by Jillian Neal
She looked extremely pleased at that particular confession, so it was more than worth it in his book. “You make me do incredibly stupid things. Things I would never in a million years do unless it’s to get your attention. There, that’s my confession.”
“You already know that me even being with you is stupid, so maybe we could be really unintelligent together and chance this.”
“Yeah, maybe we could. Now that you can just have me come to your office and take my clothes off, you won’t have to snoop in my office anymore,” she goaded.
“Now that I’ve vowed my sword to you and the house of Holder,”—he gestured to his crotch just to hear her laugh again—“maybe if this doesn’t go well, you’ll still put in a good word for me with your family.”
“My family would not banish you from our kingdom. Just promise not to break my heart.”
“Never.” He brushed a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “And maybe you’ll let me help you with the Marsden case.”
She hesitated for a beat but then seemed to want to try out this new, yet somewhat undefined relationship. “Okay, why do you think we should report the pregnant mares?”
This was decidedly not sexy afterglow talk, but it was possibly even more important. “I’m worried your family is being set up.”
“What?! Why do you think that?”
“The timeline worries me. It didn’t occur to me until you were talking earlier, but it sounds like Marsden filed his claim right after the last herd was delivered to Holder Ranch. I was a little distracted by your mouth being on my dick, so I didn’t mention it then.”
“That’s no excuse,” she harassed.
He chuckled. “Am I supposed to be sorry that I find you so utterly distracting?”
“You don’t need to apologize for that, but no one knew we were getting more horses that day. Marsden couldn’t possibly have known that.”
“The people delivering them had to know. I did some research after the case came through. Marsden has a brother who works for the Texas Bureau of Land Management. It’s not a big leap to assume they concocted some kind of plan together with his brother’s knowledge of shipments in the Midwest. I didn’t think much of it until you said something about the pregnancies, but maybe they’re banking on you not figuring out they were pregnant or on not reporting it. Your family has paid their way out of legal cases that weren’t worth fighting before. I’m betting they’re hoping to be on the receiving end of that this time.”
“I was stupid for not figuring out about his brother. What if Marsden set our stud loose when we weren’t near the stables? Oh my god. I was really, really stupid.”
“Stop. Not knowing something isn’t worthy of apology. On the surface, it looks like Marsden’s just after a payout from your family, but I’m worried this goes much deeper. Did you file the continuance before we left?”
“No. Mitch was going to do it for me Monday. How did you know to look up his family?”
“Old habit.” Jack ran his hand up and down her back trying to soothe her. “You don’t come from the family I come from and not need to know whom everyone is related to and what their relations could either gain or cost you.”
“What happens if the foals are ours though? We could lose the horses. They could bury us in fines.”
“I do still have a favor or two left with Senator McCoy, but I don’t want to have to use it unless I have to. I’ll call Mitch in the morning and tell him to go to the office and shred that continuance form before it accidentally gets filed. You call your dad and the Bureau of Land Management to report the pregnancies. We’ll take it one problem at a time. If the mustangs aren’t a result of your stud, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Yeah, I know.” She sounded like that possibility was somewhere between slim and none.
“Hey,”—he pulled her closer—“I will never let anything happen to Holder Ranch. I promise you.”
“You’re a pretty good district attorney, you know that?”
“She says begrudgingly,” he teased.
“Seriously, thank you for being so great…at everything.” Her harsh swallow tensed against his chest.
“Well, I don’t pledge my sword to just anyone.”
“You better not.” She nuzzled him again, and he was completely addicted to that continued high of her needing him, of him being her hero even if he came from a long line of villains. “Can we stay here tonight? Is that allowed out here in Bourbon Country?”
Grinning at that, he planted his next kiss on top of her head. “We could, but there’s a significant problem with your plan.”
“And that is?” He watched the golden flecks in her eyes dance in the moonlight as she lifted her head.
“I only had that one condom with me. The rest are back at the estate house.”
“I see, and you think we might need another one before morning?”
“No, honey. I think we might need another dozen before morning.”
She fell back against the sheets and pulled them around her. “That is a problem because I like it here and I don’t like it there, but condoms are definitely worth it.”
Jack leaned back against the headboard and gathered her closer to him. “I agree with your assessment, but there is another problem too.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s more difficult for me to distribute checks from out here, and I feel bad asking Rosalind to have to clean two houses.”
“Oh.” Devastation struck her all-telling eyes. “I wasn’t thinking. I thought we’d clean up after ourselves. Now I feel bad even suggesting it.”
“Again, there is nothing wrong with not knowing something you had no reason to know.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They tiptoed back into his parents’ home like young lovers who didn’t make curfew. Jack, with his shirt still hanging open, and Meridian, still barefoot and flushed both from their love-making and the walk back in the cool night air. There was no mistaking what they’d been doing in their time away. As if that wasn’t enough, Jack was loaded down with their sheets since they both felt badly asking the maids to have to do extra laundry and had determined that there must be some way they could wash them and sneak them back down to the guesthouse.
He loved sneaking around with her in any capacity. He loved the mischievous glint in her eyes when she was helping him cause a little worthy trouble.
Unfortunately, when they stepped into the dark, quiet kitchen, long after the party had disbanded, harsh lights cast them in shadows immediately. They were caught. Jack had to remind himself that he was not seventeen and had done nothing wrong despite the enraged look on his father’s face. Jack hated that some part of him still cared what his father thought at all.
Tapping in to that anger, he narrowed his eyes. “Problem?”
His father spoke through clenched teeth. “Where have you been?”
Chuckling, Jack shared a quick conspiratorial wink with Meridian. “We needed some fresh air,” he informed his father who was not a stupid man and could most certainly tell where they’d been. The question was preposterous.
“I think what you need is to remember that you are guests in my home and this”—he gestured to the bundle of sheets pressed against Jack’s bare chest—“is completely inappropriate. You left a party thrown in your honor that your mother has worked on for over a week.”
“My mother doesn’t work on anything at all. She orders everyone in this house to do her bidding for her, you included. I never asked for a party. I never asked for any of this. I was ordered home to attend Tiffany’s wedding. It was, by the way, Tiff that called us outside if you’ll recall.”
“And you did nothing to help that situation either.”
“How do you know what I did or didn’t do? Why do you care, for that matter? This wedding has no bearing on your bottom line.” That was the only thing his father really cared about.
“No, it doesn’t. You already ruined that when you decided not to
marry her yourself.”
“And there it is. You should’ve just started with the truth. It will get you further faster.” Without giving the motion much thought, he wrapped his available arm around Meridian. He was no longer certain if he was telling the truth or not, and he didn’t care. “I decided to marry someone I’m in love with, someone who makes me a better person and a better lawyer. Someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. Successful marriages aren’t born of business wagers and backroom deals.”
Meridian stared up at him. The mischievous look in her eyes had transformed to awe. His heart pounded out a frantic ovation.
“This is not who we raised you to be.” His father had the audacity to gesture to Meridian with a sneer. Jack dropped the sheets on the tile floor and was in his father’s face before he could blink.
“Don’t you dare,” he seethed. “Don’t you fucking dare drag her down into your malignant world to try to make her seem like the broken one. Who I was then and who I needed to be in order to live with myself are two very different men.”
“And I love both of them.” Meridian’s calm cool voice doused the blaze igniting between the two men. Jack was certain that wasn’t really true. She was helping his case or maybe even getting back at him for the way he’d handled her soup question at dinner. But god, it sounded good. It soothed still-festering wounds deep in his soul. It sounded far too much like his every fantasy come to life, and he was much too weak to tell himself not to believe her words.
His father took two hesitant steps back. “This isn’t a prison,” he huffed. “If you don’t want to be here, leave.”
Meridian edged closer, like a lioness circling her prey or perhaps protecting her mate. “Isn’t it though?” she stated. “Do you know the best way to keep a prisoner from escaping, Mr. Denton?” His father refused her a response. Jack’s blood continued to boil. “You just have to make certain they never realize they’ve been imprisoned.”
Jack dealt the final blow. “One of the first things you ever taught me about business was that if someone wastes ten minutes of my time, eight of them were my fault. That applies here. We’re going to bed. If you want us out tomorrow, say the word.”
Because he knew his father so well, Jack knew his words weren’t even a gamble. Palmer Denton would never demand that his middle son leave. Jack knew too much, held too many aces in his hand. This was the rope bridge of tension where they continued to duel, and it would be that way until his father’s last breath. Jack had no way out of his only life, no matter how much he longed to strike a match over an open, aged barrel and walk away.
Meridian appreciated Jack’s hand, gripped in her own, as they made their way to his bedroom. She wasn’t certain why she’d said what she said, other than Jack needed her help and she couldn’t have stopped herself if she tried. Besides, if they were really engaged, then she would love both the man he’d been and the one he’d become. That’s how love worked, at least in her world. But her worry over her pattern of continuing to do incredibly stupid things because of Jack bubbled nervously in her stomach.
They finally stepped into his room and he secured the door. Her breaths came a little easier then. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” he soothed as he stripped out of the shirt he was really only half wearing. Momentarily distracted by him again, she closed her eyes so she could speak.
“In your parents’ eyes, what would have been appropriate tonight after Tiffany called you outside?”
The jangle of his belt broke her resolve, and her eyes flashed open. She wasn’t a saint, after all. His smirk said he liked that she was distracted by him, but he went on with his answer. “Their first preference would’ve been for me and Tiffany to have come back in and announced that we’d decided you and Brent no longer exist and that we have fallen into mad, passionate love and the two of us were going to wed this Saturday. If I’d impregnated her on the way inside, all the better.”
Meridian’s eyes goggled as she fought a flare of jealousy. She reminded herself that she did not care what his parents thought. “What would their second preference have been since that seems beyond comprehendible thought.”
“I’m glad you are aware that it’s preposterous. Every single time I come here, by the time I leave, I feel like the insane one.” He shook his head. “Their second choice would’ve been for the four of us to have come back in and assured everyone that it was just a quick case of nerves before the wedding and everything was going to go off as planned.”
“Do you think that will happen? Do you think Tiff and Brent will figure it out before Saturday?”
Jack gave her a sexy half grin. “I don’t know either of them well enough to even make a prediction. You, on the other hand, I know exactly what you’re about to do.”
Rather liking his flirting, she matched his expression. “What am I about to do?”
“Ask me to unzip that dress.”
She certainly couldn’t deny that he was right, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him know that. “That sounds more like what you want to do next.”
“Couldn’t we have a mutual goal? We do work well together.” He traced his fingertips across her collarbone. The move managed to steal the air from her lungs. When his fingers arrived at her shoulder, he turned her around and painted kisses along the bare skin of her neck. Chill bumps charged down her arms. “Are you cold, sweetheart?”
“A little.”
“The house is a hundred years old. No matter how many times the HVAC system is replaced, it’s still cold at night, but I have a solution to that problem.” The quick whisk of the zipper left her back open to the cool air. His warm hands were instantly on her shoulder blades and stroking downward in a delicious juxtaposition.
“What is your solution?” She already knew, but she was having far too much fun to have stopped the game.
“We strip down to nothing. I take you to bed. Tuck you under all of the covers and keep you nice and warm with my body heat.”
When Meridian turned, the spaghetti straps of the dress, already loosened from the number of times it had been taken off and put on that evening, tumbled down her arms revealing her breasts. Her nipples were a deep flushed pink both from the temperature and her arousal.
A hungry groan echoed from Jack and took up residence directly between Meridian’s thighs. “You are cold, baby.” He clasped his hands over her breasts tenderly. “Come to bed with me. You are the only thing in my entire world that makes any sense at all.”
“Does that scare you the way it scares me?” Her question held no volume, only breaths of curiosity.
“Yes. And no. And everything in between.” He tugged the dress down and lifted her back into his arms. Before he turned off the bedside lamp, he stared at her with a question not only pinned in his eyes but also on his lips. She started to ask him what it was he wanted to know but thought better of it.
He seemed to decide the same.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After an incredibly awkward breakfast with Jack’s parents, where fewer than ten words were shared between the four of them, Meridian finally escaped back to Jack’s room to call her father.
It rang several times, but he didn’t answer. Checking the time on her phone, she knew he was on horseback gathering cattle. She called her Uncle Barrett instead, on the off chance that he was back in the office.
“Hey sweetpea, you all right out there in Kentucky?” His low cowboy drawl softened all of the places in her heart that threatened to harden due to her current surroundings.
She grinned. “I’m all right, but I need to talk to you. I think I might’ve made a huge mistake.”
She could almost see the concern that she knew would tense in her uncle’s eyes. “I can be on the next flight out from Tulsa, or I can get one of my boys to show me how to send you a plane ticket to your phone. How far are you from the airport?”
Truthfully, she had no idea since she’d been deposited directly into this bizar
re world. “I don’t need to come home. That isn’t it.” She took inventory of her mind and body to make certain she wasn’t lying to Barrett, since the man could see through a lie like a torn window screen. “I’m good actually. Really good.”
Her uncle’s smooth chuckle soothed even more of her nerves. “Well, all right then. What is it you think you might’ve made a mistake about? Not Jack, I take it.”
“No. Not Jack. He’s pretty great actually.”
“I’ve been saying that for a while, but you hadn’t ever been too keen on listening.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m too stubborn for my own good. Believe me, I get it.” Refocusing, she pressed on with her mistake, although discussing Jack was far more appealing. “I think we need to report the pregnant mares as soon as possible.”
She heard the old desk chair roll on the worn hardwoods in Barrett’s office. “I hate to do that. I’m worried sick one of our studs got loose. I don’t want to lie to the Bureau.”
“I know, but Jack thinks we might’ve been set up, and I have to agree.”
“Explain that.”
She went over the potential connection between the Marsden case and the mare delivery. The weight of running not only a ranch the size of the Holders’ but of also caring for an entire community echoed in her uncle’s sigh. “If you and Jack agree that this is what we need to do, I’m more than willing. But I have to tell you if those foals end up being ours, I’m taking responsibility for that. I won’t take money from the state for horses that they don’t owe us for keeping.”
The reassurance that her family’s moral compass always pointed due north had her sinking to the bed in relief. “I know. We can deal with that if it comes, but right now we need to get a management inspector out to confirm the pregnancies before Marsden takes us to court.”
“All right, I think I’ll give Scotty Strenton a call.” The comfort of that statement bothered Meridian the same way the realization that she was now sitting on a freshly made bed, that neither she nor Jack had made, bothered her. She wondered how many steps there were between being able to call in favors with the head of the Bureau of Land Management and strategically trying to arrange your children’s lives in accordance with your earnings.