by Nicole Helm
Maybe it should have, but he’d have to explain eventually. Jack was a lot of things, but he was crap for acting. When he was pissed, it showed. Sometimes he could manage to put a blankness over that pissed off, but…he was under no illusions Rose wouldn’t figure out what was going on the second his family appeared.
Might as well explain it to her.
“My brother and his wife are coming to visit with my family. Which I suppose would be normal enough if his wife wasn’t my ex-fiancée and if she hadn’t gotten pregnant by him while we were still engaged.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Well.”
“And apparently, Madison was worried I haven’t moved on.”
“Oh, so I’m a fuck you to your ex.” She flashed that smile. “Sounds like fun.”
Fun. No, it wouldn’t be. Not even a little bit, but at least maybe he could avoid soft-smiled pity and all the shame and fury that went with it. “All I’ll need you to show up for is a dinner or two with my family. Maybe popping up unannounced to, I don’t know…”
“Bring cookies and blow jobs?”
Jack choked on his own spit. His face heated against his will. “I…” But his voice kind of cracked, and he didn’t know what to say when there was an all-too-vivid image of Rose and… Well.
She peered at him. “Are you blushing?”
“No,” he replied, trying to scoff as though the suggestion was laughable, not pathetically true.
“You’re blushing.”
“Men do not blush.”
“And yet you’re embarrassed.” She studied him. “Please tell me you slept through a line of women in eight different countries after you found out.”
Jack crossed his arms over his chest, doing his best to look impassive and intimidating. It didn’t seem to work, damn it.
“Oh no. No. You have slept with other women since then. Please tell me you’re not still all hung up on her.”
“Well, you know, you find out the woman you love got knocked up by your brother in the morning, get half your lower body blown up by a grenade in the afternoon, and sex doesn’t exactly become quite the priority it once was,” he said, his voice flat and hard. Because he’d learned that if you said it like that, flat and hard, people were uncomfortable enough to shut up about it.
She blinked at him, but none of the expected pity ever showed up on her face. Something like relief worked through him.
“Pioneer Spirit. Tonight. Seven o’clock.”
“What? Why?”
She brushed past him and out the bunkhouse door. “We’re going to get you laid, sailor.”
“I don’t… No. No.”
“Don’t be late,” she returned with a wave as she walked purposefully to her car.
“Rose. Rose!” But she was gone, and she’d never explained why he was on the lookout for some potentially dangerous guy at her bar.
Hell.
* * *
Rose surveyed the bar and tried to find the usual feelings that came with the perusal. The power of something of her own. Something only she controlled. Finally.
It was hard to find today, and she didn’t know why. She only knew it pissed her off.
When Jack walked in through the front door, seven o’clock on the dot, something flipped in her stomach.
She could acknowledge it was attraction. She could acknowledge that after the sob story he’d given her this afternoon, the desire to reach out and help him had nearly swallowed her alive. Mostly because she’d been awfully close to offering herself up to Mr. Navy SEAL.
It had been a long time since she’d let a man close enough to see her naked, and mostly she hadn’t been too bent out of shape about that. But the way he’d gotten so flustered over blow jobs had made her a little desperate to see all the ways she could make him blush.
She wasn’t stupid enough to get mixed up in a guy who made her feel a little off-kilter though. Power was everything in a relationship, and Rose worried he’d have her relinquishing hers before she even realized she had.
Better to help him another way. Better to control the situation than let her errant feelings guide her.
So she watched Jack as he threaded through her sparse, Thursday-night crowd of cowboys, ranchers, drunks, and the sons and daughters of all three as though he were something she couldn’t take her eyes off of.
And maybe you can’t.
He strode up to her bar and placed his hands flat on the surface, leaning forward. “For the record, I don’t want to get laid.”
Rose had to press her lips together to keep from laughing at the looks that earned from the men sitting at the bar.
“In my experience, people usually want to get laid—it’s the outside factors that make it difficult.”
“Amen, sister,” said one of the older gentlemen sitting on the line of stools.
Jack’s scowl deepened, and Rose couldn’t hold back a smile. “You’re blushing again, Jack.”
He blew out a frustrated breath, and she handed him two bottles of beer. She nodded over to a table where Felicity Bellamy sat alone.
Rose only knew Felicity peripherally, but the woman who ran Blue Valley’s little general store seemed like the kind of wholesome, upstanding citizen that former Navy SEALs who’d been betrayed by their fiancées could find a few hours of comfort with.
“The woman at the table by herself. Her name’s Felicity. She runs Felicity’s. Offer her a drink. You don’t have to sleep with her. Just go talk to her.”
“Why are you doing this?” he demanded, those ice-blue eyes of his somehow causing her to feel jittery.
Rose Rogers didn’t do jittery.
“Just trying to help you.” She shrugged, looking away from his gaze and wiping down the bar. “I don’t get what the big deal is.”
“The big deal is I said I don’t want help. The big deal is why you of all people would…” He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “You know what? Never mind.” He grabbed the beer and walked over to Felicity’s table.
Rose didn’t need to watch him walk over there, limp and all. She didn’t need to study him sliding into the chair opposite Felicity. And she really didn’t need to watch the redhead smile prettily at Jack.
She’d done her good deed, and now the rest had nothing to do with her.
Maybe every once in a while, she glanced over at their table and, yeah, there was this obnoxious sick feeling in her gut every time either of them were laughing or smiling. That was just something else though, like what she’d felt with Caleb and Delia yesterday. It didn’t have to do with Jack. It was just the feeling that happened when you knew you weren’t going to have something. Sometimes it ached a little.
What was wrong with her? She did not moon, and she did not feel jittery over watching two of her regulars flirt.
Clearly her father being out of jail was messing with her head and her heart. She was worked up and looking for any kind of excuse not to think about that.
Except she’d taken care of things. She couldn’t put the awful man back behind bars, but she could protect herself. On the nights she couldn’t watch the bar diligently to see if he showed to enact a revenge he’d promised when she’d gotten him sent to jail in the first place, she had Jack.
She glanced over at the man in question again. Felicity was laughing at something he’d said, and that was great. They both seemed like people who needed to laugh more, and they were laughing together.
Fantastic.
“You okay, boss?”
Rose glanced at Tonya, who was clearly concerned enough over Rose’s behavior to brave her temper. Which was the only thing that kept it from boiling over.
“I’m fine. I’ve got a bit of a headache, and I’m going to go grab some aspirin. Can you watch things for a few minutes?”
“Got it.”
Rose forced herself to breat
he normally as she left the bar and walked through the back hallway. She glanced around before sliding the panel open and unlocking the hidden door to her apartment and stepping inside. Maybe things were getting a little out of hand. She could admit that much to herself as she crossed the messy, small apartment to her bathroom. She jerked the medicine cabinet open and threw back two aspirin. Then she stood there and looked at herself in the mirror. She did not look like the kick-ass, powerful woman she’d decided to be. She looked scared and stupid.
Rose scowled. Things had been good for about a year and a half now. Really, really good. Her sisters were thriving. Her bar was thriving. Life had felt like life instead of a prison.
So it should have been no surprise that things were getting complicated again. Sure, her father had gotten out of jail a lot earlier than expected, but at least the others were safe. Three of her sisters were in a different state. Delia had Caleb and a slew of Shaws to protect her. Rose was the only one alone, the only one really at risk.
And didn’t she deserve it? After being the favorite for so many years. After courting his favor to avoid the beatings that he’d then pass on to her sisters or mother.
Rose squeezed her eyes shut, clutching the sink. She wasn’t going down this road. She had a bar to run. She needed to get ahold of herself and stop acting like a whiny little girl. She had never been that. She was not going to start now.
She inhaled and exhaled slowly, calmly and forced herself to believe the lies she told herself.
Sometimes, lies were all a girl had.
She moved back through her apartment and exited into the back hallway. She paused only to use her key to lock the dead bolt before sliding the panel over to hide the lock.
“You need to—”
She whirled and, in the same movement, pulled out the knife she kept strapped to her belt loop, always hidden under her shirt.
She might have felt embarrassed at her reaction when it wasn’t some drunk patron or even her father, but Jack’s response was too quick to feel much of anything. His hand clamped onto her wrist, giving her arm a hard jerk that caused her to loosen her grip on the knife against her will.
The knife clattered to the ground, and they both stared at it.
Slowly, his gaze returned to her as hers did to him. He didn’t let go of her wrist, and she didn’t pull her arm away. She simply stared at him.
“Here’s a tip,” he said, his voice an awful rasp that made her heart pinch even as it galloped a crazy beat against her chest. “Don’t pull a knife on a former Navy SEAL.”
“Here’s a tip,” she returned, surprised and annoyed at how breathless she sounded. “Don’t sneak up behind a woman who knows how to protect herself.”
He glanced down at the knife he’d so easily knocked out of her grasp. Few things were as horrifically frightening as how easily he’d disarmed her. She had to remind herself he was military, trained to fend off an attack. That didn’t mean she was a weakling. She had never, ever been a weakling, and she wouldn’t start now.
“Fair enough,” he finally said, reaching down and picking up the knife. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Then don’t lurk outside my apartment.”
He frowned at the door in the wall that you’d only notice if you were looking for it. “You live here?”
“Yes, I live here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a bar to run. And if you’re not out there, and I’m not out there, then no one’s watching the door.” She held out her hand for her knife, but Jack only frowned down at it. “Give me back my knife.”
He didn’t stop frowning, but he did hand her back her knife. She placed it in its little holster and started for the bar.
Jack fell into step behind her. “You owe me an explanation.”
“If you don’t like Felicity, that’s fine. Prefer blonds? Rough-and-tumble cowgirls? Glossy city types?”
He cut in front of her, effectively blocking her return to the bar, this big mountain of a man standing in her hallway like he had a right. Before she could give him a piece of her mind for that, or a piece of her fist, he asked the question she didn’t want to answer.
“Why are you so afraid of this guy?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I am worrying about it. I’m also worried about you toting around a knife that says watch your step.”
“I also have a gun that says come and get it if that helps.”
“It does not.”
“I’m not your responsibility, Jack.” She gestured toward the door behind him. Any other guy, she’d have the knife back out, but she wasn’t so sure she could outmaneuver Jack. How humiliating. Still, she couldn’t let that shame show on her face. She looked up at him, employing her most imperious glare.
“And I’m not yours, but you’re throwing me at women, trying to get me laid. Why is that?”
“You told me a sob story. I offered a fix. It’s what a good bartender does. We want repeat, happy customers. You don’t want any help in the female department, that’s fine. I’ll back off and do my duty as pretend girlfriend, and you’ll do your job as bouncer. Now can I go back to my bar?”
He huffed out a breath and stepped out of her way. As she walked the last few yards to the door between the bar and the hall, she paused.
He wasn’t following her.
She glanced back and saw that he was leaning against the wall, hands shoved in his pockets, looking up at the ceiling.
“It isn’t that simple,” he grumbled.
She shouldn’t prolong this conversation, but he looked so lost. “What isn’t?”
“Women.”
“Oh.” She glanced down at his general crotch region. He had a limp, so he’d been hurt. “You have an…injury?”
He practically jumped away from the wall. “No!” He stopped himself and cleared his throat. “No,” he repeated more calmly. “Everything still works. Jeez. I just…”
“You just what?”
“Don’t need to have this conversation with you. I don’t know why I even opened my mouth.”
“I’m a bartender.”
He laughed humorlessly.
“A lot of times, people tell me stuff because they need to have the conversation, but they don’t have anyone impartial to talk to.”
He was quiet for a long time, still not looking at her.
Rose didn’t move. She barely breathed. Clearly Jack needed to get something off his chest, and that was something she liked about the whole running a bar thing. People came to drown their sorrows. They came to feel better about their lives, to celebrate their successes or nurse their hurts. People came to a bar to deal. Maybe it was a temporary kind of dealing, but she liked being the one who ran the place they came to cope.
“Maybe it’d be good to get it off your chest.” Words she’d never said to anyone. Possibly ever. She did not understand this man’s effect on her at all.
“Maybe it would be, but you have a bar to run, remember?”
She glanced at the door. Yeah, she had things to do. Things that were hers to protect. Jack wasn’t one of those.
So she nodded and went back to her life before she started believing silly fantasies that whispered maybe he could be.
Chapter 5
Jack knew he should head back to the ranch. He definitely shouldn’t drink, and he wasn’t going to talk to Felicity anymore. She was perfectly nice. Plenty pretty and an easy sense of humor that should have made it all simple.
But he didn’t know how to talk to women, and he was tired of all these things that he didn’t know how to do. His entire life lately was thing after thing he didn’t know how to understand or navigate.
Like why was Rose carrying around a knife? Why did she have a gun? She could be a criminal mastermind for all he knew. And yet he’d seen something in her—the fact that she felt she had to
arm herself and the way she’d whirled on him, ready to fight. It all poked and pulled at those instincts that had led him into the navy.
He wanted to help people. He wanted to save people. He wanted to do something important, protect something important. He was strong and he was good and he had wanted to help those who didn’t have what he had.
He’d done that, he supposed. He’d served his country for eight years before he’d been injured irreparably. He’d done good. He’d protected important things.
Now? He was a former sailor with a limp and absolutely no game with women. His only saving grace was the fact that he knew a little bit about cattle, thanks to his uncle’s farm back in Indiana. Jack might have grown up with soybeans and corn, but he wasn’t completely ignorant when it came to this cowboy stuff. So right now, the only thing he understood was cows.
Yeah, he didn’t have it in him to resist ordering another drink—hard liquor this time. Gabe would come pick him up later, no questions asked.
Well, maybe a few questions about Rose, but the kind of questions Jack would be able to pawn off. Doing favors for each other and all that. None of this stuff about worrying over some woman he didn’t know’s well-being.
Nothing about how the whole time he’d spent sitting at a table fumbling through a conversation with Felicity, he’d been thinking about Rose—the way she smiled so sharp and easy. The way she talked as if she never questioned or worried about anything. She seemed so infinitely capable and, God, wasn’t that what he wanted right now? To feel capable of anything.
Jack eyed the small group of guys next to him. Younger. Ranch hands at one of the bigger outfits probably. The asshole next to him had been ranting incessantly for who knew how long.
Well, at least Jack wasn’t that guy.
“I’m telling you, you gotta be firmer with that woman of yours. Women need a firm hand to keep them in line.”
Jack snorted. What a moron.
“You got something to say, buddy?”
It took Jack a few seconds to realize the guy was talking to him. Jack laughed. The stranger was about six inches shorter than him, rangy maybe, but Jack was pretty sure he could have him on the ground in five seconds flat if he felt like fighting.