“I think we deserve to know a little more than the official version,” she spat back. “All the O’Grady’s got was ‘Killed in Active Service.’ How do you think that feels, for them? And me, as well?”
“It is what it is,” I responded. “You have all known the drill for a long time now. It’s part of being a SEAL. We do covert operations, and we get that things can go wrong at any time. Men die, Gemma.”
“But what happened to Jack?”
“Jack was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I finally responded. “Shit, you know I can’t give you details of the mission. It’s so classified even the goddamn vice-president probably doesn’t know anything about it.”
She looked down, studying her coffee cup. “Was it quick, or was he tortured?”
“It was quick,” I said. It had been no such thing, but she didn’t need to know that. None of them did. How could it help their grief, to have all the intricate details of how a man can die at war?
Her lip started quivering. Shit, she was about to burst into tears.
“Hey.” I reached for her hand across the table. She pulled hers back as if my touch was tainted with poison ivy.
“I don’t want platitudes, Lance,” she whispered. Her eyes were swimming with tears. “You both said you’d look out for each other, that you would have each other’s backs through it all. Why didn’t you have Jack’s?”
I flinched, as if she had struck me. “I did my best, Gemma.” Keep it together, I told myself. “I tried to save him. It all just went to shit, very quickly. I couldn’t get there in time.”
I felt like the words were being pulled out of me by draught horses. Why was she probing this pain? Didn’t she realise that Jack was like a brother to me, that I would have given my life for his? That I couldn’t sleep at night, as I replayed it over and over in my head. Trying to figure out how I could have saved him.
And another thing was becoming obvious, too.
“I didn’t realize that you still loved him,” I said. “I thought it was all over between the two of you.”
She looked at me, then slowly got up from the kitchen table, walking away.
I looked down at my hands, trying to stop the shaking.
She still loved him. Still mourned him like they were going to end up walking into the sunset hand in hand.
But I knew.
I knew that he had never satisfied her. That she was constantly asking for things that he couldn’t give. Those emails had laid all her cards on the table.
How could she still love him, after everything?
If only she knew how much I could give her. How I could satisfy all the secrets in her heart. And body.
Gemma
I walked away from him. I simply couldn’t sit there anymore, hearing about Jack.
I hadn’t meant to lay that guilt trip on Lance, about saving Jack. It had just come blurting out of nowhere. His face had crumpled like I had stabbed him in the heart. If I could take back the words, I would. I mightn’t know anything about what the SEALs did on their operations, but I knew enough to know it was dangerous work. That they could be killed anytime.
He thought I still loved Jack, and I didn’t deny it. But the love was just a fading memory now. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t deny it. Maybe some old shred of loyalty to Jack, I just don’t know.
It was hard, too, sitting opposite Lance. Having him so close, after so long. He was so attractive, even after all this time. I had been hoping that the pull that had always happened between us might have waned after so long. But it was still there, throbbing away beneath the surface. I could almost touch it.
I walked back to the kitchen, tidying up as I went. I had to prep for tonight’s dinner – get the lamb slow cooking in the oven. It felt good to be working. I tried hard not to think about Lance sitting in the next room. His rock-hard arms and that rippling chest I could see beneath his thin t-shirt…
Damn. I leaned against the kitchen bench. I could feel sweat trickling down my neck and between my breasts. Whoa, girl.
It had been a long drought; I hadn’t been with anyone since I had broken up with Jack, and when we were still together we hadn’t done anything in a long time. I felt like I was on a trigger pull, and seeing Lance in all his masculine glory was flicking that switch big time.
But I couldn’t go there. I just couldn’t. There was too much history, but of the wrong kind. I had been with his best friend, who had just been killed. It seemed disloyal.
I would just have to suck it up. Maybe keep an eye out for a good-looking cowboy at the Rodeo, to slake the thirst.
I got lost in my prep, and when I went back into the kitchen he was gone. Hank said he had gone to bed, wrecked after his long trip. I tried not to feel disappointed. I tried not to feel like an A grade bitch for the things I had said to him.
But it all failed. Lance was back in my head, playing ball.
***
The men tucked into the slow cooked lamb that night, singing me praises, as always.
Ah, men. So long as you kept their bellies full and their cocks singing, they were easily pleased. I couldn’t help smiling to myself.
I had always kept their bellies full. But as for the other, well, there had only ever been Jack. And I hadn’t satisfied him in a long time. I had tried, even talking of what turned me on in the emails we shared. I thought it might keep our spark alive, talking dirty to each other. But Jack had never liked it.
And that had made me feel ashamed. Was there something wrong with me?
“What does a man have to do to get fed around here?”
I turned sharply, bumping my hip against the kitchen bench as I did so. Ouch. That would be blue by tomorrow.
It was Lance, of course. Freshly showered, he was dressed in tight blue jeans and a white T. Looking like a taller, buffer version of Jimmy Dean. All he needed was the black leather jacket. My heart started pounding like a jack hammer. Damn he was one hot man.
“Sit down,” I commanded. “I’ll bring it out.”
He sauntered out into the night air, sitting alongside the ranch hands.
They were happy to see him, of course. Lots of back slapping and sparring. Lance had always been popular; he never played the Big Boss card with them like a lot of ranchers around here. He rolled up his sleeves and worked alongside them, but they never took advantage. Lance just had that natural air of authority that made men want to please him, without even realising it.
“Your meal, sir,” I couldn’t resist saying as I put the plate in front of him.
Lance raised an eyebrow. “Sir?” He slowly picked up his knife and fork. “Oh yes, well I guess I am your boss now, aren’t I? You have to address me in the proper manner.”
I grinned, despite myself. Flirting with Jack was like taking a quick sip of soda, when the bubbles filled your nose and you got that giddy, effervescent sugar high. Addictive.
“Don’t start getting too cocky, now,” I re-joined. He looked at me, slowly.
Our eyes locked together. He broke into a long, slow smile. “Getting cocky sounds mighty fine to me, Miss Gemma.”
I felt myself blushing. What was happening? All the men were looking at us, their mouths open.
“The food’s getting cold.” I turned on my heel and scurried back to the kitchen, flustered.
After the dishes for the evening were done, I walked to the look out as I always did to watch the sun set. I never tired of it. It was spectacular. The sky slowly started filling with the most amazing oranges and pinks, smearing the sky like an artist’s canvas. The mountains started to blacken against it.
I could see him approaching me, and my heart quickened.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He leaned against the fence, drinking in the view. This was always my favorite spot, from when I was a kid. Ma used to take me down here before bed. We would gaze at the mountains for a long time. It’s one of my best memories.” He turned to me. “I can see you like it, too.”
“What�
��s not to like?” I answered. “You are one lucky man, Lance. Growing up here, surrounded by this beauty. Not like me, stuck in Clear Creek among all the small-town gossips.”
“But you’re here now, aren’t you?” He turned to me. “I take it you’re living on site, in the cook’s quarters?”
“That I am, Mr Starling,” I smiled. “They sure are comfy quarters for the little old cook.”
“Ah, Gemma, you know I don’t think that way,” he said. “It’s still the same between us, friends. Just forget that I employ you.”
Friends. It was a funny way to think of everything that we had been to each other. Kind of bittersweet.
It made me sad. “I’d better go, Lance.” I feigned yawning. “Big day, and all that. Need my beauty sleep.”
“That you don’t Gemma. I think if you never slept again, you would still have it in abundance.” He looked at me, intensely.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I smiled at him, and left.
In my room, I showered before bed, getting into my baby doll nightie. I brushed my hair at the dressing table, thinking.
It seemed some things never changed. The attraction between Lance and myself was burning as bright as ever.
It was such a pity I couldn’t do anything about it.
Lance
She walked away from me, goddamnit.
That woman had the sexiest saunter in the world. Watching her go, her hips swaying from side to side in the green sundress, it was all I could do not to run after her and pin her to the ground. Take those hips in my hands and grind them against me. Tell her that I knew everything. How it had played out with Jack, how disappointed she had been in the relationship.
And all those other things she had talked about.
Suddenly I couldn’t take my mind off those other things. I needed to read them again. Seeing her after all this time made the things she had written come alive in a new way. I ran my hand through my hair, thinking.
***
That night, after I had said good night to everyone, promising Hank I would be up at first light to get back into the running of the ranch, I opened Jack’s laptop.
It hadn’t been hard to figure out his password. Jack and I had shared a lot of things, and one of those was the passwords we used from time to time. Variations abounded, of course, but I was a Special Forces SEAL. It wasn’t just the physical stuff we were trained in. I had tried a couple before hitting the jackpot.
Gemma had started off demurely, of course. The first things she had expressed to him were the usual kind of romantic girl stuff. Stuff that seemed so obvious to me that it kind of angered me that Jack had never thought to do it for her off his will.
She wanted him to take her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant in a city. She didn’t care where. She just wanted them to take the time to do it, take the time for each other. Order food they had never eaten before. Order the best wine on the wine list. She wanted to dress up like a princess, and she wanted him to dress up for her. Show her that he cared enough to want to be attractive.
I leaned back on the bed head with the laptop in front of me, thinking.
Jack had never done it, of course. Too self-absorbed. When we had leave, he often didn’t come back to Wyoming to spend it with her. Instead, he had pursued other woman, often one night flings after a night of drinking. It seemed to be all that he wanted. Yet, he had kept Gemma in a safe little box back here, biding her time waiting for him. Pretending he would one day come back to claim her.
Not wanting her, yet not setting her free. That he treated her so dismally made my hands ball into fists.
Don’t get me wrong, the guy was my best buddy. We had done everything together. But over the last few years, Jack had started to change. It wasn’t just how he had treated Gemma, though God knows, that was bad enough. He had also started getting secretive with me; often I didn’t know what he was up to.
Sometimes, my sixth sense antennae would twitch urgently with him. There were things that happened on missions that shouldn’t have happened, silly mistakes, or someone where they shouldn’t have been. Like they had been tipped off.
My fingers started drumming on the laptop.
I scrolled to the next message. Gemma, saying that she would love for them to go away for the weekend, camp out. Go swimming in a lake, cook for each other over an open grill. Take long trail walks through the mountains. Sleep under the stars.
Suddenly, it hit me.
Jack had never done any of this stuff with her. It had meant enough to her that she had written him about it, making herself vulnerable. She had put her heart and soul out there, and he had kicked it to the curb like a crumpled up can.
But I could do it for her.
I could make a list of all the things that she wanted, starting with this stuff. Work slowly through it, ticking each thing off one by one. Show her that there were men out there who thought of their woman, and wanted to please them.
Inspired, I grabbed my notebook and pen off the bedside table. I wrote carefully:
Number One: Camping out under the stars
It seemed the safest one to start with. I didn’t want to startle her, it had to be done slowly. Rushing her to a city for a dinner might spook her. But I could definitely figure out some way to get her to go camping with me.
I kept adding to the list. Some of the things made me shift uncomfortably on the bed, my cock stirring. Damn. Gemma was a woman after my own heart. It would not be an issue at all to accommodate what she wanted.
Restless, I put the pen down. She was on my mind so badly, thinking of what she wanted and what was on that list. Maybe a walk would cool me down a bit so I could get to sleep.
I threw on a sweater before I left the house. No matter how hot it was in the day here, it always cooled down at night. I didn’t know where I was going, but my feet had other plans. Before I knew it, I was outside the cook’s quarters.
The light from a single lamp illuminated the quarters, and I could see her in there through the side window. I should remind her to close all the drapes at night, but then, it was the country. You got used to not worrying about things like that out here.
She was walking around, making herself a hot drink. She was wearing one of those short, skimpy nightdresses, with the frilly bits on the top. This one was lemon. I could see her breasts falling from it when she bent slightly. She had taken her hair down, and it was a mass of golden curls down her back.
Stop it, I told myself. You shouldn’t be doing this. You aren’t a stalker. But I couldn’t take my eyes away from the vision of her in that night dress.
Go, I commanded myself.
Back in the house, I reflected that the walk hadn’t calmed me enough for sleep. Now I needed a cold shower.
Gemma
Morning rush had almost cleared.
It hadn’t been a hard breakfast to prepare, eggs, biscuits and gravy. I usually did a variation on those. The cowboys loved a hearty breakfast, and needed the sustenance for all the hard, physical work they did. Mustering all that cattle made a man have a huge appetite.
Lance had certainly woofed his down, asking for seconds. It was good to see him up and about, ready to get stuck back into the running of the ranch. Hank was a great manager, but it wasn’t the same as having the owner here. And it warmed my heart to see that Lance was intending to be hands on. I would have thought lesser of him if he had come back and stayed in the house, ordering from above.
But then, Lance had always been a hands-on kind of guy. My skin glowed at the memory of those hands, large and broad. Smooth, but calloused in all the right places. The kind of hands that made you tingle when they were laid upon you.
Stop it, I told myself. You must stop! I really did need to get myself a cowboy, even if it was only for a night. I had never had a one night stand before, but a woman had needs. It had been so long. And it might stop me thinking about Lance.
Speak of the devil. Here he was, bringing his plate into the kitchen. Always
had been a gentleman like that. He wasn’t the kind of guy too proud to clean up after himself.
“Gemma.” He leaned against the kitchen bench as he watched me stack the dishwasher.
“Lance.” I didn’t stop what I was doing for a second. If he wanted to talk to me, he would have to do it as I was working. I had a job to do, after all.
“A group of men and I need to go into the high country to herd some cattle over to Ryan’s Ranch,” he said. “It’ll take a few days. We are going to camp out.”
I nodded as I kept stacking. “Well, have a fine old time.”
He smiled. “I don’t think you understand me.” He paused, looking down at his feet. “We are going to need to be fed on the trip. You’re coming to take care of all that.”
“Me?” I stood up from what I was doing, looking at him. “But the men back here still need to be fed. Can’t you bring some beef jerky?”
He laughed. “It’s hard work. I think we need a bit more than that.”
“But who will take care of the men here?”
“That’s all taken care of. Jessie can step up and do it. She knows how to cook.”
“Yes, she does.” I paused, digesting what he was telling me. “But she’s not used to leading a feed for a large group. Why don’t you take her with you, instead? She’d be better suited to preparing camp fire meals for just a few of you.”
“If I didn’t know better, Miss Gemma, I’d be thinking you were trying to avoid camping out with me.”
I blushed. “It’s not that. You know I love camping. It just seems it would be better…”
He put up a hand, cutting me off. “Bosses orders. Be packed and ready to go by this afternoon. Work out with Jessie what she is going to cook while we’re gone, and get the stuff ready that you’ll need to cook while we’re away.” He walked off.
Well I’d be damned! Seemed to me Lance had decided to play the Big Boss card after all. He could toss around orders with the best of them.
I picked up a tea towel and vigorously wiped a pot.
Camping out. With Lance.
Cowboy's Barmaid: A Small Town Military Romance (Lucky Flats Ranchers Book 2) Page 12