog a path through the rain back toward her, reaching for her phone and checking out the blank screen. “It’s dead.”
She scrunches up her pretty face. “I’m not any better at throwing than I am at having self-control, it seems. At least, not here lately.”
“I’ve done it,” I admit. “I get it.” More than she knows or that I plan for her to know.
Surprise flicks across her features. “You have?”
“In the absence of a baseball to take out my frustrations on, I chucked a phone once, yes. Didn’t find the damn thing for two weeks until a cow shit it out.”
She laughs. “You’re teasing.”
“No. No. I’m not that guy. You know that.”
“Right. You don’t laugh, but you do. We both know you’re pulling my chain.”
“I’m not giving you shit, but the cow sure as hell did me. He pooped the damn phone out right when a bunch of my men were standing around. That really happened.”
She laughs harder now. “I’m dying. Thank you. I needed that right now.”
“I owed you a laugh.” My voice sobers. “I was a real ass.”
“Yes,” she agrees, “but I told you. I’ve dealt with celebrities. I get what it feels like to be chased by money grubbers, which I am not.”
“I believe you,” I say again, just in case I didn’t get that point across before now.
“And you did make up for it with that phone throwing story. Oh. Why did you—”
“Don’t ask why,” I say before she can finish that sentence. I’m not telling her why I threw the phone.
“You know why I threw mine,” she counters.
“Yes,” I say. “I do.”
The front door opens and my grandmother appears. “What’s happening out here?”
We both turn to face her and I hold up Jessica’s phone. “We need to shove it in some rice and dry it out.”
Grandma’s eyes go wide as she looks between us and they land on me. “That’s Jessica’s phone. Did you throw it?”
“No,” Jessica interjects quickly. “He didn’t. I’m the guilty party. I tossed it. I did it.”
Again, Grandma looks between us and then focuses on me. “Were you that mean to her?”
“It was Craig,” Jessica corrects. “The asshole ex, not the asshole cowboy. He kept calling and I was upset over this with Jason, and I just wanted it to stop ringing.”
“Ah now, Jessica,” I say. “I thought you weren’t going to call me an asshole anymore?”
She crinkles her nose. “Not as a nickname. Only if you deserve it. That’s what I said and in this case, I’m referencing a recollection, as in past tense, and when you got here a few minutes ago, you were an asshole, therefore deserving of the title.” The look she gives me dares me to deny the truth.
I don’t dare, and my grandmother saves me anyway. “What is this all about?”
I scrub my jaw and sigh. “The Dallas Morning News is planning a sports segment about me. A friend is trying to get me the copy early, but she heard that it’s headlined ‘He Ran as Fast as He Threw.’”
“Ouch,” Jessica says. She has a way with words, this one.
“Yes. Ouch.”
“Ouch indeed,” my grandmother says. “And you didn’t run. You just—”
“Grandma,” I warn before she blasts my business to Jessica, who knows so damn much as it is that I was the asshole who assumed her guilt.
“I know someone at the newspaper because of one of my clients, but not well,” Jessica offers. “I’d be afraid t
o call and try to pull it. It might just get more attention. Unless you—”
“Thank you, but no,” I say, not about to get her into the middle of this. I appreciate the offer. I want to trust her, but I’ve been down that rabbit hole—trusting, the nosebleed that followed from standing on that ledge. “I know firsthand that the more interest I show, the worse this can get.”
“You thought I did this,” Jessica says. “Was it some sort of tip?”
“Yes,” I say. “That friend of mine says someone who knows me is the source.”
“Oh God,” Jessica says. “They used me for cover. I sort of did do this to you, then.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t do this.”
“He’s right, honey,” my grandmother says. “You didn’t make someone act badly. Someone we trust did. It has to be. Anyone close enough to know real details about Jason has to be close to us.”
“Or they don’t know real details,” Jessica suggests, “and they’re baiting you for an interview or just plain making stuff up. I’ve seen that happen, and unfortunately, everyone believes the crap printed these days.”
She’s right and I grimace, hands settling on my hips, gaze cutting away from them. Damn it to hell, this could stir shit my grandmother doesn’t need right now.
“It’s a little press, my boy,” my grandmother says, squeezing my arm and when I look at her she says, “I’m fine. Stop worrying. You make me feel old and frail. I can kick your ass ten ways to Tuesday and you know it. When I can’t, then you worry.”
My boy.
Only two people have ever called me that: her and my mother. Damn, if those words don’t gut me every time she says them. “I know you can,” I say, a storm brewing inside me to match the one outside. “I need to get back to the stable.” I hand her Jessica’s phone. “See what you can do, will you?”
“Of course,” she says, and thankfully Jessica allows me an escape from my grandmother’s probing stare.
“Can I help now?” Jessica offers. “Are the horses here? Do you need me?”
Do I need her? No. If this situation reminds me of anything it’s that I will never fucking need another woman ever, and yet, damn it, when I glance over at her, I feel a punch in my gut. The kind of punch that says she is present and won’t be ignored. “Stay here,” I say, and that groan inside me that wants her close has me pushing her back. “I don’t have time to pull you out of the mud and save horses.” I turn and step down the stairs.
The Truth About Cowboys Page 10