by Jillian Neal
Jack threw his arms out to her. “Well, we’re apparently engaged. Surely you don’t mind sleeping with your fiancé.”
She crossed the plush carpeting and settled in one of the velvet barrel chairs by the windows. “I’m sorry,” she offered again. He knew Meridian was not one to apologize often so he took it to heart. “I’m clearly way out of my league here, and I hate that. I had no idea this would be so fucking difficult. I’m better in the courtroom than I am in ballrooms, I guess.”
He knew he probably shouldn’t appreciate her recognition of the magnitude of their situation, but he did. “It’s fine, just so long as you’re aware that you’ve now taken this to a level I’m not sure either of us were prepared to handle. We’re going to have to be quick on our feet. Can you handle that?”
“Can you tell me what the hell has happened since that plane took off in Oklahoma? What was that kiss? Why did Sloan give you that checkbook? And who is Finn? Oh, and where is the watershed? Why does everyone here spy for your mom? She seems awful. And was she seriously pissed off that we were late when it was her pilot that got us here? Does she often get mad at God over the weather? Does she find that a productive use of her time?”
Jack stood and paced the length of his room. “If I answer all of those questions truthfully, will you give me the same courtesy?”
She considered that for a moment and nodded. “Of course.”
Now he had her right where he wanted her. He really was the better lawyer even if he’d never point that out directly. “Have you ever thought about kissing me?”
Oh, she did not like that question. She visibly recoiled as if that wasn’t answer enough. “I believe the offer was that I would be honest with you after you answered truthfully,” she countered.
Jack redacted his thought on who was the better lawyer. “As if that wasn’t answer enough.” He grinned just to watch her roll those beautiful eyes.
“Fine. Yes. I’ve thought about kissing you…a lot. Now, back to my questions.”
An awareness arced between them. The verbalization of their mutual attraction seemed to cement them further than that kiss or the announcement that they were engaged. He greeted her honesty with his own. “I’ve thought about kissing you every single day since we met four years ago. I’ve imagined it…fantasized about it so many times I got carried away. I apologize if I took advantage.”
Her eyes revealed a hunger as they rose to meet his. Jack discreetly turned, hoping she wouldn’t notice the effect she had on him. “You didn’t take advantage.” Her very admittance was laced with both need and self-betrayal. “What else have you thought about us doing?” Her gaze darted around the room running from his now. “What do you do when you think about me?”
The space between them took on a pulse he’d never felt before, certainly not in this room, not in this house, never at River Chase. He answered her question with one of his own. “What would you say if I preferred to show you the answer to that question instead of telling you?”
She stood and made three quick steps to stand before him. “What if I prefer to be told before you show me?”
He noted that she didn’t say she wouldn’t let him show her. Perhaps this trip home would be the best in memory. “Then we’d have to come up with some kind of compromise, wouldn’t we?”
Her delicate tongue that had filled his mouth so deliciously on the plane tasted her bottom lip. “Answer my questions and then we’ll discuss a potential compromise.”
His entire body tensed with parched thirst. Her words did nothing to break the spell she had him so thoroughly captivated by. Getting involved with her would probably lose him every single thing he’d earned and fought for since he’d left Kentucky, but at that moment he just didn’t care. Jack edged closer to her, magnetically drawn to those eyes, to those tender curves, to her lips. “You are incredibly dangerous, Meridian.”
“I know.” Her grin was half-coy, half-evil. She took one more step toward him, so close now that their breaths mingled and danced. “You’re not the only one with something to lose,” she reminded him. “If anyone in Holder County found out about us, I would never become DA.”
His grin matched hers. “You say that like I’ll ever lose the seat.”
Her lips were already swollen from their first kiss. The whiskey gold of her eyes was now hidden behind the pure, black need. She traced her hand down his chest igniting a blaze like flint on steel. “I always get what I want eventually,” she informed him.
Jack’s shallow breaths weren’t deep enough for him to catch her scent, and it drove him mad. His large, capable hands wrapped around her back and erased any distance between them. Her sweet little hips bucked so readily against his stiff cock. Her body begged even if her mind was being stubborn. She tried unsuccessfully to quell a needy moan. She didn’t want to reveal her hand, but it was much too late for that. “What is it that you want right now, cowgirl?” he growled low and hungry.
She shuddered against him as if admitting what they both already knew physically tore something from her. “You.”
“If the lady always gets what she wants….” He captured her lips with his own, feasting on her flavors yet again. God, he would never get enough. This time was even better than the last. There was more room to move, more space for him to own her. Gripping her ass again, he ground the heated apex of her thighs against his cock. Even between layers of frustrating clothing, her gasps and almost begrudging sighs satisfied him in a way nothing else ever had.
As he pressed himself harder against her, making certain he tempted just the right spot with every pass, he informed her of how this would work. If he was going to gamble on his entire life, then he wanted all of her, every single secret, every dark, delicious desire he knew existed right there under her skin. “I’ll make you beg,” he informed her with a cocky smirk that came so easily to all of the Denton boys. “Make you plead for me to soothe the very places I make you ache.”
She lifted her head from his shoulder, a smirk of her own forming on her bee-stung lips. “I do not beg for anything. Ever.”
“If that’s a challenge, Miss Holder, I accept.”
Chapter Fourteen
Meridian was shockingly wet—so wet, in fact, she was concerned that if he kept talking she was going to be standing in a puddle of her own desperation. What the hell was he doing to her? Primal, sophisticated, complicated, and forbidden, everything Jack was to her, served only to make her crave him more.
He spun his tongue at her collarbone and traced his lips up her jaw. A needy shiver quaked through her. She tried to be angry at her double-crossing body, but everything he did felt too damn good for her to be able to complain and complicate this.
His whiskey-smooth voice strummed from her ear to her chest to forbidden places beyond. “All of those cowboys you play with just don’t do it for you, do they, honey? They don’t understand people like us who are never satisfied. They don’t know how hard and filthy you need to be fucked, do they?” He punctuated the last two words with a slow, almost violent grind of his hips that stripped away all of her stubborn resolve.
“No,” whimpered from her. To keep herself from saying more than that, she gripped his hair and pressed his mouth back to hers. His hand twisted under her skirt, shoving it upwards before he traced over the black satin of her panties. An embarrassing, carnal moan tore from her lungs.
“You’re soaked. Soaking wet for me. Your body already knows how to beg. Let’s see if your mouth can’t learn.”
She locked her jaw shut in adamant refusal, while her body continued to try and lure his hand to her pussy. Desperate whimpers escaped the prison of her lips. Chuckling, he continued to torture her with a refusal of his own. He did nothing but tease and trace her satin-trapped clit. Her entire body vibrated with every stroke of his fingers like she was an instrument only he knew how to play.
And yet, he refused her any kind of satisfaction. “God, you really are a dick.” She’d intended that to sound far mor
e irritated than it had, but it had come out in a breathy, yearning mewl.
That got her a deep, throaty laugh that somehow only made her weaker. “Oh honey, look around you. I know precisely what I am. What I didn’t know is that you like it.” Driving home his intended goal, he eased her panties to the side and teased and tended the wet and raw folds of her but refused to enter her where she needed his fingers. One stroke and she would come. That’s all it would take. She just needed to be full of him. Please, please almost slipped from her lips. Almost.
The knock on the door was so faint Meridian wasn’t entirely certain she’d heard it until Jack eased his hand away, righted her panties, and slid her skirt back down her legs. Her heart stuttered out of rhythm, and the entire room spun. A silent echo of shock filled the air around her and nothing at all made sense, a sensation she was getting tired of feeling, until he wrapped his arms around her, steadying her.
Her own actions continued to surprise her as she nuzzled her head on his substantial shoulders and let him cradle her tenderly. “I’ve got you,” he soothed softly against her ear. “That wasn’t how I’d planned on that ending.”
She tried to laugh and nod but only ended up sighing into his neck and cuddling herself closer. She clung to him like an anchor in the storm.
The next knock was more audible. “Just a minute,” Jack barked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” trembled from whomever was outside his room.
They both lifted their heads at the same moment. Jack cringed. “Are you okay?” he whispered.
“I’m fine,” Meridian assured him, though she wasn’t sure she’d ever told a lie quite that big before.
Smoothing her hair and trying to not look like she was on the verge of bowing before Jack to beg for mercy, she returned to the velvet chair near the window. Another round of heat bloomed across her cheeks as Great Grandpa Barnsley’s eyes seemed to shame her from the frame on the wall.
Jack buttoned his top two buttons and fixed his rumpled hair in the mirror all while heading toward the door. He yanked it open to reveal a cowering Maggie. Apologies erupted from her. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Denton, sir. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You’re not a bother to anyone. Come on in.” Jack did not lie quite as convincingly as Meridian had.
“Your mother left to go to a board meeting at the university so…”
“You were worried this was your only chance to talk to me,” Jack concluded for her.
“Yes, sir.” She turned and did the curtsy thing to Meridian just like Rosalind had.
“Okay, you people have got to stop that.” Meridian shook her head. “Sit down. Take a load off.” She gestured to the seat beside hers. “I’m not the queen.”
Jack’s grin and wink at her continued to have a spellbinding effect on her internal organs, and she was going to have to figure out how to make that nonsense stop right along with all of the curtsying.
Maggie sat on the edge of the chair like she wasn’t allowed to take up any more space than that. The next time Meridian encountered Beverly she was tempted to knock her upside the head with a bottle of Denton Reserve.
Maggie fidgeted with the apron of her uniform. “I don’t really know how to go about this. Rosalind said to talk to you about Abbey, but I’m not sure what you want to know.”
Jack settled on the corner of his bed and gave her a kind smile. “Abbey is your little girl, right?”
Retrieving a phone from the pocket of her uniform, she showed Jack and Meridian a picture of an adorable plump-cheeked, blue-eyed baby girl drooling all over a teething ring. An IV line was taped to her inner arm. “This is her.” Maggie stared adoringly down at the phone. “She was six months old last week. A few weeks after she was born, she went into sepsis from a kidney infection. Uh,” her voice trembled along with her hands. Meridian reached out and held Maggie’s right hand in her own. “It’s my fault. I was so tired, and I must not have noticed that she wasn’t quite herself that night before I put her in the crib.”
Meridian shook her head. “Please don’t blame yourself. It isn’t your fault.”
Maggie managed a nod. “She coded and we almost lost her twice, but they saved her. She had to have one kidney removed, and she still has to have IV antibiotics at home. My boyfriend has gotten really good at giving them to her though. He’s amazing. But she got another infection and now she’s back in the hospital. It’s just that the bills are a lot and there will be more surgeries.
“If her other kidney should have any trouble, then I’m going to donate a portion of mine, but I can’t afford to take any time off work. My parents started one of those GoFundMe things, but we don’t really know that many people. My boyfriend lost his job as a graphic designer because he took off so much time when she was in and out of the hospital. We’re in bad shape. He got another job last week as a contractor for an online sales company but no benefits for six months. I don’t know what to do. He’s trying to work from the hospital and take care of her while she’s there. Your father said I could work tonight at the dinner party for a few extra hours, but that won’t go far.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “How incredibly generous of him,” he huffed. “Listen, I’m sorry that was all he offered to do. Sorry, but not surprised.” He moved to their luggage and removed the suit jacket he’d thrown on top. Retrieving the checkbook Sloan had given him, he leaned over the cherry wood desk in his room and wrote out a check. “Here.”
“Mr. Denton, thank you, but I…you’re going to get into trouble.”
“Good.” He tore the check from the book. “Listen, you take this to the bank. There’s not enough in this account for me to cover the hospital bills, I’m sure, but this will help. Get some groceries, get Abbey some new toys, take your boyfriend some dinner, and pay a few bills. You two just worry about Abbey. I’ll talk to Sloan tomorrow, get some funds moved around, and see if we can’t take care of the rest. You’re not working tonight. If my mother has something to say about it, she can take it up with me.”
Tears raced from Maggie’s eyes. She shook her head in disbelief. Meridian tried to breathe around the conflicting emotions of anger at Jack’s parents and awe at him that gathered in her throat. She continued to try to soothe Maggie by holding her hand and offering her tender, reassuring smiles.
“I can’t thank you enough for this, but I don’t mind working tonight. I want to try to earn some of it. I don’t want your parents to be angry with you.”
“My parents have been angry with me for years. It has nothing to do with you. Your little girl needs you right now. My mother will throw more dinner parties, and you can pick up extra shifts when Abbey isn’t in the hospital.”
“Chad and I will figure out some way to make this up to you both,” Maggie vowed as she tucked the check safely in her bra.
Meridian stood to join the two of them at the desk. “You two can make it up to him by Abbey being healthy and home from the hospital.” She knew she had no right to make that statement, but she also knew it’s precisely what Jack wanted.
He nodded. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Maggie gave them both a teary smile. “I wish the world were full of more people like you two. You’re so lucky that you found each other. “
Chapter Fifteen
“Wow.” Meridian breathed the word as she stared at him. Her impressed smile made Jack want to earn a thousand more, every day if he could.
“My parents are so caught up in their ridiculous world, they have no idea what it’s like to live in this country with next to nothing. They don’t understand how expensive it is to be poor.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just them. We’re the richest country in the world. People shouldn’t have to bankrupt themselves because their babies get sick.”
Jack had to give her that.
Her brow did that thing where it furrowed and made her lips purse. Jack found it all to be completely intoxicating. He loved watching her think. “Did you know about Maggie be
fore we arrived? Is she why you had to come this week?”
Part of him wished he could delay the answering of her questions, but he knew he had to school her before his mother’s asinine dinner party. “I didn’t know the specifics, but Sloan mentioned that we needed to step in.” He settled in the chair Maggie had occupied and gestured for Meridian to sit in the one beside him. From that vantage point by the window, he could see when his mother’s Land Rover came through the east gates.
“I take it Sloan doesn’t have signing privileges on that checking account,” she assumed correctly.
“Sloan is my father’s younger brother’s oldest son. He is the head of accounting for Denton Distilleries. As per usual with accountants, he can’t spend any of the money he’s in charge of monitoring. That’s where I come in.”
“How long have you been doing things like that? How have your parents not noticed the missing money? It’s more than obvious they disapprove of you, so why is your name still on the accounts?”
As each question compounded on his shoulders, Jack sank lower in the chair. The velvet was as hot and itchy as it had been in his youth. The desire to run from the house, through the gates, and as far away from River Chase as he could get coursed through him yet again.
He drew a deep settling breath. “Sloan makes certain that money gets moved around often enough that no one notices. You have to understand the sheer number of accounts, the constant mergers, petty cash in the tens of thousands, the legacy estate accounts that the family shields both here and offshore. My father knows corn mash, rye, and barrels. He knows how to make whomever he’s speaking to feel like the most important person in the room, but the money isn’t something he pays a great deal of attention to unless things get out of hand.
“He trusts Sloan to make certain that my mother always has more than enough to supply her whims and that he has enough to run the estate and get a new Rolls each year. As long as all of that occurs, the rest is, quite literally, gravy. I’m still on the accounts because my father’s highest hope is that I’ll realize the insanity of leaving and return like the prodigal son. I would sooner hurl myself down a coal mine elevator shaft.”