Jackson (Black Butte Ranch #6)

Chapter One

Jackson

AJA FOXX

~ Jackson ~

I rolled the whiskey between my palms, letting the amber liquid catch the last light of day.

My newly finished farmhouse stood at my back, a solid weight against my shoulder blades, and the valley spread out before me like someone had laid down a map of everything I’d been working toward for the last eighteen months.

The porch railing was cool under my elbows as I leaned forward, taking in the view one acre at a time. The driveway I’d raked clean that morning. The greenhouses I’d finished last week. The irrigation system I’d installed for the greenhouses that would hold the Riesling vines come spring.

All of it mine—or as much mine as anything could be when you signed a thirty-year mortgage with the bank. Luckily, Rawley had even me a good price for my little plot of land.

I took a slow sip of whiskey, letting it burn a path down my throat. Not the good stuff—that was for tomorrow, when I’d officially lived here twenty-four hours—but decent enough that I could taste the notes of caramel and vanilla beneath the heat.

The property stretched out in front of me, ten acres of mostly flat pasture edged by pine trees to the east. Beyond them rose the hills that had given Black Butte Ranch its name, rolling up toward the snow-capped peaks that dominated the northern horizon.

I knew every inch of it, had walked it in every season, in rain and snow and the kind of late summer heat that made the air shimmer above the tall grass.

I knew it, but I still checked the tree line at the eastern edge of the pasture, my eyes tracking the familiar pattern of shadows between trunks, looking for anything that didn’t belong.

Old habits. The kind that kept you alive when you spent your twenties jumping out of planes and clearing rooms full of people who wanted you dead.

My Humvee sat in the drive, nose pointed out toward the county road, just in case. Just in case of what, I couldn’t have said exactly, but I’d parked it that way every night since the frame one the house went up.

Behind me, the farmhouse creaked softly as the temperature dropped with the sun.

Another sound I’d cataloged my first night, walking every floorboard until I’d memorized the pitch and location of each groan and squeak.

The third step from the top of the stairs.

The spot three feet from the kitchen door.

The board under the living room window that sang like a cello when you put your weight on the far right corner.

Not that anyone would be sneaking up on me. Not here. Not now. But knowing the sounds of a place meant you knew when something didn’t fit. And knowing when something didn’t fit meant knowing when to reach for the SIG I kept under my pillow.

My phone buzzed against the porch rail, the screen lighting up with one word: CRUZ.

My stomach did something fast and inconvenient that I immediately decided not to think about. I set my whiskey down and picked up the phone, swiping to open the message.

Be in Billings end of the week. Room at Sheraton downtown. Would like to see you if you’re free.—F

Short. To the point. The kind of text you’d expect from a man who communicated primarily in nods and three-word sentences.

No question mark at the end—just a statement of fact with an implied request. The way Cruz did everything: unhurried, certain, with no visible seam between an invitation and an assumption.

I stared at the screen long enough that it dimmed and went dark. Then I unlocked it and read it again, just to make sure I hadn’t imagined the fluttering sensation in my chest.

Three months of this. Three months of hotel rooms Cruz booked without asking, in neutral cities neither of us lived in. Three months of meeting on his timeline, never mine. Three months of “would like to see you if you’re free” and “room’s under my name” and “thought you might be in the area.”

And three months of me showing up, never pushing back, never suggesting we do it differently.

Which was its own kind of answer I’d rather not examine too carefully.

I thought about saying no. About texting back that I was busy, that I’d just moved in, that I had a vineyard to plant and a house to finish settling into.

I gave that thought four seconds—generous, really—before I unlocked the screen and typed back: I’ll be there. What time?

I set the phone face-down on the rail and took another pull of whiskey.

The first night in my new house, and I was already planning to leave it.

Already calculating how long the drive to Billings would take, already wondering what Cruz would look like after a month apart, if his hair would be shorter or if he’d have the beginnings of a beard.

“Pathetic,” I told the empty porch, but there was no heat in it. Just the quiet acknowledgment of a fact.

The last light was flattening across the valley now, turning the tall grass gold before it faded to purple, then blue, then the deeper black of true night.

Somewhere beyond the western fields, the river made its soft, constant sound, water over stone, the voice of the landscape that had been here long before I arrived and would be here long after I was gone.

My land now. Or close enough to count.

I’d signed the papers five months ago, standing in the lawyer’s office with Rawley, my hand shaking just enough that I had to press harder than necessary to make my signature legible.

It left me with the unsettling feeling of a man who’d just finished a five-year mission only to realize he had no idea what came next. I’d spent so long focused on getting here that I hadn’t spent much time thinking about what happened after.

Though apparently, what happened was Cruz.

I’d met him six months ago, when he came with Sterling to help Burke and Danny.

Six-foot-five of solid muscle with eyes so dark they looked black in certain light and hands that knew exactly how to use the strength in them.

An ex-Marine who was now a member of Sterling’s ultra secret team of undercover agents and had a tendency to take up more space in a room than seemed physically possible.

The kind of man who made “yes, sir” and “no, sir” sound like the only reasonable responses in any conversation.

We’d talked for exactly seventeen minutes before he’d asked if I wanted to get out of there.

Before I’d followed him to his guestroom in the bunkhouse like a man with a death wish.

Before I’d spent the night learning that the careful control Fernando Cruz showed the world hid a hunger so fierce it made my chest ache just thinking about it.

And then we’d done it again two weeks later in Salt Lake. And again in Cheyenne. And again in Rapid City.

Always in cities neither of us lived in. Always in rooms he booked. Always on his schedule, never mine.

And never, not once, a word about what we were doing or why or if it meant anything beyond the obvious physical pleasure of it.

Not that I’d asked. I was a thirty-two-year-old ex-SEAL with a mortgage on ten acres of Montana farmland. I didn’t need to be having conversations about feelings.

My phone buzzed again. I flipped it over.

Friday. Seven. 412.

I wrote back: Copy that. And then, because apparently I was determined to embarrass myself tonight: Looking forward to it.

I put the phone down again and finished my whiskey in one swallow. The burn was almost enough to distract me from the fact that I’d just committed to driving three hours to Billings to spend the night with a man I’d known for exactly six months, most of which we’d spent naked.

A man who had texted me the night I moved into my first real home.

A man who’d somehow become the thing I thought about when I let my mind wander from the thirty-seven-item to-do list that had ruled my life for the past year and a half.

I went inside to pour another finger of whiskey, moving automatically to avoid the creaking floorboards.

The house was still mostly empty—just a bed and a dresser in the bedroom, a table and two chairs in the kitchen, a couch and TV in the living room.

I’d ordered furniture, but it wouldn’t be delivered for another week.

Until then, I was camping in the shell of the life I’d built.

A life that now included a weekend trip to Billings to see a man who’d never spent more than twelve consecutive hours in my company.

I carried my fresh drink back to the porch and resumed my position at the railing.

The stars were coming out now, pinpricks of light in the darkening sky.

I found the North Star by habit, then traced the line to the Big Dipper, to Cassiopeia, to the smudge of light that was the Andromeda Galaxy, two million light-years away.

The universe was bigger than my ten acres. Bigger than my unfinished house. Bigger than the inconvenient attraction I felt for a man who texted like he was issuing marching orders.

But somehow, none of that seemed to matter as much as the fact that in seventy-two hours, I’d be in a hotel room in Billings with Cruz’s hands in my hair and his mouth on my neck and the weight of him pressing me into a mattress that wasn’t mine.

I took another sip of whiskey and stared out at my land—my land—while my mind was already three hours east, in room 412 at the Sheraton.

Pathetic.