by Josie Kerr
Jason grabbed Meghan in a bear hug and planted a hard kiss on her mouth. “See? It all worked out, Meghan,” he said. “It all worked out.”
She nodded, but Jason knew her well enough that he could tell she had some things on her mind. “Tell me, babe.”
“I just wonder . . . I mean, we know Buster—he’s harmless. When have you ever seen him drive? The guy’s lucky he can walk straight half of the time, but he’s really cleaned up his act. He told me last winter that he’d promised his mom he’d not get arrested again, and as far as I know, he hasn’t. What prompted him to steal a car? That’s a huge leap. Normally, he gets busted for public intoxication or urination, maybe a loitering charge. Not stealing a vehicle worth more than a lot of people’s houses.”
Jason frowned as he weighed what she’d told him. It really didn’t make sense. “What did Dolly say about it being Buster?”
“I could tell that she wasn’t wholly convinced, but for some reason, she let it ride.” Meghan shrugged. “All I know is the claim was pushed through and Buster took off as soon as he got bailed out. There are patrols looking for him.”
“I’d be interested to hear his story directly from him,” Gunny added. “That whole thing sounds hinky as hell.”
Jason agreed and made a mental note to ask Johnny about Buster and the investigation the next time he saw him. As if the eldest Richards brother knew his younger sibling was thinking about him, Jason received a text from Johnny. He read over it and grinned.
“Dinner at the Richards homestead tonight, y’all,” Jason said, and with a specific look at Meghan, he added, “including you, lady.”
Meghan began to stammer excuses, but Jason wagged a finger at her. “Nope. You’re not getting out of it. Dad specifically invited you. By name.”
Meghan blinked. “Uh, I guess that’s an offer I can’t refuse, huh?”
Jason shook his head. “Nope. Not at all.”
Chapter 23
“Why are you nervous?”
Meghan stared at the rustic one-story house that was home to Jack Richards and asked herself the same question. It wasn’t like she didn’t know the Richardses. Hell, she’d known them for years. This was different, though. Every time she’d been with the Richards clan, she’d been at Foley’s, her domain. This was the house where Jason spent his high school years. This was their turf.
“Meghan, look at me.”
She tore her eyes from the house and turned to Jason. “Hey. I’m kind of freaking out, I think.”
“No shit,” Jason said with a soft chuckle. “You wanna tell me what’s going through that head of yours?”
“No, because it’ll sound completely crazy.” Because it is completely crazy.
He pulled her as close as the bucket seats of his truck would allow. “Honey, there aren’t going to be any surprises. You know they’re nuts. You also know they all think you’re great.”
“Yeah, I’m a great bartender, but I’m walking through that door as your girlfriend.”
“You’re my girlfriend?”
Fuck. Shit, shit, shit. Had they used those terms before, ever? No. Double fuck.
Jason cackled and gave her a sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Hot damn. I’ve got a girlfriend.”
Meghan turned her head so quickly she got dizzy, only to find Jason with a giddy, goofy grin on his face. “What?”
“What what?” His smile faltered a bit.
Meghan flopped back against the seat. “See—crazy.”
“You’re my crazy, though.” He gave her another kiss on the cheek, then nudged her chin so he could press another to her lips. “Better?”
“Mm-hmm.” Meghan sighed happily as Jason continued to alternate kissing her and smiling at her.
The spell was broken by a loud banging on the side of Jason’s truck. Meghan looked around Jason to see three of the Richards brothers, plus Dan, Gunny, Cash, and Ryan’s husband, Junior, with their faces pressed up against the windows.
“Stop playing grab-ass and come into the house,” Johnny bellowed on the other side of the glass. “Good God A’mighty.”
Jason turned back to Meghan. “Did you expect Johnny to do that?”
Meghan couldn’t help but giggle. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“See?” he said with a knowing grin. “Known entity. Come on, baby.” Jason paused before getting out of the car. “And yes, I’m gonna call you ‘baby,’ so get used to it.”
Meghan grinned and leaned her head back against the headrest as she waited for Jason to come around the truck to open the passenger door. “So friggin’ bossy.”
The welcome committee having already gone inside, Meghan and Jason made their way toward the house. As they walked up the cobblestone walkway, Meghan took the time to look around. The Richards homestead was far enough away from city lights for the stars to twinkle visibly in the midnight-blue sky. She inhaled the cool mountain air, catching a whiff of pine and smoke. They paused on the front porch, where five rockers sat side by side.
“Ready?” The corner of Jason’s mouth turned up in a wry grin.
“Ready.”
Jason turned the doorknob and motioned Meghan inside, where she was immediately accosted by a swarm of red-headed girls, all clamoring for her attention.
“Munchkin alert! Munchkin alert!” Laughing, Meghan collapsed onto the ground in the middle of the little girls. As the smallest of the five climbed into her lap, Jason gave her a wink and mouthed, known entity, before disappearing into what Meghan assumed was the kitchen.
She spent the next moments showing the girls her nails and listening to them argue about what color she should choose next for the stripe in her hair. She was listening to a lively debate between the two eldest girls about whether her nails should match her stripe when their mother walked into the foyer.
“Well, I was wondering where y’all had gone. I should have known Meghan had arrived.”
“Hey, Ash.” Meghan shook her head. “They are getting so big.”
Ashley nodded. “Ava and Rose started kindergarten this year.”
“You are a lying liar!” Meghan looked at the eldest girls, and a sudden wave of emotion almost overtook her. “How can you stand it?”
“I know!” Ashley’s chin wobbled. “It seems like only yesterday you were ratting on me and Em, making Rory and Mick come fetch us from Foley’s.”
Meghan wiped away a bit of moisture that leaked from her eye. “Oh my God. You two were so trashed. So hilarious, but so trashed.”
“Johnny was telling me about the pub. It’s just awful.” Ashley squeezed Meghan’s wrist. “You’ll let me know if I can do anything, right? Right?”
Meghan nodded, not trusting herself to not bawl if she opened her mouth.
Rory Doyle, the girls’ father, poked his head into the foyer. “Girlies! Time to leave Mam and Miss Meghan alone and get washed up!”
The little girls all grumbled even as they gave Meghan and Ashley hugs and kisses, then they all trooped off down the hall. Meghan and Ashley stayed in the foyer, sitting on the floor. Ashley seemed to grasp the tentative hold Meghan had on her emotions, so she gave her wrist another squeeze.
“One more bit of nosiness, then I’ll leave you alone.” Ashley looked around, then leaned close. “You getting any more shit from Crabtree?”
“Other than pulling me from the Perfect Pour on a technicality? No. I haven’t interacted with him.”
“What?!” Ashley hissed. “Oh no, he didn’t.”
Meghan nodded. “Oh, yes, he did. I think I managed to beat him at his own game, though.” She leaned closer. “They also changed the sponsor, and I might have tattled on them.”
“Oh, nice!” Ashley held up her hand and Meghan slapped her palm. “I’ll be honest—I was totally shocked when I found out you’d been married before, doubly so when I found out who your ex is.”
Meghan closed her eyes and shook her head. “That time in my life seems unreal now, like it happened to someone else, you know?”
/> “Lady, do I ever. I’ve got one of those ‘Oh my God, what the fuck was I thinking?’ exes.”
“Mam! That’ll be a fiver!” Ava popped back into the foyer to deliver her reprimand, then disappeared again.
“Good God A’mighty. That swear jar is going to fund their fu—uh, friggin’ college,” Ashley groused while Meghan tried not to laugh. This time Ashley looked toward the kitchen. Meghan’s stomach flip-flopped. “Are you and my brother together, or, you know, just together?”
“Um . . .” Meghan stalled. “That’s another question.”
Ashley rolled her eyes and glanced toward the kitchen. “Well, are you?”
“Yeah, we are. Um, we’re still sorting stuff out, but . . . yeah, we think we are. I mean, I called myself his girlfriend earlier and decided that I didn’t want to kick him in the sac when he called me ‘baby,’ so . . .”
Ashley threw her head back and guffawed. “Oh yeah. You’re together.” She sighed happily. “You two are good together.”
“He’s a good man. One of the best I’ve ever known.”
“Yes, he is. And one of the most stubborn.”
Meghan snorted. “That’s an understatement. Jeez.”
“And bossy,” Ashley added.
“Oh my God, tell me about it. I’ve already thought he needed killing a few times.”
As she talked with Ashley about Jason, the knot in her stomach began to unfurl and she no longer felt like she was going to vomit or break out into hiccups. She impulsively hugged Ashley, who whooped a little in surprise.
“What was that for?”
“I really don’t know, but it seemed appropriate,” Meghan said, shrugging one shoulder.
Jason popped his head out of the kitchen. “What the hell are you two still doing in the foyer?”
“Girl talk,” Meghan quickly said.
“Talking about you,” Ashley quipped at the same time.
Jason grinned. “Well, dinner’s ready and everyone’s waiting for you two.”
“I guess we need to get a move on, then, huh?” Ashley scrambled to her feet. “Shake a leg, Meghan. We gotta get to the table before all the deviled eggs are gone.”
☆☆☆
Jason sat by the fire pit, watching Meghan as she sat on the ground in front of little Ava and Rose, who were “doing her hair.” He thought they were making Meghan’s hair a snarled mess, but Meghan didn’t seem to mind—in fact, Meghan actually seemed to be enjoying the procedure, even though she winced every so often. What did he know?
As he watched her, he kept running over their earlier conversation. Hot damn. I have a girlfriend. The fact that she neither confirmed nor denied she was indeed his girlfriend didn’t matter one bit; the fact that she kissed him cemented his belief that their relationship had evolved.
“Damn, you got it bad, Thumper.” Gunny eased himself down into an Adirondack chair, put his feet up, and popped open a beer. “Granted, she seems pretty awesome.”
“She’s completely awesome.”
Jason waited for Gunny to say something else, but the quiet man merely fixed his attention on the fire pit’s dancing flames, so Jason turned his attention back to Meghan, who was now talking to Cash, Dan, and Dan’s partner, Alex.
I guess Cash was being up-front when he said he really didn’t have a problem with Dan.
“Huh. Cool.”
“You talking about Cash?”
“Yeah. I guess I completely misjudged him.”
Gunny snorted. “Nah, he’s still kind of a dick, just not a homophobic dick.”
Just then Ashley’s raucous laughter rang out through the backyard.
“Good God A’mighty, I always forget just how loud my sister actually is.”
Ashley and Rory were dancing to some soundless music, and every few steps, Rory would swing her around and make her shriek. The intensity of those two never failed to impress Jason, especially after two high-risk pregnancies and five children.
“Now that she’s taken, I’ll admit that I always thought your sister was smokin’ hot.”
“What the hell, Gunny? Don’t tell me shit like that.” Jason shuddered.
“Dude, she is. You have to admit objectively that your sister is a babe.”
“Gunny, dude, I do not have to admit a damn thing regarding my sister’s hotness. That’s just wrong.”
Cash had wandered back over to his buddies, stumbling a bit and eventually crashing into a chair next to Gunny. “Damn, I think I might have had more than I realized,” Cash said, blinking and trying to focus. “That Alex dude is pretty cool. No way could I teach high school.”
Gunny silently burped and shook his head. “Man, you could not pay me to go back to high school. No way, no how.”
“Man, me neither.” Cash slid his eyes to Jason. “I bet you were the big dick in high school, huh, Jase?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I was the backup kicker on the football team, though, and, man, I milked that shit.”
“So you earned your nickname even before you got to the sandbox.”
Jason squirmed, uncomfortable where this strand of conversation was heading. He’d been thinking about his past ever since he and Meghan had their brief talk about bad decisions. In the past three years, he’d had more anonymous hookups—sometimes two or three encounters a night— than he had in his whole time on active duty. When he looked back on those early days, the way he had acted scared the shit out of him. In hindsight he recognized it for what it was: a destructive coping mechanism in response to Ryan’s slim escape from death and Jason’s general feelings of helplessness.
“Hey, man, I’m just busting your balls.” Cash cuffed Jason on the arm.
“Leave my balls out of it,” Jason joked, deflecting.
The three friends chuckled, and then Cash yawned and blinked. “Man, I cannot pull twenty-hour days like I used to.”
“I was just thinking we probably need to head out,” Jason said while stifling his own yawn. “We have a shitload to do tomorrow with the beginnings of the she shed project and then Foley’s.”
Cash and Gunny agreed, and Jason looked around for Meghan. He found her in the same place she’d been all night, but now Meghan was cradling and rocking the youngest and smallest of Ashley and Rory’s daughters. Jason’s heart flip-flopped in his chest at the sight.
Did dudes get baby lust? Because right then, all he wanted in the world was to see Meghan with a baby, their baby.
What the actual fuck?
Chapter 24
“Are you okay?”
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Jason waited for Meghan to shove him, or snort, or curse him out, or any of the other things she’d done in the past when he’d gotten sappy on her—not that he made a regular habit of baldly expressing his emotions—but the usual reactions never came. Instead, she simply smiled and scooted closer to him. Jason wrapped his arms tightly around her, and she burrowed into his chest.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she whispered into his chest.
“I think I might be the most okay I’ve ever been in my life.” He swallowed hard and pressed a kiss to Meghan’s forehead. Her hair smelled like coconut and campfire. “You smell good.”
That remark got him a snort. She wriggled up to where she was nose to nose with him. “Okay, Richards, what is going on, and don’t give me some line of flowery bullshit.”
“That wasn’t a line and it wasn’t bullshit.” He tugged on the pink strand of hair. “I’ll cop to it maybe being flowery.”
“Are you having a nervous breakdown?” He could see her skeptical expression in the half light of the moonshine coming through the windows.
“No, I’m not having a nervous breakdown. It’s just like I said: I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”
“You said you thought you were the happiest you’ve ever been.”
“I reevaluated the situation, and I’m positive I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”
/> “It’s been a whole five minutes!”
“A lot can happen in five minutes.”
“Tell me about it,” Meghan muttered.
He laughed and gave her a squeeze. “Seriously, I’m good,” he reassured her.
Meghan touched his cheeks, his lips, then ran her fingers over his throat and down to his shoulders. She traced the US Marine Corp emblem tattooed over his heart, lingering over the globe.
“Why ‘Thumper’?” She tilted her face up to him, her forehead crinkled with curiosity. “I get Gunny and Cash, but until they got into town, I’d never heard anyone call you anything other than Jason or Jase.”
“Well, you’ve never been around guys that I served with, either.”
“Dan never calls you Thumper, but I suppose he’s a little different.” Meghan pulled back a little and punched the pillow into a position where she could prop herself up. “You call Ryan by his nickname—”
“That’s because Ryan is a fucking Goody Two-shoes.” Jason snickered. “He is Goody, but mostly he’s Bubba.”
“Why Thumper, though?” she pushed.
“Partially because I always had my shit packed, ready to head out to wherever. My squad never had to wait on me.” Jason rubbed Meghan’s cheek with the back of his hand. Her skin was so soft. He dragged his finger down the column of her throat to her cleavage.
“Stop trying to distract me and tell me what the other part is,” she groused even as she arched her back to give him more access to her breasts.
He chuckled softly, slightly embarrassed. “Remember when I told you I was kind of a slut before?” She nodded. “Well, there was no ‘kind of’ about it—I pretty much fucked like a rabbit.” He scratched his jaw. “But I always played it safe: no glove, no love.”
“Oh.” Meghan turned over onto her back, pulling away from him, though she left her hand on his chest. “We didn’t use a condom, you know, that night.”
“I know. I pulled out, though.”
“Yeah. I wish you hadn’t.”
His breath caught in his chest. “What are you saying, Meghan?”