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Her hot, slick flesh welcomed him, and he slid deep. He heard a gasp, a groan of pleasure, and he wasn’t even sure who it came from. And then she was moving, taking him deeper, and he barely managed to hang on until he heard her moan and her body clenched around him. He ground out an oath that was as much tribute to her as to the overpowering wave of sensation that swamped him as he poured himself into her.
And as they lay there, entangled, he had the strangest feeling more than just pent-up desire had been released between them.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nic eyed theapproaching clouds warily. They were big enough and dark enough for her to believe they were going to get their average of two inches of rain for February all in one go. It was unusual for a storm of the predicted magnitude to hit them this early in the year, but not unheard of, so they weren’t taking any chances.
She again ran through her mental list of things that needed to be done, to make sure she’d hit them all. She’d been running full tilt since the warning had come in from Cody Rafferty’s uncannily accurate weather drones that the storm had changed course and was headed their way. The youngest Rafferty brother was a tech whiz, and he had made ranch life in the Hill Country easier with this system and his fence monitoring system that not only warned you if you had a breach, but told you exactly where it was, which saved at least two or three days of work on the bigger ranches, where there were miles of fence line to ride.
Bigger, like we used to be.
She smothered a sigh. They were doing fine, better than they had for a while, since they’d sold that chunk off. She had reached the realization that, in the end, it had been a wise decision. And at least it had been sold to someone they trusted not to turn it into some overpopulated neighborhood of condos and expensive coffee vendors. Riley Garrett was a rancher to the soles of her worn boots, and ever would be, and had promised they could buy it back if they ever wanted to.
It was just that she dreaded ever facing that kind of decision again, when they might have to give up more, just to stay afloat.Or a time when the skills they had to offer were no longer valued. But for now, they were fine, even doing well, and she would just have to focus on that.
And the simple fact that she was head over heels for the guy who was helping make that possible by insisting on paying rent, even with all the work he did. Her cheeks heated a little as she remembered yesterday, when Dad had nearly caught them stealing a kiss in the tack room. It wasn’t that she was hiding this from them—in fact, she suspected Mom at least knew perfectly well what was going on, given that she had facilitated it—but she wasn’t quite ready to share it. Yet. After a week it still felt new, and somehow clandestine, because they had only the hours when Jeremy was with Mom to steal any time together. Which took today out of the mix, since it was Saturday.
Besides, they hadn’t told Jeremy yet, and it seemed to her he should be the first one to know, officially. Assuming, of course, it lasted long enough he needed to be told. After all, Jackson had already told her he couldn’t love her. She knew why, she even understood. But she couldn’t help wondering how she’d ended up feeling envious of a dead woman.
He couldn’t love her, and she didn’t want to love him. No, she needed some steady, ranch-loving Texas man who wasn’t above dedicating himself to what it took to keep a ranch going.
But isn’t Jackson doing just that?
She grimaced inwardly. Because he was doing that, she just wasn’t sure how long he’d be happy about it. And that thought conflicted with her insistence that she didn’t want to love him, which collided with the fact that he couldn’t love her. It was such a tangle, she didn’t know how to begin to sort it out.
But she did care, about both him and Jeremy. A lot. More than she could remember caring about any other man before. But it wasn’t love. It just wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Infatuation, maybe. That she could accept, but she couldn’t afford to give herheart away to a guy who might get bored with the life she loved at any moment.
She didn’t usually look for trouble, not when so much arrived on its own without her help, but as with so many things with him, this was different. She was different with him, and it rattled her.
Then the sound of distant thunder snapped her out of her useless meanderings.
Focus, Baylor. That thunderstorm’s almost here.
Once she was through her mental checklist and certain she’d done everything, that the livestock were in the more protected pastures, the horses secure in the barn—including Jeremy’s precious Pie—and everything battened down as best it could be, she headed in. And arrived just in time to see an expensive European sedan pulling away from the house.
“Who was that?” Nic asked as she watched the car head up the hill. Toward Jackson. She looked back at her parents, who were on the porch, also watching it go, and neither of them looked happy.
“That,” her father said flatly, “was some Hollywood bigwig who came to see Jackson.”
“To talk him into going back, you mean,” her mother said, her tone beyond sour.
Nic felt her stomach give a sudden churn. “Going back?”
“Yes,” Mom said. “He as much as said they’d given him more than a month to get his head right, and it was time for him to get back to work.”
And Nic had the sinking feeling that there was more than one kind of storm on the immediate horizon. What would he do? Had he found enough here to hold him? How could anybody in his position refuse such a demand?
Was she about to lose him, when she’d barely begun to learn all the facets of him?
The doubts she’d thought vanquished rose yet again; how could she, a simple ranch girl from small-town Texas, hold a man like Jackson Thorpe?
She was very afraid she knew the answer to that.
She couldn’t.
*
Jackson toed offhis boots—which had become more battered in a month of real ranch life than they had in five years of portraying it, which he supposed told him something—and hung up his jacket. Nic’s dad had been anxious to get everything prepared for this massive storm rolling in to remind them, Richard had said, that winter wasn’t quite over yet. Between them they’d gotten everything loose at the barn under cover, the hay secured, all doors secured, and the generator checked, fueled, and tested. Nic had been out moving the last group of the Angus into the smaller, higher pasture, away from the creek that could flood if the rain stayed as intense as forecast, but she should be done by now.
