26. Jax
TWENTY-SIX
jax
I survived Ranger training. Deployments that could have easily seen me coming back home in a body bag. The possibility of death was just something you either had to reconcile with or lose your fucking mind.
And yet, as I waited for the sound of Natalie’s car making its way down the gravel driveway behind me, it was a special kind of torture. I could handle ruck marches and an insane operational tempo, but not texting Natalie to ask what time she would be here since it was well past nine o’clock was taking some superhuman restraint.
I hadn’t stopped thinking about her, about the land, about a possible relationship with her, for even a second these past few days. Which was how I knew, if Sicily wasn’t the number one fucking clue, I was in deeper than I’d ever been before.
Fucking finally.
The crunch of gravel from her car stopped. Silence. Until the sound of her footsteps was followed by a flash of blue. She wore jeans and a navy sweater. Natalie looked good in navy. And jeans. Hell, the woman looked good in everything.
Our eyes met as she bounded up the stairs. When she stopped at the top, I realized the problem. I’d give it to her, Natalie would make one hell of a Ranger. The restraint it must have taken her to stop halfway to me wasn’t the kind of discipline I had, and objectively I could admit my unit and I were some of the most disciplined guys on the planet. We had to be.
“Goddamn it, Natalie. We’re on another pause.”
Closing the distance between us, I grabbed her cheeks when she got close enough and held Natalie’s head as I kissed her.
And kissed her.
I couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop.
Her hands wrapped around my neck, and I continued to hold her to me. Her cheeks were warm beneath my fingers. Her mouth, even warmer. She tasted like mint and spring and...no.
I pulled away.
“What’s wrong?”
She tasted like love.
“Nothing. It’s just really good to see you.” I dropped my hands.
“It’s good to see you too. Thanks for the pause,” she said, backing away. “But maybe we should talk.” Natalie lifted a bag up. “Sorry I’m late. Brought donuts.”
Those cinnamon donuts were going to kill me if Natalie didn’t. I followed her into the kitchen as she headed straight for the coffee machine.
“Top me off?” I asked, putting my mug in front of her as Natalie finished pouring her own coffee.
With two full mugs and a bag of Devine’s cinnamon donuts, we headed back onto the porch. It took a healthy dose of discipline not to pull Natalie from her seat and carry her to my bedroom.
The only thing that stopped me?
I had a meeting tomorrow with Dave to finalize the sale. We had to figure this out, today.
“How was the rest of the flight?”
“Uneventful,” she said. “Jet lag is a bitch. I zonked about an hour after getting home and then woke up at four.”
“You should have come over earlier.”
“At four a.m.?”
“Sure. Why not?”
There were a few reasons we could both think of, and those needed to be dispensed with. Pronto.
“Nat,” I started. “We’ve got to figure this out.”
“Agreed.”
I thought about what to say. How to say it. And then went with the big guy’s advice. Dad always told me there was nothing as powerful as the truth. So that’s what I’d give her.
“I really want to buy that property. It’s a huge deal that I’ve been working on for six months. The thought of losing that much money, not to mention the time I put into it, kills me. But I also wasn’t lying when I said that was one of the best weekends of my life. It was fun”—I smiled—“but even beyond the great sex. I like you. A lot.”
More than a lot, but that could wait.
Natalie took a bite of her donut. I could see her thinking about what she was going to say, measuring her words. “I like you too,” she started. “And obviously have given this a lot of thought. There’s a huge part of me that wants to say, screw it. It’s just a piece of land. Take it. I’ll find somewhere else for the program by next spring. And it’s not mine to use for drinking wine with friends on a Friday night. That’s a nice perk, but that’s all it is. A perk. The land belongs to the Trust. Not to me.”
I’d start celebrating, but there was a big-ass “but” in there somewhere.
“However.”
But. However. Same difference.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve railed against the Trust’s decision to do something similar. Accusing them of selling out. It starts with a small piece of property or some supposedly unimportant piece of land and the next thing you know, you’re auctioning off all of the Finger Lakes’ natural resources to the highest bidder. The whole reason I got into this business was to preserve and protect. Like you, with our country. But with the natural resources.”
I had to admit, Natalie’s dedication to her mission was hot. Her conviction, something to be admired. But it was inconvenient too.
“I get what you’re saying,” I began, taking a bite of donut too. Damn, these things were good. Although not as good as those cannolis in Sicily. Smiling to myself, I pushed the thought from my mind. Now wasn’t the time. “And admire your conviction,” I admitted. “So we end where we started, at opposite ends of a problem with no easy solution.”
“Precisely.”
“You aren’t letting me out of the bet?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Jax, if you had any idea how many times I replayed our weekend together, how badly I want you to snatch me up from this chair and rip every piece of clothing from my body, you’d be amazed that I’m sitting here so calmly eating this donut and drinking coffee like it was nothing. I honestly didn’t know I had this much willpower.”
I had to at least try. “If you knew how much I wanted to rip every piece of clothing from your body, bury my head between your legs and make you scream loud enough for my neighbors to hear, you’d be amazed I remained this far away from you for more than five seconds.”
“You don’t have any neighbors.”
“Exactly.”
Her lids hooded. Natalie was thinking about us. How could she not? I visualized doing exactly what I said I was going to, actually seeing her fingers close around the arm of the chair, her knuckles whiten as I worked her with my tongue.
“Jax, don’t.”
“Can’t help it.”
She looked away.
I took a deep breath and finished my donut. Hard as a rock and feeling as tortured as racing through my first Ranger school obstacle course, I looked out onto the lake.
“I didn’t say it lightly,” I added. “About moving to Kitchi Falls.”
“You don’t say anything lightly,” Natalie said, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet under her. I loved when she crossed her legs like that, coffee on her lap as if she didn’t have a care in the world. It made me imagine that she lived here with me, and it was a regular weekend morning. A very domesticated vision, if I did say so myself.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t.”
“You would move here?”
“For you? Yeah. I would.”
She blinked. There you go, Natalie. All on the line. Your move.
“We haven’t even dated.”
“Dated. Whatever that means.”
“You know what it means.”
“I know we’ve gotten to know each other these past few weeks. Unconventionally, sure. But the outcome is the same.”
“What if we don’t work out?”
Oh, we’d work out just fine.
“I’ve lived more places than my hometown these past few years. And before that, as a Ranger. Besides my family, who are a short drive away, there’s nothing keeping me in one spot. Moving around isn’t a big deal to me.”
“So you’d be on the go a lot? Out of town, I mean. Wherever the next big land deal took you?”
“I don’t have to stay as long as I did here. Sometimes I go for a few days. This time, I stayed for a bit longer, but only because I’d been working like a dog and needed a break. Renting this house was as much a vacation as it was for work.”
“I see.”
No, Natalie, I don’t think you do. But there wasn’t a lot more I could say at this point other than to tell her that I was pretty sure I’d fallen in love with her. But no fucking way would I admit that right now, given the circumstances.
“I’m supposed to meet with Dave tomorrow,” I reminded her.
“I’m well aware.”
If Natalie’s voice had an edge to it, that was understandable. I was nothing if not a patient man, but the clock really was ticking.
Silence stretched.
“This is torture, Jax. It honestly feels like I have to decide between my convictions and...” She frowned. “My heart.”
I had to know. “What is your heart telling you?”
She held my gaze. “That we’d be really good together.”
“Fucking right we would,” I said, without thinking. That was a given.
“Did you ever have to make a choice like that? In the military?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “My heart never really got in the way. But certainly I had to make tough decisions. Every Ranger comes face to face with who they are, at their core. Facing death tends to have that effect.”
“This must seem like child’s play compared to the kind of decisions you had to make.”
“Understanding yourself well enough to have convictions, never mind sticking to them when it becomes difficult, is never easy.”
“So you understand where I’m coming from?”
There was no part of me that wanted to admit I did. That Natalie was right in any way to choose anything other than being with me. But I did know myself well enough, had been forced to face my fears, my own convictions, my very soul, and any answer but the truth would be a lie.
“I do.”
“What would you do in my situation?”
“Don’t ask me that,” I warned. “Please don’t.”
“Jax? What would you do. If you had to decide between forsaking something you truly believed in for your own personal gain. Or something you really, really wanted.”
“Good to know you really, really want me,” I teased, attempting to deflect her question.
But Natalie wasn’t having any of it. She was serious. So I needed to be too.
Our eyes locked.
The muscles in my shoulders tensed as silence stretched.
“Never mind,” she said finally. “I already know the answer.”