by Jillian Neal
Giving it up as a stupid idea anyway, he turned in the grass and headed toward the portion of the ranch run by Gentry Holder and his children—which included his beautiful, brilliant, stubborn only daughter—to enact the next two sides of his plan. He would either successfully scare her off or prepare her. Either way, at least he was doing all he could to protect her whether she wanted to be protected or not.
Chapter Seven
Meridian shook her head at Harper. “No one will find out. Everyone at the office will just assume that Jack and I decided to go on vacation the same week, not in the same place,” she informed her cousin while methodically folding the Dior jacket to add it to the suitcases her great aunt had given her when she graduated from high school. She didn’t ever travel, so new luggage was not an item she would spend money on.
Harper’s jaw cocked to the side as she stared at Meridian like she’d sprouted a third boob from her face or something. “My god, when it comes to Jack Denton you are dumber than dirt under a cow patty. This is Holder County and you are a Holder. Literally everyone will find out. The Sanderson’s baby that’s not due until January probably already knows.” She shook her head. “Look, I want you to have what Ryan and I had back in the day, and I think Jack might be the only guy you could ever fall for, but I’m worried about this. Everyone is going to say that you’re trying to sleep your way into his job. You know they will. I don’t want you to have to live through that.”
“I give exactly no shits what people in this town think of me. You know that.”
“I know you like to say that, but it’s a bold-faced lie. You care because they didn’t vote for you.”
“That will change next time.”
“Will it?”
“By next year when his seat is up again, yes, it will. People have shockingly short attention spans and even shorter memories.”
“Maybe, but they seem to remember every single mistake our family ever made and several we didn’t.”
“Then just don’t tell anyone where I am.”
“Right. That’ll work.”
A knock on the front door shook the ladies out of their debate. “Who is that?” Meridian wondered aloud as she made her way out of the bedroom. Everyone who lived on the ranch generally just let themselves into her house, a habit she couldn’t seem to break them of, and since she lived twelve miles from the gates no one else made the effort.
Harper scooted around her and peeked out the dining room window. “It’s Jack,” she whispered.
“He’s probably here to make one last effort to keep me from going. Clearly, he needs to be schooled in cowgirl.”
Harper giggled. “He clearly needs to be schooled in your own special brand of stubborn. I know a lot of cowgirls, and none of them hold a candle to you.”
Meridian pulled open the door instead of responding to her cousin. “Hey. What are you doing out here?”
Jack held up two fancy suitcases. “I brought you luggage, and my father’s pilot would be suspicious if we didn’t arrive at the airstrip together tomorrow. I assume you don’t want to have to get up at five in the morning to meet me somewhere, so I thought maybe I’d stay here tonight.” He sounded precisely like he did in court when he was nailing the final points home to the jury.
Meridian tried to hide her amusement. Did he seriously think he was going to scare her out of this?
“Come on in.” She opened the front door wide and stepped back to both allow him entrance and to reveal her favorite cousin.
“Hey, Jack.” Harper waved.
“Oh,” he cleared his throat like that would help. “Ms. Reeves, I didn’t know you were here.”
“Yeah, I walked over. My house isn’t that far from here, and Ryan’s brother, Chase, took the boys to soccer practice for me so I had a night off.”
Jack nodded, but he’d clearly rehearsed whatever it was he planned to say based on the premise that Meridian would be alone. Oh, this was too good. “I get up at four thirty to run my feed trucks before I come into the office, but if you want to stay, you’re welcome to the couch.” Meridian gestured to the leather behemoth that sat in her living room as Jack trailed after her into the house.
“Oh, uh, I had no idea you got up so early.”
“Yeah, well, part-time cowgirl, full-time attorney, remember?”
“Of course.”
“I have my own luggage. You didn’t have to bring me any.”
Whatever she’d just said rushed confidence back into his gaze. “My mother is very particular as I’ve tried repeatedly to tell you. I suspect she phoned you this morning because she already suspects that we’re lying about our relationship.”
“Would that be so terrible? I’m really just going so you don’t have to show up at your ex-fiancée’s wedding alone, right?”
Harper cringed. “I’m gonna head on home. Chase will be back with the boys soon. Have fun, you two.” She scooted out the front door.
The tense set of Jack’s shoulders eased when she left. “When it comes to my family, I refuse to leave any hole open for them to manipulate either of us because they will. If you’re determined to play my girlfriend, then that’s what we’re going to do. That means I need to know a great deal more about you, and you need to know more about me. It means when we’re in their presence we’re behaving as a couple would.”
Refusing to call his bluff, she shrugged as if that was no big deal at all, while desperately wishing that her reproductive organs would stop their victory parade, complete with fireworks, that was going on deep in her nether regions. “Fine. Have a seat. You want a beer?”
“Sure.” A note of defeat tugged at his tone, which delighted her.
She grabbed two bottles and handed one off as she joined him on the couch. “I do have a question before we start making certain we could win the Newlywed Game.”
Jack took both bottles from her hand instead of just one and proceeded to open hers for her. Meridian decided to allow the gesture instead of reminding him that she could do everything by herself and for herself. “Ask me,” he encouraged.
“If you hate your family so much, why go back? Why do you need to show up at this wedding at all?”
“That’s two questions for the record, and I suspect you’ll figure that out pretty quickly, after we arrive on the estate.”
“But you won’t tell me now?”
“No. Now, tell me about your childhood. Tell me anything someone you’d been dating for a while would know.”
“I’ve never dated anyone long-term so I have no idea what they might know about me.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“What do you mean by that? You were engaged.”
“I was not engaged. I was all but betrothed. My mother went on with the announcement in the papers without so much as asking what I wanted for my life. That’s how the Dentons work.”
“Interesting. So, you weren’t in a relationship with Tiffany?”
He shrugged. “Other than being thrust together at required events our entire lives, no.”
A quick smirk formed on Meridian’s features. “So, you fucked her, you just didn’t want to marry her.”
To her shock, Jack gave her a responding smirk. “As much as I regret that decision, it wouldn’t even make it to the top twenty list of things I wish I’d never done. But to the reason I’m here, just like when we go to trial, I’d rather know too much than not enough. Let’s start with your earliest memories and go from there.”
Meridian didn’t care for this particular line of questioning or the way he’d taken over the conversation. She couldn’t argue with the reasoning behind it, but it galled her nonetheless.
A deluge of wonderful childhood memories flooded her mind. They were intertwined with a few bad ones by way of brats she had to attend school with, until she landed on her first real memory. “I was around three and trying to feed my horse an apple while hugging her at the same time. She bit my hand. I was scared my daddy would be upset with h
er so I never told anyone, but I learned my lesson on trying to do too much around animals at once. How about you? What’s your earliest memory?”
“Uh…” Jack took a long drag of the beer. “I was around the same age as you and was in my nursery helping my nanny—the one I liked, not the one I didn’t—pick up toys.” Meridian trained her face to show no surprise even though having multiple nannies did shock her. “My father came in, lifted me up in the air, and spun me around, which wasn’t normal for him. I think I only recall this because it was such a bizarre reaction from him, but he was thrilled that one of our horses had won the roses. My parents had just gotten home from Churchill Downs.”
Terror and shock washed down Meridian’s chest along with the beer she’d just sipped. “Your family raises Derby horses?” gasped from her bile-soaked throat. “Do you ride?” She needed him not to know anything about horses at all. The mares were very obviously pregnant. If he knew horses, he would know they were expecting. She reminded herself that Jack still wouldn’t know what was or was not on the reports from the Bureau when the horses arrived. With a deep breath, she settled again.
“I know how to ride, but don’t do it often,” he assured her.
Turning the tables on her opposition was her classic move, so she went with what she knew. She wasn’t going to be the only one trying to stand on unsteady ground. “I did some research on your family. I didn’t read anything about thoroughbreds.”
To her relief, panic stormed in Jack’s dark eyes. He managed a hesitant nod. “The horses are certainly not what my family is best known for. Not likely something Wikipedia would denote.”
Setting her beer on the coffee table, she leaned closer to him, wanting to crowd his mind by crowding his space. “I dug a little deeper than Wikipedia. The Denton Distilleries Dynasty, quite the alliteration.” She gestured to a stack of papers on her coffee table that she’d printed off about the Dentons, most of which she hadn’t even gone through yet, not that she’d ever admit that to him.
The words seemed to physically wound him. Meridian instinctively backed off. It was the first time in her life she’d ever done so. She couldn’t comprehend her own actions. “Don’t look so put out. I didn’t find anything too terrible. If you don’t read between the lines, they don’t seem as bad as you describe them.”
He averted her intense gaze. Staring steadfastly at her tile floors, he took an audible breath. “The whole damn story is written between the lines, and my parents’ only concern is making certain that they own that real estate.”
Chapter Eight
Of course, she’d researched. That didn’t surprise Jack at all. Meridian was nothing if not thoroughly prepared. He knew being surprised was not something she enjoyed. That was part of what had driven him to the ranch that evening. He’d hoped that telling her about his family’s Derby horses would build a foundation for her to confide in him about whatever it was she was worried about with the mustang case.
He just had to show her that she could trust him with whatever was going on because something obviously was. There had to be a reason she was willing to put her neck on the line for Marsden’s lawyers’ axe.
“I read that you have a brother,” she informed him. That was a throat punch she didn’t even know she was throwing.
“I have three brothers—same as you.”
Frustration tensed in her eyes. She’d missed something and that obviously bothered her. How had she never figured out, over the past several years, that they were far more similar than they were different? He didn’t like to be surprised, and he didn’t like not knowing when he was traversing a minefield.
“Oh,” came out in a quick breathy syllable. “Are they…?” She cringed.
“No,” Jack sought to assure her, to wipe even the potential sadness from her. “They’re both very much alive. They just…only exist in that space between the lines that we were just discussing.”
“Interesting.”
Of the many tools in a lawyer’s arsenal, the one that most often got results was the truth. “I’ve spent the entire week trying to talk you out of coming with me, as much as I selfishly want you there. What’s it going to take? If you want the Marsden case, you can have it, but I want to help you with it. I want to present it in court. I don’t want you risking anything for your family. When you’ve represented them in court before, it was them against a foe. This foe is against this ranch. Marsden will muddy the waters to make them seem deep. I’m worried you’re going to get in over your head.”
A softness he rarely saw eased the angles of her face. “You want me to come with you to Kentucky?”
“I could count on one hand the number of people in my family that I can stand to even be in the same room with. Every event leading up to this wedding will be a hellish abyss of pompous privilege. I have to go because there are people there who count on me, and I refuse to let them down. A situation has come up that I need to deal with now. But,”—he rubbed his hands together in an effort to keep himself from brushing the few escaped hairs from her high ponytail off of her temple—“having someone who can keep me grounded, remind me that there’s a whole world outside of that malignancy, and just having a friend there who’s strong enough to yank me out of the tides is highly appealing. That doesn’t mean that I want to expose you to everything we’ll be forced to endure while we’re there.”
Meridian scooted closer to him on the couch. Unlike the last time she’d done that, which had been an intimidation technique, this time it was because he needed her closeness and she sensed that. “If you want me to come with you, then I’m coming. We’re not all that different, you know?” she whispered.
He chanced another hit of those eyes and the fervency they held. So, she did know how similar they were. “How do you figure that?” He wanted to hear her say it.
“We’re both willing to go through hell for people that depend on us. I will fight for my family until my very last breath. I suspect you’d do the same for whomever it is that you’re going back to take care of, so, let me help you.”
“Does that mean you’ll let me help you with Marsden?”
“I don’t need any help.” The words went into his ears like daggers and then sliced through his chest.
“I disagree.”
“How about this—let’s get through Kentucky and then we’ll see,” she negotiated. That was a much bigger deal that most men would recognize. Meridian did not negotiate. He tried to take solace in her offer.
Sitting back on the couch lest he coax her face closer to his, he tried to order his scrambled mind. “What’s your favorite drink? You will be asked that several times.”
“A whiskey sour.”
“Isn’t that apropos.”
After a quick grin, she went on, “I suppose when someone in your family asks me, I should tell them I prefer them made with Denton Select.”
Jack chuckled at that. “Do me a favor and tell them you only like Jefferson’s. My brothers and I get a kick out of watching that vein in our father’s head throb on occasion.”
“How about you? What’s your preferred Denton Brew?”
“Come on now, you know me better than that. I only drink Maker’s Mark.”
She beamed at him. “To piss your daddy off?”
“Naturally.” He lifted his beer bottle to her in tribute. When he’d downed the last sip, he tried to come up with some reason to keep her talking. “Is there anything a boyfriend would know about you that I should know before we get on that plane tomorrow?”
Her signature smirk turned deliciously wicked. “There’s a lot a boyfriend would know about me, but none of it’s likely to come up over the dinner table.”
His cock leapt to attention like she’d just sent up the Bat Signal and he was suiting up. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.” Inappropriate? Hell yeah. But nothing about this was normal. Emily Post had not written anything like this in any of her books.
She shook her head at him. “How many of
the women I’m going to meet this week have you had in your bed?”
“That’s not likely to come up over dinner either.”
“You’d be surprised what women will discuss.”
“Clearly I’ve been hanging out on the wrong side of the ballroom then.”
“I’ve never even been in a ballroom.”
“Well, as you say, saddle up. You’ll be in so many of them this week you’ll likely hate them almost as much as I do.” He made his way into the kitchen to toss their empty beer bottles.
“Hey, Jack.” She followed him into the kitchen.
He tried and failed in an effort to stop wishing he could hear his name hang on her lips in the breathy groans he drew from her with his hands, with his tongue, with his cock. “Yeah?” He choked on the word and on his own need.
“I need people at work not to know where I am this week if we can help it. I…don’t want people to get the wrong idea about us.”
He studied her eyes, the set of her jaw, the slight movement of her neck with her harsh swallow. “There is no county bylaw about us seeing each other romantically. You know that.”
“I do know that. It’s just,” she shrugged, “as much as I hate to admit it, people do like to talk about my family.”
Good. At least now she was thinking somewhat sensibly. Surely it would only be a few quick steps away from that admission to the obvious conclusion that she was giving Marsden the opportunity to skewer the Holder name in court. “Fine. I think Mitch is the only person in the office who knows we’re traveling together. Hopefully, he’ll be discreet.”
“Thanks for understanding.”
“I understand reputation more than you’d ever know. I should go.” He said the words, but his feet made no effort to follow through.
“I thought you were staying here.” The direct challenge turned her impish grin on with the flip of a switch.