by Jade Cary
Jed pulled me close and he kissed me tenderly on the mouth. “Does your ass sting?”
“Yes. Does that please you?”
“Under the circumstances, it does, yes.” He rubbed his hand across both cheeks, and his hand drifted lower, brushing against the protrusion between my legs. One side of his mouth curled up. “Get into bed, lady. My belt hand is getting twitchy.”
“Well,” I said, sliding off his lap. “We wouldn’t want that.”
“At least one of us doesn’t.”
Turned out, we both wanted it something fierce.
New Developments
I stood at the kitchen window in the main house, staring at the expanse of land I now owned and didn’t seem to have any control over. Something was happening to us, and I didn’t know how to fix it. It had been a week since two cows were roasted out on the prairie, and I sustained a bullet graze and a sore backside. My ass was better by the next morning; my neck was healing nicely. The bandage was off and it itched like mad. There was an ongoing investigation, but we hadn’t heard from the authorities since that afternoon a week ago. I had a deadline on a project I was supervising in Brooklyn, and I wanted to get well and septic dug for the Wind Dancer Equine Center before the first frost. I should have been at the drafting table. Instead, I was drinking too much coffee, not sleeping, and doing far too much worrying.
I tossed the remains of my cup in the sink and went to find Jed. I spotted his truck on a dirt road that bordered a freshly cut alfalfa field, where deer, Pronghorn antelope, moose and a band of wild mustangs grazed twice a day. Cuttings still lay in neat rows for 80 acres, and it was as pretty as anything you’d ever want to see. Soon snow would fall, covering it all. We had more than enough to sustain our livestock through the winter, so why not leave the remains for the wildlife?
I pulled along side Jed’s truck. He was repairing a stretch of fence that had been knocked down.
“Hi, honey.” I came up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. He pulled his gloves off and turned, pulling me into an overwhelming embrace.
“What a nice surprise,” he said, resting his mouth on my forehead.
“What are you doing?”
“Opening the range for the winter migration.”
My head went to something nefarious before logic had taken over. Of course that was what he was doing. Herds of moose and elk migrated through our property at different times during the year, but never more so or in such numbers as during the winter.
“Mmmm.” I hugged him tighter. The knot that set itself in my stomach a week or so ago remained. He sensed something, and as he was wont to do, spoke his mind.
“You’re still unsettled about this, honey. I’m sorry. It’ll work out. You’re safe; know that.” He set me away from him. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I do. Do you? You’ve been like a tick on my ass since this latest incident.”
His grin was unapologetic. “Yeah. And?”
“I’m just saying. I’m okay.”
“You’re not. I know you. I’ve spanked you once already for lying. Do I have to do it again?”
“Will it hurt?”
“For lying? You bet it will.”
“Then no.” I buried my face in his neck. I was indeed unsettled.
“Listen to me,” he said, tipping my chin up so my eyes met his. “You get on back, get yourself undressed and get into my bed. I want to see you there in an hour. I’ll set you right.”
“But honey, I have work…”
“Argue with me and I’ll tan your hide right here and now.” He’d smacked my ass at least a thousand times in the last week over arguing and sassing and a billion other things he took offense to, all in the name of ‘seeing’ to me, as only Jed Brooks could. Tanning my hide for putting up a fuss over being ordered to his bed was justified in his mind. Seeing as how I’d benefit greatly by this particular order, I couldn’t disagree.
We’d both wasted the best part of the day in bed, and it would have indeed been a waste had the day been bright and sunny. But a storm passed over and instead of worrying over heating ducts in an office building in Brooklyn, or laying down fence for the elk, we lay in bed, satiated beyond measure, and watched the flashes of lightening out the window, then counted one-Mississippis until we heard the clap of thunder.
Jed had his hand laced in my hair, close to the scalp. It was something he did since that first kiss; kept me tethered to him, let me know I belonged to him. I’d become used to the sting at my scalp, and I missed it when he let go. Sometimes, if we were sitting out on the porch, or I had my head on his chest, I’d take his hand and slip it over the back of my neck and up into my hair, and he’d latch on, and all would be right again.
“I don’t know who to go to,” he said. A fire blazed, the smell of woodsmoke and Jed’s unique smell permeating everything.
“For what, honey?”
“Your hand.”
“Beg pardon?”
“I’d go to your daddy, but…” I looked up at Jed, and his eyes were moist.
“Might be a good idea to come to me.” My nose stung.
“Goes without sayin’, darlin’.”
I blinked back tears. “Jed?”
His mouth twitched, and he raised his eyes to the ceiling, emotion shrouding his face in a way I’d never seen, not even when we set my father into the ground. “I love you so much, Chan. From the moment you got out of that car—hell, from the moment I hung up the phone after telling you’re your daddy…” He shifted onto his side to face me. “I knew. Something in me changed.”
“Well, I’ve always loved you, so…” I stroked his face. “I’ve been planning the wedding since I was six.”
“Yeah?”
“You know I have.”
“So, will you?”
“Will I what, honey?”
One side of his mouth turned up in that sexy way, then he got out of bed, threw his jeans on without underwear, trotted into the bathroom and came out a moment later with his hair combed. I laughed through tears and sat up, a sheet covering my lady bits, as was appropriate on such an occasion. Jed got down on one knee at the side of his bed. He cleared his throat and took my hand in his.
“You’re an amazing woman. You’re tough, you’re tender, you’re sweet and you’re as sassy a woman as I’ve ever met. I thought I’d been in love before, but I know now I never came close. I’m happiest when you’re up close to me, and at my orneriest when you’re far away. I want to make a life with you, Chan. Tend a ranch, grow a family, and succeed in all of it by your side. Chandler Elise Asher, will you agree to be my wife so I don’t up and die right here?” One hand disappeared and came up holding a black velvet box. He deftly opened it without letting go of me. The ring was round, and pink, set in rose gold and as big as my pinky nail. Small round white diamonds surrounded it.
“The setting’s your mama’s, Chan; the diamond I found. I liked the color. I hope you do, too.”
“Oh, Jed. Oh…oh, oh, oh…” What a fool I was making of myself. My mother’s setting? How? “Oh, honey…”
“May I put it on you, baby?”
I couldn’t speak. I sobbed and sobbed, and suddenly I was wearing the ring. It was on my finger and gleaming and it fit and it was perfect and bright and shiny and pink and it fit.
I came that day, for the third time, staring at a pink diamond in my mother’s setting, and I was the happiest woman in the world.
“Take your plate to the sink, honey, so I can wash the table.”
“I’ll do it,” Charlie said. “The table, I mean.” He lifted my left hand. “Is it really true?”
“Yes, it really is.”
My brother looked across the room at Jed, who sat on the couch with an after-dinner glass of wine in his hand. “And so you’ll be my brother?”
“Yes.”
“Yahoo!” Charlie cleared the dinner dishes and wiped down the table with a damp cloth. He’d yahooed and snatched up my hand to look at the
ring, and asked over and over again if Jed would be his brother and if I would still be his sister along with being Jed’s wife, as if doing both was a phenomenon he couldn’t grasp. For hours this had been going on. I glanced at the clock and knew that homework and settling in time and trips to his room to say goodnight would take hours more, and I sighed and settled into the reality of my brother. He was an amazing, amazing person of depth and beauty and perception, and he was a child of seven who couldn’t comprehend the idea of tomorrow most of the time, so getting his head wrapped around next spring, or summer and a wedding would drive us insane. We’d have to think something up, and I was working on it as I took my cup of jasmine green tea and joined Jed on the couch. Charlie got out his homework and settled at the kitchen table, and I turned the news down on the TV. We were talking quietly as a fire crackled in the fireplace when Jed sat up at the arrival of a car in front of the house. Unexpected visitors were rare, and my stomach lurched, as it always had when we received visitors in the evening.
“It’s Buck.” Buck was Buck Allen, the sheriff. The FBI agent and Texas Clay were with him.
“Mijo, take your work in your room now,” Maria said.
“Forget you,” he said wide-eyed as he watched the men get out of the Sheriff’s SUV and climb the porch.
“William Carlos Asher!” I scolded. His eyes snapped to me and filled. A mixture of hurt and embarrassment shrouded his face. My own stress at this visit spurned the knee jerk reaction and I felt like a heel. “Please take your work in your room so we can talk to Sheriff Allen.” He disappeared down the hall as Jed opened the door.
“Buck?”
“Jed…Maria,” he nodded. “Chandler. You remember agent Jess Porter from the FBI field office in Bozeman?”
“Of course,” I said while the others nodded. Texas Clay eyed me with a three-dollar smile. I may have sneered.
“We wanted to fill you in on some new developments. After questioning the men—the ones who went with you on the drive as well as the ones who stayed behind—we’ve discovered that a ranch hand by the name of Devon Steel was employed by the people who came to Charles a year ago about that piece of land. Seems he’s been reporting your activities around here for close to six months.”
I caught Texas Clay’s eye, and a simple nod told me it was true.
“According to Dev,” Buck went on, “Someone from this house paid a visit to their fake real estate office about a week and a half ago, asked some questions, took some pictures of the place. They packed up and moved outta there the next day.” Buck turned to me. “Seems they knew who you were, Chandler.” He held out a newspaper from about a month ago with my picture on the front page. The story was about me becoming the largest contiguous landowner in the state upon the passing of my father. It wasn’t significant news to the locals; only to these nefarious people.
“Seems Chandler here was the target of that shooter.” Buck Allen looked at me. “Darlin’, they’ve had their eye on you since you arrived for your daddy’s funeral.”
A hand clamped down on my shoulder. It was Maria. She must have caught Jed’s look, too. His eyes were black and his chest heaved. His face went white and then a shroud of red painted his cheeks and spread from his forehead to his neck.
“Would have been easier to make some arrests had they stuck around,” Agent Jess Potter said, speaking for the first time. “But the good news is I don’t think they’ll bother you folks anymore. They’ve been outed. They’ll move on now to another target.” Potter sighed. “We’re on it. We’ll keep you informed.” He nodded to Clay. “You have time for a debrief with Agent Seneca, the sheriff and myself, Jed?”
“Yes…yes, of course.”
Agent Seneca? Oh, dear lord. Did I out him, too?
“May…may I join?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” FBI Agent Texas Clay How-Could-I-Be-So-Wrong-About-Another-Person Seneca said.
Dear Daddy…
I was numb when I left the meeting. I’d heard all I needed to. Clay Seneca had been planted within the group because he suspected one of the men was feeding information to the enemy, so to speak, and he’d been right. All along I’d suspected him, never dreaming he was here to watch out for us—me in particular. I saw how hard it had been for Jed to allow this man into our lives, for by allowing him in, it communicated that Jed was incapable of protecting me. Of course that couldn’t have been further from the truth, and as Buck Allen explained, they needed Jed as removed from the situation as possible. The appearance of normalcy was imperative, and as Jed had warned me, it was only a matter of time until the enemy slipped up. I saw now how spot on he was.
While the men talked in the study, I went down the hall to Charlie’s room. I knocked on his door, and instead of asking me in, he got up and opened it.
“Hey,” I said. “You almost done?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course, crazy,” he said.
“Come sit down, honey,” I said, leading him to the bed. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I don’t like to scold, but I also don’t like hearing you sass your mama. Do you understand?”
Charlie nodded, his eyes filling again. “I’ll say sorry.”
“That’s a good idea. Thank you.”
“Why are those men here?”
“They said the bad people are gone. I don’t think we’ll have any more problems here on the ranch. I don’t want you to worry about it anymore. We’ve got holidays coming up, the first big snow of the season’s on the way, and we have a lot of work to do. Can’t waste time worrying about what others are going to do.”
“You’re safe?”
I thought about that. I thought about Jed’s face, set in stone from the moment Buck Allen mentioned I’d been in the real estate office and that I’d been the target of the shooter. I hadn’t fully taken that one in yet, but I knew I would in time. I had no idea what to expect from Jed—oh, hell, who was I kidding? I knew what to expect. I just didn’t know how my decision would affect my future with him. I’d never seen that look on his face; I’d never seen that kind of anger in his eyes, that level of fear, that shroud of betrayal. I realized I saw only a fraction of it the day I disobeyed him and got myself shot. Safe? Not by a fucking country mile.
“Yes, I am safe, Charlie,” I said. “We all are.”
“Good.” He leaned his head against my arm, and that is how Maria found us when she came in to get him to bed.
The house was empty when I came out. The sheriff and the FBI men were gone, and so was Jed. He hadn’t waited for me; there was no note and no answer when I called out to him. The fire had died down in the fireplace, and the lights were minimal, as they always were as the house quieted down for the night. It was at this time that, while Maria sat with Charlie, Jed would take me by the hand and lead me out the door to his truck for the short drive up to his place and bed, or an after-dinner drink and a cuddle on the couch. I was getting none of that tonight; his truck was gone; Jed had left.
A deep, achy panic set up a place in my chest, and I sat on the couch, where he and I sat not two hours ago. I had a ring on my finger and a song in my heart, to be perfectly trite, yet the ache I’d felt for the last almost two weeks, ever since I made that trip into town, was throbbing in me now. Did I really believe Jed would never find out what I’d done? Well…yes. Did I seriously plan never to tell him? No. I wouldn’t be able to live with that nagging ache forever, so yes, of course I planned to tell him—eventually, like on our first, or twenty-first anniversary, perhaps.
What was worse, and the thing I couldn’t get past now, sitting here on the couch alone, his scent everywhere, his presence inside me like a satin heart you stick inside the stuffed rabbit right before it gets sewed up, was that he just…left. I expected to see him when I walked out, sitting at the kitchen table, or worse, leaning against it with his arms folded and that look he got just before he seared my tail. I expected ‘What the hell were you thinking?�
�� to fall from his mouth in an angry hiss, or worse, ‘Get your ass up to the house. We have some things to cover.’ But all I got was an empty room and silence. And it was deafening.
Jed was not a run-awayer, but he’d done it tonight, and I was terrified. The right thing to do, of course, was to walk up the hundred or so yards to his place, knock on the door, and fall on my sword. But I was afraid; afraid of rejection, of retaliation, of feeling bad about something I’d done, of regret. I didn’t want to face him, and was terrified not to. I’d played that game for fifteen years, and it got me nowhere. And yet, here I was, playing it again.
I walked down the hall and whispered goodnight to Maria, and went up to bed. I got undressed, grabbed my laptop and sat against the headboard. I opened a document, and my fingers flew over the keys.
Dear Daddy,
The first thing is, I wish you hadn’t sent me away, but more than that, I wish I’d asked you why. I wish that I had come home holidays and summer breaks and for birthdays, and for the first day of harvest. But I didn’t. I was stubborn and I was trying to hurt you, and I think I accomplished that. But I also hurt myself because I never got a chance to tell you how much I missed the smell of hay, the chill of an early morning ride just before the first snowfall of winter, the ache in my bones at that first plunge into the river on the last day of school. That I was sorry I never got to see Charlie grow up. And of course, you, just being here. Being here, because it was something I always counted on, even when you couldn’t be here, you still were.
Oh, God, Dad…I’ve done something terrible. I don’t know where to begin, but I’d say it started about fifteen years ago. If you were here now, you’d tell me what to do. I betrayed a friend. I went against him because I thought I was smarter, thought I knew better, and I almost got myself killed. This friend—I’ll call him Ralph—looked stricken, sick to his stomach, like he’d been stabbed when he discovered what I’d done. Honestly, it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time—until it was inferred that my actions caused another action that wounded me physically…and oh, God, Daddy, Charlie was right next to me when it happened! I saw none of it coming. Because I deal in a different world, with a different type of snake, I didn’t see it. Ralph (oh, shit, JED!) tried to tell me…he did. But I thought I knew better. And now I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid, Daddy. I’m afraid of his anger, of his disappointment, and that he’ll never think of me the same way again. I can hear your voice now: Go talk to Jed, little girl. Get it done, then you can move on. G’on, now, git! And then you’d smile, and the corners of your eyes would crease, and I’d know in that moment that all would be right if I just…did…the…right…thing.