by Maisey Yates
“You have to watch her. She’s a champion schemer,” Eli said.
“The championest.” Sadie smiled broadly.
“Scheme away,” Jack said.
“You don’t have to tell her to scheme,” Eli said. “She can’t stop scheming. This is how I ended up with an annual Fourth of July barbecue on my property.”
“I’m delightful.” Sadie nodded, the expression on her face comically serious.
“She is,” Eli agreed.
“Are we going to play cards?” Kate asked.
“So impatient to lose all of your money,” Jack said.
This was a little more normal. A more typical level of Jack harassing her.
“To me,” Sadie said, her grin turning feral. Sadie, it turned out, was a very good poker player for all her wide-blue-eyed protestations to the contrary when she first joined their weekly games.
Kate opted to stay silent, continuing on that way while the cards were dealt. And she was dealt a very good hand. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep her expression steady. Sadie was cocky. Jack was cockier. And she was going to take their money.
By the end of the night Kate had earned several profane nicknames and the contents of everyone’s wallets. She leaned back in her chair, pulling the coins toward her. “Listen to that. I’m going back home, dumping all this on the floor and swimming in it like Scrooge McDuck.”
“No diving in headfirst. That’s a sure way to spinal trauma. It isn’t that deep of a pool,” Connor said.
“Deeper than what you have. I have all your monies.” She added a fake cackle for a little bit of dramatics.
“Then I will keep all the pie,” Liss said.
“That’s my pie,” Jack said.
“You have to stay in fighting form, Monaghan. Your bar hookups won’t be so easy if you lose your six-pack,” Liss said cheerfully.
“I do enough work on the ranch every day to live on pies and still keep my six-pack, thank you very much.”
“You aren’t getting any younger,” Sadie said.
The conversation was going into uncomfortable territory as far as Kate was concerned. Really, on all fronts it was getting to an awkward place. Jack and sex. Jack’s abs. Yikes.
“I would return volley,” Jack said, “but I’m too much of a gentleman to comment on a lady’s age.”
“Gentleman, huh?” Eli asked. “Of all the things you’ve been accused of being, I doubt that’s one of them.”
Jack squinted and held up his hand, pretending to count on his fingers. “Yeah, no. There have been a lot of things, but not that one.”
“Anyway,” she said, unable to help herself, “you comment on my age all the time.”
“I said I never commented on a lady’s age, Katie.”
She snorted. “I am a lady, asswipe.”
“I don’t know how I missed it,” he said, leaning back in his chair, his grin turning wicked.
For some reason that comment was the last straw. “Okay, hate to cut this short, but I have an early morning tomorrow.” That was not strictly true. It was an optional early morning since she intended to get up and spend some time with Roo. “And I will be stopping by The Grind to buy a very expensive coffee with the money I won from you.”
Jack stood, putting his hands behind his head and stretching. “I’ll walk you out. I have an early morning, too, so I better get going.”
Dammit. He didn’t seem to understand that she was beating a hasty retreat in part to get away from him. Because the Weird Jack Stuff was a little more elevated today than normal. It had something to do with overexposure to him. She needed to go home, be by herself, scrub him off her skin in a hot shower so she could hit the reset button on her interactions with him.
She felt as if she had to do that more often lately than she had ever had to do in the past.
The thing was, she liked Jack. In that way you could like a guy who was basically an extra obnoxious older brother who didn’t share genetic material with you. She liked it when he came to poker night. She liked it when he came into the store. But at the end of it she was always left feeling...agitated.
And it had created this very strange cycle. Hoping she would see Jack, seeing Jack, being pissed that she had seen Jack. And on and on it went.
“Bye,” she said.
She picked up her newly filled change bag and started to edge out of the room. She heard heavy footsteps behind her, and without looking she knew it was Jack. Well, she knew it was Jack partly because he had said he would walk her out.
And partly because the hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. That was another weird Jack thing.
She opened the front door and shut it behind her, not waiting for Jack. Which was petty and weird. She heard the door open behind her and shut again.
“Did I do something?”
She turned around, trying to erase the scowl from her face. Trying to think of one thing he had actually done that was out of line, or out of the ordinary, at least. “No,” she said, begrudgingly.
“Then why are you acting like I dipped your pigtails in ink?” he asked, taking the stairs two at a time, making uncomfortable eye contact with her in the low evening light.
She looked down. “I’m not.”
“I seem to piss you off all the time lately,” he said, closing the distance between them while her throat closed itself up tight.
“You don’t. It’s just...teasing stuff. Don’t worry about it.”
Jack kept looking at her, pausing for a moment. She felt awkward standing there but also unable to break away. “Okay. Hey, I was thinking...”
“Uh-oh. That never ends well,” she said, trying to force a smile.
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve heard the stories Connor and Eli tell. Any time you think of something, it ends in...well, sometimes broken bones.”
“Sure,” he said, chuckling and leaning against the side of his truck. “But not this time. Well, maybe this time since it centers around the rodeo.”
“You don’t ride anymore,” she said, feeling stupid for pointing out something he already knew.
“Well, I might. I was sort of thinking of working with the association to add an extra day onto the rodeo when they pass through. A charity day. Half-price tickets. Maybe some amateur events. And all the proceeds going to...well, to a fund for women who are starting over. A certain amount should go to Alison’s bakery. She’s helping people get jobs. Get hope. I wish there had been something like that for us when I was a kid.”
Kate didn’t know anything about Jack’s dad. As long as she’d known him, he hadn’t had one. And he never talked about it.
But she got the sense that whatever the situation, it hadn’t been a happy one.
And now mixed in with all the annoyance and her desire to avoid him was a strange tightening in her chest.
“Life can be a bitch,” she said, hating the strident tone that laced its way through her voice.
“I’ve never much liked that characterization. In my estimation life is a lot more like a pissed-off bull. You hang on as long as you can, even though the ride is uncomfortable. No matter how bad it is on, you sure as hell don’t want to get bucked off.”
“Yeah, that sounds about like you.”
“Profound?”
“Like a guy who’s been kicked in the head a few times.”
“Fair enough. Anyway, what do you think about the charity?”
Warmth bloomed in her stomach. “Honestly? I think it’s a great idea.” She couldn’t even give him a hard time about this, because it was just so damn nice. “We only have a couple of months until the rodeo, though. Do you think we can pull it off?”
“We?”
Her stomach twisted uncomfortably. “Well, yeah.
I think it’s a good idea. And I would like to contribute in any way I can. Even if it just means helping the pros tack up or something.”
“When are you going to turn pro, Katie?”
She gritted her teeth, and it had nothing to do with his unwanted nickname for her. “When I’m ready. I’m not going to waste a whole bunch of money traveling all over the country, entering all kinds of events and paying for association cards when I don’t have a hope in hell of winning.”
“Who says you don’t have a hope in hell of winning?” he asked, frowning. “I’ve seen you ride. You’re good.”
The compliment flowed through her like cool water on parched earth. She cleared her throat, not sure where to look or what to say. “Roo is young. She has another year or so before she’s mature. I probably do, too.”
He reached out and wrapped his hand around her braid, tugging gently. “You’re closer than you think.”
Something about his look, about that touch that should have irritated her if it did anything, sent her stomach tumbling down to her toes.
Then he turned away from her and walked around to the other side of his pickup truck, opened the driver-side door, got inside and slammed it shut. He started the truck engine and she felt icy spots on her face. She released her breath in a rush, a wave of dizziness washing over her.
You’d have thought she’d been staring down a predator and not one of her family’s oldest and dearest friends.
Freaking Jack and all the weirdness that followed him around like a thunderclap.
She walked over to her pickup and climbed in, then started the engine and threw it into Reverse without bothering to buckle. She was just driving down the narrow dirt road that led from Connor’s house to her little cabin.
The road narrowed as the trees thickened, pine branches whipping against the doors to her old truck as she approached her house. She’d moved into the cabin on her eighteenth birthday, gaining a little bit of distance and independence from her brothers without being too far away. Of course, it wasn’t as if she’d really done much with the independence.
She worked, played cards with her brothers and rode horses. That was about the extent of her life. But it filled her life, every little corner of it. And she wasn’t unhappy with that.
She walked up the front steps, threw open the front door that she never bothered to lock and stepped inside. She flipped on the light switch, bathing the small space in a yellow glow.
The kitchen and living room were one, a little woodstove built into a brick wall responsible for all the heating in the entire house. The kitchen was small with wood planks for walls that she’d painted white when she’d moved in. A distressed counter-height table divided the little seating area from where she prepared food, and served as both infrequently used dining table and kitchen island.
She had one bathroom and one bedroom. The house was small, but it fit her life just fine. In fact, she was happy with a small house because it reminded her to get outside, where things were endless and vast, rather than spend too much time hiding away from the world.
Kate would always rather be out in it.
She kicked her boots off and swept them to the side, letting out a sigh as she dropped her big leather shoulder bag onto the floor. The little lace curtains—curtains that predated Kate’s tenure in the house—were shut tight, so she tugged her top up over her head and stripped off the rest of her clothes as she made her way to the shower.
She turned the handles and braced herself for the long wait for hot water. Everything, including the hot-water heater, in her little house was old-fashioned. Sort of like her, she supposed.
She snorted into the empty room, the sound echoing in the small space. Jack certainly thought she was old-fashioned. All that hyperconcern over her not owning a computer.
Steam started to rise up and fill the air and she stepped beneath the hot spray, her thoughts lingering on her interaction with Jack at the Farm and Garden. And how obnoxious he was. And how his lips curved up into that wicked smile when he teased her, blue eyes glittering with all the smart-ass things he’d left unsaid.
She picked up the bar of Ivory soap from the little ledge of the tub and twirled it in her palms as she held it beneath the water, working up a lather. She took a breath, trying to ease some of the tension that was rioting through her.
She turned, pressing the soap against her chest, sliding it over her collarbone.
Yeah, Jack was a pain.
Still, she was picturing that look he got on his face. Just before he said something mouthy. She slid the bar of soap over her breasts just as she remembered her thwarted retaliation for his teasing tonight. The way his fingers had wrapped around her wrist, his hold firm...
She gasped and released her hold on the bar of soap. It hit the floor and slid down between her feet, stopping against the wall.
She growled and bent down, picking it back up, ignoring the pounding of her heart and the shaking in her fingers.
The shower was supposed to wash Jack off her skin. He was not supposed to follow her in.
Another jolt zipped through her at the thought because right along with it came the image of Jack and his overbearing presence sharing this small space with her. Bare skin, wet skin...hands on skin.
She turned and rinsed the soap off her chest, then shut the water off, stepped out and scrubbed her skin dry with her towel, much more ferociously than was warranted.
She needed to sleep. Obviously, she was delirious.
If she didn’t know better, she would think she was a breath away from having a fantasy about Jack freaking Monaghan.
“Ha!” she all but shouted. “Ha ha ha.” She wrapped her towel around her body and walked to her room before dropping it and digging through her dresser for her pajamas.
She found a pair of sensible white cotton underwear and her flannel pajama pants that had cowboy hats, lassos and running horses printed onto the fabric.
There could be no sexual fantasies when one had on cotton panties and flannel pants.
With pony pajamas came clarity.
She pulled a loose-fitting blue T-shirt over her head and flopped down onto her bed. Her twin bed. That would fit only one person.
She was sexual fantasy–proof. Also sex-proof, if the entire long history of her life was anything to go by.
“Bah.” She rolled over onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow. She had arena dirt, pounding hooves, the salty coastal wind in her face, mixed with pine and earth. A scent unique to Copper Ridge and as much a part of her as the blood in her veins.
She had ambitions. Even if she was a bit cautious in them.
She didn’t need men.
Most of all, she didn’t need Jack Monaghan.
CHAPTER THREE
JACK ROLLED INTO the Garrett ranch just after nine. He’d finished seeing to his horses earlier and was ready to ambush Kate with coffee and a plan. It was her day off, and he knew she wasn’t still in bed lying low while the sun rose high. It wasn’t her way. Which meant he would have to track her down on the vast property.
But that was fine with him. He didn’t have much else happening today.
His equine operation had gotten to the point that it was running so smoothly he often felt as if he didn’t have enough to do. He had people who worked on the ranch seeing to all of the horses’ needs and a housekeeper who took care of all of his needs. He was forging great connections in competitive worlds. Both the Western riding community and dressage. And he was very close to signing a lucrative deal to breed one of his stallions to a champion hunter jumper, Jazzy Lady.
Now that all that was falling into place and he wasn’t traveling with the rodeo, he was left with a lot of free time.
His mother had said idle hands were the devil’s workshop, usually before she booted his
ass outside so he’d stay out of her hair. But then, he’d never had much use for worrying about things like that. In part because he never worried all that much about the devil. He’d gone to church once when he was a boy with a friend from his first-grade class. The pastor had said something about Joshua the son of Nun. And after the service the boy who had been his friend when they’d walked into the building had decided Jack the son of Nun was a fitting nickname for him since he didn’t have a daddy.
Jack had punched that little son of a bitch in the face and had never darkened the doors of any holy institution from there on after. He hadn’t stayed friends with the kid, either. In fact, the only people he had stayed friends with were the Garretts and Liss. He’d raised too much hell over the years to keep many other connections.
Hell, he’d taken to it as if it was his job. And when he’d transitioned from causing trouble in town to bull riding, it had just been a more legitimate method.
And another way for him to try to get his old man to take some notice. To make his mother look at him for more than thirty seconds.
It hadn’t worked. His success hadn’t changed that, either.
But he had Eli and Connor.
Together they’d knit a strange and dysfunctional group that continued on to this day. He liked to think they were all a little more functional now. Well, the rest of them more than him, he supposed.
Though he had some stability now with his ranch. He might not be married and procreating like his friends, but he wasn’t a total lost cause.
And he knew that in and of itself was a big surprise to most people in Copper Ridge. Oh, sure, they were all polite enough, but he knew for a fact no one wanted him dating their daughter or their sister.
Though now they were happy to have him spending money at their establishments.
He killed his truck’s engine and got out, grabbing hold of the big metal thermos he always carried with him during the workday and two tin mugs.
This was a peacemaking mission, which meant he had come prepared. He shoved his truck keys into his jeans pocket and crossed the gravel lot, heading toward the newly built barn, Connor’s pride and joy, with the exception of his wife and unborn child.