Читать книгу The Texan's Twins - Pamela Britton - Страница 13
ОглавлениеShe’d revealed too much, Jasmine thought a few minutes later. She should have kept things impersonal. Chatted about Baron Energies’ last quarterly report or something. Instead, she’d treated him like a Catholic priest, someone to confess all her dirty little secrets to, and that was the stupidest thing in the world to do. He was the boss’s son. A man who reported back to the big man himself, not to mention his sister. The last thing she needed was for word to get out that she was stretched too thin, that she couldn’t cope, that she’d made mistakes.
“Ever been up in a helicopter before?”
Her stomach dropped.
“No.”
To be honest, she hadn’t given the coming ride much thought other than how much it would interfere with her day.
“You want the vanilla ride, then? Or the Disneyland version?”
“Explain Disneyland version?”
He smiled, and Jasmine thought he looked like a kid standing in front of an amusement park. This was the second time she’d seen him with mussed hair. He trimmed the black strands shorter on the sides than on the top and it appeared he frequently ran his fingers through it. If it weren’t for the strong jaw and the curve of his masculine lips, she’d think him younger than her, and those green eyes had laugh lines stretching out from the corner. He was tan and well-groomed and so good-looking there was no way he didn’t know the effect he had on women.
Like you?
No, she told herself firmly. Not like me.
“Well, we could fly straight to our destination, or we could take the scenic route.”
“Why do I have the feeling the scenic route entails a lot more ups and downs?”
The lines stretching from the corners of his eyes deepened as he smiled. “Because you’d be right.”
“I see.”
“You don’t get airsick, do you?”
This was beginning to sound more and more ominous. “No.”
“You like scary rides?”
Yes. A long time ago. She’d lived life on the edge. You didn’t date a hellcat without having a wild streak of your own. Alas, motherhood and loss had cured her of that.
His face fell. “I can see by your face that you’d like me to take it easy.”
“No.” The word shot out of her before she could stop it. Something in his eyes had challenged her, and that should scare the crap out of her. Darren had challenged her, too, and look where that had gotten her.
“No?” he asked, as if sensing her doubts.
“I don’t mind a little excitement.”
She shouldn’t have said the words. The way he glanced at her, quickly, that wink back in his eyes.
“Oh, really?”
She blushed. “I meant I’m not as uptight as I look.” This was going from bad to worse, so she did the only thing she could think of. She changed the subject. “What did your dad want?”
As a buzzkill, the words worked perfectly. He frowned, and somehow she knew what he was thinking. “He was checking up on me.”
“You mean, making sure you were at work.”
He glanced at her quickly. “Something like that.”
“You’re not very happy about being forced into a day job, are you?”
“Excuse me?”
Don’t look at him. Easier to focus that way. “Your...lack of interest in Baron Energies is well-known.”
“See, that’s where everyone’s wrong.” He smoothly merged onto I-35. “It’s not that I’m not interested. I love our family business. I just don’t see the point of devoting my entire life to it like my dad, at least not while I’m young. I have my whole life to do that.”
Must be nice to have that kind of attitude. She’d had to work her entire life to get to where she was. As a woman she’d had to do things better, be smarter, work harder. Lizzie Baron had been the first oil executive to take her seriously and yet here she was with her brother, a man who didn’t want what had been handed to him on a silver platter, and she couldn’t help but feel a small burn of resentment. What would it be like to never have to worry? To have such a huge support group that you knew you’d always be taken care of? She’d left behind her only support, Darren’s parents, and they were aging help at that. Even so, she would miss them—did miss them—terribly. They were the only family she had.
“I don’t have my whole life ahead of me,” she heard herself say. “I only have the here and the now.”
Only after she said the words did she wonder why in the name of heaven she’d made the confession. That’s what happened when the only company you kept were twin girls. Girlfriends? What were those? Any fledgling friendships she might have formed once she’d graduated college were toast now that she’d moved. As she sat there thinking about it, she admitted she’d never felt more alone in her life than in that moment sitting there with Dallas magazine’s bachelor of the year next to her.
He stared at her, she realized. Analyzed her. Tried to determine the look on her face.
Unhinged mother.
She wanted to tell him that’s what he saw. Someone living life on the edge...and about to come unglued.
“You okay?”
No. She was most definitely not okay because following on the tail of her loneliness came an unbidden urge to cry. It made her angry, that urge. She’d never been one for stints of self-pity, yet here she was, suddenly looking out the side window of his sixty-thousand-dollar truck and wondering if she had the strength of will to hold on to her tears.
“Fine.” But even to her own ears her voice sounded high, her nose clearly stuffed with the crud that clogged your nostrils and your throat when you tried so hard not to weep.
He flicked on his directional. It took her a moment to recognize the click-click of his blinkers, and then a moment more before she realized what he was about to do.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no. Do not pull over. I’m fine.”
“You need a tissue.”
“I do not.”
But, damn it, she was crying. Crying. In front of Jet Baron.
He pulled over.
When she glanced through her lashes the world was a blurry mess. She had no idea where they were and so she sucked in a breath, hoping it would help to clear her eyes and her airway, which made her sound like an asthmatic yappy dog, and that only made her want to cry even more.
“You’ve had a rough spell, haven’t you?”
It was too much. The long night. The early morning. The mistakes on her report. Meeting Brock Baron. Seeing the surprise in his eyes. No. It went back further than that. Losing Darren. The new job. The move away from everything she loved.
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
A blurry box formed in front of her eyes. Tissue. She had no idea where he’d pulled it from. Reluctantly, she snatched one and dabbed at her eyes. At least the urge to sob seemed to have faded. Could she be hormonal? Was it close to her time of month? To be honest, she couldn’t recall anything. Time seemed to be an endless blur of get up, take care of the twins, get ready for work, race around the office, go home, cook dinner, bathe the twins, tuck them into bed, fall into her own bed—exhausted—then get up and do it all over again.
“You mind me asking why the father of your twins isn’t doing more?”
Another sucked-in breath, this one hitching in her chest again. “Oh, you know,” she said airily, waving her hand through the air. “He’s a little busy, what with being dead and all.”
Silence.
From the left side of the vehicle came the whoosh of a car passing them. He’d pulled to a stop at the base of an off-ramp—she had no idea where. To their left cars whizzed by on the freeway. Actually, she was kind of glad she’d stunned him into silence. It gave her a moment to catch her breath.
“Wow,” he said at last. “You’ve been handed a rotten deck of cards, haven’t you?”
He had that right.
“When? How?”
She stiffened.
“If you don’t mind me asking.”
He handed her another tissue. This time she took it without hesitating. She’d stained the first one black. Great. She probably looked like a panda bear.
“He was a hellfighter.”
And that said it all. Jet Baron was no fool. He knew what a hellfighter did. Knew the risk involved in trying to put out the flames of a burning oil well. She’d known, too. She’d warned herself away from Darren at least a half a dozen times that first night they’d met, but something about his bright blue eyes and his sparkling smile and the way he’d stared out at the world—as if he’d owned it and so nothing bad would ever happen to him—had drawn her to him like a kitten to catnip. She’d thought him invincible. She’d been dead wrong.
“So I take it he died on the job?”
“Yup. Two months before we were supposed to get married. I found out I was pregnant afterward. Darren never even knew.”
“Damn.” He shook his head. “That’s a tough gig.”
“Eyup.”
She felt better now. At least her lungs didn’t sound like a clogged exhaust pipe. Just a momentary breakdown. No big deal.
Except you broke down in front of the boss’s son.
Who’s staring at you right now.
She had to look away again. What she needed was a swift kick in the rear. That’s what Darren would have done. He’d never let her wallow in self-pity.
“Do you need anything?” Jet asked. “A helping hand? A shoulder to cry on? A shot of whiskey?”
That actually made her smile. “No.” She leaned her head against the smooth leather seat. No faux leather for the prince. “I’m fine.”
He stared at her again, and she wondered what he saw. A woman with raccoon eyes and tear-stained clothing, no doubt. She glanced down and realized she did indeed have a Cheerios in the cup of her bra. She should have known.
“How long has he been gone?”
Damn it, why shouldn’t she feel sorry for herself? It sucked big-time that she had no one to count on, no husband to help ease her burden, no family to share in the raising of her children. And her girls...her poor girls. They would never know their father. That, more than anything, broke her heart.
“Jasmine?”
“Five years ago.”
She wasn’t looking at him, but she could tell her words surprised him.
She inhaled, released her breath, inhaled again. She did that over and over again until her eyes stopped burning and her heart stopped breaking—but the cracks would always remain.
“You’ve been doing this a long time on your own.”
Yup. School. Working whatever job she could find. Raising the girls.
“I’m sorry,” he added. “Nobody should ever have to raise a child on their own, much less two.”
Damn it, she felt her eyes begin to burn again. She didn’t want him to see her like this. Didn’t want him to be nice to her. She wanted to go back to the way things had been this morning when she’d walked into her office and she’d been looking down her nose at him. Jet Baron the dilettante. Instead, he’d fixed her report, invited her to tour his family’s facilities and handed her tissue.
“I am, too,” she said.
She heard him shift. A hand reached for her own. She thought about twisting in her seat, turning away so he couldn’t do what he was about to do—touch her. Instead, she watched as long fingers enveloped her own. Warm fingers. Soft fingers. No. Not soft, she realized. He had calluses on the inside. He worked outdoors a lot, she remembered. Rodeo.
“Let’s see if we can’t put a smile back on that face of yours.”
He released her.
Jasmine couldn’t move. It had been a long time since a man had touched her. A long time since she’d felt soft tingles of desire skate up and down her arm. A long time since she’d experienced the need, the want, the longing to have a man do more than touch her.
Dear God.
She was attracted to Jet Baron.
