by Jillian Neal
But Jack would never do that. He was classy and sophisticated. Two qualities one was not likely to find in cowboys. They had their purposes of course. One or two of her cousins could even almost outride her, but Meridian had precious little use for cattlemen.
“You are not talking me out of this,” she informed him yet again as he continued to feebly try to convince her not to come. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” She ended the call and rattled off the lengthy clothing list she’d need to her cousin.
She also considered her options in Tulsa. Glamorous Gowns and Something Blue Bridal Shop were not likely going to cut it. His family sounded woefully pretentious, and she prided herself on always blowing expectations out of the water. She needed designer clothes. She had to do this right. The only problem was that she did not have the credit limit for a week’s worth of designer clothes.
Harper was still eyeing her from the driver’s seat. It unnerved Meridian not to be the one driving, so she wished her cousin would hurry up and get them to the mall. “Why do you keep staring at me?” she finally demanded.
“I was trying to think if I’ve ever seen you so unnerved.”
“I am not unnerved. What do I have to be unnerved about? Why is this a big deal?”
Harper rolled her eyes. “Well, Cleopatra, if you’ll pull your skinny ass out of the river of de-Nile, I think I have a better idea than the mall for what it sounds like you need.”
“I’m listening.”
“Do you trust me?”
“That is such a leading question. Do I trust you not to drive us into that telephone pole? Yes. Do I trust you to help take care of my cattle while I’m gone? Also yes. Do I trust your opinions on me and Jack and this trip? Not in ten million years.”
“Fine. But just so that I can thoroughly enjoy this when it blows up in your face, do you trust me on finding you clothes because I really do have a brilliant idea?”
“Okay, I trust you on clothes as well.”
Fifteen minutes later, they were pulling into the small parking lot of a high-end thrift store that Meridian didn’t even know existed. “Okay, you are brilliant,” she conceded.
Harper beamed at her. “I know I am. Does this mean that you’ll listen to me about you and Jack?”
“Let’s not push it.”
As Meridian began trying things on, Harper continued to push her point. “Explain to me again why, if you’re just doing a friend a favor—a week-long, across-the-country favor, mind you—you need clothes to make Jack drool? That doesn’t sound very friendly to me.”
Grinding her teeth at that, Meridian pretended to be studying a loosened button on the custom-made-for-someone-else Dior jacket. Harper cleared her throat when Meridian didn’t answer. Glaring at her cousin, Meridian pretended to be unaffected. “Men…enjoy drooling. That’s proven. They’re like dogs.”
Harper’s laughter filled the small store. “Oh, I so cannot wait to throw that comment back in your face. I think I’ll save it for my maid of honor speech.”
“Never getting married. Will never need a maid of honor. I’d sooner give up my career than ever walk down an aisle to meet a man-dog. Now, what do you think of this jacket with these jeans and these boots?”
Harper’s smirk was louder than her laughter. “Jack’s gonna need a spittoon.”
Chapter Five
After successfully scoring suitcases full of designer clothes for just a few hundred dollars, Meridian informed her cousin that she needed ice cream. Specifically, she needed the kind of ice cream which was acquired at Woodland Hills Mall, which would also gain her access to lingerie shops.
Once they’d acquired two large cups of Black Forest and Oreo, Meridian had to figure out a way to lose her cousin long enough for her to slip into Victoria’s Secret to acquire some new undergarments. Not that anyone would know what she was wearing underneath her new used clothes, but she told herself she would be even more confident if she knew her bra and panties matched. Plus, a few new nighties would be required. She had to look the part all the time, right? What if there was some kind of fire or something in the middle of the night and she had to run out of her bedroom? She couldn’t very well show up in the front yard in a torn Oklahoma State T-shirt and a pair of frayed flannel pants. That would ruin the entire effect.
“So,”—Harper licked the ice cream from her spoon and let her eyes close as she savored—“where exactly will you and Jack be sleeping? Since you’re engaged and all.”
“We haven’t even discussed the specific status of our fake relationship, but we are definitely not pretending to be engaged. Plus, his family is old money proper. I’m imagining the Queen of England crossed with Vatican Nuns levels of propriety. I’m sure I’ll have my own room, so you can get that thought right out of your head. Nothing improper will be going on.”
“You look mighty disappointed in that.” Her cousin continued to prove just how well she knew Meridian. “You know, Ryan and I used to have all sorts of fun sneaking around his grandmother’s house when we visited there. Disapproval can be an aphrodisiac.”
Meridian never knew what to say when Harper talked about Ryan. It had been years since his death, and it killed Meridian that he wasn’t here every day adoring Harper the way he always had. The visible pain in Harper’s eyes that she tried to hide when she spoke of him wounded Meridian.
She hated seeing her cousin hurt. She hated seeing anyone hurt, especially if there was nothing she could do to ease the pain. It was the thing that drove her to be an attorney. Removing the source of the pain from society only solved half of the problem. The victims were never the only ones hurting. It was why she and Jack had worked tirelessly to try to bring prison reform to Oklahoma. Hurt people hurt other people, and she’d fight for both sides until her last breath.
Unless someone came after her family and then all bets were off. Marsden and his ridiculous case were driven by the latest clickbait news headlines about Oklahoma not being able to afford to keep the mustangs on ranch land. She’d just as soon roast Marsden on a spit as look at him.
Doubling down on her determination to handle the case entirely on her own, she glanced around at the nearby stores. They only had a half hour until the mall closed, and she needed to move quickly.
“Didn’t you want to get Josh some new Pokes stuff for his birthday?” She gestured to the nearby sporting goods store.
Harper’s left eyebrow lifted as she studied Meridian. “Josh’s birthday isn’t for three months, and why are you trying to get rid of me?”
“I just thought while we were here.” She shrugged off the question.
“Uh huh, Mer, I have two kids. I know sneaking when I see it. I can sense it. Sniff it out a mile away. Spill it.”
Meridian rolled her eyes. “I just need to pick up some new panties.”
The only positive thing resulting from the truth here was that every note of pain over memories of Ryan dissolved as Harper laughed again. “And you think that I’m not going to help you pick out the things that Jack Denton will absolutely never be seeing you in,” she mocked.
“Just a work friend and this is just a favor,” Meridian insisted yet again.
“Get up. We only have a half hour and we have a lot to do.” Harper yanked Meridian out of her seat. “And it’s called friends with benefits”—she emphasized the last three words—“not friends with favors. Who knew you were so bad at this?”
“If you don’t shut up, I will bring Josh and Noah every piece of candy I can find in this mall and in every single gas station between here and the ranch, and I will give it all to them at bedtime tomorrow night.”
Harper chuckled. “You’re evil.”
Meridian gave her a broad beaming grin complete with the fluttering of her eyelashes. “But I’m very sweet about it.”
Friday morning, Jack found himself walking into Meridian’s office without even the pretense of knocking. He had less than twenty-four hours to forbid her from coming with him to Kentucky. The only problem
was that forbidding Meridian to do anything at all would only result in her doing the thing you didn’t want her to do faster and with less regard for things like her own personal safety and judgment.
She held up a finger when he entered and then pointed to her cell phone at her ear. “I am so looking forward to meeting you, Mrs. Denton,” drawled from her. All of the blood rushing through Jack’s body froze at once. “Jack has told me so much about all of you.” The roar of panic in his ears was too loud for him to fully understand what she was saying. “Really? He hasn’t mentioned me at all, huh? Well, you know what they say, once you start to fall in love it happens fast.”
Jack only made out the words fall and fast. His mind supplied him imagery of a deadly explosion at the end of the rapid fall. Blinking seemed the only bodily function he was capable of, so he did that several times hoping to jump-start the rest of himself.
It worked, at least partially. He was able to mouth the words, “Why in god’s name are you talking to my mother?!”
Meridian wore her cat-with-the-canary-in-her-iron-sights grin. “She called me,” she mouthed back with a complementary shrug. Oh fuck, this was bad. Very, very, very bad. There was no telling what his mother was up to, but it was definitely something villainous. Holder was not a surname that existed on the approved list of mates for the Denton boys. That was the very reason Jack had to refuse to take Meridian with him. He could not allow her to endure the scathing burns his mother would wield via backhanded compliments and outright impudence.
He stood rooted to the marble flooring until she ended the call. “What the hell did she want and what did you say?” he demanded.
Meridian’s eyes narrowed, and Jack knew he’d gone several steps too far. “Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?”
“My mother is capable of many things, none of them good.”
“She seemed perfectly nice, but far more importantly, I do not need to be protected,” she spat the word like rattler venom from her lips, “and it’s really starting to piss me off that you can’t just let me help you out. Your family cannot possibly be as bad as you say they are. They raised you, didn’t they?”
Aware that there was a slight compliment woven into that, Jack tried to figure out which point to counter first. “My family is worse than I’m describing them. Far, far worse. I should never have told them you were even potentially coming. I gave them your name. That was too much. I’ve already not protected you.”
She rose from behind her desk and took seven very deliberate steps to stand before him. Those heels of hers brought her lips dangerously close to his. Her scent, some erotic combination of cheap perfume, wildflowers, and saddle leather, teased at his nostrils. For years he’d told himself that must be how all cowgirls smelled, but it wasn’t. It was distinctly Meridian. His nostrils flared either in awareness that the fight-or-flight portion of his brain should be engaging now and wasn’t, or in desperation to bring more of her scent to his lungs. He wanted to drown in it. To put himself out of his own misery by losing it all in her.
The tip of her tongue gently caressed her bottom lip. “Hear me say this, Jack,”—his name struck from her lips like a hammer connecting with a nail—“I just informed your mother that we were falling in love, so we’re doing this. I do not need to be protected. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
He shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know them. I protect the people I care about. It’s who I am. It’s why I do what I do. It’s why I left Kentucky.”
“Then care about me less,” she countered.
“That isn’t possible.” For the first time in four years he saw something he’d never seen before—Meridian Holder didn’t have a comeback.
Chapter Six
Still dizzy from being so close to Meridian in all of her stubborn, sexy glory, when Jack finally made his way back to his own office, he found someone waiting on him inside.
Maddox Holder, one of Meridian’s older brothers and the one closest to her in age, stared him down. Every curse word Jack’s grandfather had taught him formed rapidly on his tongue, but he bit them back. “Maddox,” he managed. “How are you today?”
The guy was an Army Ranger by trade, frequently worked with some secret specialized government protection agency, and was referred to by all who knew him as Maddog, given his wild stunts and temper. Jack generally regarded him as a pin-less grenade. Since Maddox had never come to Jack’s office before, he could only assume Maddog was there to let Jack know what he thought of Meridian going to Kentucky.
Clearly, Jack needed to seek some kind of psychological testing because, again, that fight-or-flight instinct wasn’t kicking in. It seemed to be defunct.
Maddox stared him down. “I’m all right, I guess. You, on the other hand, are either goddamn fearless or dumber than you look.”
Keeping him talking might delay the fists flying so Jack considered his words. “I’m most definitely not fearless, so I guess I’ll have to go with the second choice. I assure you that any interaction I have with your sister will be with the utmost amount of respect and”—he scrambled for more words that might reassure Maddox—“dutiful, gentlemanly, all of that.”
Confusion clouded Maddox’s whiskey-colored eyes, not nearly as light and pristine as his sister’s, but the resemblance was still there. “Wait. Do you think I’m here to scare you offa her?”
Stupidly, Jack’s brain supplied, “I’m not really on her. No, wait. Uh, isn’t that why you’re here? To protect your sister from me?”
Maddox laughed. “Meridian sure as fuck don’t need me or anyone else to protect her. Jaysus, it was us that needed to be protected from her when we were kids. I’m here to protect you, to figure out what the hell you’re thinking taking her out to Kentucky to meet your folks. She’s gotta be after something and seems to me you’re playing right into her hand.”
“What on earth would her meeting my family get her?” Other than misery. He left those words off in the interest of keeping Maddox on point.
“She’s probably still pissed you beat her out for the DA position. Girl does not like to lose. What if she’s digging up dirt on you or something to use the next time your seat’s up?”
Jack knew that wasn’t even a remote possibility though there would certainly be enough dirt to dig in on his family’s estate. “Come on now, your sister hates to lose, but she always, always plays fair. She would never cheat to win. She wouldn’t consider it a real victory if she had to run a smear campaign to get elected.”
Maddox shook his head and gave Jack a consolatory pat on the shoulder. “And there it is. You’ve got the hots for her. I was worried that was the real reason you were going along with this. Just be careful, man—ain’t nobody nowhere who will ever tame my baby sister.”
“I would never want to tame her,” finally spilled from Jack’s lips, but Maddox was on the elevator by the time the thought had moved from the firm implantation in his mind to his mouth. Since he was alone, he allowed the thoughts to continue their growth. God, why would anyone ever want to tame her? She runs hot and wild always. What man in his right mind would try to put out her fire? She burned hotter than fireball whiskey, and the truth of the matter was that he wanted to spend a week getting drunk on her. Letting her burn away the scars from his time in the Denton Dynasty.
He wanted to be the object of her attention if only for a week. He wanted to keep up the ruse of their romantic relationship if that might mean that he got to have his hands on her in some small way occasionally. Despite the desperate levels of selfishness and the guilt he would never outlive, he wanted to take a small piece of heaven with him to hell.
It wasn’t until later that afternoon as he wrote up the eminent domain contract—something he’d done so many times in his career he could do it asleep—that his own words came back to haunt him. She always, always plays fair.
He took his hands off of his keyboard and sat back in his chair to stare out at the town sq
uare he’d grown to love. Meridian always did things by the book, so why was she so hell-bent on representing her family in the Marsden case? He understood her dedication to protecting her family. My god, he more than anyone else understood that, but she was going to end up hanging the case up in court on technicalities. She’d already drawn up a continuance on the trial without so much as asking him. Why did she want to delay it? What the hell was she up to?
Maybe Maddox was right. Jack refused to believe that she was after information about him, but she was after something. He needed to find out what going with him to Kentucky really had to do with the mustang case.
Jack’s decision to take himself out to Holder Ranch that evening was three-fold. But all three of his reasons for being there would have the same result—protecting Meridian, even if he was protecting her from herself.
Deciding that he’d claim ignorance if he got caught, he turned in the wrong entrance to the ranch. Meridian lived two entrances down from where his truck was currently cruising. That was fine. He wasn’t there to see her yet. He needed to see the mustangs. His family had bred and trained Derby horses for generations. The Denton horses had come home with the roses sixteen times and had gone on to win the Triple Crown five times. He might not have known much about wild breeds or ranch horses, but he knew enough to be able to tell if there was something going on that Meridian was trying to keep under wraps. At least, he hoped he did.
Driving slowly along the expansive field the Holders kept the thousands of mustangs housed in, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. A few of the mares headed his way, but they all appeared perfectly healthy and happy with their circumstances.
The Holders were the very best of cattle ranchers. They had generations, buckles, land, respect, profits, and knowledge to their credit. They would never do anything malicious to a horse. He had no real idea what he was even looking for, but he certainly wasn’t seeing anything that Meridian would try to hide.