Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2021

by Anna J. Stewart

  “I can take care of my own cattle, thanks,” Wes bit out, his jaw hardening even more in his effort to be polite.

  “Too bad we turned the herd out up in the high pasture this morning. We’re gonna have to bring them back in and run them through the chutes to sort out your cows from ours.”

  Wes winced. That would be an all-day job.

  John suggested, “Why don’t you spend the night here, and we’ll get to it first thing in the morning?”

  He hated the suggestion, but it made sense. His own herd was already fed for the day, and he really did want his cows back as quickly as possible and to get back to living his own life on his own land.

  “Besides, your mother will be thrilled to have you for supper.”

  His gaze narrowed. Staying the night would give him a chance to tell his mother to steer clear of Jessica and the trouble that seemed to follow her around. He nodded briskly. “Fine. I’ll stay.”

  * * *

  But when suppertime arrived and Jessica accompanied Miranda into the house at the last minute before the meal, Wes had a change of heart. Just looking at Jessica made his gut tighten into impossible knots.

  “Wes!” his mother exclaimed. “What a lovely surprise!”

  She stepped forward to kiss his cheek, and he took advantage of the moment to mutter, “What’s she doing here?”

  “Oh, you mean Jessica? She’s redecorating the hunting cabin for me. I told her to stay here at the ranch until she’s done with the job. It’ll save her a ton of driving back and forth to town while she’s working on the place.”

  Perfect. Now he knew where not to be for the next few weeks.

  For her part, Jessica was silent, standing behind Miranda and looking uncomfortable. What did she have to be uncomfortable about? He was the one whose life had been destroyed.

  Scowling, he took his place at the big plank table as Willa and the housekeeper, a young woman named Ella who was new at the ranch since he’d left to join the Marines, served supper. He dug into the sour cream enchiladas, arrested by how good they tasted.

  Miranda commented, “Ella’s a chef by training. I keep offering to set her up in business with a restaurant of her own, but she keeps insisting she likes it out here on the ranch.”

  Wes nodded at the pretty young woman. “You really should take my mother up on the offer if everything you make is this tasty.”

  A shadow passed across the young woman’s face—the kind of shadow he’d seen from victims of war and violence when he’d been deployed in the field as a combat officer. What the hell had put that expression in her eyes?

  He was distracted, though, by dessert—cinnamon ice cream and crispy sopaipillas so tender they practically fell apart on his fork. Jessica had been notably silent during the meal, which was unusual for her. Usually, she was in the thick of conversation, outgoing and vivacious. She had a gift for making everyone around her feel at ease.

  He’d seen it any number of times when she’d acted as her father’s hostess at official dinners and the cocktail parties so vital to advancing a senior officer’s career. After all, it wasn’t what you knew, rather who you knew, when it came time for political appointments to be made. And George Blankenship had been nothing if not ambitious. The man aimed to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff one day.

  Personally, Wes had found the man overbearing and arrogant, too willing to throw others under the bus in the name of advancing his own career. And that trait had transferred to the bastard’s daughter.

  As coffee was poured all around, John asked his wife, “So how much is this renovation of the cabin going to cost me?”

  Miranda deferred to Jessica, and all eyes turned on her. She answered smoothly, “It’s a small space, and I want to keep the design simple and functional. It won’t be ridiculously expensive.”

  She quoted a figure that actually sounded cheap, given the quality of work Wes knew she was capable of. In Washington, Jessica had commanded shocking fees for redoing the homes of the wealthy who wanted authentic historic renovations.

  “I’ll hold you to that, young lady,” John said, smiling.

  Wes interjected, “He means it, Jessica. If you want to revise your estimate upward, do it now.”

  She glanced over at him, her expression impossible to read. “You forget that I am my father’s daughter. I know exactly what to expect out of your father, a military man himself.”

  John pounced on that. “Your father was military? What branch?”

  “He’s a Marine, sir. Stationed at the Pentagon at the moment.”

  John grinned. “Ugh. He’s hating every minute of it, isn’t he?”

  Jessica shrugged. “He seems to have adapted pretty well. He considers politics to be just a different form of warfare. It’s combat in a conference room instead of in an armored personnel carrier.”

  Wes snorted mentally. Truer words had never been spoken.

  Jessica neatly turned the conversation back to a discussion of what color John and Miranda would like the inside of the new cabin to be.

  For his part, Wes leaned back, studying Jessica. Why hadn’t she admitted who her father was? Surely she wasn’t trying to protect him. What was she up to, then?

  He waited until after the meal, when his parents had settled down to read newspapers in front of the giant stone hearth that dominated the great room, and he followed Jessica down the hall to a bathroom. When she emerged, he grabbed her elbow, steered her into his father’s office and closed the door.

  He backed her up against the wood-paneled walls and planted a hand over her shoulder to trap her in place. He looked down and her chest was heaving in the most disconcerting way.

  All of a sudden, he was thinking about other times she’d breathed that hard. Times when she’d arched up into him, kissing him senseless, wrapping her leg around his hips and teasing him until he’d stripped her clothes off and sunk into her hot, welcoming body and lost himself—

  “What are you playing at?” he growled at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  Their gazes locked, clashing. Sparks flew between them, sparks of friction and anger and betrayal—and of something else. Something he didn’t want to acknowledge. Something he refused to name.

  “What are you doing here, insinuating yourself into my family’s life?”

  “Contrary to popular belief, Wes, not everything revolves around you. I bumped into your mother in an antique shop, and she and I got to discussing the cabin she’s looking to redo. One thing led to another, and she hired me for the job. There’s no deep, dark plot afoot. It’s just a job.”

  “Is that really what this is?” he snarled. “Tell me the truth.”

  Her eyes widened as she stared up at him. He saw the moment her gaze dropped to his mouth. How her throat worked as she swallowed convulsively.

  “Quit looking at me like that,” he muttered.

  “Like what?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Like you want to eat me up.”

  “But I do.”

  The words zinged through him with the jolting shock of electricity. She wanted to eat him up? An image of her red, juicy lips on his flesh, doing just that made blood race to his groin. All of a sudden, he was hard as a rock and his pulse pounded through his erection demandingly.

  “Stop it,” he bit out from behind clenched teeth. Whether he meant it for her or for himself, he wasn’t sure. Maybe both.

  “Stop what?” she breathed.

  “Dammit,” he snapped. He closed the distance between them, all of twelve inches, and kissed her roughly. He didn’t want to be doing this. Didn’t want to remember how damned soft and welcoming she always was to him. How she tasted like cinnamon and cream, and how he wanted more of that taste. More of her...

  Her body surged forward against his, her slender arms going around his neck. Her head ti
lted to fit their mouths together better, and her tongue sipped tentatively at his.

  The wet slide of tongue on tongue was so sexy, so blatantly sexual, that he lost his mind a little. His arms swept around her, dragging her up against him. Oh, man. Those curves. The way they fit against his hard body was perfect. She was perfect. So hot. So eager.

  He wanted her. Like he wanted to breathe.

  Wrong. This was wrong.

  But so damned good. His hands plunged into her silky, lush hair, drawing her closer so he could deepen the kiss, explore her mouth more fully, taste that seductive sweetness—

  There was a reason he shouldn’t be doing this—

  Didn’t care. He couldn’t get enough of her. His kiss gentled and slowed. It had been so long. So. Damned. Long. All those nights of dreaming about her. All those nights of wanting her. And here she was, real and warm and eager in his arms, every bit as lithe and sensual and irresistible as ever. More so.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured against his mouth between kisses.

  He peppered her jaw with kisses, tracing the artistic line of her neck with his lips, tasting the pulse leaping in her throat. A need to take her right here, right now, came over him. He plunged his hand down the waistband of her peasant skirt, found the skimpy thong—she always did have naughty taste in lingerie—and eased his fingers between the soft, plump folds of her womanhood.

  She groaned and shifted her stance to give him access to her core, and then she rode his fingers, shamelessly groaning into his mouth as he rubbed the bud of her desire, rolling it between his fingertips. He plunged a finger into her wet heat and she gasped, arching up against him sharply.

  “Like that?” he mumbled.

  She let out a half sigh, half groan, and rocked her hips forward, impaling herself more deeply upon his finger. He added a second finger and her hips moved more rapidly. Using his thumb to rub across the hard, wet little bud, he drove her out of her mind.

  As her cries increased in volume, he captured them with his mouth, tasting her pleasure with dark satisfaction. It didn’t take her long to shatter around his hand—it never did. And then she was trembling in his arms, her forehead falling to rest on his shoulder, her chest heaving with pleasure, her internal muscles still spasming around his fingers hungrily.

  An urge to unzip his jeans, free his erection and plunge into all that wet heat and make her his once more nearly overcame him. And then, all of a sudden, reason came crashing back in upon him, breaking over him in a cold rush of terror.

  Lord, the hold this woman still had over him—

  He stumbled back from her in horror. What had he just done? No way did he want to get back into a relationship with her. She was lethal. Deadly. She’d sucked him back in so easily. And he’d gone along with her, a lamb for the slaughter. What fall was she setting him up for this time?

  “What the hell do you do to me?” he mumbled hoarsely. “How do you do that?”

  She stared at him in what looked like shock. “What are you talking about? You did that to me.”

  “I didn’t want to. How did you manipulate me again?”

  “I didn’t manipulate anything, Wes. We just have chemistry between us. We always have—”

  He cut her off, half in fury, half in panic. “It has to stop. I want nothing to do with you. Do you understand? Nothing.”

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked. She reached forward boldly to cup the erection that still strained at his zipper. “You don’t feel like a man who wants nothing. Seems to me you’d like quite a bit more than we just did. And that’s fine by me.”

  She reached for the zipper and he swatted her hand away, staggering back from her. “You’re poison. An addiction. I can’t. Won’t—”

  He turned and bolted from the room before he could give in to temptation—to disaster—again.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jessica tossed and turned in the guest bedroom of the Morgan mansion for hours, unable to forget the screaming orgasm that had ripped through her earlier. She had known she still wanted Wes. She’d just had no idea how much she still wanted him until she’d gotten a little piece of him. A very little piece. The man had held his body completely apart from her, never sharing more than a few kisses. And then he’d reached for her. Played her body like a finely tuned musical instrument. He always had known how to draw pleasure out of her like no one else.

  And now she was sleepless and so turned on she could hardly stand it. Sure, she could scratch the itch herself, but she wanted Wes to scratch it. Why had he turned her down when she’d directly offered him more? She knew he wanted it. The bulge behind his zipper had been rock hard and filled her entire hand. He seriously wanted her.

  Was he so stubborn that he would deny both of them the pleasure they both craved just to prove his point? What was his point, anyway?

  That he had more self-discipline than she did? That he was a better person than she was? Lord knew, that was true. She was wild and undisciplined and had gotten both of them into trouble, dragging him down against his will. But she’d changed since the kidnapping. Grown up. She had no more desire to be the bad girl or break all the rules. Although she would never get along with her father, she no longer needed to enrage him like she once had.

  If only Wes would give her a chance to show him the new Jessica. He might never forgive her for wrecking his career, but maybe he could at least see that a little good had come of it.

  And he had his own ranch now. That was good, right?

  His life didn’t totally suck.

  If she had truly been out to ruin his life, she would have done a better job of it than this. Surely he could see that. Right? Was that what he was hung up on? Didn’t he know she would never have hurt him just for the sake of hurting him? She really liked him. Heck, she still cared for him after everything that had happened between them. Or maybe he didn’t know that.

  A need to tell him, to make sure he was aware of how she felt about him, came over her. The clock on the nightstand said it was nearly two in the morning. He must be asleep by now.

  Although, maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. The more alert he was, the more hostile he tended to be. When she’d caught him off guard, surprised him in the office by kissing him, that was when he’d let his real feelings for her show.

  She climbed out of bed, the sleep shirt she’d bought in Hillsdale skimming her thighs. She opened the hallway door, glad for the small lamp on a table at the end of the long passage. The girl named Willa had helpfully told her that Wes’s room was the last one on the right. Jessica crept down the hallway now, heading for the closed door. She was startled to see that the door was beautifully carved, much like the front door on his current house. Except this panel depicted mountains with a stream running through a broad meadow. A deer grazed by the stream, and an eagle flew overhead. She made a mental note to ask Miranda tomorrow who the artist was.

  And then she was reaching for the doorknob, and all thought fled her brain except letting Wes know how she really felt about him and, moreover, getting him to admit to himself how he still felt about her.

  It did register that this was potentially insane and that he might very well tell her to go to hell and toss her out on her keister. But, hey, she’d always been a risk taker. Why stop now?

  Memory of that throbbing erection behind Wes’s zipper spurred her forward. He did want her. She had to believe in that.

  She tried his doorknob and it turned silently under her hand. She slipped inside the room, and faint moonlight crept around the curtains. A sleeping form stretched under the covers on the bed. She eased forward until she could see the planes of his face, the bushy beard that seemed to be such a source of contention with his parents. If he’d wanted to find a rebellion that would drive his folks nuts, he’d succeeded with that beard. They’d pestered him over it at length at supper, exhorting him to shave and cu
t his hair like a civilized human being.

  Amused, she studied his beard. With a little trimming, it wouldn’t look half-bad. But she still preferred him clean-shaven. In her mind he would always be that spit-polished Marine she’d first met in her father’s office.

  Carefully she lifted the covers so as not to wake Wes and slipped into bed beside him. She rolled to face him and gently reached across his body with her arm. Yay. He still slept commando.

  He shifted a little but didn’t wake. She slid her hand ever so lightly down the flat, hard plane of his stomach. Her fingertips slipped through the curls at his groin and stroked lightly down the length of him. Immediately she felt a swelling response. She stroked him again. In seconds, his body was raging in response to her. Ha. And he’d claimed to be unaffected by her earlier tonight. Liar.

  Of course, she was not immune to him, either. Her own body went limpid and wet in response to his obvious, if unconscious, desire for her.

  She leaned in close to kiss his shoulder, and he woke—or half woke to be more accurate—groaning and turning toward her to wrap his arms around her. He rolled her beneath him, his muscular thigh pushing her legs open for him. His beard tickled her neck as he nuzzled her ear, and she lifted her chin to give him better access to her neck. He took the invitation and nibbled her neck, working his way across her jaw to her mouth. Their tongues tangled sexily, his plunging into her mouth and hers swirling around his, teasing him and inviting him in. His hips pushed against hers, his erection pressing into her core with only her flimsy sleep shirt separating their bodies.

  “Take me, Wes,” she whispered.

  His eyes opened then, and he stared down at her as if he was disoriented, as if he couldn’t tell if she was a dream or not. She lifted her head to capture his mouth with hers, to kiss him before logic could get the better of him and make him overthink this. That was his problem. He needed to go with the flow more.