Chapter Ten
Autumn’s head spun. She was kissing Jett. And not just a little friendly peck on the cheek either, but a full-on tongue-in-mouth messy kiss. For the first time in almost twenty years, she was locked in an embrace with him.
She wasn’t sure what had come over her, but when she saw him talking to Markus, she had to come outside and find out what was going on. Something had dragged her out of the house and down the driveway. The same something that often had her peering through the trees at his ranch. The same something that had her kissing him now.
The two men had been in a standoff. She was pretty sure neither of them had even known they were staring the other down as if a gunfight at the O.K. Corral were about to take place. But she’d recognized that stance of Jett’s. He had squared his shoulders and fisted his hands on his hips. His legs had stood shoulder width apart, and he most likely had that glare in his eye that could make a grizzly stutter. She hadn’t been able to tell from her spot at the window, but she had seen it plenty of times before.
Jett was a force when he wanted to be. She had always felt safe in his arms, as if the world could not come in and harm her. And even though she and Trent had a good life for a long time, only with Jett could she be completely vulnerable.
She had wanted some of his sexy confidence today. Because after last night in his house, all the ways she had loved him had seeped into her heart and cracked it open. Her damn heart had not forgotten how good it had been with Jett even when she tried so hard to make her mind forget.
And her body remembered now. He cupped her face and drew her in. His mouth expertly devoured hers as if he too had been missing something for a long time and had finally found it. She tangled her fingers into the ends of his hair that flipped out of the bottom of his knit cap. She tugged because she wanted more of him.
He seemed to know what she meant and ran his hands down her arms and slid them inside her coat. She should be freezing out here with her coat unzipped and her thin shirt doing nothing to block the cold, but she was as hot as a bonfire now.
His lips released hers and moved to the spot below her ear. “You still taste so sweet,” he said against her skin.
His breath was warm but sent shivers over her. She fumbled with the zipper of his parka. She had to feel more than nylon and down. His mouth returned to hers. He sucked on her lips and ran his tongue over the places where his teeth left little nips. Her lips might end up swollen if he kept it up, but the tiny pricks of pain were delicious.
Her hands dove inside his coat and warmed up immediately. His body was like a furnace, and she wanted to fold in against him and stay there. Instead, her hands explored his strong and muscular back.
“Autumn, what are you doing?” Her mother’s shrill shriek shoved her away from Jett.
She stumbled. Jett gripped her arm to steady her.
“Looks like we got busted.” The smirk on his face said he didn’t care. He ran a thumb over her lip.
“Autumn.” Vera pounded her fists on the porch railing. If her mother continued, she’d end up breaking a hand and needing the hospital.
“I should go.” She tried to step around him, but he blocked her with his muscular body. She couldn’t see her mother’s flailing now.
“Don’t let her bully you.” He held her gaze. “We’re not kids anymore.”
“I know how old I am. I don’t want to deal with her. If I go inside, she’ll run out of steam soon and I can get on with my evening.”
“It’s time to start—”
“Vera isn’t like your mother. She doesn’t understand how to behave. She holds grudges. I wish she didn’t. I wish she were anyone else most days, but she’s her. I have to go.” She dodged him, or he stepped out of the way to let her by. She wasn’t sure which, but if she knew Jett, he wasn’t likely to stop her again.
She hurried up the drive, past her mother without saying a word, and into the house. Vera was fast on her heels. As fast as Vera could go.
“I can’t believe my eyes. How could you?” Vera sucked in a few deep breaths and held her side.
“Do you need some oxygen?” A ridiculous question, considering she had none, but her mother probably would be screaming for the emergency room in minutes.
“I’m fine. What were you thinking? What is wrong with you?”
“Mom, drop it.”
“Answer me. I’m your mother. Why were you kissing that Ryker? Haven’t you learned anything about that family? All they do is use people for what they want and then toss them aside when they’re done. He’s using you.”
The anger burst through her. “What is it that he could be using me for? My money? I don’t have any. Sex? Jett Ryker can have sex anytime he wants. There are plenty of willing women in this town and every surrounding one that would be happy to jump into bed with him. He’s a catch. I don’t have anything he wants.”
“I don’t know what he’s up to, but you mark my words. He’s after something you have. You’re a fool. You always were so gullible like your father. He fell for the wiles of Karen Ryker. She turned his head without any effort, making him think he was some kind of big man.”
“That was almost twenty years ago. When are you going to let it go? You and Daddy never got along. Your divorce wasn’t Karen’s fault.” Her father would have left her mother anyway. He had been a serial cheater, but in moments like this she didn’t blame him. Trying to get any emotional support from Vera was like cuddling a porcupine.
“She had no right to sleep with my husband,” Vera huffed and shuffled out of the room.
Autumn flopped onto the couch and held her head in her hands. Her mother’s angry voice echoed in her head. She didn’t know how to get it out.
Jett wouldn’t use her. He had no reason to. But why had he kissed her now? She had wanted him to. She had leaned into that kiss as if a life preserver were thrown her way. She was pathetic, holding on to her crush for him. He would never want a relationship. Commitment wasn’t his thing. The man was in his forties and had never even been engaged. He liked his bachelor life too much, it seemed. Maybe he was just looking for sex. Familiar sex. Well, she wouldn’t be a winter booty call. Not even for him.
She pushed off the couch, hung up her coat, and went into the bathroom to splash water on her face. She could still feel Jett’s lips on her skin. He had seemed into the kiss as much as she was. She didn’t remember him being a very good actor. Jett always said what was on his mind, regardless of the consequence. His face often confirmed the story. He was never mean, but he was direct. He had to be in his line of work. Too many people and animals relied on him to get his point across.
She did remember, however, how great he was in bed. They might have been young, and she was never sure how many girls had been with him before her, but in his early twenties he’d taken his time, making sure she always felt good. He had never rushed her. In fact, he would linger in places for so long that she would be the one to push things along. The man had patience.
Could all of that have changed over the years? Was he trying to get back at her finally for losing their child or walking away when Ajay had died even though he had been clear that was what he wanted?
No. She wouldn’t allow her mother to ruin that wonderful kiss. She would put it on her memory shelf for visiting. Even though she liked kissing him more than she should, she couldn’t get involved with him. Too much water under the proverbial bridge. She couldn’t listen to Vera yelling about her betrayal to their family by taking up with a Ryker. Not when she had to deal with her land issue. She could only solve one major problem at a time. And if in the future, when she was settled into a new life with a new career and Jett wanted to kiss her again, she might let him.
****
The air smelled of snow. Jett slid open the stable doors. The night sky was absent of light. Clouds covered the stars and the sliver of moon that hung on a tilt this time of the month. They were due to get a few feet of the white stuff tonight. The extra snow would be good for practice tomorrow.
He paused outside the stables and breathed in the damp air. He loved this time of year, when everything was covered in white and a stillness blanketed the land in warm wool. Wildlife was tucked in for the season. Birds had flown to warmer weather. He strained to hear, but only the ripple of the creek in the distance came back to him.
He couldn’t imagine being anywhere except on his land, surrounded by mountains that reached for the big sky. He could think in the quiet night. And after that kiss earlier, thinking seemed out of the question.
He walked through the stable to check on the horses. The new saddles had been placed inside the tack room. The stalls had been cleaned. The horses were warm and bedded down for the night. He should go to bed too, but he was too wired to sleep. Coming down here usually calmed him when his mind raced, but he hadn’t been tangled up over Autumn before. Well, not in a long time anyway. He had thought he’d put that to rest when they broke up. Obviously, they still had some unfinished business left if that kiss said anything.
“Hey, girl.” He stopped at Silver Bell’s stall. She whinnied while he petted her head. “You doing okay?”
She nodded as if to answer him. Silver Bell had been Ajay’s horse, a gift from their parents when Ajay was born. Each son had been given a horse at birth, but for whatever reason Silver Bell had lived a long life. Gage believed Silver Bell hung in there all these years because Ajay hadn’t. As if she wanted him to live on and she would do it for him because he couldn’t. Ajay had loved Silver Bell more than anything else.
“What are we going to do without you?” Her time was coming. She moved slower. Wasn’t eating as much. She slept longer and longer. “I bet Ajay is ready to see you. It’s okay if you’re too tired to keep going. We’ll all understand.”
Except maybe Gage. When Silver Bell went, he would be hit the hardest. He had taken over caring for Silver Bell as if she were his. He thought he owed it to Ajay. Gage thought he owed all of them. But Gage owed no one. He had done more than his fair share of taking care of the whole family.
“What are you doing down here?” Gage appeared in the stable doorway as if Jett had willed him to the stable. The snow fell behind him in the light above the door. He wore a knit cap pulled low on his head and his sheriff’s coat with his jeans tucked into his snow boots.
“I was just thinking about you. That’s strange.” Was his brother reading his mind or something? He looked at Silver Bell. She only stared back as if to say, “I didn’t send him, stupid.”
“What is? That you were thinking about something other than this ranch and that horse or that you were thinking about me?” Gage sauntered to him and ran his hand over Silver Bell’s snout. “Hey, girl.”
“Weird that I thought about you and you showed up. Mom would say I made it happen or something bizarre like that.” He turned over the feed bucket and took a seat. The day had been long, and he was ready to get up in his apartment and have a beer and shut down. Another busy day would begin at dawn.
“Yeah, and Calista would agree with her.” Gage leaned against the stall door and rested his foot on it.
“You believe in that voodoo stuff yet?” He had spent his life trying to be practical and logical. His mother might believe in magic, but he didn’t.
“No way. I might love Calista with my whole heart, but I prefer facts. Black and white. No shades of gray for this sheriff. I leave that other stuff to her and her yoga mat.”
“Good. I don’t want you going and changing on me now.” He expected his brother to be the stable person he could count on. Calista had softened Gage, had reminded him to open his heart again, and he would be grateful for that, but he didn’t want Gage putting those crystal things around his house and believing if he thought hard enough about something, it would just appear. The world wasn’t ready for Gage to start burning incense, and he sure wasn’t either.
“I saw you go past the guest cottages. I figured you’d come down this way. I thought I’d catch up with you,” Gage said.
“Just doing my nightly rounds.” And trying to get Autumn out of his head before he did something dumb like throw rocks at her window and beg her to come down and make out with him.
“How’s Silver Bell doing?” Gage ran a hand over her snout again. Silver Bell nudged him, making Gage laugh.
“Well, the arthritis seems to be getting worse. She’s got dental issues now. I’m concerned about her weight loss.” He wanted to spare Gage, but his brother knew about horses as well as he did. Trying to smooth over the truth would only hurt more because Gage could check for himself and see Bell’s issues now.
“Do you think she’ll last the winter?”
“I didn’t think she’d last this long. She might be stubborn enough to keep going.”
“I want to be here when it happens.”
He stood and met his brother’s watery gaze. “She might choose to go when you’re not here. She knows how you feel about her.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in things like that?” Gage swatted at his eyes.
He didn’t care that his brother could cry over this horse. Hell, he would bawl like a baby when Silver Bell took her last breath, but watching Gage cry was something different altogether. Gage was his rock.
“I believe this horse is smarter than you.” He shoved Gage like he did when they were kids trying to work out their feelings.
Gage choked out a laugh. “True enough.” He straightened his face into something neutral, as if they had been talking about nothing more than the weather. “How’s the coaching going?”
Grateful for the change in subject, Jett headed for the door. They could talk and walk back to their homes. “Good. For now.”
He told Gage about Logan and Markus and filled him in on Quinn’s skills and what could happen if he couldn’t get to the bottom of it.
“You need any help with talking to either of them? I could take Quinn for a run or watch the team if you want to go with her.” Gage walked beside him, always ready to help one of them.
The snow continued to fall, coating everything with its touch in regal white. The ranch spread out before him, and the warm glow of lights in and around the buildings puddled on the ground. Someone laughed in the distance. This place was in his blood. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost it. Just this fall Kace had considered selling his share, and that nearly killed him. No stranger would own what belonged to the Rykers if he could help it.
He suspected Autumn felt the same way about her land, and she was about to lose it.
“I might take you up on it. I can’t be in two places at once. That happened today when the saddles arrived and I couldn’t get Lock to take care of it. Thanks again for dealing with that.”
“That’s what I’m here for. You ever find out where Lock was?” They followed the walk toward the guest houses where Gage lived with Izzy and had since Izzy was a baby.
“He’s not telling me.” He had tried to pin Lock down again after dinner, but he wasn’t saying where he was. He could have found a casino and gambled his inheritance, or he could have helped some family in need build a house. With Lock, it was always up in the air.
“He wouldn’t tell me either. He got to the barn right as I was finishing with covering them. He apologized, but he said he had stuff to do. I let it go. I’ve had more than my fair share of conversations with Lock about his disappearing acts. In the end, he always pulls through. It’s just Lock being Lock.” Gage stopped at the bottom of the walk to his house.
“If he’s not telling you, then he’s not telling. You still scare him. He can’t lie to you.”
Gage roared with laughter. “He might be the youngest, but he’s the biggest. I’m not about to fight him.”
“Ajay is the youngest.”
“You know what I mean, Jett.” Gage lasered a stare on him.
“When you give me that look, you can scare me. So I know you scare Lock.” He hadn’t meant to step on Gage’s pride with that Ajay comment. He never wanted his baby brother to be forgotten. Gage would never forget Ajay. It was just late, he was tired, and that kiss had his head on backward. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that thing about Ajay.”
“Forget it. Listen, there’s one more thing before I go inside. I bumped into Betty Mason at the grocery store. She mentioned you and Autumn were going at it hot and heavy out in public today.”
“Betty Mason is losing her mind.” Betty Mason was one of the town gossips. Her sister was Margie who happened to be best friends with Vera Thatcher—Autumn’s mother.
“So Betty got it wrong when Margie called her with the news?”
“Why are you asking me about this?” He would not kiss and tell. Autumn deserved better than that, but the gossips had grabbed on to a tiny morsel and would spread it all over town by morning. He shouldn’t have kissed her right in front of her house with any sign of daylight left. But he had lost his head when she stood so close, smelling so good. And that hug she had given Jay Henry had his blood boiling.
“Because if it’s true, Mom is going to find out.”
“She isn’t going to say anything. Besides, she likes Autumn.” At least his mother could separate her life from his. Vera Thatcher seemed to think Autumn’s life should be entwined with hers, as if Autumn owed Vera all of her happiness.
“Autumn slept here the other night.” He might as well tell Gage before he bumped into another town storyteller.
“What did you say?”
“I was doing her a favor. Her heat was out, and I couldn’t let her and Quinn sleep in that old house. They took the extra room. She was gone before I was up. Mom was totally aware.”
Gage ran a hand over his head. “Okay, I didn’t see that one coming. Is it true, though? You kissed Autumn and got caught?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” He hadn’t even been thinking about it until the very last second. Spending time with her had opened up that box everyone said should be kept shut because nothing good came from opening it. And now it was opened and causing trouble.
“If you wanted to kiss her, you should’ve at least waited until nightfall and taken her out into the woods like when we were kids.”
“I think we’re a little old for that.” He had never taken Autumn into the woods for a make-out session. They had been nineteen when they started dating. And twenty when they got pregnant. He had believed he was too mature to drive his truck into the woods and pull a girl over the gear shift and onto his lap. Mature was the last thing he had been back then.
“Just be careful. I know you’ve always held a torch for Autumn. I don’t want her trying to manipulate you,” Gage said, dragging him back to the present moment and the snow falling around them.
“Why would she do that?”
“Because you can help her out of her jam. She could ask you to lend her money.”
“You think she’s using me?” That kiss had seemed genuine.
She had responded to him in the way he remembered. She had even let out that little moan he liked so much. And she was far too proud to ask for a handout. She would go to the bank and ask for a loan, which she must have done and been turned down since she needed to sell. But put out her hand and ask him to give her money? Not the woman he had been in love with. No way. But was she still the woman he had loved once? How well did he really know her now? She had her back up against the wall. Desperate people could do desperate things. How far would she go to keep her land?
“I don’t know if she’s actually using you. She doesn’t seem the type. She might even still have feelings for you too. She might just want to get back with you. But go slow, okay?”
Go slow? He wasn’t even planning on kissing her again. They could never be together. Not with her mother hell-bent and determined to stir up trouble. He didn’t do drama. Not even for Autumn. And if her intentions were less than honest… He didn’t want to think it.
“I want to buy her land. I’m going to see what she’s selling for and make an offer.”
“Did she ask you to do that?” Gage’s eyebrows climbed under the rim of his knit cap.
“Are you kidding? When she finds out I want to buy her land, she’ll probably punch me. She’s too proud and stubborn to sell to me.” That alone would stop any more kissing. She would probably hate him for taking her land, but it was business, even if Markus had said those same words. For Jett, the words were true. He would never deliberately hurt Autumn. Markus, on the other hand, was capable of anything.
“But you’ll be the one to keep her land intact.” Gage pointed out what he had thought.
“You’re damn right I will. And I’ll let her stay in that house that needs major repairs. Anyone else is going to come in, divide it up, and develop on it. I don’t want the competition either.”
“Maybe kissing her wasn’t such a great idea.”
“It was one of my worst.” But that didn’t mean he didn’t like it.