Chapter 11
JACK
Holy shit, the Belmont ranch was huge—and this wasn’t even the part where they kept the cattle.
Acres of grass that had no right to look this green and a sprawling house that was more suited to Beverly Hills, California, than Aspen Springs, Colorado.
I had known that Janie and I came from opposite sides of the railroad track, but damn.
She had been raised with all this. What the hell was she doing at the Painted Cat?
With all those acres spread out before me, it hit me how absolutely ludicrous it was that I had never considered it until she had brought it up.
But the truth was, she didn’t act like someone who had money.
She looked completely comfortable behind the bar in her worn-in Levis and scuffed boots.
She handled rowdy customers and their less-than-hygienic bathroom habits without batting an eye—all right, she batted an eye and bitched a bit, but she still did her job.
She dealt with whatever came her way. She never tried to shove the more disgusting parts on someone else.
She fit there. She didn’t fit here.
At least, the Janie I knew didn’t fit here. But maybe I didn’t know Janie all that well, after all.
“You can set up the mini quiches over there, if you please, Cat,” a woman’s voice said.
Since I was holding two trays of mini quiches myself, I looked up. I recognized her from the other day at Sweetie Pies. Maya’s grandmother—which meant she was Janie’s mother. And behind her—
Shit.
I damn near swallowed my tongue.
Janie.
And her tits.
Janie’s tits.
Tits.
“Do you mind if I grab one, Cat?” Janie asked, already reaching for it. “I didn’t get a chance to eat before I came here, and I am starv—oh, hi, Jack.”
Before this moment, I would have said that the hardest thing I’d ever done was BUD/S training. Now? Janie Belmont had raised the bar. Nothing in this world was as excruciating as prying my gaze from Janie’s luscious cleavage. I was no better than that creep who had leered at her in the bar.
I dragged my gaze upwards and found her watching me, chocolate eyes glowing with amusement, her lips tilted in a full smirk. I cleared my throat. “Hi, Janie.”
“Hi,” she said again. She bit off half the quiche and her eyes rolled back. “Oh, my god, Cat. These are divine.” She popped the rest in her mouth and made another sound of ecstasy.
Shit. My pants were uncomfortably tight now. I could only hope no one noticed I was sporting wood. Just in case, I lowered the trays slightly to block the view.
Mom put a second quiche on a cocktail napkin and offered it up. “Would you like another one before we hand them out?”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Janie said cheerfully, but her mother got there first, scooping up the quiche before Janie could take it.
“Nothing else is going to fit into that dress, Janie,” Mrs. Belmont said. She didn’t eat it herself, though. Instead, she folded the napkin around it and tossed it into the trash can behind the table.
Next to me, my mother inhaled sharply. Janie froze. Shock and hurt flashed across her face before both were quickly hidden behind a bland smile. She picked up a quiche and pushed the whole thing in her mouth. Mrs. Belmont’s lips thinned as Janie chewed, each movement of her jaw slow and deliberate.
That’s my girl.
She wasn’t really my girl. It wasn’t my place to tell her mother to go to hell, but fuck. I wanted to. Even though Janie had just proved she was more than capable of fighting her own battles, I still wanted to fight them for her.
“You look amazing,” I said. “Beautiful.”
Her eyes softened as she smiled at me. “Thank you. Maya says hello, by the way.”
“Is she here?” I craned my neck to search the garden.
“No, she’s—” Janie’s eyes darted to her mother and she chewed the inside of her cheek. “This isn’t really a child-friendly event. She’s in the house.”
There was a hint of anxiety in her expression. I glanced around the lawn again. Not a single child was present, and I wouldn’t have expected there to be. Children weren’t known for enjoying political fundraising parties. Janie was telling the truth. So why did it sound like a lie?
“You’ve met Maya?” Mrs. Belmont asked in tone that suggested she wasn’t entirely pleased.
“We—” I started but was interrupted by a blonde server with a tray of drinks.
“Wine?” she asked brightly. “Beer?”
Janie swiped a glass of white with a small smile for the server. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Belmont took one, as well. “Small sips,” she murmured to Janie. “Remember to treat it as a decoration.”
Janie rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to get drunk and embarrass you, Mother.”
Mrs. Belmont ignored her and turned to me. “You were saying about Maya?” Her tone was perfectly cordial, but the way her nose wrinkled ever so slightly as she looked me over made it clear she didn’t approve of me. “You’re Cat’s son, aren’t you?”
Janie noticed it too, because her eyes narrowed on her mother. “Mother, you know Jack Price. He was in the paper two years ago, remember? His team rescued the news correspondent who was taken hostage.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Belmont’s smile was genuine now.
It was truly incredible how quickly she warmed up to me now that I was something other than the son of her caterer.
She should have been ashamed of herself, but I doubted she was.
People like that were never as embarrassed as they should be.
“Jack. Of course. My husband will be delighted to meet you. I’ll have to introduce you to him. ”
My stomach dropped into my shoes. The last thing I wanted was to be paraded around a party full of politicians and socialites looking for a photo op with a war hero.
“If I have time,” I said. “But right now, I need to help my mother. Janie—”
I blinked at the empty space where Janie’s tits had been just a second before.
Janie was gone. She’d escaped while her mother was distracted and fawning over me.
That shameless little hussy.
I managed to dodge Mrs. Belmont for the next hour, but it was hard to hide from the hostess when you had to be literally out in the open with no cover, serving bite-sized hors d’oeuvres to guests who really ought to put something more substantive in their bellies to soak up all the alcohol.
When she finally caught me, she and her husband spent the next eternity introducing me to all their friends like some damn show pony.
The worst part was, they were so fucking nice now that they had decided I was a worthwhile human being.
But I saw how they treated the servers who carried trays just as I had.
They weren’t rude. They remembered to say thank you about half the time, even if they never looked directly at the them.
Mostly, the Belmonts and their guests treated the staff and servers like furniture.
They were there to serve a purpose. They weren’t actually people.
But Janie…she wasn’t like that. She looked them in the eyes when she said thank you, and when she knew their name, she used it.
Her bright hair made it easy to track her around the party. My eyes went to her again and again.
I wasn’t the only one.
Most of the glances going her way were furtive and quick.
A few double-takes from men whose wives were quick to intervene.
But one man in particular—he appeared to be a friend of her father’s—was blatantly leering in way that put my hackles up.
The least he could do was be subtle about it like a fucking gentleman.
I didn’t like the way he watched her. But I fucking hated that he slung his arm over her shoulders like he had every right in the world.
Janie froze, her doe eyes round like saucers as she stared at her father in a silent plea for intervention. My blood pressure ratcheted up as I apprised the situation from a few yards away. Her father wasn’t going to let this dickweed get away with that, was he?
Mr. Belmont’s forehead knit in a frown. “I—ah—”
Apparently he was. Alarm bells rang in my head. Are you fucking kidding me? I strode forward.
Mrs. Belmont cleared her throat. “Charles, why don’t you show Todd the stables?”
Mr. Belmont looked relieved. “An excellent idea! Shall we?”
Todd twisted to look at Janie. His nose grazed her hair. “What do you think, Janie?”
And then I watched him slide his palm over her bare cleavage, fingers curving inward along the undercurve of her breast. He squeezed.
I saw red.
Janie’s expression went from distraught to shocked to furious. I had a feeling I was about to witness exactly what it looked like when Janie Belmont got her bad out, and as fun as that might be, I was too pissed off to wait for it.
“Remove your fucking hand or I will do it for you,” I said lowly, enunciating every word carefully so his single brain cell would understand.
“Janie and I are old friends,” he said. “Aren’t we, Janie? She’s fine.”
Wrong answer.
I moved on instinct. I separated his body from hers by brute force, putting my own in between them, and shackled his slim wrist with one hand. A pathetic squeal spilled from his lips as I twisted his hand to an unnatural angle, just shy of making it snap, and drove him to his knees.
“Are you fine, Janie?” I asked, turning my head to look back at her over my shoulder.
She exhaled and dropped her forehead to my shoulder blade. “I am now,” she said quietly.
In that moment, I felt it—the thing I had been missing ever since I was discharged. Purpose. Someone who needed me. It felt so fucking good.
“Janie,” I said, but she didn’t break stride as she made for the house like a woman on a mission.
I caught up with her as she pushed through the door. “Janie,” I said again. I caught her by the elbow and gently turned her to face me.
“Hm?” she muttered.
The glossiness of her dark eyes made me want to do things. Hold her. Rearrange Todd’s face. Possibly her parents’, too.
“What the hell was that back there?” I asked. I scanned her face, searching for answers.
“You know what that was. An entitled man-child put his hand where it didn’t belong and you corrected that for him.
” She looked away, her throat bobbing in a hard swallow.
“Thank you for that, by the way. I was going to stomp on his foot, but your way was probably better.” She gave me a wobbly smile that broke my heart.
“You say the word, Ace, and I’ll break every bone in his body. But I’m talking about your parents. What the fuck was that about?”
“Oh.” She curled in on herself, one arm wrapped protectively around her waist, the other across her chest. “Todd Yates is a big lobbyist in the ranching industry. My dad will do anything to keep him happy. And my mother…appearances are everything. She believes you don’t make a scene. Ever.”
I stared at her. “So they were perfectly okay with him touching you like that without your consent? What the fuck.”
“They weren’t okay with it,” she said defensively. “They didn’t know how to stop it without causing a scene or pissing him off.”
“Janie.”
“For what it’s worth, I was absolutely going to cause a scene.”
“I know you were, honey.” I pulled her into my arms and rested my chin on the crown of her head. “I know you were.”
For a moment all we did was breathe together. And then her hands dropped to my belt.
“Jack,” she whispered. “I still want to cause a scene.”