Jake (11 page)

The kiss was soft and unexpectedly sweet. Little more than a whisper of mouth to mouth. But as their lips brushed, Jake was forced to absorb a quick, hard punch to the heart that had him closing his hands around her arms, as though to draw her away. Instead of pushing her back, he found himself wanting more. So much more.

He drew her even closer as his mouth moved over hers with a thoroughness that had them both sighing.

Though he’d meant to comfort her, there was nothing sweet or gentle about what they were sharing. Now it was all sizzle and spark. Hot need and a sharp, desperate flare that had them both frantic as they held on to the kiss and to each other until, with a sudden, quick intake of breath, they moved apart.

Jake’s lungs were straining as he saw green eyes that were fixed on him with such focus that he couldn’t look away. Nor did he want to. He could, he realized, happily drown in those liquid emerald depths.

He cupped her chin in his big hand and tipped up her face. His voice was rough with need. “Mind if I try that again?”

She looked as dazed as he felt.

Her lengthening silence was all the invitation he needed.

He lowered his face and took his time, kissing her long and slow and deep, enjoying the sizzling curl of desire that snaked along his spine.

Hadn’t he known those pouty lips were made for kissing?

He took his time, drinking in the sweet taste of her, allowing the pleasure to pour through his system like a straight shot of fine Irish whiskey.

When at last he lifted his head, his lips curved into a smile of pure male appreciation.

“Sorry for that rough first attempt. Too needy, I guess. I’d been thinking about kissing you, but I hadn’t planned on doing it quite so soon. I guess it was seeing that scar. It’s like we’re kindred souls. Both of us bearing the scars of our childhood.”

“Or baring them,” she said with a throaty laugh. “As in
baring all
. I realized, just as I’d shown you my scar, that I’d revealed a bit too much flesh.”

“Now, ma’am,” he said in his best drawl, “I believe I speak for all cowboys when I tell you there’s no such thing as a bit too much flesh.”

Her laughter grew until he joined her.

“Oh, Jake. Thanks. I needed that.”

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

She drew the cowhide around her and got to her feet. “I think it’s time I made a fresh pot of coffee.”

“I’ll second that. Right about now I could use some caffeine.”

She started down the hallway, with Jake trailing behind. Her voice betrayed nerves that were close to the surface. “I think we’re much better off in the kitchen, where we can keep the width of the table between us.”

“Spoilsport.”

Jake was still laughing as Meg switched on the light and began measuring coffee into the pot.

He tucked his hands in his pockets. Hands, he noted, that weren’t quite steady.

He’d kissed dozens of women. Hundreds, if truth be told. But at the moment he couldn’t recall a single one of them.

There was danger here, he cautioned himself. Meg Stanford was turning out to be a whole lot more fascinating than he’d first thought. Not just a tasty treat, but the whole candy store. And darned if he wasn’t feeling like a kid with a fistful of dollars and eager to taste to his heart’s content.

Chapter Eight

As she measured water and poured it into the machine, Meg was grateful to have something to do. Her hands were still trembling. Her entire body felt lighter than air. She was floating, and yet grounded.

She could feel Jake’s cool gaze boring into her back. It was a most unsettling feeling. Not that it wasn’t pleasant having him here. She was grateful for his company. And the security of his rifle, if truth be told.

But that kiss…

Well, that was another matter entirely. She’d certainly resolved her curiosity about how it would feel to kiss this cowboy. It had been amazing. In all honesty, she’d felt the earth move. A once-in-a-lifetime event. The only trouble was, now that she’d kissed him, she’d really like to do it again.

And again.

Not a very wise thing, under the circumstances.

As the coffee began perking, she had a sudden urge to laugh out loud. With her system already so jittery, she wondered what another jolt of caffeine would do to her.

She needed to get out of the room and clear her head before she started acting like a schoolgirl with her first crush. “I think I’ll go up and check on Cory.”

Jake straddled a kitchen chair. “I just checked him out a while ago. Sound asleep.”

“You…checked on him?”

He nodded. “I just wanted to make sure he was able to get back to sleep after all the excitement.” He lowered his voice. “You ought to know that he’s keeping a baseball bat next to his bed.”

She looked crestfallen as she dropped down in a chair, tapping a finger on the tabletop. “A baseball bat? For protection?”

“Yeah.”

She brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh, that poor kid. He’s been so quiet. I assumed it meant he wasn’t feeling all that threatened by what’s happened. But now…” Her words trailed off.

Jake’s eyes narrowed. “I’d love to get my hands on the creep who’s causing all this trouble.”

She looked up. “Did my father have any enemies? Did he owe somebody a big debt?”

Jake shook his head. “I’m not the one to ask. I barely knew Porter. He kept to himself. I’d say Kirby Bolton was probably the one closest to him. And only because he was your father’s lawyer. But if there are any unpaid debts, Kirby would know.”

She nodded. “I have an appointment to meet Judge Bolton Monday, after the funeral.” She sighed. “He apologized for asking me to wait so long, but he wasn’t able to clear his docket until then.”

Jake could hear the weariness in her tone. Everything, it would seem, was conspiring against her. She’d given herself a week to settle her father’s estate, and that amount of time would barely give her a chance to bury her father and meet with his lawyer, with only three days left to deal with everything else. Add that to all the surprises she’d faced since coming here, and it was no wonder she was feeling so stressed.

When the coffee was ready she started to stand.

He reached out a hand to stop her. “You’ve done enough. I’ll take care of it.” He filled two cups and set one in front of her before sitting down across from her.

“Careful.” She smiled her thanks. “I could get used to being taken care of.”

“I get the impression you’re good at taking care of yourself.”

She looked down at the tabletop. “I guess I am. I learned it the hard way.”

Jake stretched out his long legs. “If you feel like talking, I have all the time in the world to listen.”

She took a long sip of coffee and felt it warm her. “I told you about my fall into the barbed wire. It was, for my mother, the latest in a string of issues that she and my father couldn’t seem to resolve. They had a terrible fight, and afterward Dad stormed out of the house and up to the hills, where he bunked with the wranglers for a week or more.”

She looked over at Jake. “Did you ever hear your parents fight?”

He shook his head. “I barely remember my mother.”

Meg flushed. “Sorry. I keep forgetting.”

She drank her coffee in silence before saying, “By the time my father returned, I’d already forgotten what had sent him away. I was just so happy to see him back with us, I guess I stuck to him like Velcro, which only infuriated my mother more. My father remained unapologetic, and my mother called him a cruel and inhuman monster. I’ve often thought that the two of them had this terrible need to keep opening old wounds that simply couldn’t heal, until finally, at least in my mother’s mind, there was no solution except the obvious one.”

“Just like that? Couldn’t they have tried something less drastic than divorce?”

“You mean like counseling? That would have been too sensible and slow for two such volatile people.” Meg shook her head. “Looking back at all their ugly scenes, I can’t recall a single instance when the fight wasn’t about me. About something real or imagined that my dad and I had done together that had ended badly. Either I’d fallen, or I’d gotten sick eating something while I was up in the hills with the wranglers, or I got sunburned, or I didn’t get enough sleep. To my mother it was proof that I would have a better life in the city, far from my father’s interference.”

“And so you relocated as far away from here as possible.”

Meg nodded. “I had no idea what a big city really was. The closest thing to a city I had ever visited was Jackson Hole.”

At Jake’s snort of laughter she nodded. “It’s the truth. I’d visited Jackson Hole several times with my folks, and thought that’s what my mother meant. It had never occurred to me that we would relocate thousands of miles across the country, in a city so large and teeming with people, it seemed to be on another planet.”

“That had to be a tough adjustment.”

She gave a dry, mirthless laugh. “You have no idea. From a sprawling ranch to a town house in a city filled with cars and people and noise, and then I was sent to a private boarding school with girls whose only thoughts seemed to be fixated on the boys who attended the all-boys’ school nearby.”

His gaze swept her from head to toe. “I bet those boys took notice of the new redhead on campus.”

That had Meg chuckling, in spite of her anger. “I was the youngest, most naive ten-year-old ever. I only thought about the horse I’d left behind, and riding up to the high country with my dad and the wranglers. Two short years later, by the age of twelve, I was learning the ropes and getting my share of whistles from boys.”

“Uh-huh.” He winked. “Was your mother happier in D.C.?”

“Much happier. A year later she married Philip, one of the partners in the law firm that handled her divorce, and she finally got the life she wanted. Which meant that my world changed yet again. I was met at school on Friday afternoons by a uniformed chauffeur and whisked away to an exotic home in the rolling Virginia countryside. I met my stepfather’s wealthy, international guests at country-club dinner dances. After high school I attended an exclusive women’s college and then law school at Georgetown. When I graduated, I was invited to join my stepfather’s firm.”

Jake grinned. “I guess it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

She returned his smile. “I’m not complaining. It became a smooth ride once I decided to stop fighting my mother. But that only happened because I realized that without her, I’d have no one.”

“What about your father?”

Meg ran her finger around and around the lip of her cup. “When we first settled in D.C., I used to wait for his calls. They never came. I was too hurt and angry to talk about what I was feeling. But my mother knew. She said that in time I’d get over being mad at my father and just put that old part of my life away.”

“Why were you mad at Porter?”

She looked up, as though surprised by Jake’s question. “In my mind, he had always been my champion. Whenever my parents waged a tug-of-war over me, he always won because I absolutely adored him. He should have fought to keep me with him. Instead, he just let me go. I figured the reason he didn’t fight for me was because he blamed me for the divorce. After all, every fight was about me.” She shrugged. “After a while, when I accepted that he was never going to call or come for me, I realized I had no one to hate but myself.”

“Okay. I get that you were mad at Porter. But why were you mad at yourself?”

“If I hadn’t been so determined to spend all my time with my father, completely ignoring my mother, maybe my parents would have stayed together.”

“That’s a child speaking. I hope, now that you’re an adult, you’ve let go of all that foolish guilt and accepted the fact that some people just can’t live together.”

She sighed.

Jake tried another subject. “You said your mother passed away. What happened?”

“My mother and stepfather died together more than three years ago. Their boat was hit by a storm off the coast of Mexico. The craft flipped, and their bodies washed ashore a week or so later.”

“I’m sorry, Meg.”

She gave him a troubled smile. “Life happens. I’ve learned to deal with it. Of course, with Philip dead, I’ve had to push myself harder at the firm.”

“And why is that?”

Again that shrug. “I’ve always had the nagging feeling that I was only accepted into the firm because of Philip, and not because of my ability. I guess I need to prove to all of them that I’m worthy.”

“Do you need to prove that to them? Or to yourself?”

At Jake’s question she looked away before saying softly, “You’re quick, Conway. Yeah, I guess I have a lot to prove to myself.”

“Are you guys having breakfast without me?”

At Cory’s voice they both looked over at the boy standing in the doorway, looking sleepy-eyed and confused.

Meg turned toward the window, where the morning sunlight was already creeping into the room. “I can’t believe it’s morning already.”

Cory glanced at their cups. “You’re not having breakfast?”

“Not yet.” Jake shot the boy a wide grin. “But now that you’ve reminded me, I think I’m ready for some of Ela’s flapjacks. How about you?”

Cory’s eyes widened. “With warm maple syrup?”

“I see you didn’t forget. Yeah.” Jake got to his feet. “Why don’t the two of you shower and dress, and we’ll ask Chief Fletcher to join us for breakfast at my place.”

Cory was already turning away. “I can be ready in five minutes.”

“Hold on.” Jake waited until the boy turned back. “First you’d better ask your sister if it’s all right with her.”

Cory looked at Meg, his smile replaced by a frown.

His swift change of mood wasn’t lost on her. She sighed. “Okay. Ela’s flapjacks sound good to me, too.”

Cory turned away and raced up the stairs.

When he was gone, Meg picked up their empty cups and carried them to the sink. As she washed them her voice sounded weary. “Why do I get the feeling that Cory always expects me to poke a hole in his balloon?”

Jake picked up a dish towel and dried the cups and saucers before reaching over her head to set them in the cupboard. “Maybe that’s the way it’s always happened to him before.”