25. Summer
Summer
Thirty minutes later, he’s putting steaks on the grill, the smoky meat smelling like heaven to my rumbling stomach. I can’t even remember the last time I splurged on a steak. Between Mom’s bills and my own, every paycheck disappears almost immediately.
There’s a table for two on the wraparound porch where Jaxon has already set a white tablecloth and a lit candle.
“You know we could eat off paper plates,” I suggest. “I’m very low maintenance.”
He scoffs, like I’ve personally offended him.
“This china was my mother’s.” He holds up a cream-colored plate ringed in tiny roses, with a real gold edge. “A wedding gift to my parents, passed along from my grandparents.”
“Yet another reason not to use it.” I try to grab the plate from him, but he lifts it above his head like we’re playing keep-away. “You should save it for a special occasion, Jaxon!”
“This is a special occasion,” he insists.
I give up, and he sets the table with the nice china, then adds crystal glasses next to the plates.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen these before,” I remark, picking up the cut glass and spinning it so it shimmers in the candlelight.
“Mom never used them. Always said she would someday. But that’s the problem with someday—you never get around to it.” His gaze flicks to me. “Plus, I’m supposed to impress you.”
I put down the glass. “You know we could just eat in the kitchen and I’d be fine with it.”
“What, you think I would cave and order takeout?” He straightens the last fork. “I don’t go back on a promise, Wildflower.”
“Oh, come on. I want the honest answer.”
“That is the honest answer.” He turns toward me, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I wanted to make things up to you.”
I frown. “You don’t have to do anything for me…”
He holds up a hand. “Yes, I do. I found out tonight that your mom’s at Golden Haven.”
My stomach drops. It’s something I’d planned to tell him eventually. But no one wants to admit that they couldn’t take care of their own mother.
“Why didn’t you mention it?” he asks quietly.
“I was…embarrassed, I guess.” I settle on the porch swing. “I had hoped things would get better. But she hasn’t recognized me for months.”
His brow knits, but he doesn’t say anything. Just sits down next to me and wraps his arms around me in a hug. I breathe in his clean scent, letting him hold me like that for a while. His touch feels good, right even, and I want more of it.
“Who told you about my mom?” I ask, shifting slightly so that I’m leaning into his chest while he holds me.
“Wanda Roy,” he admits.
“Unsurprising,” I mutter.
“If it matters at all, she wasn’t gossiping. She thought I knew.”
I study his hand as it softly trails up and down my arm. “And your mom? She never mentioned it to you?”
He rests his chin on my head. “I think she must have understood you didn’t want her to, even though she talked about you all the time.”
“She talked about me that much?”
“My parents thought a lot of you, Summer,” he says matter-of-factly.
I knew that. But hearing him say it out loud is different than knowing it yourself.
“I still don’t understand why they didn’t tell you that Lucky Chance was in trouble. It doesn’t make sense. You’re the oldest son.”
He exhales. “I don’t think she wanted us to worry.”
That sounds like Miriam. Always thinking of others before herself. “So she just carried it alone,” I murmur.
His hand stills on my arm. “No, Summer. She wasn’t alone.” He straightens a little, looking down at me, his expression soft. “She had you.”
I take in his words as the porch swing sways gently. “Miriam was the closest thing I had to family. When you came back, I thought you were going to take all of that away. The land, the farm, my place here. It’s why I wasn’t exactly…welcoming.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “You came out with guns blazing over your stolen flowers. Guess I should’ve known that some wildflowers have thorns.”
“Hey!” I say with a soft laugh. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“You are,” he says, looking at me differently now.
“You’ve grown on me, Jaxon Chance.”
“That’s good. Because I’d never ask you to leave, Summer. Lucky Chance is your home too. That won’t change as long as I’m here.”
He stares at me for a beat, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. His gaze drops to my lips, and something in my chest unfurls that’s been tightly wound since the day he returned. I lean toward him, feeling that old glimmer between us as his warm breath brushes over my lips.
I close my eyes, just as the timer on his watch goes off for dinner. I snap back, heat rising into my cheeks.
He stands, rubbing the back of his neck, his brow creased. “Uh, guess that’s our sign that dinner’s ready.” Then he heads off toward the grill.
Was he about to kiss me? Or did I imagine the way he was looking at me, like he wanted this as much as I did?
I lean back against the swing. This is probably the best date I’ve had in a long time. Maybe even ever.
After we eat dinner and finish off a bottle of sparkling cider he found in the pantry, I finally look at my watch.
“It’s eleven?” I gasp. “Where has the time gone?”
An amused smile curves his mouth. “You have somewhere to be this time of night?”
He knows I don’t have plans, unless it includes falling asleep on the couch to a movie, which is my usual Friday routine.
“I have the farmers market in the morning. And we haven’t washed dishes yet.”
He grabs my plate before I can. “You will not wash dishes on a date. That’s my job.”
“It’s the least I can do,” I protest.
“Can’t,” he says, stacking up plates and glasses and heading into the house before I can argue.
I follow him inside, stopping next to him at the kitchen sink. “It will only take a few minutes, Jaxon,” I say, turning on the water, full blast.
He immediately reaches in front of me and turns it off. “Dishes can wait,” he commands. “I need to take you home first.”
I glare at him, before hip-bumping him to the side. “Move over, cowboy.” Then I turn the water back on. “By the time you get back, you’ll be too tired. I can do this.”
“I know you can.” He flips the water off again and blocks the kitchen sink with his body, daring me to try to move him. “But I’m not going to let you.”
We forgot to turn the light on, both of us too focused on winning the dish battle to think about anything else.
I have to look way up to see his face, which is only lit by the moonlight streaming in through the window.
There’s something else in his eyes tonight—not the usual steel gaze, but a heat that’s been there since the dance and hasn’t faded yet.
“Come on, Jaxon, move,” I say, trying to push him out of the way, but he’s like the Great Wall of China. He folds his arms and smirks at my feeble attempts to make him budge.
I give him one last shove that accomplishes absolutely nothing except making him burst out laughing.
“You know what?” I fold my arms. “You can be really aggravating sometimes.”
His mouth curves into a wicked grin. “Funny. I was about to say the same, Wildflower.”
The smirk should not be working on me right now. I would like to file a formal complaint that it is, in fact, working on me, and that I find this wildly inconvenient, given I was approximately two seconds away from kicking him in the shin just to win this argument.
How can one man make me want to fight him and kiss him in the same breath?
“You know I can’t let you do the dishes.” His voice comes out low and rough, with just enough heat to be dangerous.
“Oh, yeah?” I say, tilting my head.
“Yeah.”
I jut my chin out. “Then just try to stop me.”
I want to pull those words back the second they leave my mouth. Because I just challenged Jaxon Chance to stop me, and he has never once turned away from the opportunity to prove me wrong.
His eyes drag over me like a lit match before he takes one long stride toward me, cups my face, and crashes his lips into mine. My heart riots in my chest at the press of his lips, the sudden wash of pleasure through my body.
I should push him away. I really should.
Instead, I take every ounce of frustration I’ve been carrying around for weeks and put it directly into this kiss. My hands find his chest, his shoulders, the back of his neck, not pushing him away exactly, but pulling him toward me. A low moan escapes him as I tug him closer.
He’s still built like a hockey player. I am extremely aware of this as I feel every ridge of muscle under his shirt. But he looks like a cowboy now. Tousled hair, rough stubble, cowboy boots. No one can fill out a pair of jeans quite like Jaxon Chance.
His hands thread into my hair as his lips find mine again and again, until I cannot remember what we were arguing about.
When he nips, I nip back. When he deepens, I angle in more.
He’s such a good kisser, it makes me mad.
And that only makes me kiss him harder, which I recognize is not a rational response, but here we are.
Even our first kiss is a competition.
He responds by walking me backward until my hips hit the counter, and then there’s nowhere left to go, but I’ve completely stopped wanting to go anywhere, anyway.
My hands slide across his shoulders and I angle up into him, using the counter as leverage, kissing him with enough behind it that our teeth bump and we both almost laugh, and then pick up right where we left off.
We’re like two people who haven’t been kissed in decades, making up for lost time.
Good. I want him as unsteady on his feet as I am.
“Do you give up yet?” he murmurs against my mouth.
“Never,” I return and he kisses me again like that’s the answer he wanted all along.
The man is hungry to win. But anymore, I’m not sure if I want to beat him at his own game or keep playing as long as he’ll let me.
When I finally pull back, I’m breathing like I just sprinted across town again. “Are you surrendering?”
“Depends.” His hands still bracket my hips firmly. “On if you’re going to let me kiss you again.”
“You are impossible,” I huff, right before crashing into his mouth again, angling my chin to go deeper.
“So are you,” he says roughly between kisses. “That’s why I can’t stop kissing you.” His lips trail across my jawline. Then he hoists me onto the counter, so we’re more evenly matched now.
As my fingers thread through his hair, I tug his mouth toward mine, murmuring against his lips, “I thought you kissed me to shut me up.”
“No,” he says, pulling back and holding my gaze.
“I kissed you because I couldn’t stand not kissing you.
Because when you fight with me like that—” His thumb brushes over my bottom lip.
“It’s all I can think about doing.” Then his mouth slants over mine, taking in my lips and leaving me dizzy with want.
I hate that I know exactly what he means. Every argument, every time he’s looked at me across the barn like I’m the most aggravating person he’s ever met, I’ve felt the same tug underneath it.
This is what Larissa meant by a hate kiss.
I pull back suddenly, disoriented, like the counter just shifted. He’s looking at me like the heat inside him is going to burn us both alive.
I swallow. “You win.”
His brows rise. “What?”
“The argument.” I nod toward the dishes in the sink.
“Look at that.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “We’re making progress.”
He kisses my lips one last time, then lifts me off the counter, my body pressed against his.
“Never said I wouldn’t enjoy watching a man work,” I say.
He gives me a smirk. “Is that your excuse for checking out my butt in these jeans?”
I back away, grinning the entire time. “Guess you’ll never know.”
Somewhere between the dishes and the drive home, the reality of what I’ve done settles in. I kissed Jaxon Chance. Not just kissed. I basically pounced on him like a feral animal.
But what does this mean for tomorrow, when we’re back to work? How am I going to face the man who just kissed me so hard my lips are raw?
I don’t have an answer now, and what’s worse, I’m not sure I’ll have one tomorrow either.
These feelings aren’t going to go away overnight. At this rate, they might never go away, and I don’t even know if Jaxon is staying after his required time on the farm is up.
My feelings for Jaxon are impossible to avoid now, but this is new territory for us, one I don’t know how to navigate.
I’m quiet on the drive home, and when he pulls up to my house, I throw out a quick “thanks for tonight” and let myself out of the truck. I can’t assume that our kiss means anything more to him.
Jaxon gets out of the truck to follow me to the door anyway.
I whirl around to face him. “You don’t have to walk me up.”
“I do,” he insists. “I promised to be a gentleman, and I need to make sure you get home safe.”
“In Golden Springs?” I say around a laugh. “Jaxon, I can take care of myself.”
His eyes search my face, like he can see right through my facade. “Why can’t you just let someone do something for you?”
I shift on my feet. “I’ve never really had anyone who wanted to.”
A lesson learned the hard way with my father. No man has ever been steady enough to depend on—until Jaxon showed up.
He steps toward me and sweeps his hand up to my face. “Then let me be the first.” His thumb strokes my cheek before he heads to his truck.
I stand at the door, watching him leave. Something changed tonight when I hate-kissed Jaxon Chance. And now I don’t know how to stop wanting him.