Some Girls Don't (Outback Heat Book 2) (4 page)

Selena almost choked on her mouthful of beer. “That’s not a very nice thing to imply about your chief of police.”

A ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “She adored him. She was pretty. She hung on his every word.” He took a draw of his beer. “Men are simple creatures, really.”

Selena didn’t know if that was a not-very-well-veiled shot at her. Would he have preferred her to be the adoring, clingy type? She wanted to call bullshit on that. She sure as shit would have called him on it back in the day.

But she didn’t want to open a can of worms.

Three days
.

Just three days. Two, really, considering this one was almost over.

“He was in love with her, Jarrod. I was there too.”

“Yeah. He loved her.” He glanced at her. “But that’s not always enough, is it?”

The barb struck her in the centre of her chest.

Three days.

Three. Days.

Selena took a deep breath. “Grandy tells me Lacey has become a bit of a local celebrity?”

“Yes.” He turned his face back to the view and she studied his profile. His strong jaw was visible beneath the layers of scruff on his face. “She’s started her own fashion label right here on the main street. Went into business with Mrs Hoff. They’re doing a roaring trade. She’s engaged to Cooper, an old cop friend of Ethan’s.”

Selena frowned, trying to figure out how old Lacey would be now. She’d been about six when Selena had left town in the dead of night. “She’s a bit young to be getting married isn’t she?”

“Not every woman sees marriage as an impediment, Selena.”

The derision in his tone could have felled a gum tree. One of those big bastards maintaining a ghostly vigil in the surrounding bush. Selena’s temper rose as heat flushed through her veins. She’d never been very good at letting things be.

She put her beer down on the floorboards between their chairs and sat forward, looking over her shoulder at him. “You’re still seriously pissed at me after
fifteen
years?”

She didn’t want to have this confrontation but, clearly, he did.

“I was in love with you,” he said, their gazes clashing. “I thought you were in love with me. You sure as shit loved what I could do to your body. Or have you forgotten that?” His eyes raked over her.

She wished she could forget. They may have been each other’s firsts, they may have fumbled those first couple of times, but it hadn’t taken long to get it right. Selena had been surprised to learn that men who were
really
good in bed were surprisingly thin on the ground.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

“Yeah, well. It wasn’t my idea.”

Selena snorted. “I didn’t hear you saying no.”

His stare hardened. “
Really?

She broke his gaze, focusing on the mountains again. He was right. Jarrod had wanted them to wait before taking the final step. Until after they’d finished high school. He’d wanted to take her into the city, book a fancy hotel. Make it special. Get through the last few months of stress and exams and then they’d be free to explore and be with each other.

But after two years of hot kisses and heavy petting she’d been out of her mind with wanting him.

“It was driving me crazy, Jarrod,” she murmured, remembering the sweet
agony
of that time as if it were yesterday. “
You
were driving me crazy. Every time you kissed me you lit me up. I dreamed about you constantly. About us … together. God …” she shook her head. “Those dreams were so vivid I’d wake up at night all tight and achy, not even fully understanding why but knowing
you
were the cause. And the cure. I couldn’t concentrate on school or study.” She looked back over her shoulder again. “It was like I was possessed.”

“You think I didn’t feel like that?” he demanded, his voice low, strained.

Selena shrugged. “You always seemed so in control.”

He shook his head. “I was always just seconds from losing it with you. And it scared the hell out of me. The things I was feeling, the things I wanted to do to you … they felt too big … too wrong to let off the leash.”

Selena searched his face. Saw the kind of agony in his eyes she’d seen in her own all those years ago. “Too wrong?”

“I wanted to … devour you. To tear your clothes off every time I saw you. I wanted to …
fuck
you … not sweet and gentle either although, God knew, I wanted to do that too. I wanted to
possess
you. And I didn’t even know how to do that shit at that point. But I do now and I can tell you that was
exactly
the way I was feeling.”

Goosebumps broke out across Selena’s skin at his graphic words. Her nipples beaded in blatant response. She’d felt the same way about him. She’d wanted to sink
into
him.

“I wanted to
stamp
myself all over you. To lock you away so you wouldn’t leave to go to college in Brisbane, so we could be together forever.”

Selena nodded, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. They’d been insatiable. A freaking powder keg. She looked away. The stars twinkled back at her, so much closer out here. “That’s why I left.”

It wasn’t the whole truth. But it was some of it.

Time stretched as she waited for him to say something. The cicadas stopped trilling, as if they too were waiting. The back of her neck prickled beneath his gaze.

“Yeah.”

Selena looked back at him. He seemed so desolate. “Jarrod …” she whispered.

“Just go, Selena.” His voice cut through the silence, his eyes hard as jade. “I don’t need your pity visit. Or your pity company. Unless it comes with a pity fuck, you should just go on home.”

She sucked in a breath at the ferocity of his words. Each one hurled a tiny little dart straight into her heart. She’d never known Jarrod to be deliberately cruel. Deliberately
crude
. Maybe she deserved it for walking out the way she did, but it was surprising how much it hurt.

His father would have kicked his ass. Hell,
Grandy
would have given him an ass kicking if she’d heard him. And a cake of soap for his mouth.

Her heart thudded loud in her chest and her hand shook as she stood. “Screw you, Jarrod,” she said, not bothering to glance back at him as she stalked away.

It’d be the only one he was getting from her.

‡

J
arrod stuck a
finger in behind his collar and stretched his neck out as he watched Selena giving her speech. It was hot in the old Farmers’ Hall. It’d been the centre of the Jumbuck Springs social scene for a hundred and fifty years yet nobody had seen fit to install an air conditioner.

Every window was open, in the hope of catching a breeze that might spring up, but the night was stubbornly still. All the men had shed their jackets a long time ago, but with two hundred and fifty bodies packed into the hall it made little difference. The same went for the high ceiling fans, which were doing nothing but circulating a feral mix of sweat and body heat.

Connie and Lacey were using their paper programs as makeshift fans. So was Delia, who’d decided to grace them all with her presence at the last moment.

Selena somehow managed to look cool as a cucumber up on stage in her shiny, slinky red dress complete with a long split right up the centre. Her blonde hair tumbled around her head in a wavy riot as if it was being blown by an invisible fan.

He adjusted his collar again. Just watching her kicked his temperature up another degree.

Every time she said
root
—and she’d said it a lot during her speech—Marcus chuckled. Ethan was smirking behind his hand too. It was irritating as hell. Jarrod wanted to lean across the table and smack them both across the head.

They were supposed to be upstanding members of the community, for fuck’s sake.

He tapped his foot, impatient for the formal proceedings to end so he could do the requisite amount of socialising then get the hell out. But first, he had to apologise to Selena. He’d behaved like a prize dick last night, and she didn’t deserve that.

So, she’d left him—it was a long time ago, and he was supposed to be
over it already
.

But yesterday had been a very strange day. One that he’d conjured in his mind many times. It hadn’t gone according to the script in his mind. He hadn’t expected the hard tug of attraction to still be there. He hadn’t expected to want her so damn much. He hadn’t expected to feel seventeen again.

And he’d lashed out.

By being a total dick.

It seemed she could still make him think and say crazy things even after all this time.

“In conclusion, I’d like to say that although I’ve been away for a long time, places like Jumbuck Springs seep into your soul. Maybe it’s something in the air. Maybe it’s in the water. Maybe it’s …” Selena shrugged and shook her head. Her hair shimmered like a halo in the light. “In our DNA.”

She glanced at her notes then back up again and, although Jarrod doubted she could see him with the stage lights in her eyes, the weight of her stare burned straight through him.

“Leaving here was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Leaving a place that you love,
people
that you love—” Jarrod’s heartbeat drummed in his ears “—is never easy. Jumbuck Springs gave me roots. But it also gave me wings. A good town should do that and I, for one, will be eternally grateful. Thank you.”

Marcus was the first to his feet, clapping enthusiastically, sticking two fingers into his mouth to let rip one of his footy coach whistles that echoed loudly around the hall. Soon everyone joined him in the standing ovation. He turned to Jarrod and winked.

“She’s a stunner, mate,” he said over the noise. “Crash tackle her to the ground if she tries to leave again.”

Jarrod rolled his eyes at his middle brother who firmly believed there was a footy analogy for every situation. Life was not a football field, and if Selena wanted wings then he was damned if he was going to clip them.

*     *     *

Three hours later
Jarrod was still at the Farmers’ Hall, which was rocking to a local country music band. It hadn’t helped the heat levels. The tables had been pulled right back to create a dance floor and people who’d never had an ounce of rhythm were up shaking their asses like they were Taylor goddamn Swift.

Most of the old-timers had already left, but there were probably still about a hundred people kicking on. Ethan had taken Connie and Mrs D home an hour ago. Marcus was showing off his moves on the dance floor. Lacey and Coop, who were still going strong despite Coop spreading himself between Jumbuck Springs and Brisbane, were slow dancing in a dark corner. Delia was flirting with some poor bastard who was buying her a drink.

And he was making inane conversation with people he’d never really liked in high school. Most of them had left the district and gone to the cities,
thank Christ,
but had felt
drawn back to their roots.

Roots.
That bloody word was sent to taunt him tonight.

Selena had talked to just about every person in the room. Except him. Flitting from group to group, a champagne glass in her hand, smiling and laughing, pressing the flesh as if she was running for mayor. She danced too. With
everyone
it seemed, but the one who brought her.

In fact she was avoiding him altogether, giving him no chance to talk to her. But Jarrod was damned if he was leaving without saying sorry.

“You know, Jarrod,” Delia said, pulling up next to him, another hapless idiot in tow, “if you scowled a little less, women might want to dance with you. Some of us actually find rangas very … sexy.”

Jarrod glanced down at his ex-sister-in-law, who smiled at him with what looked a helluva lot like sexual interest.
Jesus.
Was she … flirting with him? Because of his red hair? Or just because she didn’t know how to switch it off?

Selena had been right—what had Ethan ever seen in her? Sure, she still looked good but it couldn’t erase the ugliness of her actions over the years.

His brain scrolled Terminator-like for an appropriate reply because
I thought anyone with a pulse did it for you
was not a nice thing to say to the woman who had given them all one very special little lady.