“I’ve had some trouble with women lately,” Jake explained. “Not that kind of trouble,” he added when Lawson and Garrett glanced at his crotch. “It’s just women keep pestering me, and that’s not pestering in a good way. I can’t get any work done. They sneak into my house and my truck. I can’t go into town without one of them throwing herself at me.”
“Marcie?” Garrett asked.
Jake nodded. “And that’s why Lily Rose was kissing me, to get Marcie off my scent.”
Well, that was part of why Lily Rose had kissed him. The other part, the one that had caused some stirrings behind his zipper, was because of the attraction. Garrett and Lawson weren’t fools so they’d no doubt sensed it. Seen it, too, because that kiss had involved a little tongue.
Lawson and Garrett exchanged glances. “So, you’re faking a relationship with a woman who works for you?” Garrett said.
“A woman too young for you,” Lawson added, “who’s just coming out of a bad relationship with a dirthead jerk?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” But when they put it like that, Jake could see flaws the size of Texas in his off-the-cuff plan.
Lawson had a follow-up question. “Are you the reason Lily Rose was crying this morning?”
Hell. Crying? This was the first Jake was hearing about it, and he honestly didn’t know if he was the reason or not. “I told her yesterday that there couldn’t be anything between us, but she didn’t seem upset. In fact, she agreed.”
Both Garrett and Lawson huffed. “Lily Rose would agree to a root canal without painkillers if you asked her. She’s a smart woman, but her brain turns to mush whenever she’s around you. That’s why it’s up to you to make sure nothing starts up between you two again.”
Jake hadn’t known for sure about the brain-mush part. Probably because he had a similar problem when it came to Lily Rose. But there appeared to be something else happening here. Yes, Garrett and Lawson were on the protective side, but this seemed above and beyond the call of genetic responsibility.
“Is there something going on with Lily Rose?” Jake came out and asked.
Garrett and Lawson gave each other an uneasy look. Not a good thing. Because it made Jake anxious, too. “Ian didn’t knock her up, did he?” Because if he had, Jake was indeed going to beat the crap out of him.
“No,” Lawson answered, and he paused. “Ian broke off things with Lily Rose months ago. The only reason she continued working for him was because of the horses.”
“Then, why the hell does Ian still think she’s his girlfriend?”
“You’d have to ask dundernuts that question.” Lawson glared at him again. “I just don’t want you piling anything else on Lily Rose right now. And sleeping with her and getting her hopes up about you two would be piling it on. Just keep your distance from her, okay?”
Jake should have just made a sound of agreement, said goodbye and got to work. He had fences to check and paperwork to do. But he stayed put.
“Is Lily Rose upset because of something going on in your family?” Jake asked Lawson.
It was a legit question. There always seemed to be some feuding going on with the Grangers. It had started two generations ago as a dispute over some ranch land and continued today between Lawson’s family and Garrett’s clan. Despite that feud, which often turned bitter, Lily Rose and Lawson had managed to stay friendly with their cousins.
“Lily Rose is already going to be madder than a hornet because we came here,” Lawson said. “Anything else you hear should come from her.”
Hell. So, there was something to hear. Something that apparently Lawson and Garrett weren’t going to tell him because they walked away. Jake did some walking, too, straight out the back of the barn so he could find Lily Rose. He didn’t have to go far. She was in the corral with the horses and the horse’s ass—Ian.
Lily Rose had her arms resting on top of the fence, her left foot on one of the lower slats, and she was having a whispered conversation with Ian. An angry one, judging from her tense shoulders.
Since pretty much anything Jake could say to them would make him sound A) jealous B) nosy or C) a horse’s ass equal to Ian’s status, he just went with sounding like a boss.
“I want you to work with Zeke and the chestnut today,” he said to Lily Rose. Zeke was one of his hands and due at the ranch any minute now, and like all the hands, Lily Rose was training him on the cutting horses. Of course, once she was done with that training, her job would be finished here, but Jake was beginning to think that wasn’t a bad thing. Lily Rose and he played a little too well together for her to stick around.
“Lily Rose and I were talking,” Ian protested. He said it as if Jake cared even a little about that.
“Tough. She works for me now, and she can’t do that if you’re around here yapping in her ear. Chat her up on her off time.”
“Just go,” she said to Ian. “I’ll be fine. I’ll work it out.”
Okay, that didn’t sound like a conversation about a broken heart or her considering getting back together with this clown. Good. Because Ian didn’t deserve a second chance to give her any more misery. Too bad he’d already caused plenty of that, though.
Or maybe something else had put that troubled look on Lily Rose’s face.
“I would have never sold you these horses if I’d known you were going to act like a jerk,” Ian said to him.
“You wouldn’t have sold them if you hadn’t been trying to get back at Lily Rose,” Jake countered. It was a guess on his part, but it must have been a good one because the corner of Lily Rose’s mouth lifted in a smile. Ian, however, didn’t smile.
“I’ll call you,” Ian told her, and stormed off.
Lily Rose moved as if to leave, too, to go into the corral with the horses, but Jake stepped in front of her. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.
“No,” she answered right off. Then, she groaned. “Obviously, Ian is trying to get back together with me.”
He waited for her to add that there was no way in hell that was going to happen. But she didn’t. What she did do was groan again before she continued.
“It’s tricky,” she said, “because more than anything I just want to train cutting horses from champion bloodlines. Well, guess who controls a lot of the buyers and stock for that?”
Ian.
Even Jake had had to do business with the moron.
“You’re not saying you’d get back with Ian just so you’d have a job?” he asked.
“No,” she snapped just as quickly as she had before. “But I have to walk a fine line with him. Until I can start my own business, that is, and then I’ll give him some competition to take him down a notch.”
Jake shrugged. “Seems like you could start that business now. Well, after you finish with these horses. You could put that Granger trust fund to good use.”
She made a sound that could have meant anything. Or nothing. And she looked at him. “You and I have similar problems. We both have someone trying to put strings and rings on us. Of course, what with all the women after you, you have a lot more people trying to do that to you than I do, but Ian’s not the sort to just give up.”
No, he wasn’t, and Jake thought he knew where she was going with this. “You want everyone to think we’re together. That way, you can keep Ian at bay without outright telling him to get lost.”
She nodded. “And it would work for you, too. It would put a stop to all those women chasing you. It would certainly stop Marcie from surprising you in your bedroom. That in turn would prevent you from having to buy bigger towels.”
Lily Rose winked at him.
That wink shouldn’t have caused a frenzy in his jeans, but it did. He’d definitely given her an eyeful when she’d walked into the barn to find him naked, but that wasn’t a good thing. They already had en
ough heat between them without adding eyefuls and nakedness to the mix.
“Just think,” she added. “No more having to duck and cover when you go to the Longhorn Bar.”
Yeah. Not having to do that was an upside he wanted to latch onto. But there were also a couple of really big downsides. “Your brother and cousin won’t like this,” he reminded her.
“I can tell them what’s going on and swear them to secrecy.” She answered fast enough to let him know she’d given this a little thought. “Of course, we can’t let too many people in on it or it’ll get out. In other words, your hands are going to think you’re breaking a cardinal rule by playing around with me.”
Interesting word choice—playing around—and Jake’s body was already coming up with ideas as to how to do that. Those ideas weren’t for a fake relationship, either. They involved sex.
Which couldn’t happen.
At least not until Lily Rose had finished working for him, that is. Even then it would be plenty hard to convince Lawson and Garrett that he wasn’t out to stomp on Lily Rose’s heart the way Ian had.
“So, do we have a deal?” she asked.
He was still debating it, thinking about all the angles, especially those that could come back to bite them in their butts. But then he made the mistake of turning toward her. The sun was barely up, but it was hitting her face just right. Or just wrong if he hadn’t wanted to be reminded that Lily Rose was a mouth-watering woman.
And she noticed the way he was looking at her.
Worse, she started looking at him the same way—as if she’d like to have him for breakfast.
“For this to work, people would have to see us together,” he said more to himself than to her. “Playing with fire usually turns out bad.”
She smiled. “But it can be fun, too.” Lily Rose laughed, dropped a kiss on his cheek and headed back into the barn. “Think of all the cold showers in our future.”
He was, and Jake was also thinking about something else.
Just how fast and how hard they were going to fail.
CHAPTER THREE
“YOU ARE SO going to fail at this,” Sophie said to Lily Rose.
It was exactly the response Lily Rose had expected from her cousin after she’d told Sophie that Jake and she were going to pretend to be lovers.
“Don’t you remember what happened between you and him when you were eighteen?” Sophie added. She had a sip of her margarita and looked at Lily Rose from over the top of her salty rim.
“Of course, I remember.” In wonderful perfect details. Jake hadn’t been her first lover, that’d happened a year earlier with her then high school boyfriend. But Jake had a way of branding himself into her memories.
Triple orgasms could do that.
“And don’t you remember how you cried when Jake broke things off because he said you were too young?” Sophie kept on.
Her cousin was obviously trying to drill home that this fake relationship was a bad idea, but Lily Rose needed no such convincing. It was bad, and yes, she would fail. Heck, she’d probably get another broken heart out of it, too.
“I remember all of it,” Lily Rose assured her. “And there are a lot of reasons why I should back away from this.” Solid reasons, too. That didn’t mean she was going to play it safe. Not when she had such a hot fire to make sure she got good and burned.
Lily Rose sighed, drank her wine. “Maybe I feel as if I need to be punished.”
Sophie’s eyebrow came up. “You’re not going to borrow Marcie’s riding crop, are you?”
Lily Rose dismissed that with another huff, but it might be fun to smack Jake’s butt with it. Actually, it might be fun just to see his butt. Along with the rest of him.
“I can set you up on a date with one of Brantley’s lawyer friends,” Sophie suggested. “That way you can maybe have a real relationship rather than a fake one.”
Brantley was Sophie’s longtime boyfriend and fiancé. Lily Rose had always thought he had the personality of a generic potato chip bag. Which wasn’t much personality at all. But since Sophie seemed to be in love with him, Lily Rose held her tongue. However, tongue-holding wasn’t a good idea when it came to matchmaking. She might end up with someone like Brantley.
Lily Rose shook her head. “Thanks but no thanks. Actually, I think it’s a good idea for me to take a break from men. It hasn’t been that long since Ian broke up with me—”
“Over four months ago,” Sophie provided. “That’s plenty of time for you to move on especially since you don’t want to get back together with him.” She paused. “Do you?”
“God, no. Lesson learned.” She should have learned it sooner, though.
After the breakup, Ian had made her work environment as hellish as possible, but she had been under contract. Walking away from that would have hurt her future prospects in the business along with making her look like a wimp for not being able to handle the pressure. Plus, it wasn’t as if she had a lot of options.
“I’d prefer a guy not cheat on me after demanding that we be in a monogamist relationship.” Lily Rose stopped. “But just because I don’t want Ian, it doesn’t mean I should jump in bed with someone else.”
Sophie gave her a flat look. “If you stay around Jake, bed jumping will happen. That’s why you should just give up this ruse and start dating for real.”
It made too much sense, and it was taking Lily Rose a while to come up with an argument to counter such logic. Thankfully, she got a distraction to interrupt the conversation. And the distraction was yet another hot cowboy.
Sophie’s brother, Roman.
It seemed as if time stopped when he walked in. Women certainly stopped anyway, and those seated at the bar and in booths all turned in his direction as if their eyes were metal, and he was the magnet.
Simply put, Roman got people’s attention.
Lily Rose’s, too. Even though he was her cousin, she’d always loved him like a brother. Since she rarely got to see him, it was a little like a visit from Santa Claus.
Roman spotted them and headed their way, the eyes in the room following him. When he made it to their booth, Sophie moved over to make a spot for him, but he kept standing.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “I’m heading to the ranch to do some paperwork, but Lawson asked me to check on you.” He directed his concern at Lily Rose. “He mentioned that you’d cried. And that you had hooked up with Jake again.”
In addition to eyes being on them, ears were, too.
“The crying was allergies,” Lily Rose lied, “but uh, yes, I’m back with Jake. We’re very happy.”
Roman’s hands went on his hips, creating some sighs in the room. Probably because it caused his jeans to tighten over all the right parts of him. “Bull crap,” he snarled. “You don’t have the look of a satisfied woman, and I just saw Jake because he’s out front trying to fend off one of the Busby sisters. No satisfied look on him, either. So, what’s going on?”
“Jake’s out front?” Lily Rose repeated. Of course, what concerned her more was the Busby sister. Marcie was tame compared to that Busby gene pool.
Roman blocked her from leaving when she got up. “Look, I don’t like putting my nose in your business. Especially when I’ve got better places for my nose to be. But I need to know if I should be worried about you.”
He gave a bad-boy glower to Candy Mercer who was inching closer, batting her eyelashes and looking ready to jump him where he stood. Roman’s glower, however, was the equivalent of a wink for most women because Candy kept coming
“You don’t have to worry about me. But thanks for checking.” Lily Rose kissed his cheek to reassure him that all was well. It wasn’t, of course. Maybe Roman knew that, too, but he didn’t stop her when she hurried out.
It didn’t take long for Lily Rose to find J
ake. He was parked just up the street about a half block away from the bar and was standing next to his truck, his back against the driver’s side door. He wasn’t alone, of course. Nelly Busby was there right in front of him. However, it wasn’t exactly the scene Lily Rose had expected to see.
For one thing, Jake was laughing, and while Nelly was indeed leaning in a little too close to him, her body language wasn’t of a woman who was on an aggressive prowl. This was more like flirting.
Jake stopped laughing when he saw Lily Rose, and he started toward her. Nelly’s flirting expression vanished, and she gave Lily Rose the stink eye that many single women in town had been giving her.
“I was just looking for you,” Jake said, giving Lily Rose a quick kiss. It was very similar to the one she’d given Roman. Similar in quickness and pressure anyway, but it still packed a wallop. “I saw Roman, and he said you were inside with Sophie.”
Lily Rose nodded. “Are you here for a drink?”
He tipped his head to the lawyer’s office just up the street. “I had some papers to sign.”
Papers that probably had to do with his inheritance. Depending on who you talked to, that inheritance was worth a million or more. Other folks thought it was much less than that and that Jake had used every penny to buy the ranch and get it going.
“I probably shouldn’t say anything,” Nelly grumbled, “but it’s hard to believe you two are back together. I mean, neither of you look very happy about it or anything.”
Since Roman had just told Lily Rose something similar, she immediately tried to change her expression. She also hooked her arm through Jake’s and kissed him. Not one of those for-show pecks, either. Lily Rose made it count.
They ignored Nelly, and even though Lily Rose broke the kiss and eased her mouth from Jake’s, they continued to stare into each other’s eyes. Hopefully, it looked intimate as if they were starved for each other and couldn’t wait for Nelly to leave.
“Fine, be that way,” Nelly finally snapped. On a loud huff, she turned and walked off.
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