by Gigi Moore
“Well, sure. You’ve missed her as much as I have.”
“Eighteen years, Jax.”
“Don’t tell me you’re still mad about her leaving.”
“She deserted us, deserted the family, the ranch.”
“She had her life to live.”
But we needed her.
Jess wanted to shout the words, but like everything else that bothered him, he bottled up his feelings and just bit his tongue. Not that bottling up his feelings and biting his tongue had ever done a lick of good when he dealt with Jax. Jax lived in his head and his heart, always knew when something bothered him.
Jax put an arm around his shoulder now as they made their way to Clipper. “Besides, we turned out all right without her, didn’t we?”
“I don’t know,” Jess murmured. “Did we?”
“Jess—”
“I’ll be all right. It’s just that I can’t take her coming back as lightly as you.”
“You’ve got to let go of the baggage, Jess. It’s only weighing you down. And you with your stern, uptight ways are the last person in the world who needs extra weight on his shoulders.”
Jess gritted his teeth. “I’m not uptight.”
“Tell that to someone who doesn’t know you.” Jax laughed and slapped his brother on the back. “So when is she arriving?”
“I’m on my way to the airport now to pick her up.”
“Well, shucks, that doesn’t give us much time to prepare, does it?”
“Prepare for what?”
“Our Tamara’s homecoming.”
Jess shook his head then untied Clipper from the post. He put his left foot in the stirrup, and swung up onto and mounted his horse. He looked down at his brother standing beside Clipper with a hand on the animal’s rump. “Don’t do anything elaborate, Jax, if you do anything at all. You do have your duties.”
“And we wouldn’t want her to get the idea that she’s welcome.”
Jess scowled, knowing his disapproval would have little to no effect on his brother. Jax would listen to what he had to say, then go out and do what he wanted to. It had always been this way between them. Hell, Jax did the same thing with their dad. He’d listen to the old man’s sage advice, and what he didn’t agree with, he’d just ignore or toss out and use what was left over.
Jess supposed this way the best way to be in order to get along in life stress-free, not worrying about the consequences of your actions or what people thought of you, or what you did in life. He didn’t have that luxury, and wouldn’t allow himself the luxury. Too many people counted on him to make the right decisions for his family and the employees of the ranch as a profit-making business.
“Go get ready for your next show.”
Jax snapped to attention and gave Jess a crisp salute. “Aye-aye, sir!”
Jess chuckled and kicked Clipper into gear. He took off toward the ranch proper.
He needed to retrieve his truck and get to the airport before Tamara’s flight landed. He didn’t want to keep her waiting, although the idea of picking her up on Clipper held a twisted and vicious sort of appeal for him. He could just imagine the look on her face, and could feel her sliding behind him on his mount, having to cling to him for purchase.
He wondered how long it had been since she’d been riding, how long since she’d had a big, powerful beast like Clipper between her legs.
Jess pulled up on the reins and brought Clipper to an abrupt halt. He tried to gather himself. Perspiration dotted his upper lip and forehead, and he was near panting at the thought of Tamara leaning against him. He imagined her arms wrapped around his waist, palms sliding up to his chest as Clipper bore their weight and galloped through the outermost forests and acres of The Double R.
He took several deep breaths and closed his eyes against the vision. The idea of sharing Tamara’s backside with Clipper was enough to breathe life into his green-eyed monster and make Jess hard as a steel rod.
Where all this horniness and sense of possessiveness came from, Jess couldn’t say. Tamara had been gone eighteen years, more than enough time for him to have gotten over any residual puppy love he’d fostered for her as a kid, especially considering that they had never had a romantic relationship what with him being nine and Tamara being over eighteen when she’d left. Talk about jailbait. The authorities would have put her not in jail, but under it for even thinking about him in that way. But as the years past it didn’t stop him from thinking of Tamara in that way. In fact, the more time went by, the more he wanted her.
Other boys had had Playboy and Penthouse growing up. Jess had had recollections and photos of Tamara. Maybe if he hadn’t obsessed over his memories and pictures of her pretty much from the moment she’d left until now he wouldn’t be working himself up into such a frigging lather.
He remembered the first and only time he had seen her naked breasts.
Even back then she’d been a walking wet dream, curvy and lush, her skin a flawless, smooth caramel-brown that glimmered beneath the dim lighting in the barn.
He’d never seen naked breasts before then, but couldn’t imagine any other woman’s breasts being as perfect as Tamara Carpenter’s. Even at his tender years, Jess wondered what it would be like to touch them, taste them. In fact, he had gotten his first ever erection lying prone among the earthy scents of hay and horses dreaming about nestling his face against them.
Jess had gasped as he watched Noah Frost, the ranch’s only black wrangler, tenderly kiss Tamara’s breasts. He’d snickered with Jax, and thought the whole display just generally icky, but something deep down, below the childish fun and games stirred to life inside him.
Tamara belonged to him and Jax—always had, always would.
By the time Bailey burst into the barn with steam coming out of his ears and the dust had settled completely, Noah had been fired and Tamara had been grounded for the rest of that summer before her final embittered departure to New York.
Even through his own distress, Jess had seen that Tamara had been distraught too, and so distant from everyone she cared about that she didn’t belong to anyone anymore, not even the boys on which she doted from when they’d just gotten out of diapers.
When Jess considered the conditions under which she had left, he wondered why she bothered to come back at all.
What had his father told her?
Jess opened his eyes and squared his shoulders as if preparing to face a firing squad. What he was about to do was far more damaging, however, and dangerous to his cool and libido than several well-aimed bullets would ever be to his body.
He geared up to face the embodiment of all his unfulfilled desires.
Chapter 2
“So you went ahead and done it, huh?”
“Well, afternoon to you too, boy.”
Jax chuckled and finished stomping the mud off his boots. He took them off and placed them on a nearby rack across the room from where his father took a freshly laundered pile of whites from the washing machine to put into the drier before their housekeeper, Maria could.
Marie came up short in the doorway several seconds later, looked at Jax, and sighed and rolled her eyes before throwing up her hands. “Ay, I give up. He does not listen to me.” She shook her head, leaving the mudroom an irate trail of Spanish sentences in her wake.
“Pop, I told you Maria gets upset when you do her work for her.”
“I’m not the one who hired her.”
“We did it to give you a break and more freedom to do other things you wanted to do.”
The man acted as if they had gone out and smuggled Maria over the border and onto the ranch without his knowledge, and that she hadn’t been living and working at the main house for the last several years. Lucky for Jax and Jess that most of the time she didn’t pay any attention to their father’s orneriness and came well equipped and willing to put up with a stubborn old rancher’s idiosyncrasies. If memory served Jax correctly, this might have been the exact wording he and Jess had included in the Help Wanted ad t
hey’d placed. Maria Consuelos had been a godsend when she’d showed up on their doorstep, responding to the ad with references as long as their arms and a willingness and readiness to start as soon as possible.
Jax knew the real problem and he and Jess had assured their dad that they did not try to hook him up and replace their mom. Having Maria around made sense and freed up not just Pop’s time, but had freed up his and Jess’s time to attend university, work at the ranch between classes and commuting and still have a life in between. Pop entrenched himself in his ways so deep, he couldn’t see things clearly, not that Jax would ever tell the ol’ man that to his face.
“I ain’t never too busy to do a lousy load of laundry,” his father now groused.
“Yeah, but if you could be out fishing at the pond or riding, wouldn’t you rather be?” Jax closed the space between them and gave his father’s shoulders a firm massage before passing him to go into the kitchen.
“Don’t sass me, boy. I ain’t old or infirmed and you ain’t too old for me to take a switch to your hide either.”
“Don’t I know it,” Jax murmured then opened the fridge to see what there was to eat. He felt his father standing nearby, ol’ man probably expecting more lip. He found some of Maria’s famous roast beef leftover from a couple of nights ago, removed the platter from the fridge and put it on the solid cherry island top. He retrieved the jar of mayo, half a head of lettuce, a tomato, loaf of whole wheat bread, a carving knife, and prepared to make a sandwich. Jax glanced up at his father as he took a seat at the island. “You want one?”
“Naw. I had a sandwich a littler earlier.”
Jax nodded and carved into the rare, succulent meat. “That Maria makes a mean roast.”
“It’ll do.”
Jax stopped carving to look up at his father. “Not as good as Mama’s, huh?”
“Couldn’t too many women compete with your mama in the kitchen.”
Jax would hazard to guess that not too many women could compete with her in other areas of the house either.
He loved hearing all the romantic tales about his mama and daddy meeting and the happiness they’d shared in the several years that they’d been married. They hadn’t had nearly enough time together. Heck, Mama had been dead now longer than she and Pop had been married, and after twenty-three years, not a day went by that his father didn’t mention her.
Jax hated seeing the old man all torn up after all these years and had been tempted on several occasions to fix him up with a couple of nice older women he knew in the area. He knew for a fact the ranch’s cook, Helena Quarry, had a particular hankering for his pop, and Jax thought it high time his dad threw his hat back in the ring. But the last time he or Jess had brought up the issue of him dating, the old man pitched a hissy-fit saying Paula Pines had been the only woman for him, and if he couldn’t have the real thing, he didn’t want nothing.
Jax half-suspected his brother felt the same way about Tamara and this was why he rarely went out or dated. He guessed Jess didn’t think there was anyone else out there to compete with the memory of a woman who had been out of his life longer than she had been in it.
Jess and their dad had far more in common than either of them would admit, least of all the mile long and wide stubborn streak they both had. The two of them forever locked horns, usually about ranch operations, especially Jess’s plans for expansion and modernization and his ambition to keep The Double R competitive into the 21st century and beyond.
Jax usually played the buffer and go-between during these entertaining and loud differences-of-opinions. But he suspected when it came to women and relationships, Jess and the ol’ man agreed like two pickpockets at a country fair.
Now Jax, he admitted to hedonistic tendencies and claimed to be a connoisseur when it came to the female form. He also liked variety and frequency in his couplings and wasn’t about to get tied down by any one woman. He didn’t search for everlasting love as much as he searched for the ultimate physical satisfaction.
Jax now slathered mayo on both pieces of bread then placed the thinly-sliced pile of roast beef, lettuce and tomato wedges on one slice. He slapped the other piece down onto the robust mound of food before cutting the sandwich in half. “So you called Tamara.”
Pop folded his arms across his chest. “An’ I ain’t apologizin’for it either.”
Jax didn’t say anything, just lifted one half of the sandwich to his mouth and took a hearty bite. Still chewing, he went back to the fridge to grab the gallon container of milk off the top shelf and brought it back to the island. His father passed him a glass from one of the overhead cupboards and silently stood by as Jax filled the glass and took a gulp.
“The gal needs to bury the hatchet with her daddy. It’s way past time.”
“And his being your oldest friend has nothing to do with it.”
“Of course it does!” Pop threw up his hands and began to pace. “But that gal has been like a daughter to me since she barely got out of training pants. I ain’t giving up on her just ’cause she done gone to some hotsy-ditty college and become a highfalutin’ pettifogger.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, Pop?” Jax got the glower he expected at his sarcasm and knew he worked his dad’s reserve nerve with his lip, but he couldn’t help it. He’d always been a smart mouth and a daredevil. And more times than not had to turn to Jess to get him out of one tight spot or another. “Pop, how do you think she’s going to feel when she finds out that Bailey only has a broken leg and isn’t a paraplegic?”
Jeremiah stopped his pacing and arched a brow. “I never said he was a paraplegic.”
“I bet you made his injury sound worse than it is though. I know you, ol’ man.”
“Don’t ol’ man me. Besides, the stubborn ol’ coot needed someone to grab the bull by the horns and stop beatin’ the devil around the stump. I just done him a favor contactin’ the gal.”
“Ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black?” Jax said, just addressing the stubborn ol’ coot part since he was pretty much at sea about most of the rest of what his father had fired off. The man had some colorful, favorite, old western lingo and sayings he liked to throw around, but every now and again he pulled a new one out of his bag of tricks that not even Bailey or any of the other old cowboys on the ranch knew.
Pop’s hand now swept out to playfully cuff Jax upside the head. “Generally, you ain’t learnin’ nothin’ when your mouth’s a-jawin’.”
“I’m a-listening.”
Pop forked a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and sighed in obvious frustration. “Aw hell, I just miss the gal. We all do. Some of us are just too stubborn and pigheaded to admit it. What’s the harm in askin’ her to come back to the homestead where she belongs?”
“Pop, I know how you feel about her. We all feel the same way. But you can’t make her want to be here. If she’s just coming out of an obligation, she’s not going to stay long.”
“Hmm, we’ll see about that,” Jeremiah mumbled and took the seat across from Jax.
Jax looked at him over the island, wondering what the wily old man had up his sleeve.
Did he plan to hog-tie and keep Tamara a prisoner in the basement or something? What other kind of plans could he possibly have that would make her stay longer than the hot minute it would take her to find out she had been hornswoggled?
Not that he complained any. He couldn’t have been happier to have Tamara back at the ranch and couldn’t wait to see her live and in the flesh and not just in the annual snapshots she sent in her Christmas cards. Granted, in the absence of a partner—a rarity for him—her pictures unfailingly guided him to satisfactory release during his sessions of five-fingered amore. But nothing like the real thing could give a man wet dreams fine as cream gravy.
The more he thought about it the harder and more anxious he got at the idea of being reunited with Tamara after so long.
Truthfully, he hadn’t ever expected this day to come, not after the bi
tter falling-out she had had with her daddy. Those two had gone at each other worse than a cobra and a mongoose, and despite Tamara’s being eighteen, she had stood toe-to-toe with her daddy and argued with him word for word. But then she’d always been headstrong and smart and knew exactly what she wanted. She’d talked about becoming a lawyer from as far back as Jax could remember and darned if she hadn’t gone out to the big city and realized her dream.
She hadn’t been like him who’d busted up his knee on the football field senior year and never got to play a game of pro ball a day in his life the way he had planned.
Pop always said people made plans and God just laughed. Well, God had hooted it up right and proper the evening a two-hundred-fifty-pound bruiser clobbered him during a brutally stunning play in the last minutes of ColoradoStateUniversity’s final home game. He’d caught the ball two yards short of the end zone to bring the Rams that much closer to winning the game, but he paid a price.
Jax heard the pop even before he felt his knee give out and knew his time had run out and along with the season, all his hopes and dreams of a career in the NFL were over. He’d had to sit in the stands looking much like Bailey did now, leg in a cast to his thigh and crutches at his side as he watched his teammates bring home the state championship without him.
Jax closed his eyes and swallowed hard before he totally choked up and his father noticed anything off-kilter with him. He couldn’t talk to his father about what he’d lost. To his pop, football wasn’t an honorable, real job. To his pop, a man played football for fun, before he settled down into what he came on this earth bred to do for life. And according to his pop, Jax had been born and bred to be a cowboy and a rancher. Pop had a little more respect and tolerance for the rodeo circuit over football, but not much, mostly because the latter had taken Jax away from the ranch when he’d taken it up after getting out of college.
“…hear what I said, boy?”
Jax shook his head, focused on his father standing in the middle of the kitchen as he brought the second half of his sandwich to his mouth and took a bite.