Chapter 4 Jake
FOUR
JAKE
“Cold,” she said, rubbing her arms with her hands. Her normally curly hair had been flattened by the rain and hung around her shoulders like a damp curtain. Her shirt clung to her curves, concealing nothing.
I pulled my gaze away from her. This was no time to think about that.
She was freezing, and I needed to do something about it.
“Colorado weather,” I mused. “Especially this time of year. I’ll get a fire going.
” The cabin was damp with disuse, but there was firewood in the box.
I grabbed several pieces and knelt in front of the stone fireplace, making a pyramid of the logs.
“Not like that,” she said, coming to kneel next to me, her shoulder brushing against mine. “It’ll never light. You’ve got to stack them like this.” She rearranged the logs, changing the pattern.
“I’ve built plenty of fires,” I gritted out. Thousands.
“Yeah, but did you get them to take off? I don’t think so. Get the matches.” She could be downright bossy. Two could play at that game. I reached for the box of matches on the mantel but held them out of her reach. “What are you doing?” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Holding out until you come to your senses about the fire. Keep in mind that I’m not the one who’s shivering,” I said. She was, and my mother would thump me over the head for allowing a lady to be cold when I had the means to fix it. But something in her brought out the contrarian in me.
She rose and backed off. “Have it your way.”
I quickly rearranged the logs to suit me, added kindling, and struck a match.
In a few minutes, the fire was burning strongly, so I carefully fed it more wood.
When I was satisfied that it was set, I took a step back and looked at Julia.
She’d moved on from shivering to shaking with cold.
“Get out of your wet clothes before you catch a chill,” I said.
I was starting to feel the cold myself. The fire was great, but it wouldn’t be enough to get us warm when we were still soaked through. I peeled off my shirt.
“What are you doing?” She shot me a look.
“It’s the only way to warm up. You know as well as I do that your wet clothes are making you colder.
” I unlaced my boots and kicked them off before peeling off my socks.
I unbuttoned my shorts, pushed them down my legs, and stepped out of them.
If I’d been alone, I’d have stripped off my boxers as well, but I thought better of that with Julia present.
I hung my clothes on a line Doc Murphy had near the fire so they could dry.
When I turned, I caught her eyes focused on my body and had to suppress a smile.
She was checking me out. Or was she? She’d stomped on the idea of me taking her out at the bar last night.
So was the attraction all in my head? I couldn’t tell.
Either she was sending me mixed messages or maybe my radar was wrong.
“Come on, join me,” I coaxed. “I promise, you’ll feel better the minute you do.”
For a second I thought she wouldn’t give in, but her practicality seemed to win out—as did her shivering.
She kicked off her shoes and shed her T-shirt and shorts quickly enough.
I tried not to look, but hell, she had, so I took a good gander at her in sports bra and panties.
Her body was trim with long lean muscles developed from actual physical labor, not working out. Julia Lett was a gorgeous woman.
“Give me your clothes,” I said. When she handed them over, I hung them next to mine. By the time I was finished with that, she’d found a couple of blankets in a chest. She handed me one and wrapped herself in the other, and we sat inches apart on a small sofa pulled up in front of the fire.
“That’s better,” she said, but her teeth were still chattering and she was visibly shaking. “Don’t mind me. I get cold easily, and then it takes forever to warm back up.” She hugged the blanket closer around her.
The good news was, I decided, that hypothermia was highly unlikely. But then I’d never been one to test the power of mother nature, and who knew how much worse the storm would get? Without bothering to analyze it more than that, I lifted her up, blanket and all, and placed her on my lap.
“What are you doing?” She immediately tried to squirm away.
“Warming you up.” I began rubbing my hands over her arms and back through the blanket. She stiffened but didn’t move away.
“…Thanks,” she said at last.
“Thank you for grabbing hold of me out on the trail. I could have gone off the edge.” I’d had plenty of close calls in my lifetime. That was the life of being a rancher. But I knew how fortunate I was that she’d reacted quickly. If I’d been on my own, I wouldn’t have been so lucky.
“Maybe,” she conceded, relaxing the tiniest bit. “And you’re welcome. I guess that’s why you’re always supposed to hike with a partner.”
“You don’t, though, do you?” I asked, noticing that her shivering was lessening.
“No, I like my independence. It’s why I came back to Poplar Springs to set up my practice. I had an offer to become a partner in a vet hospital in Denver, but I like to do things my way. Being a sole owner suits me better. And I couldn’t turn my back on my father’s land.”
I understood both family obligations and the desire to be independent. “It’s a weird thing, though,” I said. “Working for yourself is good in some ways. I love the freedom and sense of ownership over everything I do, but it tends to absorb my life, leaving little personal time.”
“That’s true enough,” she agreed. “I haven’t been on a date since…since I don’t remember when. Vet school, maybe? That’s terrible.” She wrinkled up her nose. “You date?”
“Some,” I admitted. “Nothing serious, though. No time for that.” Before my dad and Luke were killed, I’d had an active social life, but with the responsibility of the ranch on my shoulders, I refused to dedicate the time it took for anything beyond a casual romance.
I told myself that I didn’t want anything more.
From what I’d seen, love was messy and ran counter to my need to be in control.
Relationships were too difficult to navigate and maintain.
So if I started to feel strongly for someone, experienced feelings that messed with my head, I tended to break it off.
Or I overcompensated by trying to manage the relationship, which usually resulted in the woman wanting out.
“So there’s good and bad, but I still wouldn’t trade being a vet here,” she said, bringing me back from my mental wanderings.
“What made you decide that was the job for you? You could have taken over your family’s ranch or done anything.” In high school she’d been top of her class; everything appeared to come easily to her.
“That’s simple,” she said with a small smile.
“I had a pony named Meredith as a child. When I was about ten, she got sick and Dad couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so he called a vet.
Ruth Wilcox came out, and I followed her around, asking a million questions.
She took the time to answer them and discovered what was wrong with Meredith.
I was so impressed that I decided I wanted to do the same thing. I’ve been focused on it ever since.”
“Inspiring.” I could see how that would have had an impact on a child. “Wait, so how come Declan Morris bought out her practice instead of you?”
Julia chuckled. “You’ve met her, right?” I nodded.
The old vet was excellent with animals, but when it came to people?
She was onery on a good day. “She had a falling out with my dad while I was in high school. That woman can hold a grudge. She wouldn’t think of considering me.
” She shook her head. “It’s okay. I already had another plan in place. ”
Neither of those things surprised me—that Ruth Wilcox transferred her anger with Shaun Lett to her and that Julia had a long-term plan that went back to high school.
“What about you? Did you consider anything but ranching?” she asked.
“Not for a second. I always knew I’d be a rancher. When we were kids, Brian always played the sheriff, and I was the cowboy in our make-believe world.”
“Who was the villain?” she asked.
“Sometimes, Luke was the enemy and we’d sneak around spying on him, but he was never actually part of our game.” There was only a four year difference in our ages, but once Luke hit puberty, it felt more like a full generation.
“So you’ve never done anything else?”
“Yeah, I have, but not by choice.” It wasn’t a story I told often, but we had time to kill, and I felt comfortable with her.
“I got in trouble one summer. Brian and I were out goofing off, trying to pull off stunts in the ranch trucks. I messed up and crashed. I was fine—but the truck wasn’t.
Dad made me earn the money for the repairs doing an off-the-ranch job. I worked at the diner in town.”
I didn’t add that my father had banned me from so much as touching the horses until I could prove myself worthy of the privilege again. It’d been torture not being allowed into the barn or the pastures—and it was a lesson I’d never forgotten.
“Oh, how did that go?”
I shrugged. “The owners were good to me, but I hated the job. Busboy and dishwasher. The worst was being trapped indoors during the summer months.”
“That would kill me,” she said, twisting a little closer to me. I didn’t think the move was intentional, but it was a stark reminder that a desirable and nearly naked woman was in my arms.
“No matter the weather, I’ve got to get outside every day,” I said, trying to focus on the words and not the feel of her on my lap. “Mom used to try to keep me in if I was sick, but I always escaped.”
“I climbed out the second story window and down the trellis more times than I can remember,” Julia said with a chuckle. “Usually at night, though. Something about the quiet with the moonlight calls to me, and I can’t stay inside.”
“You use the stairs and the door now, I hope,” I teased.
“I do. I guess that’s the advantage of living alone. No one tells me what to do. While I could go out the window, it really is easier to use the door.”
My imagination got the best of me, and I pictured her going outside in a flimsy nightgown to stand in the warm nighttime air.
The soft light would reveal her curves through the thin fabric.
Curves that were currently pressed up against me.
I felt myself getting hard. In another few seconds, she’d feel it, too.
I needed to get her off my lap. Too late, I realized, when she turned her face toward me, her eyes widening.
“I…um…I’m not trying to make a move on you,” I said.
“Honest. You turned down a date quick enough in the Roundup last night, and I respect your choice. So if I’m making you uncomfortable, feel free to move away and I’ll calm down.
” I might have to step outside into the cold rain to do that, but if that was what she wanted, I would.
For a beat, she neither spoke nor moved. Then she licked her lips and I had to bite back a moan. “What if it’s not bothering me?” she finally asked.
Not what I expected. “I’d consider myself a damn lucky man,” I whispered.
She shifted, smooth and lithe, so that she was straddling me. Her fingers slipped under my blanket, tentatively pushing it off my shoulders. “Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re not going into business together, so we don’t need to worry about mixing business with pleasure.”
The word pleasure broke through the last of my self-control, and I kissed her.