Five
Than
Finishing the last of my sandwich, I shifted my eyes off the television to look at the closed bedroom door for at least the fifteenth time since I’d sat down to eat. If she wanted to stay in there and sulk, then it would make being in here a hell of a lot more enjoyable. I hadn’t known throwing facts at her would send her running and shut her up, or I’d have walked in the door, spewing them.
Because even when she was being snarky, that voice of hers had a sultry sound to it that didn’t need to be coming out of a mouth like hers. It was just shy of being too wide with a generously plump bottom lip. It was already lethal. To most men. Not me. I was immune. I knew better. She was the screwed-up daughter of a stripper with major daddy issues. Those were the crazy kind. I steered clear of them.
Picking up my soda, I took a long drink, then set it beside my plate on the coffee table. The Braves game was on, and I should be watching at Gathe’s, but I was here. Watching it alone. I needed more food.
Standing up, I started for the refrigerator, but moved over closer to her door to listen. Make sure she wasn’t on the phone, talking to anyone. The sooner I found something to use against her, the sooner I was back home. The sound of running water was all I heard. She must have gotten in the shower. Tonight, when she went to sleep, I was going to go through every single text, app, and call on her phone. I’d find something. Hell, maybe by tomorrow, I’d have my life back.
I wondered if Jayda had made game food. I should text her and see if she would send some out to me. Picking up my phone, I noticed two missed text messages.
Gathe: Fuck, man. I heard what Linc has you doing. That sucks ass. Is she hot at least?
Hot didn’t describe her. She was more than hot. I’d go with fire. But fire wasn’t enough when she was fucking crazy and would likely do psycho shit. Not that a guy would mind if she decided to stalk him. He’d probably enjoy it.
I realized I was scowling at the phone. I read the next text.
Ransom: Just because Linc has you playing babysitter doesn’t mean you can’t work on your laptop. We need the new labels ordered and the corks we are switching to. The email is backed up too. Handle it.
My brother loved to act as if he owned our family’s whiskey distillery, but that would be Dad. Rolling my eyes, I found Jayda’s contact and shot her a text, asking for game food. She was Linc’s cook and house cleaner.
Luther Levine lived in one wing of the house. Linc, his wife, and their daughter in the other. Luther and Linc had had bought this place together, not thinking either would marry. Then, surprise, Linc’s accidental wife showed up, wanting a divorce so she could get married to someone else, and had a little girl with his eyes. Things had worked out for the best though. Linc was actually happy at times now. “My girls,” as he called them, had become his center. It made him more bearable.
Luther…yeah, no one was marrying his ass. He’d end up fucking their mom, sister, aunt, and niece at the rehearsal dinner. The man might be my hero. Grinning, I stuck my phone back into my pocket and went to grab another handful of berries.
My phone started ringing. While chewing, I got it back out, then held it between my shoulder and ear, still searching for more to eat.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You read the text, and I got no answer,” Gathe replied.
I really needed to turn the Read notification off on my phone.
“I’m busy trying to find food,” I told him, pulling out one of the meals that Jayda had made and put in there with the heating instructions. It looked like something Mexican. This might be good.
“We’ve got a spread here,” he said. “Shame you can’t be here, but then if she’s hot…”
“I’d rather be there with the spread,” I told him instead of answering his question.
“Ah, damn. So, she looks like Baskin,” he replied with a chuckle.
No, she did not.
My text alert went off.
“Wait a minute,” I told him, then looked down at it to see Jayda’s response.
Jayda: I will be there in a few. But only because I’m nosy and I want to see what she looks like.
I rolled my eyes. Of course Jayda had the lowdown on who Montana was. She lived in Linc’s house most of the time. It was hard to keep shit from her. She heard everything. It was the main reason that Linc didn’t want Montana in his house. He didn’t want her to hear anything. That, and he didn’t like the idea of disturbing his wife’s and daughter’s peace. He liked his time with them to be uninterrupted.
Me: Thanks.
“I asked Jayda to bring me some game food,” I told Gathe.
“So, where is she? That cabin isn’t big. Y’all watching the game together?”
“Jayda is at the big house. She’s not here.” I knew that wasn’t who he was talking about. I was being an ass.
“Not Jayda! Baskin’s bastard.”
I glanced back at the closed bedroom door. “She’s closed up in the bedroom. Hopefully not coming out.”
“Ouch. Damn, that bad, huh?” he said.
“Yep,” I replied.
“All right, I’m getting back in there. If she’s not a sex kitten, then this shit is just boring.”
I smirked, closing the door to the refrigerator and heading back over to the sofa. “You have no idea.”
He chuckled, then ended the call.
I dropped my phone on the cushion beside me and propped my feet up on the table.
Linc was right. Gathe would have fucked her. That face of hers would have left him speechless, and her body would have gotten his dick so damn hard that he’d have started salivating. I hadn’t wanted to be stuck with this job before I saw her. Now, I sure as hell didn’t want it.
The game playing got my attention, and I relaxed, drinking my soda, wishing that I’d told Jayda to bring me a beer too. Thinking that was a good idea, I reached for my phone just as the bedroom door opened. Turning my head in that direction was a simple reaction. The sight that walked out was anything but simple. Forget the beer. I needed to request an entire bottle of whiskey.
Her eyes met mine, and earlier, I’d thought her eyes were olive green, but right now, they reminded me more of sea glass. All that long, dark chocolate hair was pulled up into a bun with a few tendrils that hadn’t quite made it hanging in loose curls, and that damn button nose that did the slightest upturn on the end had a scattering of freckles over it that had been covered up earlier with makeup. I tried hard not to look at the mouth. It was her best feature, and that was saying a lot.
Apparently, she did not own a motherfucking bra. Like the halter top she’d worn with ripped jeans that clung to her body as if it had been a second skin when we had picked her up, she was in a cropped T-shirt that revealed even more of her flat, toned stomach. The shorts she had changed into hung on her hips and could use a few inches more. Preferably all the way to her ankles.
I jerked my head back around and glared at the television as if it had offended me. My cock, her clothing choices, and those motherfucking freckles were the offenders. I didn’t speak and tried to think about shit to make the hardening in my jeans go away. She didn’t say anything either.
The only sound was the soft padding of her bare feet as she walked behind me and into the kitchen. Maybe she had ugly feet. I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t made it past her fucking stripper-worthy legs. God, I hoped her feet were ugly. That would turn me off. I thought. Probably. I had a thing about feet. But the rest of her was so damn perfect that I wasn’t sure her feet would matter. Ugly ones would help though. I could just look at those when I talked to her.
Her reflection in the flat screen showed her looking in the cabinet for something. I could probably help her, but I wasn’t going to. She could find it. There weren’t many places to look.
The next time the screen went to black, I saw her putting something on a plate, then picking up a glass and taking a drink. When she reached up to get something from the cabinet over her head, the top she was wearing rode up further, and I held my breath, praying it didn’t show any tits and wishing it would at the same time. Angrily, I grabbed my phone to look at emails. Anything but the screen.
A knock on the door was a relief. Jayda. A distraction. I jumped up and headed to answer it. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Montana had stilled and was watching me, but she still didn’t speak.
Opening the door to Jayda, holding a large, reusable tote bag that she took to the grocery store with her, I wanted to weep with joy.
“You know how much I love you, don’t you?” I told her, reaching to take the bag.
“All men do, honey. Get in line,” she retorted with a smirk, tossing her deep auburn hair over her shoulder and strutting inside past me.
Jayda starred in several of my fantasies. I’d gotten off to thoughts of her and her longtime girlfriend, Beth, many times in the shower. She was tall, willowy, and stunning. Walking into the kitchen at Linc’s one day to catch her and Beth kissing had given me a boner for fucking days. I’d been twenty-two at the time, but I was sure it would do the same thing now. I doubted that was something a man outgrew.
“Hello,” Jayda said brightly as she entered the cabin. “I’m Jayda. Your supplier of meals.”
“Oh, thank you,” Montana replied with that fucking sultry voice I wished would continue being unused. “I wasn’t expecting food already in the refrigerator when I arrived, but it was a pleasant surprise.”
Jayda pulled out a stool and sat her ass down. Great. She was going to stay and chat with Montana, who I was trying to ignore.
Thanks a lot, Jayda . I walked over and set the food on the counter and began pulling containers out of the bag.
“It’s my thing. I love cooking, baking—heck, I even love going to the grocery store. Well, Whole Foods. It’s my jam,” Jayda told her.
The corner of Montana’s mouth tugged up as if she was repressing a smile. The hint of a dimple appeared. I realized she’d not smiled until this small attempt right now. I wanted to see her smile. Was there one dimple, or did she have two?
“I’ve only been in a Whole Foods once,” Montana replied.
Her smile got a little wider. I was seeing another dimple appear.
“All right, you can’t smile like that and not tell me why,” Jayda told her. “And I’m just gonna toss this out there. Your mother must have had some excellent genes because your father…” She scrunched her nose.
Then it happened. The full thing. Two dimples. My gaze lifted to see her eyes as she stared back at Jayda. Sea glass as the light hit them. That was the only way to explain them. They twinkled.
Fuck! Realizing what I had been doing, I tore my gaze off hers to continue getting the other things out of the bag when I caught Jayda watching me with a knowing gleam in her eyes.
FEET! Look at her feet! I dropped my eyes, praying the entire time that they were ugly. No surprise that God had ignored my prayer. They were tanned, as if she’d spent time outside, barefoot, and she had small, perfect toes with pink polish on them.
“It’s…” There was a hesitancy to her voice that had my eyes doing their own thing and snapping back up to look at her. “Um, well, my momma. She and I went in one once. It had just been built, and she was curious. When she saw the price of the berries right when we walked inside, she…” Another small laugh slipped past her lips, but the sadness in her expression now had my complete attention. “She said that she didn’t get on a pole at night to pay that much for goddamn berries—loud enough for everyone around us to hear. And”—she paused and shrugged—“when she realized they were all staring our way, she placed a hand on her hip and flashed them a bright smile, as if posing for a photograph.”
Jayda’s burst of laughter snapped me out of my daze, and although I went back to getting out the food, my complete attention was on Montana.
“God, she sounds like she was fun,” Jayda said.
“Oh, she was that.”
The wistfulness in her voice took all my willpower not to look at her again. I had to stop this fucking chat session. I’d gotten Jayda here as a distraction, not to make it even more difficult for me to ignore Montana.
“That’s the sauce that goes with the wings. I wasn’t sure if Montana liked her wings sauced or not,” Jayda said.
I lifted my eyes from opening the different things she’d brought.
“Who said I was sharing with her?” I asked, trying to get my head right.
My dick was going to get hard around her—that was a given. She’d give a ninety-year-old man a woody, but that wasn’t going to distract me from finding shit on her and getting out of this cabin and back to my life. She’d brought this on herself by blackmailing her father. I felt not one shred of guilt about it.
Jayda reached over and slapped her hand over the next container I was about to open. “Don’t be a dick. I’ll starve your ass,” she warned.
“It’s fine,” Montana said.
Both of our gazes swung to her.
She held up her sandwich to Jayda. “I have this. I’m good. Uh, and it was nice to meet you. Thanks again for the food. I’m gonna go back to the bedroom. It’s been a long day.”
Her smile this time was tight and didn’t meet her eyes. There was no shine of amusement in them. No sun glistening on sea glass. No dimples.
Taking her water and sandwich, she closed the short distance between the kitchen and bedroom before I chanced looking at Jayda. Seeing the death glare she had aimed at me, I rolled my eyes and went to get a plate from the cabinet.
“What the hell was that?” she hissed at me.
I shrugged. “I can’t help that she’s so fucking sensitive.”
“Since when did you become an asshole?”
Walking back over to the food so I could load up on all the things she’d brought, I replied, “I’m being forced to be her babysitter because she’s blackmailing her father. Don’t go taking up for her.”
Jayda stood up. The look of disgust on her face was directed at me. “Baskin is a philandering bastard. The girl has no one. She did what she had to in order to get some help. Besides”—Jayda glanced past me to the closed bedroom door—“I bet you could get Gathe, Forge, heck, even your brother to take your place. It’s not like being stuck in a cabin with her is a hardship. You have looked at her, right?”
No, Jayda, I went blind recently.
“I tried to get Linc to give this job to one of them. He insisted I do it,” I told her, taking my food to the sofa to sit back down.
“Poor baby,” she drawled sarcastically.
I glanced back at her as she went to the door and opened it.
“Thanks for the food,” I told her.
“Don’t choke on it,” she snapped, then left.
Two for two tonight. I was pissing off females like it was my job.