by Lilian Darcy
As if she’d been in any doubt.
“I’ll marry you, Tegan,” he said.
Off-hand, but faking it.
Hiding something. Hiding his concern for Chet.
Or just slurred from beer.
Pretending to be slurred from beer? Tegan tried to think how many he’d actually had, but couldn’t. Still, it suddenly seemed to her, looking back, that maybe he quite often pretended to have drunk more than he really had, when he and Chet were together.
Why would he do that?
In his new position, legs extended and crossed, elbow on the hard armrest of the plastic chair, she could see the bulge of a nice-looking, denim-clad package at his crotch. It was only the way he was sitting. It wasn’t the old Mae West scenario - Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
“You’re drunk, Jamie,” Chet pointed out to him, gathering himself to speak at last.
Tegan knew it was Chet himself who deserved that accusation. He was staring at Jamie out of those baleful, red-veined, bull-like eyes with an intensity of focus that suggested he needed to fix his gaze on a solid object in order to stop himself from falling over or throwing up.
Jamie didn’t deny his friend’s accusation. “Yeah, but I mean it.”
He shifted again, sitting up and leaning forward, and this time it was his upper body that was on show, hard brown forearms below the half-rolled sleeves of his shirt. Unbuttoned neck of the shirt gaping so that Tegan could see inside, down to the start of the sprinkled dark hair on his chest. He wasn’t the kind of guy who waxed.
She felt irritated with herself, and with Jamie, for the fact that she so often noticed these things about him. It had been getting worse lately, too. She hated it. Maybe she should have stopped at one beer.
“Everybody means everything when they’re drunk,” Chet said.
“You had your chance, buddy, and you ditched her at the altar,” Jamie told him. “Now it’s my turn.” He didn’t mean that at all. He was saying this to help Chet, but he was on the wrong track, there.
Dean Davis laughed. “Jamie, everybody knows Tegan can’t stand you… Why the hell would she marry you?”
Exactly.
“Because she needs a green card.”
“…And you can’t stand her.”
“And my buddy Chet let her down, and he’s feeling bad about it, so I’m gonna help both of them out, by stepping in. It’s not personal. It’s not because I like her.” He seemed utterly scornful of the possibility.
As well he might be. Tegan was scornful, too.
“Don’t need that kind of help,” Chet said. “Don’t want it. That’s not what I want from you, Jamie.” He seemed to be trying to say something deeper with the words, and to feel that Jamie wasn’t getting it.
Somehow, everything felt really weird. Jamie was still looking at Tegan and there was a feeling between them that had never been there before.
Or, okay, not never.
But she’d never been in any danger of giving in to it before, or of letting it take hold. Now, for the very first time in nearly two years of knowing him, she stopped thinking about how much she disliked him, and surrendered to those other thoughts, the much less comfortable ones, about the things she tried not to see.
Jamie’s outdoor tan. That bulge in the denim crotch of his jeans. The veiled light in his blue eyes. The way he smelled, like well-kept leather and clean male, freshened up with some shaving product, no doubt slapped haphazardly in place.
She thought about his mouth, and the way it was so neat and smooth, with lips that were neither fat nor thin but just right. And there was the way he moved on a horse, and the way he moved on the ground. The way he laughed, not when he’d had a drink or three, but during the day, leaning on a rail and watching riders and bulls, or the queen of the rodeo galloping through the arena.
I must be drunk, too, Tegan thought. But I can’t be, because I’ve only had two beers in three hours.
She thought about his words, and the way they weren’t stupid tonight but were actually the right words. I’ll marry you, Tegan.
Weird. Did this mean at some level she trusted him, then, even though she didn’t like him?
Maybe she did like some things about him. He was an incredibly loyal friend to all sorts of people - fellow saddle-bronc rider Dawson O’Dell, pickup guys like Mase Green and Grady Hannay. He was good to his horses. He looked after the rodeo newcomers. Twice, she’d seen him talk a green and terrified rider out of accepting a dangerous animal to ride, full of gruff kindness and understanding.
And he was giving her another option, at least.
Even though she had no intention of agreeing to it, because yeah, everyone did mean everything when they were drunk, and in the morning Jamie would be appalled, and any green card marriage plan between the two of them wouldn’t even get as far as hers and Chet’s had done.
So she met Jamie’s blue-eyed gaze full on and shook her head slowly. “Sorry, Jamie. But thanks anyway.”
He looked right back at her, steady and serious, eyes in shadow now, fingers laced together so he could click his thumbnails back and forth, although she didn’t think he knew that he was doing it. He didn’t argue her rejection, but all the same she had the spooky, intuitive feeling that they weren’t anywhere near done with the subject yet.
CHAPTER FOUR
Chet was facing the wall, a motionless lump under a blanket on the lower bunk of the trailer’s living area. Jamie didn’t pay any special attention to being quiet as he moved around getting dressed and gulping some water, because it was already seven in the morning and the horses were overdue for their breakfast. Chet should wake up.
But he didn’t stir, despite Jamie’s noise, and in the end Jamie shrugged and left him to sleep. If he really was asleep. There was something about that long, hard expanse of body under the covers that didn’t seem to point to the heavy relaxation of a tired rodeo rider’s slumber.
Yet why would Chet pretend? He was probably the least lazy man Jamie knew, which was saying something, because Jamie’s Dad and his brother RJ worked all the hours under the sun, on the ranch, and plenty of hours in the dark as well.
It had been close to dawn when Chet had stumbled into the trailer and into his bunk. Jamie had no idea where he’d been all night. With a woman? Chet had his share of one-night stands but they weren’t very frequent and they never seemed to go that well, or to lead to anything more substantial. Maybe because they only seemed to happen when he’d been drinking pretty hard.
Which he had been last night.
Somehow, though, Jamie didn’t think Chet’s absence was woman-related.
That thing…
Meanwhile, he could easily handle the horses himself, so it was no big deal. He walked them first, because a night in a confined yard could stiffen them up or make their lower legs swell. They would have preferred food first, but didn’t get a say in the matter.
After he’d left them contentedly munching, it was time to think about his own stomach. Still no sign of Chet emerging from the trailer. Had he really drunk that much, last night? Enough that he was still out cold?
Jamie wasn’t happy about it. Chet was definitely drinking more, lately, and Jamie himself had been drinking less and less, so that at least one of them stayed in control. Was it wrong that he often let Chet think he’d been drinking more than he really had, so that it wouldn’t be so obvious he was looking after him?
Frustrated and uneasy, he headed across to the pancake breakfast, set up in the same park as last night’s dinner, and saw Tegan.
Of course.
Because she was the person he most didn’t want to see. He’d been finding her harder to put out of his mind, in recent weeks, and the thoughts weren’t always as irritable as they used to be. A sudden image entered his head and he realized he’d dreamed about her last night. A hot, wild dream that vanished from his brain as soon as he tried to grab onto it.
Sheesh, a hot dream about Tegan Ash
!
She was on her own, so they greeted each other briefly, with their usual surliness. Exaggerated surliness, really. It was almost a game between them now. They lined up for pancakes together, and he wondered if he should say anything about last night.
No, not about the dream. About the marriage offer.
Didn’t really mean it. Thanks for turning me down. Saved us both.
…Although he would have gone through with it if she’d said yes, just to take the pressure off Chet. He felt uncomfortable and aware, standing just behind Tegan with no one else as a buffer.
Tegan had such outrageously over the top taste in clothing, he couldn’t stand it. Right now she was wearing one of her pairs of elaborately tooled and decorated boots, cream snakeskin with watermelon-red flowers on them, and a matching pinky-red belt on her blue jeans that was so thick with fake diamonds it had to weigh a good five pounds.
Her shirt continued the watermelon and fake diamond theme, with an added note of swirly white satin piping, while her blond hair tumbled messily down her back. At least it looked soft and silky and touchable, not lacquered up with spray.
But Jamie liked women who dressed… less.
He liked them musky and soft and sweet, beneath simple fabric, not covered in metal and jewels like armor. He had the idea, which he tried not to think about too much right now, that Tegan’s lean yet completely female body would be very musky, soft and sweet indeed, under the exaggerated bling of her western outfits.
He sometimes wondered if the outfits really were a kind of armor for her, because she could be a little too brash and hard-edged, sometimes, as if she was compensating. He didn’t know for what.
Or maybe she was protecting herself. Again, he had no clue on the detail. It kind of bugged him that he even thought about this sort of stuff, in relation to her.
“Jamie!”
He’d reached the front of the pancake line, directly behind Tegan’s glittering embroidered shoulders and dark denim butt, and suddenly here was a voice and face and figure he recognized. “Aunt Kate. Gee, it’s so good to see you!”
“So good to see me that you didn’t even tell me you were coming to town,” she drawled. She put down her kitchen tongs and reached across the serving table to give him a hug so he’d know she wasn’t nearly as mad as she sounded. He and Tegan both took a step to the side - he one way and she the other - so that the hug could take place.
“Did you tell anyone?” Aunt Kate asked. She was a practical, generous, caring woman and he loved her.
“Uh, yeah… no. I didn’t.”
“How come?”
“Well, you know,” he said, faking the easy response. “Plans change, in rodeo. Might have been in the hospital in Nevada this weekend, and if I’d said I was coming everyone would have been disappointed.”
Aunt Kate let go of the hug, fixed him with her warm, clever eyes and said quietly, “Go out there, won’t you, to the ranch?”
He stopping faking and dropped his voice, aware of Tegan beside him, waiting for her pancakes. Aunt Kate had the tongs in her hand and a big pile in front of her, in a warming tray, but she’d forgotten to keep serving. Annabeth Collier and Carol Bingley were both standing farther along, not doing a great job of hiding their curiosity, the witches.
“Do they want me?” he asked his aunt. “Last time I went home, Dad didn’t have a lot to say to me. And RJ said way too much. Most of it just by glaring.”
“They’re coming around,” she said. “You’ve been sending money, your mom tells me.”
“Not as much as I planned.”
Aunt Kate drawled, “No rodeo cowboy ever sends as much as he planned. Go out there,” she repeated. “It’ll be good for your mom. She doesn’t come into town often enough.”
“I will.”
“Is that the same “I will” you used to give me when you were seven years old and I was telling you to brush your teeth?”
“No, it’s a lot more genuine than that,” he answered, betraying his seven-year-old self without a blink.
“Good.” She let it go, after that, and served out pancakes first to Tegan then to Jamie himself then to the next person in line, busy and efficient.
Jamie and Tegan moved along for syrup and strawberries, crisp-fried bacon and paper cups of coffee. “That was my Aunt Kate,” he said, after nodding briefly at Mrs. Collier and Mrs. Bingley. “She’s nice.”
“You never said you were from around here,” Tegan accused him. She’d made the same accusation last night.
“I don’t come back all that often.”
“Yeah, I got that.” She threw him a sideways look that made her jaw look especially fine and neat. The look also meant business. “I’m quick that way.”
Ah, hell, she wanted him to talk. Hadn’t she already told him he was no good at that stuff?
He made an effort, scratching around inside himself for something that felt right. “Okay, here goes… My brother didn’t want me on the pro rodeo circuit. Dad wasn’t that keen, either. They don’t get it. I needed some time out. I want to come back to the ranch. I do. They know it’s not a long career, rodeo. I’m not turning my back. I do send money. I’m committed. But if I’m going to spend most of my life on the ranch, I want to be happy there. Want to have the - the itch out of me. Ready to settle. Not restless. Wouldn’t be fair to anyone if I’d just stayed. I would have messed it up.” He finished up the speech, lengthiest one he’d made when he was sober in a long time.
Then he waited.
She didn’t speak, damn her. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Somehow they’d sat down opposite each other at a table and she was just looking at him with big, troubled eyes, a jagged piece of pancake stuck on a fork in her hand, not yet traveling toward her mouth.
Finally, she took a breath. “That’s exactly why I left my farm. So I could be happy when I came back.”
“So you get it, then?” he growled, suspicious of the fact that she seemed to be agreeing with him.
“Yes. I do.”
“Good.” It bewildered him. Did they actually have something in common?
So are we done, he wanted to add.
He waited for them not to be done - for her to probe further, and want more detail, and dump a whole lot of stuff from her side that maybe he wouldn’t want to hear. But nothing came. She sat there slowly eating her pancakes and drinking her coffee and off in a world of her own, and it was way more restful than he expected it to be.
Hm, except in those moments when Jamie got a little flash of last night’s dream in his head, and felt himself growing too aware of Tegan’s body and too irritated by the armor of bling that would get in the way if he ever tried to put his hands -
Which he wasn’t planning to do.
He wasn’t.
When they were almost done, she said, out of the blue, “Thanks for that.”
“For what?”
“For sharing.”
“Ah, hell, sharing?”
“Talking.”
“Why the crap do people have to call it sharing?”
“Why do you hate talking so much?”
He sighed.
Tried to come up with an answer that would blow her off.
Couldn’t.
It seemed wrong, suddenly, that he always tried to be his worst self when she was around, just to annoy her. They weren’t in grade school, they were adults, and it was time to admit it.
So he dug deep into himself in search of the truth, instead. Man, it was unpleasant. But she was looking at him, all big-eyed and soft in the mouth and different, with that Australian accent so much a part of her he almost didn’t hear it most of the time, and…
Ah, shoot, okay, why? Why did he hate talking about important stuff?
He grilled his brain.
“Think about the worst thing that ever happened to you,” he said to her.
Well, that was easy, Tegan thought, as Jamie’s blue eyes glared at her from across the table. Finding out that Dad ha
d sold the farm without even asking her. She felt the ache in her throat all over again, even though it was eighteen months ago, now, since Dad had given her the news.
Jamie was looking at her, his gaze dropping to her mouth. Probably seeing the tightened muscles around it, because she could feel them herself. “Okay, and did talking about it make you feel even the slightest bit better?” he challenged her.
“I haven’t talked about it,” she said, words rasping through the throat ache. “I haven’t told anybody.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went out and bought these boots.”
He sat back, tucked in the corner of his mouth and said, “There you go.”
“You think I haven’t talked about it because I knew it wouldn’t make me feel better?” New idea, but she rejected it instantly.
“Don’t you think?” he drawled. “Did the boots make you feel better?”
“For about five minutes.”
“So?”
“Maybe there just hasn’t been the right person to tell.”
He raised his eyebrows and quirked that mouth again. “Try me.”
Oh, seriously? “You think I should tell you? You. About the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Why not?” he shrugged, as if he didn’t really believe anything very bad could have happened to her at all. “See if it works. Maybe you’ll prove your point.”
Jeesh, he could make her angry! “Given that it’s you we’re talking about as my listening ear, Jamie MacCreadie, I think it’s way more likely I’ll prove yours.”
“Now, that’s not nice.” But he didn’t seem too bothered.
“We’re never nice to each other,” she said, and if she was honest, she knew she was deliberately trying to provoke him, now.
He looked at her the way he’d looked at her last night when he’d offered to marry her, and she suddenly began to question everything about the reasons why they were never nice to each other.
Maybe it wasn’t…?
Maybe instead it was…?
The look lasted a long time and left her hot all over. She looked down and broke the contact, blinking as if she had something caught in her eye. They needed to get back. They more than needed to get back.