Читать книгу The Millionaire's Club: Jacob, Logan and Marc - Brenda Jackson - Страница 16

Jake’s mouth opened as wide as his eyes. “What? Me? What am I going to make happen?”

“For five years you’ve needled me, teased me, made fun of me and in general goaded me into burying my feet deeper into my principles and my head deeper into the sand. Well, Saturday night changed all that. You were nice to me. In fact, you were into me. I liked it.”

Damn. “Chris—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, some of the old starchy Chrissie back in her speech and her bearing. “I know you were just playing. I know what you are. You’re a flirt and a good-time guy. And you were just being you on Saturday night because I wasn’t being me. At least, I wasn’t being the old me. I was being the new me when I didn’t even realize I wanted me to be a different me.”

His head was starting to hurt. “Huh?”

She waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you offered to teach me how to loosen up and have fun and I’m going to hold you to it. Starting right now.”

And the next thing he knew, she kissed him. She reached up, placed her hands on either side of his face and pulled his mouth down to hers. There wasn’t any finesse to it. It was all about impulse and determination and flat-out moxie.

It should have been funny. But for some reason he thought it was sweet. At least, he did during the moments he wasn’t alternating between panic that warned him he could easily go down for the count here and a flat out case of pure, animal lust.

That mouth. She did have a way with her mouth. It wasn’t practiced. It wasn’t expert. But, oh, was it enthusiastic. And that enthusiasm was infectious. He hadn’t planned to kiss her back. But there was the surprise factor. And the heat factor. And the warm, soft woman factor that, combined, sucked him in, egged him on and dragged him under.

He widened his legs, pulled her between them and dived into the kiss like a pearl diver on a treasure hunt. He urged her mouth open, swept inside her sweet, wet heat with his tongue while pressing her into his growing erection with one hand at the small of her back. His other hand pressed between her shoulder blades, encouraging the pressure of her breasts against his chest.

And sweet ambrosia, she tasted good. The soft sounds she made deep in her throat fostered a low growl of his own that had him leaning back on the top of his desk, bringing her with him. He heard something crash to the floor, didn’t care what it was because her full weight covered him now—sexy and hot and pressing in all the right places.

If their sudden horizontal tango gave her pause, she didn’t let on. In fact, she really got into the kiss then. She’d let go of his face and buried her hands in his hair, all the while squirming and sighing and doing a little pressing of her own.

He loved it. Loved the honest lust. The exuberant response. But most of all he loved the way they fit, the heady friction as she moved above him, dragging him deeper into the heat of the moment and further away from the consequences.

He was ready to take it to the next level. Make love to her right there on the top of his desk, in the middle of Monday, when she lifted her head. Looked down into his eyes through those drowsy hazel eyes of hers and in the most slumberous, seductive voice he’d ever heard, she whispered, “Consider that payment for lesson one. Come through with lesson two and there’ll be more where that came from.”

Then, as if she hadn’t just played the most amazing game of tonsil tag he’d ever been a party to, she pushed herself off him, straightened her top and left him flat on his back.

“When you do come up with lesson number two,” she said, turning around with one hand on the door handle, “give me a call.” Then she left him. Hot and bothered. Hard and hungry.

When the blood returned to his head several long minutes later, he eased himself to a sitting position. When he could take a breath that didn’t smell of her—something fresh and citrusy—he carefully stood.

For the longest time he just stared at the closed door. Finally he raked both hands through his hair, swore, then dropped into his desk chair. He let his head fall back and stared at the ceiling.

What the hell had just happened here?

He felt as if he’d been hit by a tank. At the very least, by a whirlwind in the guise of Chrissie Travers.

Prissy? He’d never again think of her that way.

But he would think of her. She’d made sure of that.

He’d be thinking about just how silky her skin might be. How those soft breasts would feel pressed against his palm, how they’d taste on his tongue. About how much heat the two of them could generate on a big bed instead of a hard desk.

None of that was supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to kiss her again, to flirt with her again, to charm her again, let alone think about making love to her.

But she’s the one who had done the kissing. And the flirting. And the charming.

And the challenging, he realized as a tight knot of grudging respect twisted into anger. The minx had turned the tables on him. She’d leveled a dare. He was the one who had always been in control of their relationship—if you could call what they’d had until Saturday night a relationship. Mostly it had been a good-natured—at least on his part—razzfest. He teased. She bristled. He’d liked it that way.

But then he’d been stupid enough to kiss her. He’d used the weekend to put that kiss into perspective, chalked it up to stupidity. End of story. Until the woman had barged in here, added another chapter to the book and confused the hell out of him with her talk about “old me” and “new me” before attacking him with those sizzling, mind-bending kisses.

Now he was in a daze. And that just plain fried his circuits. He did not get bent out of shape over a woman. It wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t supposed to happen.

So why had it?

He stood and walked to the window. Maybe he was bored. Since he’d damaged his lungs in that damn fire five years ago, he’d had to be satisfied with the management end of his own business. Sure, it was rewarding. But it was dull. He’d joined the Texas Cattleman’s Club hoping for a little excitement, but so far all the thrill he’d gotten was to listen to the exploits of other club members. Hearing those stories about saving countries or princesses only served to remind Jake of his limitations.

Chrissie had been a handy distraction. One that he’d let get out of hand.

Well, there was only one thing to do about it, he decided as the haze began to lift. This couldn’t go on. He had to regain the upper hand. And he knew how to do it.

He was going to call her bluff.

Little Chrissie wanted to take a walk on the wild side? Well, then, he would give her the walk of her life. That would put an end to her hit-and-run kisses. Put an end to her messing with his head.

He’d come up with something so wild and so foreign to her straitlaced nature that she’d run like a rabbit and he’d never see her sweet face again. Yeah. He’d fix her little red wagon and reclaim his equilibrium in the process.

He felt marginally better about the situation until he dragged a hand over his face and realized how unsteady he still was.

Why in the hell hadn’t he let her win the bid on Jess Golden’s things? Then none of this would be happening.

She’d done it.

Between sharp bouts of disbelief that left her tummy tumbling and moments of pride at her own audacity, Christine couldn’t stop grinning. She’d marched into Jake Thorne’s domain and told him what she thought, told him what she expected from him. Then she’d kissed him.

Well, okay, there had been a little waffling in there, but she’d gotten it together. Oh, had she gotten it together.

Another one of those waves of disbelief swamped her as she signaled for a left turn and headed out of the city. She’d shocked him. Heck, she’d shocked herself. Never in her life had she initiated a kiss. Never in her life had she experienced such a strong sexual reaction. Okay, so her experience was severely limited, but could it get any hotter than that kiss in Jake’s office? On his desk?

She wasn’t sure where her actions had come from—instinct maybe. Maybe from years of watching movies and reading books and living vicariously through them. Whatever, she’d been a tiger.

She felt good. She felt great! The sun was high and hot, her brand-new convertible’s top was down and the wind whipped her hairstyle around her face—something she’d never allowed with her longer hair. It was freeing. And exciting.

“It’s the new me!” she shouted into the wind, inched her speed up to a shocking two miles per hour above the speed limit and switched her radio station from the classics to classic rock. She felt like a little kid writing on the walls with crayons or a teenager skipping class.

Actually she was skipping work. Technically she was taking a personal day—something she never did just for the heck of it. It felt naughty. And, wonder of wonders, she liked it.

She couldn’t wait to call Alison to tell her what was going on.

And she couldn’t wait to hear from Jake to find out what the second lesson would be.

There would be another lesson. She may have discovered some new sides to Jake Thorne during the past few days, but there was one thing about the man she’d always known.

He never backed down from a dare. He wouldn’t back down from this one.

“Bring it on,” she said aloud. Whatever he fired at her, she was up to it. “The new me is up to it.”

The new her wasn’t deluding herself into believing that what was going on between her and Jake was a long-term notion. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that she was the one who could tame him for a serious relationship when any number of beautiful, sexy women hadn’t been able to accomplish the same.

No, she wasn’t that foolish. She simply was ready to experience life. For some reason, she trusted Jake to be the man to help her. And when the challenge was over and she’d had her fill, she’d be ready to walk away.

It helped to know what Jake Thorne was—a game player. He couldn’t help it. And she wouldn’t change him. Even if she wanted to.

The thought of things between them ending—before they’d even really begun—flooded her with an unexpected sadness. She turned up the radio and, at the top of her lungs, sang along with the Boss about being born to run.

Jake left the office early that day and hightailed it to the Cattleman’s Club for a little diversion. He breathed a sigh of relief when one of his buddies, Logan Voss, spotted him and motioned him over to join a poker game. A friendly game of five-card stud was exactly what Jake needed to take his mind off Chrissie and the way she’d turned him inside out yet again.

“So, how’s it shakin’, Jake?” Logan asked as Jake hung his black Stetson on a brass hat rack in the corner of the bar.

“Can’t complain. How about you boys?”

He got what he’d expected—mumbled “fines” and head nods. While members of the club often tackled matters of grave importance and danger within these walls, it was also a haven. As a rule, a man didn’t come to the Cattleman’s Club to talk about his troubles. He came here to get away from them, to simply hang out with men of like minds.

Of all of his friends at the club, he felt a particular kinship to Logan Voss. Voss ran a large cattle ranch just outside of town. Like Jake, the rugged rancher, who was a hands-on owner, was divorced. Unlike Jake who took pains to see that no one saw his pain, Logan’s scars occasionally showed in the bleak look in his eyes and the weary set of his shoulders. Or maybe Jake was just sensitive to Logan’s situation since he’d gone through an ugly divorce himself.

“You in, Thorne?” Mark Hartman asked. “Or you gonna sit there and admire your cards the rest of the night?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m in,” Jake said and called Hartman’s good-natured haranguing.

Jake didn’t know Mark Hartman as well as he knew Logan, but he liked what the guy stood for. Jake didn’t know the entire story, but the retired soldier had lost his wife in a violent mugging. Mark played his cards—and his feelings—pretty close to the vest, too. The African-American appeared to be independently wealthy but still spent hours at his gym where he gave self-defense classes to women. No one had to wonder what motivated him.

“Read ’em and weep, boys.” This came from the fourth man at the table, Gavin O’Neal, as he laid down a diamond flush.

Jake groaned and tossed in his cards. He hated this run of luck. But how loudly could one complain about losing to the sheriff? A decent one at that. O’Neal had been a wild man in his day, but he took the shiny badge that he wore on his chest seriously. The badge also didn’t hurt his standing with women. As a rule, Jake loved to give O’Neal grief about his reputation.

Tonight, though, Jake just wasn’t in much of a joking mood—mainly because of one particular woman giving him so much grief.

O’Neal dealt Jake another stellar hand. Not. He arranged his cards, rolled his eyes and folded. When Voss won the hand, Jake was down fifty bucks—and he hadn’t been in the game a full hour. He was starting to think his luck had deserted him altogether when Voss dealt him a pair of queens. Finally. A bidding hand. He was about to raise Gavin’s bet when a commotion by the front door had the entire table on their feet.

“What the hell?”

It was Nita Windcroft. Her violet eyes were shooting sparks and the slim young woman, who had recently taken on one helluva responsibility when she’d assumed management of her father’s horse farm, appeared to be in one high and mighty snit.

“Sheriff,” she said, marching toward the table. “You’ve got to do something.”

O’Neal met her halfway across the bar and laid a settling hand on her arm. “Good Lord, Nita, settle down before you bust a vein. Not another word until you calm down. Take a deep breath now. That’s it. Give me another one. Okay. Now tell me what’s wrong.” He steered her toward the table where the men had been playing.

Even off duty and out of uniform, Gavin had an air of command that Nita responded to.

“The Devlins are at it again,” she said, rage coloring her voice. “And if you don’t put a stop to it, so help me, I will. I can’t let them destroy my ranch.”

“Okay, Nita. Settle down,” Gavin repeated with a soothing calm that seemed to make Nita at least stop and take stock of her surroundings.

Besides their table, only a half a dozen other TCC members sat in the bar. After Nita’s initial outburst, they all returned to their respective conversations.

“You want to talk to me in private?” Gavin asked.

“I don’t care if the whole county hears what those snakes have been up to! You’ve got to do something.”

The Windcrofts and the Devlins had nursed a Hat-field-and-McCoy-style feud for close to a century. Old Jonathan Devlin had liked to keep the situation stirred up, but Jake had thought things would settle down now that Jonathan was gone.

Judging from the look on Nita’s face, he’d thought wrong.

If he had his facts straight, the Windcroft-Devlin feud had started when Richard Windcroft lost over half of his land to Nicholas Devlin in a poker game. The Windcrofts always had maintained the game was rigged. A Devlin ended up getting shot and killed over it, and of course, the Windcrofts got the blame. The accusations and squabbles had been going on ever since.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on out at the ranch that’s got you so upset, Nita,” Gavin suggested.

“In the past few weeks I’ve been dealing with downed rails, cut fence lines and spooked horses. At first I tried to write it off as wear and tear, but then I found wire cutters by a downed section and some of my new board fences have been broken, as well. I spent three days rounding up stock from the last time those bastards did their dirty work. But the last straw, the very last straw—they poisoned my horse feed.”

Nita’s cheeks were fiery red. “If my foreman hadn’t noticed something off, there’s no telling how much stock I would have lost. It’s bad enough I’m treating over a dozen head of very sick horses—some of them my customers’—but it will cost me a small fortune to replace that tainted feed. And do you have any idea what this is going to do to my business once word gets out? It could ruin me. Not to mention, I’m worried sick about the horses. Only a Devlin would stoop so low as to try to kill innocent animals.”

No wonder Nita was upset, Jake thought. The Wind-croft ranch boarded and trained horses. She’d start to lose customers if they felt the safety of their stock was compromised. She was leveling some pretty serious charges, and the Devlins were prominent citizens in Royal. Tom Devlin was even a member of the Cattleman’s Club and Jake considered him a friend.

“Those are pretty strong allegations, Nita,” Gavin warned, echoing Jake’s thoughts. “You have some proof that the Devlins are behind this?”

“Who else would it be? They’ve finally come up with a way to ruin us. It’s what they’ve always wanted. And they’ll shut us down if they aren’t stopped!”

“Have you had any direct threats on your life?” Gavin asked.

“My life is my ranch, so you can play it anyway you like.

“Okay, no,” she admitted when Gavin gave her a stern look. “I haven’t been personally threatened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come to that. I’m worried about my stock. I’m worried about my help. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

“Come on,” Gavin said. “Let’s go down to the station. You can write out a statement and I’ll dispatch an officer to your ranch to take stock of all that’s happened. Maybe he can find a lead on who’s doing this.”

“I told you who’s doing it. And I want to press charges,” Nita insisted.

“Do you have anything—anything but your gut instinct—tying the Devlins to this?”

Nita’s silence was Gavin’s answer.

“Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the station.”

“I know what that means,” she said, her tone expressing her anger. “It means you can’t do anything. Okay fine. You can’t. You have to follow the letter of the law. But what about you?” she asked, turning to Jake, Mark and Logan. “I know it’s supposed to be a secret but it’s common knowledge that you TCC guys get involved in situations like this when people are in danger.”

Whoa, Jake thought. The club’s missions were kept under wraps, so it was a little unsettling to hear Nita announce that their covert operations weren’t all that covert. But more unsettling was the fact that Nita felt she was in danger at the hands of a fellow club member and wanted them to investigate. Even though from the sound of things there was really nothing definitive to indicate either danger or Tom Devlin’s involvement.

“Nita,” Jake said, “I feel real bad for what’s happening out there, sweetie. Hell, I’m sure we all do. But for all we know, you’re just the unfortunate and random vic tim of some ugly pranks. Anyone could be responsible. Kids. Vagrants. As to the feed, have you had it tested? Is it possible you just got a bad batch from the elevator?”

“No, I haven’t had it tested. It just happened today and I’ve been too busy saving horses to investigate.”

“So, when did you get your last batch of feed?” he pressed.

“Yesterday,” she said defensively, “but we always order the same mix from the same elevator, so it’s not likely that they’re responsible.”

Jake cut a glance at the others. Mark, Logan and Gavin all wore looks that said exactly what Jake was thinking. Most likely she’d just gotten a bad batch of feed, but in her panic over the possibility of losing the horses, she’d decided someone needed to take the rap and the Devlins were the most likely target.

“Check with the elevator,” Jake said gently. “If you come up blank there after the feed is tested, then maybe we’ll consider looking into it.”

“Consider?” Her eyes snapped with fire. “Thanks. Thanks so much for nothing.”

She stomped out of the club in as much of a huff as when she’d stomped in.

“That’s one upset woman,” Logan remarked.

“Can’t blame her,” Jake said. “She’s stubborn and outspoken and I’ve known her to go to great lengths to get her way, but I’ve never known her to lie about anything. This is her livelihood that’s being threatened. I’m sure she’s scared.”

“Let’s keep our ears open for word from the elevator regarding the feed,” Mark suggested.

“What about the fences?” Logan asked.

Jake shrugged. “Who knows? Could be kids. Could be any number of possibilities. What do you guys think of checking with Tom Devlin to see if he has any ideas on what’s going on?”

“He’s out of town right now. Business trip,” Gavin said.

“When he comes back, then,” Jake said. “We’ll find out what he thinks. Man, when old Jonathan was alive, he loved to stir the fire on the Windcroft-Devlin feud every chance he got. I thought maybe after he died that this stupid feud business would die a quiet death, too.”

“I should be so lucky,” Gavin said on a weary breath. “See you boys. I’d better get down to the station before Nita raises hell with my officers.”

“But I was about to get into you for some serious coin,” Jake complained, thinking about his pair of queens.

“You can break my bank another night, buddy. I’ve got a mad woman waiting and it’s not going to do any of us any good if I keep her that way too long.”

Didn’t it just figure? Jake thought. These days there always seemed to be a woman complicating things for him. Nita was leaning on the club members for help, and his pair of queens hadn’t shown up until after he’d dropped a bundle and the game was over. Then there was Chrissie. Lord. She had materialized this afternoon as a different woman, then issued a challenge he couldn’t see his way clear to walk away from.