Lone Star Blues

by Delores Fossen

  The brainless part of him won out. For the moment anyway. And he dragged Jordan back to him. Good thing he’d kept his hand on her butt because it made it a little easier to get her against him again. She didn’t protest, either, but she did make a little sound of relief—that immediately got trapped with their next kiss.

  Since this was definitely headed in the direction of an orgasm or two, Dylan maneuvered them back to the door. There was no inside lock, which meant anyone could come strolling in for supplies or to pushpin another bingo card into the wall. Best not to have anyone catch Jordan and him filling in one of those squares.

  It wasn’t easy, not with Jordan kissing him and going after his zipper, but he managed to drag a saddle in front of the door to block it. But Jordan had a different notion about what to drag because she pulled him down to the floor. Floors weren’t his specialty, especially wooden ones that could lead to splinters, but his dick was just fine with it.

  So was Jordan.

  Because she pushed him onto his back and straddled him. She was wearing a little cotton dress that he had no trouble pushing up. The panties gave him some trouble, though, but that was mainly because she was trying to get his wallet from his back pocket so she could take out the condom.

  There was a lot of twisting, moving and otherwise grinding of her on his erection. Not good because he wanted this to last more than five seconds. And that’s why Dylan took hold of her hips to steady her. And to steady himself by looking at her.

  Jordan probably didn’t know that she was his Kryptonite and his salvation. Probably didn’t know that she was the benchmark he’d held up to all other women, and those other women had always fallen short.

  No. She didn’t know that. Because at the moment she probably didn’t know much of anything. The fire had her now. Which meant Dylan had her. He knew exactly what to do about that, too. He got on the condom, shimmied off her panties, and he pushed into her.

  Every time he was with her like this he always forgot just how good it could be. Even pity sex, which this might be, still made her the benchmark winner.

  Jordan rode him hard. Fast. And while Dylan was still in the “making it last” mindset, he decided just to let her have her way with him. After all, she was doing a damn good job of getting him off. So Dylan decided to return the favor. Catching onto her hips, he adjusted her just a little so that she was getting the right pressure in the right spot.

  It worked.

  The riding hard turned into a thrust, then a sultry moan, and Jordan would have collapsed against him if Dylan hadn’t held on. He wanted to see her face as he felt her body ripple around him. He managed it, too.

  For a few seconds anyway.

  Before Jordan caused him to ripple right along with her.

  * * *

  JORDAN WAS NOW certain of one thing. She was too old to be having sex on a tack room floor.

  Her knees were bruised and creaky, and somehow she’d wrenched her ankle. It was sore and twinged every time she stepped down on it. Still, that didn’t stop her from chasing Corbin, and therefore Booger, around the yard. With each sprint, though, she was reminded that it would be a while before she got to do this again.

  Dylan obviously felt the same way because he was in the chase game, too, though there really weren’t any rules. Corbin just ran until one of them caught him—which was frequently—so they could get a sloppy kiss.

  Jordan let the running go on for a good ten minutes before she slowed things down by scooping up Corbin and taking him to the back porch. She definitely didn’t want the exertion to trigger an asthma attack for Corbin. And that was another reminder that she needed to talk to Mack about how to give him his meds and drill home the need to never miss a dose.

  “Read to me, Daddy,” Corbin said the moment Dylan’s and his bottoms were in the porch swing. He pulled a book from the basket that Regina had put there for him. There were at least twenty he could choose from, but Corbin always picked the same one—a picture book about horses.

  Dylan motioned for her to sit down next to them, but Jordan shook her head. The view was better from where she was standing. She could take it all in and catalog this moment before the great depression took over. By now, Mack had had plenty of time to take those papers to the jail for Adele to sign.

  She heard the movement behind her and saw Lucian when he stepped into the doorway. Dylan spared him a glance, or rather a glare, but he continued to read to Corbin.

  Jordan also gave Lucian a glare, but her heart wasn’t in it. He’d been thinking of his brother, and she couldn’t fault Lucian a whole bunch for that. Of course, she still expected him to give her an apology, which was likely the reason he’d come out to the porch.

  “Do you know you have hay in your hair?” Lucian asked. He pulled a piece from the back of her head, showed it to her and tossed it into the yard. “Been spending time in the barn with Dylan?”

  Now her heart was in the glare. For a second or two anyway. That was exactly the same sort of thing Lucian would have said to her when Dylan and she were teenagers. Back then, he’d voiced a ton of concern over them getting too involved too fast. Lucian had been right.

  But she had no intention of admitting that to him.

  “Karlee’s not back yet from visiting Adele,” Lucian said a moment later, “but when she gets here, could you tell her I needed to leave for that meeting in Austin?”

  She nodded for the part about telling Karlee, but Jordan shook her head to the visiting Adele part. “Karlee went to the jail?”

  “Yeah, to tell Adele that she was going to help Mack raise Corbin. She figured Adele would be worried about that.”

  She would be. Adele was a screwup, but she loved her son, and Karlee’s assurance would go a long way to helping Adele accept that Corbin’s actual father was going to be the one to raise him. Jordan just kept reminding herself that Adele was far from being the most responsible person and she hadn’t managed to screw up Corbin. Maybe Mack would be the same way. And if not, then she would be their safety net. Dylan, too.

  When Lucian left, Jordan turned to Dylan to see if he’d heard about Karlee’s visit. He had, because he nodded while he continued with Corbin. Even though Dylan had read the same book to him dozens of times, Corbin still continued to hang on every word and picture. And he was still hanging when Regina came onto the porch. She smiled when she saw Dylan and Corbin together, but the smile faded as quickly as it’d come.

  “Mack O’Malley’s here,” Regina said.

  Well, no wonder the smile hadn’t lasted. Worse, Regina glanced at Corbin as if there was something she wanted to say that he shouldn’t hear. Jordan was about to offer to take him inside, but Regina continued.

  “So that you hear it from me and not him, I offered him money so that we could keep Corbin.” Regina managed to sound confident that it’d been the right thing to do.

  It wasn’t.

  Jordan wasn’t sure whose huff was louder, hers or Dylan’s.

  “Mack turned me down,” Regina added.

  That actually made Jordan feel a sliver of relief. Mack wasn’t the sort to let Granger money sway him, and that showed he had some honor.

  “I’ll take Corbin to his room to play while you talk with Mack,” Regina went on. “But I’m not packing his things.”

  There was no need for that. Jordan had already done that along with writing out a note for Corbin’s meds. Still, it wouldn’t hurt for Regina to have some alone time with Corbin while Dylan and she met with Mack.

  Dylan stood, giving Corbin both a kiss and the book, before he handed him off to Regina. He kept his eyes on the boy until Regina and he were out of sight. There was nothing Jordan could say to Dylan to make this less painful so she went with the silliest thing she could think of.

  “We can x out that bingo square about sex in the barn,” she reminded him.

  The c
orner of his mouth lifted. Not even close to that charm-cowboy smile, but it’d do. Later, maybe she could break out a bottle of whiskey for him. Maybe, too, they could tick off more of those boxes. It was a Band-Aid, of course, but it might help them both get through this.

  When they went back into the house, they found Mack pacing in the foyer. He had a large manila envelope in one hand and his cowboy hat in the other. Maybe Regina hadn’t offered him a seat or maybe he’d refused. Either way, he stopped, his gaze immediately connecting with theirs.

  “I know you don’t think much of me,” Mack started before either of them could say anything. “I don’t have a good track record for anything but f-ing up. Hell, I’m just one arrest away from ending up like Adele because I’m on probation right now, too.”

  Jordan hoped he was about to say that was all going to change, that he was going to be the best father he could be to Corbin.

  He didn’t.

  “And that’s why I can’t do this.” Mack’s voice was such a low mumble that at first Jordan wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “I can’t raise Corbin because I’d just mess that up. I can’t do that to the kid.”

  Everything inside Jordan leveled out and got very quiet. Then, the rush of relief came. There was so much of it that her knees nearly buckled. But then something else came. The realization that if Mack wasn’t taking him, then who was?

  Mack handed her the envelope. “That’s the paperwork I had my lawyer draw up. It’s to revoke any parental rights that I have to Corbin.”

  So that meant this was back on Adele’s shoulders. Clearly though, Adele wouldn’t be raising Corbin.

  “Revoking my rights won’t be temporary, either,” Mack went on. “I couldn’t see the sense in me coming back to get him in five or six years from now. By then, he’d be settled wherever he’s going to be settled. I’ll let whoever gets him decide if I should be able to visit him. Not soon, though. I’m taking a job up in Montana.”

  So he’d be out of the picture. Maybe permanently.

  Dylan took out the papers, and both Jordan and he looked at them. Mack had indeed put his signature on them. But Dylan wasn’t celebrating. She wasn’t even sure he was feeling any relief because all of this was still so uncertain. That uncertainty went up even higher when Karlee came rushing in. She looked at her brother, then at Dylan and her.

  “You told them about the papers you signed?” Karlee asked Mack.

  Mack nodded. “How’d you know about them?”

  “Adele. I just came from visiting her.”

  Mack glanced away, shook his head. “Is she mad?”

  “No. She understands and thinks this is for the best.”

  Good. So Adele was on the same page. Now Jordan needed to figure out exactly what page that was.

  “I gotta go,” Mack told his sister.

  He hugged Karlee, slipped his hat back on, and he walked out without even hinting that he wanted to say goodbye to Corbin. Maybe because he thought it would confuse the boy. Or it could be that Mack truly didn’t want any part of fatherhood.

  “Is it true?” Dylan asked Karlee after Mack had left. “Does Adele understand?”

  Karlee’s forehead bunched up. “More or less.”

  Heck, that didn’t sound good. “What does that mean?”

  Karlee’s bunched-up forehead stayed in place, and she added a sigh. “Adele agrees that Mack shouldn’t raise Corbin. She wants Dylan and you to do that, and she’s willing to sign over joint custody. But she has a condition,” Karlee quickly added.

  Jordan had been about to jump for joy, but that nipped a celebration right in the bud.

  “What condition?” Dylan asked, and he sounded just as skeptical as Jordan felt.

  Karlee didn’t simply look skeptical. Her expression was more akin to don’t shoot the messenger. “Adele said that since she came from a messed-up childhood, that she’s decided she doesn’t want Corbin to have the same. She wants him to have ‘normal.’” Karlee put that last word in air quotes.

  “What’s Adele’s condition?” Dylan repeated.

  Karlee hesitated, her face screwing up even more. “Before Adele will give you two joint custody, she wants you to get remarried. And if you don’t agree, then she’ll give Corbin to me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DYLAN WAS NO longer surprised by anything that Adele did—including her latest demand for Jordan and him to remarry.

  But he was pissed off about it.

  Apparently, Jordan took the title of pissed-off champion, though, because as soon as Karlee had told them what Adele had said, Jordan had gotten in her car and headed straight for the jail in San Antonio. Dylan had stayed behind because: a) he figured it wasn’t going to do any good to talk to Adele and b) he wanted to spend what was left of the afternoon taking Corbin out on their favorite horse.

  Dylan wasn’t in the mindset of this might be the last ride or the last evening with the boy he still considered his son. Nope. He was just going to enjoy it. It helped that he knew if Karlee did indeed get custody, that there’d still be plenty more days like this. Even if Corbin didn’t live at the ranch, Karlee would see to it that Jordan and he would spend time with him.

  “Sketti-balls,” Corbin announced when he saw the spaghetti and mini meatballs that Abe had fixed them for dinner.

  Since they actually looked edible, it probably meant either Regina had fixed them or else Abe had picked them up from the diner in town. It was Regina, because she appeared out of the butler’s pantry with some extra napkins. Which would be needed since Corbin tended to be a splasher when it came to pasta sauce and peeing.

  Booger was right on Regina’s heels, but when he trotted to the table, the dog positioned himself beneath Corbin’s chair. Smart. Because Corbin was a food dropper, too.

  “How are you feeling about all of this?” Regina asked him as they sat down to eat.

  “I’m okay. Okay enough,” Dylan added. “You?”

  She gave him a smile, but it came with plenty of uncertainty. “Okay enough.” She paused. “Are Jordan and you going to get m-a-r-r-i-e-d?”

  Dylan wasn’t sure why Regina had spelled out the word married the same way she did when talking about diseases and the mild profanity she used. Maybe because she’d spelled it, it got Corbin’s attention. While sucking a strand of spaghetti into his mouth, he stared at Dylan as if also waiting to hear the answer.

  “N-o,” Dylan answered. He added a wink to Corbin, who was no longer interested in the conversation. The boy turned his attention back to eating.

  “N-o?” Regina questioned. “But why not?”

  The answer to that was so obvious that Dylan didn’t bother with it. Plus, he didn’t want to have to spell out that Jordan and he had already failed at marriage and that he wasn’t going to give in to Adele’s blackmail.

  Even if he’d kind of, semi-wanted to give in to it.

  No way, though, would Jordan jump back into another “I do” with him when she was just trying to get her life back together.

  “But you have feelings for Jordan,” his mom went on. “I know you do because you’ve been s-l-e-e-p-i-n-g with her.”

  No, not sleeping. “We had s-e-x.” In the car, hotel and the barn. There’d been no sleep involved.

  His mother’s mouth tightened a bit so it probably hadn’t been a good idea to confirm the s-e-x with Jordan part. “But that sort of thing can lead to m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e,” Regina pointed out.

  Dylan gave her a flat look. “It can also lead to just more s-e-x.”

  Of course, it could lead to nothing, too. If Karlee had to move Corbin to San Antonio, then Jordan would probably also move there and start a new life. One that would hopefully still involve orgasms with him in whatever new place she chose to live.

  And speaking of orgasm recipients and givers, Jordan walked into the kitchen. She was
sporting the same mouth-tight expression as his mom. Except coming from Jordan, it was just because she’d climbed onto the pissed-off/disappointment wagon with them. It likely meant she’d gotten bad news when she visited Adele.

  Despite the tight mouth, Jordan conjured up a smile for Corbin. “You’re eating sketti-balls.”

  Corbin grinned and nodded. “And spell-y-ing words.”

  That had Jordan volleying glances at Regina and Dylan, probably because she figured if they were spelling things, then they were likely talking about this situation with Adele. Which they had been in a roundabout way.

  Jordan dropped a kiss on the top of Corbin’s head before she motioned for Dylan to go out of the kitchen. Obviously, they needed to talk.

  Dylan sighed and walked out with her, but apparently this chat was going to require them to put some distance between Corbin and them, because she led him into the sunroom. Abe was there, taking a nap, but apparently this wasn’t Jordan’s destination anyway. She went out back, and they started walking. Not toward the barn or the guesthouse but up the road.

  “Adele has lost her flippin’ mind,” Jordan announced.

  Dylan wasn’t certain Adele had ever had a mind to lose, but mentioning that would only delay this discussion. “What did she say?”

  Jordan huffed and kept walking except it was more like a marching pace that included some mumbled profanity and kicking at rocks. “She won’t budge on the marriage demand even though it’s completely unreasonable. She wasn’t married when she was raising Corbin, and there’s no reason for us to be, either.”

  So it sounded as if the visit had accomplished exactly what Dylan thought it would—nothing.

  “What were you and Regina spelling about in the kitchen?” she asked after kicking another rock.

  “S-e-x. Mom apparently believes it leads to marriage.”

  She frowned. “Or more sex.”

  “Yes! That’s exactly what I told her. But I spelled it out because Corbin was there.”