Project Virgin (27 page)

“He can stay here,” Angelique retorted, and rolled her eyes at Billy with, Jesse realized, the kind
of absolute confidence she had never displayed when she’d been with him.

It occurred to him that all the things he’d thought were who Angelique was—the bids for his attention, the sex kitten routine—had been nothing more than insecurity. Right here, right now, she looked every inch the tough, capable Montana women he’d grown up with. That made him blink. And more, made him realize that if it
was true, his split-second take on the changes in this woman, he really hadn’t ever been the man for her. How could he have been?

Angelique looked back at Jesse. “Ignore him. Of course you can stay here, and for as long as you want.”

“Like hell,” Billy threw right back. “You’re not staying under the same roof as my—”

But he didn’t finish that sentence.

And it all made sense, suddenly. Jesse
knew that look on his father’s face. He could see the old man’s fears like a scrolling marquee. Billy had stolen his very hot, much younger wife—who was the same age as his own daughters, for God’s sake—from his own son. And maybe after three years and two kids, Billy figured that son might look pretty good to a woman who’d already switched allegiances once under this very same roof. Next to him,
Jesse could feel Angelique vibrating slightly, with temper or emotion he couldn’t quite tell, and there was a certain liberation in recognizing that whatever it was, whatever he might have figured out about what had happened between them,
this
wasn’t his problem.

She wasn’t his problem. His father’s paranoia wasn’t his problem. He didn’t have to fix any of this. And yet at the same time, like
it or not, these people were his family.

He wasn’t sure he was ever going to truly understand his father. This was a man who had slept around so much and lied so expansively to Jesse’s mother that she’d become a hermit since the divorce, preferring the company of horses on her little spread in Idaho. Billy was a salesman to his core, which meant he was a great guy to have a few beers with but
was never around to clean up the mess the next day. He was a weak man and he’d been a terrible father, but then again, Jesse had built his own company from scratch exactly the way Billy had, almost as if he’d taken a few things from the old man after all. Maybe if he stopped waiting for his father to apologize, if he stopped expecting that this man, who had never changed, would do so at Jesse’s command,
they might discover they had a lot more in common than Jesse had ever thought.

If your father’s in the room, I didn’t invite him,
Michaela had said.

Well, his father was in
this
room. And if Jesse didn’t deal with him here, he’d spend God only knew how many more years dealing with his unresolved daddy issues in all the places Billy wasn’t. And he was done with that. He wanted something better.
He wanted to be free of this mess.

And if he wanted this crap behind him, he was obviously going to have to do it his own damn self.

“I’m not here to dredge up the past,” Jesse said then.

Jesse recognized that tilt to his father’s head, the squaring of his shoulders. He’d seen it often enough in his own goddamned mirror.

“Why show up here unannounced, if not for that?” Billy asked.

And Jesse
had the same dislocating sensation he’d had driving through Billings to get here. That he might not love this place, he might define himself in opposition to it, he might have done his level best to distance himself in every way he could… but this was where he was from. This was his hometown and Billy was his father, and there was no getting around that. Billy hadn’t killed anyone, or abused anyone.
He and Angelique were two grown adults who hadn’t even been married to other people when they’d gotten together, they had their own family now, and Jesse didn’t want this anyway. He didn’t want a woman who would choose his father over him, not even if the timing had been better, and he didn’t want their life. Not any part of it.

He knew exactly what he wanted, and she was roughly eight hundred
miles to the west and, he could only hope, disentangling herself from Terrence Polk. And he couldn’t possibly deserve her if he didn’t free himself of his shit the same way he’d demanded she free herself of hers.

“I heard I had a couple of little sisters,” he said then, holding his father’s gaze and then dropping it to look at the little girls who were still staring back at him, their eyes bright
and cheeks pudgy.

He smiled at them, and waited. Slowly, very slowly, one of them smiled back.

“That’s Layla,” Billy muttered, his hand on her head. Then the other one smiled too, even wider. “And this is Lacey.”

He heard Angelique suck in a breath beside him, as if she hadn’t believed that any of this would ever happen. A quick glance showed him she was wiping tears away, covering her mouth
with her hands. And when he looked back at Billy, even his father’s eyes were suspiciously bright.

“It seemed like a good time to introduce myself,” Jesse said gruffly. “That’s why I’m here.”

*

That Saturday night,
which happened to be Valentine’s Day, Michaela walked into Grey’s Saloon in Marietta, Montana, on a mission.

She’d accomplished a great deal in
the past few days, not least of which was paying a king’s ransom or two to get the last seat on the last plane into Bozeman this afternoon. Not to mention throwing down about five times that to wrangle a suite at the gloriously restored Graff Hotel right here in town, which had, lucky for her if not for her wallet, a last minute cancellation on this most romantic of weekends. Because a woman didn’t
head off into the Wild West in search of a man she wasn’t sure would have her and plan to bunk down in her Aunt Cathy’s spare room with the twin beds.

But it was all worth it when she saw the most beautiful man she’d ever beheld, outside of a movie theater, standing at the far end of the bar, staring down at the whiskey in front of him as if he’d been doing it a while. As if he was completely
alone instead of surrounded by the boisterous Saturday night crowd that heaved around him. She started toward him, not surprised that Grey’s was decidedly
not
decked out in pink hearts and red garlands in celebration of the Day of Love.

She’d dressed the part herself—or anyway, she’d dressed the way she’d like to think she would have dressed had she imagined that a week ago, she’d have been meeting
the man who would completely alter the course of her life. A sweet little red dress for the holiday, and for the man who didn’t know she wanted to share it with him, and she’d even tried to do something with her hair. A slick of lipstick and a touch of mascara. Boots because this was Montana and it was viciously cold out there, and she wasn’t going to get anywhere with Jesse if she’d tripped
and broken her neck on the frigid walk over here from her hotel.

And Michaela really, really wanted to get somewhere with this man.

She knew the exact, precise moment he saw her.

Because it was like every other time their eyes had locked in those wild two days they’d spent together.

Hot. Consuming.

Epic.

He didn’t move as she wound her way toward him, dodging groups of women making the typical
declarations in the face of apparent singlehood, couples swaying together as if they were in private, and then the usual packs of men on the prowl and animated women looking happy enough to be prowled upon. All the usual shenanigans, and then Jesse there, like a clear, high note that cut straight through the noise.

She slipped into the space at the bar directly to his right, and then she could
feel
him. All that heat and strength. The heft of his brooding attention, his milk chocolate gaze, as he leveled it at her.

Michaela turned slowly, leaning her elbow on the bar so she could face him.

And he was exactly the way she remembered him. He hadn’t been some snowstorm delusion. If anything, she’d dimmed him a bit in her head because she still couldn’t believe any man could really, truly
look like this.

But he did.

And he was gazing back at her as if there wasn’t another woman alive, the hint of a curve on that hard mouth of his.

“Well?” she asked, after one moment dragged into a year or so, and they still only looked at each other.

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?” She lifted one shoulder, then dropped it, fully aware of what that did to the deep V neckline
of her dress. And to him. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

“I think I can bribe the bartender into making you something hideously pink,” Jesse said after a moment, dragging his gaze back to her face. “He’s practically family. He can’t refuse.”

“Only if it’s sugary and awful and will make my teeth hurt.”

“You can trust me,” Jesse said, and she did.

Not just about the pink drink, which was delivered
with an eye roll from the dark-haired bartender who appeared only slightly less surly than the man Michaela knew to be Jesse’s uncle. But she was finally here, and he was looking at her as if he could do that forever, and she figured there was all the time in the world to get into that.

“Your game is pretty dire,” she told him, when the silence dragged out again. “If this is how you flirt with
women, I don’t think there’s any wonder that you’re still single.”

Jesse had ordered a beer when he’d ordered her drink and he took a pull from it, then leaned closer, his smile like gold in those eyes of his.

“I don’t have to flirt, Michaela. I think you know that.”

“Maybe you should start.”

His mouth moved into that delicious curve again, and then he reached over and stroked a finger along
her shoulder. She felt that touch like a current of light, and it took her a breathless moment to realize he was doing it again, tracing the strap of this dress up and down and up again. Making her whole body seem to liquefy and run hot, that easily.

“It wouldn’t be fair,” he murmured.

Jesse shifted so he was leaning against the bar too, and they were face to face again. He looked perfect. Better
than perfect. He was wearing another Henley, this one a soft grey that made her hands itch to touch him, and which clung lovingly to every etched stone ridge and valley on that gorgeous torso of his.

And Michaela hadn’t come all this way to stare at him, as much as she enjoyed doing exactly that.

“Technically,” she said then, very distinctly, “I didn’t betray anyone.” His dark eyes gleamed,
but he didn’t say anything. “All we did was kiss.” That light in his eyes turned to a very knowing, very male sort of amusement, and she felt the answering flush swamp her immediately. And everywhere. But she lifted her chin, held his gaze, and soldiered on. “It doesn’t matter where.”

He didn’t quite laugh and that was heat in his gaze, she was sure of it, not the dark and tortured thing that
had been there the last time she’d seen him.

“Believe me,” he said, quiet gravel and all that fire besides. “It matters.”

“I didn’t break any promises,” she told him, frowning at him. “It’s important that you understand that, Jesse. I’m not that person.” He looked as if he was going to comment on that but she forged forward. “You came out of nowhere. I’d never had the slightest interest in exploring
what an open relationship meant. Maybe it always feels like cheating. I don’t know. But it wasn’t cheating and it doesn’t matter, because I’m never going to have to worry about it again.”

“Oh?” He sounded bored, but she could see that hard thing in his gaze, and she knew whatever else he was, he wasn’t
bored
.

So she told him Terrence had taken a little tracking down. That she’d finally managed
to find him late on Tuesday night, though she’d been reeling and exhausted from having woken up at three in the morning with Jesse in Montana, and maybe a little less composed than she should have been. She’d been waiting for Terrence outside his apartment when he’d finally turned up, and he’d looked decidedly unexcited to find her there.

“Not a great sign,” Jesse pointed out now, very still
against the bar, his dark eyes fixed to hers.

“Not a great greeting, either,” Michaela said.

“Do we drop by on each other unannounced?” Terrence had asked, instead of saying hello. He’d smiled. Gently, the way he always had, in that way that made his lean, handsome face look much more intellectual, which she suspected he knew. “You know my feelings on dropping by. I think that speaks to a real
lack of respect for emotional boundaries, don’t you?”

“I’m obviously a terrible person,” she’d replied, flatly. “Can we talk?”

Terrence had blinked, and then he’d ushered her inside, and Michaela had taken a minute to really ask herself if this was what she wanted to do. If she was really going to blow up her whole life after less than forty-eight hours in the company of a man she hardly knew.

“Do I have a vote?” Jesse asked darkly.

Michaela shushed him, took a sip of her sweet, pink drink, and kept going.

Terrence hadn’t asked how she was or where she’d been, despite the fact it had been over a week since he’d seen her last. He hadn’t mentioned all the calls he hadn’t returned or the voicemails she’d left, which had made her wonder if he’d listened to them. He’d moved around his
apartment in that way of his, not actually saying he’d been annoyed with her but making it clear with every single one of his gestures and the faintly clipped tone he’d used.