The source of his sharp humor became clear—his family.
“And that behavior wasn’t tolerated, not from the son of Lincoln Monroe, studio head.” Jonah sobered. “As a kid, I didn’t always have the right comeback in the moment. But when I wrote a script, I was brilliant. I brought peace to the family and love to the world. I created characters who weren’t as bitter or as gullible as...” He paused. “Writing made those childhood years bearable.”
“Oh.” Emily’s chest ached with worry for the hurts suffered by a little redheaded boy.
“It wasn’t all bad,” he was quick to clarify. “My grandfather was a gift. To all us kids.”
She took his hand.
He looked at it, saying nothing, doing nothing.
And yet, the feel of his warm skin next to hers was doing something. Deep in her chest, deep in her heart, emotions stirred.
A whisper in her head tried to halt the stirring: city fella, vinegar, Arabians.
Em should listen to that whisper. She wasn’t a lofty dreamer like he was.
But like yeast set in a warm bowl, the process of forging a bond had begun. And she let it. Because she liked him. Because he was hurting. And like her brother’s horse, she couldn’t take those painful memories away. She could only help him march forward with a steady hand and the strength lent to get through a less than rosy past.
The owl took flight, sweeping across the yard on a breeze laden with shared confidences.
“Your parents were strict?” Emily gave his hand a squeeze, not going anywhere.
Jonah stared at her, wary, stoic. “Yes.”
“They betrayed your trust.” He’d mentioned being gullible, after all. And his parents were powerful in Hollywood.
“In some ways.” There was no sign of his trademark grin. “For example, they set poor examples of conscious coupling.”
He was talking about relationships.
The cautious whisper in her head grew louder. “And yet, you have a strong sense of right and wrong.” Not a question.
“Yes. Back to my grandfather. He made sure of that.” His gaze never wavered, never flinched, never moved from her face.
He’s braver than I am.
She no longer wondered how it could be that she felt connected to Jonah and not Bo. Jonah was cynical but kindhearted. Despite him being Hollywood royalty, he wasn’t on a pedestal. He befriended everyone. She was afraid he was doing more than befriending her. And that was all on her.
Jonah cleared his throat. “Emily, I—”
“Are you guys getting married?” Adam stood at the edge of the gravel circle.
“No,” Emily and Jonah said at the same time, releasing their handhold and putting distance between them without moving from their folding chairs.
Adam wore cotton pajamas with cowboy hats on them and his cowboy boots. Bolt sat at his feet. “Can I have some muffin?” He didn’t wait for Em’s permission. He bunny-hopped over and climbed into her lap, taking one of her mini-muffins. “The boys are fighting.” He tilted his head up to Em with that smile she loved so much. And then he glanced over at Jonah and said, “She’s the bestest baker in the whole wide world. You should marry her.”
Neither one of them protested his statement.
Shouldn’t they have?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EXTERIOR. THE STAGE ROAD. Mike galloping for the hills, a sack of gold tied to his saddle horn, dodging ruts and mud puddles. Ahead of him, Letty led the way.
DID DESPERADOS DODGE mud puddles?
Jonah didn’t know. Heck, he wasn’t even fighting the Letty plotline. He was more interested in the logistics of stagecoach robbery and escape.
Case in point: road conditions. It probably wasn’t good for a horse’s health to run through mud puddles. They might be deep or filled with rocks. A lame horse was like a flat tire. Did that mean most stagecoach robberies happened in good weather?
“I sense an online research session, Razzy,” Jonah said.
The horse blew a raspberry.
“What are you doing back there?” Emily had been riding ahead of Jonah on the old stage trail.
She’d been unusually quiet this morning, as if she was working something out in her head. She couldn’t be thinking about Adam’s teasing words at the firepit last night, the ones about them getting married.
Emily twisted in her saddle. “Jonah?”
“I’m plotting and evading mudholes.” True, but Jonah had slowed Razzy down so he could eat a banana and drink some water, items he’d stowed in the inner pockets of his lightweight jacket on this cloud-filled day. Jonah had hung back because he hadn’t wanted Emily to notice he was eating. She asked more questions than anyone he’d ever met.
Emily turned her scarred black horse around and headed back at a quick clip. There was nothing about the big gelding that was slow, even when he was walking.
Jonah took a bite of banana.
They’d joined the trail early in the morning where it was flanked by the Salmon River and a wildflower-strewn meadow. Farther north, the road had sharp S-turns and was crowded by trees and gentle rises, offering great spots for an ambush.
“There’s no mud, Jonah.” Trust Emily to poke holes in Jonah’s excuses.
“There would be if it had rained recently.”
She scoffed.
He cast about for a distraction. “I think I owe you an apology for that Bo-breakfast yesterday. I got all tangled up in Letty. Truth be told, I’m still tangled.” But now he was tangled with Emily, too. And only Emily’s knots were unraveling, revealing intriguing contradictions of vulnerability and strength.
“You’re apologizing and lagging behind?” Em shook her head, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses and beneath the brim of her cowboy hat. “Is that a banana?”
“It’s no big deal. I’m eating.” Jonah waved her off. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”
“Seriously?” Emily kept coming toward him, starting to grin. “For a person who doesn’t eat much, you sure eat often.”
“I’m on a strict diet, which is why I eat often.” He finished the banana and stuffed the rolled peel in the pocket of his lightweight jacket. “I have to eat several small meals a day.”
“You’re dieting?” Emily stopped her horse next to him, close enough that she could reach out and touch his leg, but facing the way back to the ranch. “Are you trying to keep your weight down?”
“No.” Jonah hoped the clipped response would discourage Emily from prying.
No such luck.
She raised her brows. “Do you...” She stuck her finger in her throat, mimicking the actions of a self-induced vomit.
“No.” He tried to think of something clever to say—normally not a problem for him. But he drew a blank, and a part of him was weary of deflecting the truth. “I have Crohn’s disease.” At her blank stare, he added, “Basically, ninety percent of processed food makes me ill.”
You’ll regret that, Grandpa Harlan used to say when Jonah was tempted to eat something he shouldn’t, like greasy pizza or carrot cake.
“Oh.” Emily turned Deadly around, practically without moving herself. “I’m sorry. Both for assuming you were a survivor of some dreaded disease and because I’ve always given you a hard time about eating.” She gave a little head bobble. “Seeing as how I have no problem eating and eating well, I shouldn’t cast stones on someone who can’t.”
“I never resented your eating habits or your teasing.” He resented his condition. He resented having to think about every bite of food that passed his lips.
“Is that why you’re so thin?” Emily inventoried his frame, a clinical inspection that lacked any sexual sizzle.
He shrugged off his disappointment. “I was never as big as Bo.” No Monroe had ever been as big as Bo. “I was diagnosed when I was thirteen.” And mortified when he’d fain
ted from the cramps on one of his grandfather’s family outings. It had taken a medical diagnosis for his cousins to stop ribbing him.
“The awkward teen years.” Emily nudged Deadly forward.
Razzy followed along without any guidance from Jonah.
“You had cake on my birthday,” she said.
He winced. “Actually, Bolt had cake on your birthday. And Adam had my frosting.”
“You’re that strict about what you eat?” She slanted him a look. “You don’t cheat?”
“Humiliation and physical pain have a way of making me eat smart.” Always. “I didn’t tell you to earn your pity. I try not to make a big deal out of it. One of the things I like about living in Hollywood is that everyone is on some kind of specialty diet. No one questions what I choose to eat.”
“What do you eat? What’s safe?”
“Tofu. Steamed vegetables. Dairy.” Luckily he wasn’t allergic to dairy. “Can we talk about something else? It’s all very emasculating.”
Emily gave him a sideways look. “As would be any serious illness if you had a fragile ego, which you don’t have.”
Right. “I’ll take that as a rare compliment from a most respected rodeo queen.”
“I get it now.” Emily guided Deadly around a big rock that seemed out of place on the trail. It would’ve stopped a stage from passing had a bandit rolled it from a slope above. “I always wondered why you just sat back and watched women fawn over Bo. But it’s not just amusement. You don’t think you’re as attractive as he is. Or a real catch.”
Jonah suddenly hated how smart Emily was. “Most people would agree that I’m not.” He cleared his throat. “Case in point...you.”
She disqualified that comment with a roll of her big brown eyes. “This is perfect. It suits your tendency toward melodrama to sit back and be ignored.”
“Oh, come on, now.”
“It’s true. You can admit it. We’re friends.” Emily turned in the saddle, grinning. “But really, the exact opposite is true. You want the stage.”
His head started shaking before she finished that last sentence, even though he recognized the truth in her words. “I’m not an attention-seeker. Trust me. I have a famous sister and a mother who wishes she had marketable talent. I know attention-seekers when I see them.”
“Argue all you want...” Emily laughed. “But let this idea sink in, Hollywood. You slip in those little zingers, like gems waiting to be discovered by the worthy.” Her voice trailed off and she gave him another sideways glance. But this time, her expression was speculative. “When did Aria know about your Crohn’s?”
“What? Who’s Aria?” Jonah lifted his chin and tried to pretend ignorance.
“Please.” Emily tipped back her hat and shot him with a no-nonsense stare. “Your former fiancée? The woman who fell for you and all your charm, and Bo and all his muscles?”
“You fell for Bo and all his muscles.” Jonah didn’t want to have this conversation. His privacy and his past were being invaded. Not to mention that her infatuation with Bo bothered him more every day.
The corners of her mouth turned up a smidge. “Technically, Bo checked more boxes than just muscles.”
“My bad. Let’s see. The first box is cowboy.” Raising his voice, Jonah ticked the points off on his fingers. “Muscles. And...why else are you so darn compatible?” The annoyance he was battling shocked him. He’d never raised his voice to Aria. Of course, he’d never confronted her directly about her attraction to Bo, either.
“Do you have to overanalyze everything and everyone but yourself?” Emily sat taller in the saddle and seemed to urge Deadly into a faster walk. “Sometimes there’s just chemistry between a man and a woman. Plain and simple.”
“I’ll add chemistry to the checked boxes.” Jonah held up three fingers. “Along with good-looking, because, let’s be honest, he is Mr. Bodilicous.” He raised a fourth finger. “Lucky Bo. You’ve fallen for him for all the right reasons.”
Emily frowned, scanning the trail ahead. “I didn’t fall for Bo. I never said I was in love with him. There’s a difference between love and attraction.” Tension rose from her like hot air from a summer sidewalk.
“A difference?” Jonah scoffed, too worked up to analyze anything. “Not from where I’m sitting when I watch you.” When Jonah looked at Emily, like called to like. She saw too much truth the way he did. She found too much irony the way he did. “You expect that attraction to Bo will bring love to you, like ordering food from a menu and feeling full afterward. Love doesn’t work like that, Em. It’s a hard-fought battle on shaky ground.” Too often, so-called love lost the war.
“You know, sometimes I like you better when you don’t speak.” Emily brought Deadly close to him. The toe of her boot touched Jonah’s running shoe. She reached over to poke his thigh. “Sometimes when you don’t shut up, I just want to...” She pulled Deadly to a stop and removed her sunglasses.
Razzy stopped, too.
“I just want to grab you by the shoulders...” Emily kept hold of her reins with one hand and grabbed one of Jonah’s shoulders with the other. And then...
Nothing.
They stared at each other. They stared the same way they had the other day moments before she’d hugged him. Jonah looked deeply into her rich brown eyes, taking note of her pretty face and her pretty hair, taking note of the fact that he wanted to kiss her, to learn the softness of her cheek with his palm, to listen to her talk about what it took to be a rodeo queen until he drifted to sleep in the circle of her arms.
But hey. Cue reality. They were on horseback and there was no way Emily wanted to kiss him after he’d questioned her devotion to Bo and admitted he was a dude with perpetual tummy issues.
Très sexy.
If reality was calling, Emily wasn’t picking up. She continued to stare, not completing her sentence.
Jonah smiled gently. “You want to grab me by the shoulders and...give me a shake?” he supplied helpfully, fully prepared for Em to slug his shoulder or poke his thigh once more.
She did neither. “Sometimes I want to...” She tugged Jonah closer, bringing him into the narrow chasm between them. And then she kissed him. She kissed him hard. She kissed him with intensity.
All too soon, she shoved him back, so abruptly he nearly fell out of the saddle.
“There,” she said. “That was chemistry. And it doesn’t mean I’m in love with you, either.”
She shoved her sunglasses back on, urged Deadly into a gallop and left Jonah holding on for his life.
* * *
“SILLY.” EMILY GALLOPED along the trail without looking back.
Why should she? Jonah wasn’t going to let something as intimate as a kiss go by without dissecting it. He’d catch up. And when he did, she’d never hear the end of it.
“Stupid.” Just because she found his eyes arresting, his arms surprisingly strong and his jaded heart compelling, she didn’t need to take his lips for a test drive.
“Idiot.” Because Jonah was staying at the ranch and she wouldn’t be able to avoid him. Which meant she needed to slow down and face her mistake.
Emily stopped in the shade of a tall pine and turned to confront her blunder head-on.
Jonah and Razzy sauntered around the corner as if they had all the time in the world.
To make me suffer.
Emily squared her shoulders and prepared for her lumps. “I’m sorry,” she said when Jonah was close enough to hear her without shouting. “I’m impulsive sometimes.”
“Impulses like that can get you into trouble.” Jonah didn’t pull Razzy to a stop until he was almost past her. He sighed. “I know that kiss meant nothing.”
What?
The eggs were flabbergasted. That had been some kiss.
“We were like two kids in the schoolyard, spurring each other on.” He patte
d Razzy’s neck. “Except we both know better than to throw a punch, don’t we?”
“Sure?” Wasn’t he going to tease her? Make stupid innuendos about her no longer wanting a cowboy?
Jonah nodded. “I was disrespecting the way you’re looking for love. You have a type. Lots of people do. I should have honored what you were telling me about Bo’s good points.”
She turned Deadly so that they were heading in the same direction as Jonah, turning his words over in her head. “You don’t like me.”
“I didn’t say that.” Jonah nudged Razzy forward, easing up on the reins. Despite his tennis shoes, he was becoming a decent rider when he tried.
“Or you don’t want me to like you.” Could Jonah want her to ignore the attraction she sometimes felt for him? Why would he do that if he liked her?
“I see now why you’ve never married,” he murmured. “You leave no emotional stone unturned.”
Jonah always seemed to murmur the truths he saw in the world, speaking at half volume as if he knew it was inappropriate to voice his observations but couldn’t keep them to himself.
Because that last statement...
He’d hit the nail on the head. Emily’s impulsiveness and honesty were a key reason why her relationships never turned the corner into long-term territory. And, admittedly, she tended to protect her private life and had a bit of a temper to go along with a goodly dose of pride.
Emily stared at Jonah instead of the trail ahead. What kind of man was lip-bombed only to let the lip-bomber off the hook? Of course, Jonah being Jonah, he’d let her off the hook and then pointed out her flaws. But that had nothing to do with their kiss. Their kiss had been scary good.
And yet, it was almost as if he didn’t think he deserved to be kissed again.
Jonah, you sly dog.
“Was this how it was with Aria?” Emily pressed on before Jonah could shut her down. “You pushed her away?”
He pressed his lips together.
“Aria,” she continued. “Even her name sounds delicate. Was she too fragile for your humor or...” She reached across the gap between them and drew back on Razzy’s reins while simultaneously bringing Deadly to a stop. “Was she too fragile to handle your illness?”
Enchanted by the Rodeo Queen--A Clean Romance Page 13