Their first time was burned in his memory for good. He was ready for a second time. And a third.
“I’M AFRAID MY FAMILY NEEDS me and I’m letting them down. Again. That’s my modus operandi.”
Buck hadn’t planned to spill his guts to Matthew. The man certainly hadn’t asked him for that plaintive, pathetic outburst when he accidentally bumped into Buck. But that’s what happened when a socially inept reformed drunk is asked, “How’s it going?” by a friendly, kindhearted soul.
“Ah. You’re there, my friend. You’ve arrived.”
Buck shook his head. “What? Where?”
“Your happy place.”
Buck laughed out loud. “You weren’t listening, Matthew. I’m not happy. I’m a miserable, self-serving screwup and there’s a good chance I’m screwing up again simply by being here.”
Matthew took a step closer, his smile unchanged. He pressed his hand flat against Buck’s chest, directly above his heart. “I meant the inner you has arrived,” he explained. “When you came here, you were outwardly calm and composed, albeit somewhat sad and serious. You were looking for answers from outside, but the real answers you sought were tucked deep inside. And now you’ve found them.”
Buck pulled back, horrified. “The answer is I’m a self-serving screwup?”
Matthew shook his head, his smile even bigger. “No. Your answer is you care about your family so much you’d leave this place of safety and dive into their lives to try to help. Does that sound self-serving, Buck?”
No. He had to admit it didn’t.
“Wait, my friend. Sleep on it. Your family is learning to navigate without you. We both know that is a reality that will face them someday. Just as you’ve been teaching yourself how to live without them, without their worries, their needs and demands on your energy. We all learn in different ways, Buck. But time is by far the best teacher.”
Buck took a deep breath. He felt calmer now. Almost as if a veil of grace had fallen over him. Matthew was right. Buck wasn’t there, yet. He needed to stay until he truly understood that his happy place would be a part of him forever.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I DON’T THINK I LIKE Plan A,” Jessie said, looking at Cade from across the table. He’d cooked them two of the buffalo burgers Kat had dropped off for the barbecue he was no longer hosting.
“Why?”
“It’s boring. And it depends on someone else acting first. I hate to wait. I can’t simply sit around waiting for Zane to show up and try to kill me, Cade. That’s not my style.”
“Well, then, what do you suggest as a Plan B?”
“What if we call him out, so to speak, on a couple of the social-networking sites? We both agree the man is ego personified. I could put the clip of the video Remy took and tell everyone that the person who tried to hurt me failed.”
“Do you really think he’s spending a lot of time online at the moment? I’m not knocking your idea—trust me, I’m not wild about feeling trapped in my own home—but I think he’s smart enough not to burst in here because his feelings are bruised. The guy might be obsessive, but he’s not dumb, right?”
She drummed her fingers on the countertop. “Not by a long shot. Which is partly why I’m so confused. I mean, until he messed with Yota, which made everybody realize my car could have reacted exactly like my rollover, he’d basically gotten away with trying to kill me. Why? We don’t know. But everybody called it an accident and most people were happy to blame my driving ability. The whole thing would have gone away—even if I’d been killed. With the climbing tower, he still could have talked his way out of any charge if he’d stuck around. But now everybody is looking at him as a suspect. If he somehow manages to outsmart us, I might get hurt or be killed, but he’s going down, too. How could he possibly expect to get away with this?”
Cade shook his head. “I don’t think he cares anymore. Sometimes you reach a point where you have to win—at any cost.”
“By win, do you mean successfully kill me?”
He threw out his hands. “If that’s his goal. Maybe he planned to disable Yota so he could snatch you. He might even have settled for Remy if Mac hadn’t stopped to help her.”
Jessie pushed her plate away. “This was good. Thank you, but I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.”
He rose to carry their plates to the sink. She needed to pace. That’s how she worked out things that were troubling her, but the yoga had been taxing enough on her ankle. She’d had to ice it again before dinner.
She took a sip of wine. The light fruity taste was refreshing. “What if I died? Very publicly? Very theatrically.”
The plate in his hand clattered to the counter. “I beg your pardon?”
“It was Remy’s idea. She told me she had a dream last night that I was on fire.” She spotted the look of abject horror on his face and quickly added, “It’s okay. I was fine. She said she knew it was a stunt. There was a crew around me to put out the flames. I pretended to limp. I fell and it looked as though I died, but, of course, I didn’t.”
He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“I think I should leave. Fly home. I have friends in the business. People who would help me create this stunt and release the clip and—” She stopped. “Bad idea, huh?”
“Yeah. And the answer is no. If he sees you leave, he’ll follow. I don’t want to see what this guy will do if he decides to improvise.”
She gave him that point, but Remy’s dream had bothered her on several levels. Fire was not her friend and she didn’t want to think what might happen if Zane decided to smoke them out—literally. “I couldn’t live with the guilt if you lost this beautiful home because of me.”
He wiped his hands on a towel, then walked to her chair. “Jessie, you don’t have to prove to me how brave you are by facing your worst fear. I’d let him set fire to every freaking building on this ranch before I’d put you through that.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“But I am.” He took her hand. “I’m afraid of losing you…”
The words held an import Jessie was terrified to examine too closely. She pulled her hand free. “Well, then, what do you suggest?”
“I think we should go to the movies.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What?”
He picked up a newspaper that she’d seen lying on the counter. “What do you prefer? Chick flick or action adventure?” He gave her a wry look. “No-brainer, huh?”
“We can’t just—”
He lowered the paper. “Live our lives? Why not? The guy is a cowardly opportunist. You’re his obsession. You, Jessie. Nobody else. He’s not going to blow up a crowded theater just because you’re inside it.”
She had to admit he had a point. So far, all of the bad things that had happened were focused entirely on her. She was the only one who got hurt. Even when he booby trapped Yota, he’d admitted that he’d gotten the wrong twin by mistake. “Does this mean you’re asking me on a date?”
“Yeah. I guess it does.”
Jessie snatched the paper out of his hands. “Chick flick? Please. I’m an animated-kids’-movie kind of girl. Don’t you know anything?”
He was too startled by her quicksilver change of heart to laugh but his own heart did that funny leaping thing he was beginning to associate strictly with her. That’s when it hit him.
I love her.
He swallowed hard. The rational part of his brain was shouting, “Too soon.” But a far more fatalistic side—maybe the young boy who would cradle baby Kat in his arms when the fighting and hollering got too much—knew love didn’t ask permission or make logical, time-sensitive choices. Love happened.
He hadn’t expected to love Kat—the child his father seemed to adore above his other three children—but he did. He hadn’t expected to love and marry Faith, but once she flashed that Look out, cowboy, here I am smile his way, he was a goner. And now he was in love with Jessie.
He’d told his father he was head over heels a
few days earlier. How odd, he thought, sharing that private thought with a man he didn’t trust when he hadn’t even admitted the truth to himself.
“Damn,” he muttered.
She looked at him. “I’m teasing. I’m actually not that picky. I like most movies. It doesn’t even have to be great. Just keep me entertained for a hundred and twenty minutes and I’m a happy camper. But animated movies are my favorite. And there’s a new one playing that I’ve been dying to see.” She snickered. “No pun intended.”
She flattened the paper and nudged the Entertainment section closer to Cade, pointing to a familiar logo with her finger. “And it’s even playing in Spearfish. Here are the times.”
She looked so hopeful. So real.
“Let’s go. I’ll set the alarm and let the boys in the gatehouse know when we’re coming back so they don’t shoot first and ask questions later.”
“IT’S OKAY. REALLY,” JESSIE SAID the moment they’d cleared the lobby of the theater. “Don’t be embarrassed.”
Cade blinked against the setting sun as the hundred or so small children who had shared the theater with them swept past like shiny fish avoiding two large rocks in the stream.
“It was a kids’ movie,” he said, his tone genuinely perplexed. “Nobody is supposed to cry in kids’ movies.”
She’d been incredibly touched when she spotted him brushing away a tear at one point in the movie. Touched and a little envious. “Somebody told me modern production companies realize they can’t make enough on ticket sales to kids alone, so they layer in subliminal story lines for adults. Humor that an eight-year-old misses makes you and me laugh out loud.”
He nodded.
“Same with the heart-tugging stuff. There’s always some aspect of the script that gets you. Right here,” she said, tapping the center of his chest.
“Is that a slam?” His eyes were narrowed but she could tell he wasn’t any more serious than she was. She felt relaxed. And strangely content.
“No. It was a joke. Remy always cries in G-rated movies, too.”
“But not you.”
She cried. On the inside. And in a darkened theater she didn’t have to worry about her feelings showing on her face. The rest of the time she had to be strong—for Mama’s sake.
Weird. Where did that thought come from?
“Are you okay? Seriously. You still look a little blue.”
“No, I’m good. Let’s go home.”
Home? That didn’t sound right, but she decided not to correct herself. The ranch was his home. And hers…for the moment. And even while she’d enjoyed the escapism of the movie, she’d spent a good portion of the time worrying that Zane had found his way past the guards, dismantled the alarm with some techno-gadget lifted from some recently filmed spy movie, and was now lying in wait.
It was pitch-black by the time they got home. Watching Cade get out of the truck to talk to the guard at the gate made her feel safer than she’d ever felt in her life. She didn’t understand the feeling, given the uncertainty of their current situation, but she liked it. She also liked Cade. A lot.
Liar.
The voice—hers? Or her sister’s? She couldn’t be sure—did not lie. What she was feeling was a whole lot more than like. There was a good chance she was in love with him, but how could she know for sure? Her mother’s problematic, convoluted love life was at least three chapters short of a romance novel, according to Remy. What chance do I have of getting this right?
And her mother wasn’t the only one who never seemed to pick the right guy. Bing was on hubby number two. Bossy had been married forever to the same guy but, according to Remy, he strayed and she stayed. No one could figure out why. Rita had so many kids she couldn’t leave her husband. They seemed to have an okay life, but was that love? Jessie simply didn’t know.
Even poor Remy, who believed in love wholeheartedly, couldn’t be considered a poster child for that elusive destination known as Happily Ever After. The boy she’d loved with all her heart had been lost to her forever thanks to their mother’s careless ways. Love was scarier than any stunt Jessie had ever tried.
If what she felt for Cade was love, it didn’t match any of the goofy descriptions her sisters used to describe the word. It sure as hell didn’t originate in her heart; it seemed to come from deep in her bones and grow in intensity the more she was with him.
Yes, she liked the person he was—strong, genuine and focused on what counted most. Family. Integrity. But like was the pretty words on the outside of a greeting card. Love was the juicy, heartfelt, handwritten scribbles on the inside. Real. Kind. Fearless. Heroic. Good. Humble.
He embodied all those things and she was starting to realize those were things she’d always secretly craved but had been too afraid to acknowledge as possible to find in a mate.
“No sign of trouble,” he said, getting into the truck. “We checked in with the other sentries and they all said the same thing. Maybe Zane decided to sit this one out.”
“I hope so, for everyone’s sake. I really feel stupid about bringing all this drama and expense into your life. I’ll pay you back.”
He didn’t speak until he pulled to a stop at the end of the driveway and he’d turned off the engine. Then he turned to loop one arm across the back of the seat and face her. The motion-sensor light above the garage doors had come on, but for some reason he’d decided not to park the truck inside.
“Let’s get something clear,” he said. “This is my fight, too. This asshole brought his agenda to me and mine. My home. My employees. My daughter. And my woman.”
“I’m your woman?” She tried to laugh. “That’s a bit old-fashioned. Or should I say Old West?”
He shrugged. “You can say anything you want. I won’t apologize for being politically incorrect. You’re a woman in my life who I care about a great deal.” He paused. “Oh, hell, I might as well put this out there. I love you, Jessie Bouchard. I’m sorry if that freaks you out or scares you away and you split tomorrow, but I—”
She cut him off midsentence by throwing herself into his arms, her lips pressed to his. The kiss started out messy and awkward because she’d forgotten to undo her seat belt, but only for a second—until he reached between them and released the latch. Then his arms closed around her and he pulled her tight against his chest. They both were breathing hard—as if they’d been racing from opposite ends of a football field to meet at the fifty-yard line.
“This is new territory for me. I feel like I’m in the middle of a dangerous stunt with no script and no net. I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know what will happen next, but…”
His low, sexy chuckle made a zing of desire trip-wire through her body. “I can answer that. I know what, when and where.”
“You do?”
He opened the door and got out. She didn’t want to be separated from him even for the amount of time and space it would take for him to walk around the truck, so she climbed over the console and slid across his seat to drop to her feet beside him. “What?”
He kissed her again, one hand pressing against her low back. There was no missing his arousal. “This.”
“When?”
He scooped her into his arms and closed the door with his heel. “Now.”
So much for me hating to be carried, she thought, using the proximity to outline his ear with her tongue. “Now is good.”
They entered the house through the side door. He set her down when the alarm system started beeping but lingered long enough to kiss her—hard, wet and full of promise.
He quickly punched in the code then turned to her. “Where were we? Oh, yes.” He dipped down to pick her up but she stopped him with a hand pressed flat against his chest.
“You lead. I’ll follow. I’d rather you saved your strength for what I have in mind.”
He grabbed her hand and led the way through the kitchen to the stairs, pausing so Jessie could hang up her backpack on a hook by the door. As they climbed the stairs, Jessie
inhaled deeply, tasting each and every scent as a confirmation that she was home. Truly home.
He paused at the tops of stairs to kiss her again. “This isn’t going to be like the last time, Jessie. No hiding out in the dark. There will be lights. Candles at the very least.”
She lifted her chin, determined not to show fear. “I’m okay with lights, but no candles.”
His expression turned pained. “Sorry. That was—”
She put her finger to his lips. “Candles are distracting. You have to remember to blow them out. I want to focus completely on us. Nothing else. No past. No crazy lunatics. No worries.”
She hoped. Perfection was something to strive for, right?
His smile was all Cade. It lit up his vibrant blue eyes and made her heart expand in a way she’d never felt before. “Okay.” He turned toward the master bedroom but stopped. “Oh. And there will be a bed. Did I mention that?”
She laughed. “I like beds. So, stop talking. Let’s do this.”
This, Cade thought later, turned out to be so much more than he’d pictured it being. This was new, novel and life-changing because the woman making love with him was a different Jessie. A Jessie who felt comfortable enough to ignore her scars, who trusted him enough to play.
“First one naked gets to pick the position,” she said, slipping under his arm like a minnow the moment he opened the door to his room.
He stood, arms akimbo, shaking his head. “Are you always competitive in everything you do?”
She wiggled out of her shorts and kicked them aside. “Always.” Next, she stripped off her shirt. Facing him in her bra and panties, she put her hands on her hips, too. “Does that scare you?”
He let out a hoot and starting pulled off his clothes—to hell with the buttons. “Petrified. Wanna feel?”
She let out a squeal and sprang to the bed like a gazelle—or a gymnast. But after a couple of uneven bounces, she dropped to her knees. Somehow she managed to lose her underwear in the process, making him the half-dressed loser. But Cade could honestly say he’d never felt more like a winner.
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