Chapter Ten
Jory melted into the kiss.
She was tired of lying to herself that she didn’t feel the pull between them, that she was strong enough to resist. The desire and connection were novel, and almost unbearably welcome, and the ache and need so consuming that she dove into the kiss like it was the Aegean Sea and she’d arrived for a long-anticipated vacation.
His arms were steel around her. His body heated tungsten and his mouth jolted her back to life.
They had to stop.
Why?
He’s injured—just beginning his recovery.
I’m his doctor.
Not anymore.
I don’t know how to make connections.
I want to. I’m so lonely.
Her good and bad angels shouted at each other, and the need stamped in her last two thoughts shamed and scared her.
Her hands roamed over his back, delighting in each muscle pair—latissimus dorsi, supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres major and teres minor.
“You’re so incredibly made,” she noted reverently. She speared her fingers in his thick hair that was dang perfect. “So damn beautiful.”
He laughed. “That’s my line.”
“I’m not beautiful,” Jory said with certainty.
It hadn’t bothered her before this moment. There had been no point to beauty. It couldn’t help her get love from her family. It wouldn’t bring her daddy and brother home. It wasn’t a vehicle to drive her out of Marietta. It wouldn’t earn her a degree, assist plotting a career that would finally lead her to financial stability and respect.
But now with his arms around her, his most masculine part a tempting thrust against her yielding body, and his mouth creating a cascade of heated sensations coursing through her blood and nervous system, Jory wished she were beautiful to Calhoun.
And that snapped her out of her sexual stupor.
Beauty and sex and connection were sirens singing her to crash on the jagged rocks lining the path to her future.
Calhoun was here to do a job for a friend and then he and his dog would leave.
She too had a job to do. Work. Get a recommendation. Close her Marietta chapter forever.
She didn’t want to want him, and she definitely didn’t want to miss him.
“This is crazy,” she whispered against his lips, as he lifted her and pressed her against a wall so that his erection was hot and hard and aggressive against her wet core.
“Good crazy.”
“Crazy’s never good.” She’d stop kissing him after this last kiss. It would have to be enough. It would have to last.
She bit down on his lip. “We have to stop.”
“Do we?”
They did, didn’t they? She searched for a reason. She had been so sure, but now that her hands were around him, tracing his muscles, and grinding on him, she couldn’t find her brakes. But then she heard his breathing fracture.
“Oh my God,” she yelped and jumped out of his arms. “You’re injured. You just had a splenectomy. Four of your ribs are cracked and your lung was punctured.”
She backed up. Her hands out. “Calhoun. I could have hurt you,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” he said, but she could see he was pale under his flushed cheeks. “Okay, I am, but kissing you offered up something more than a banshee screech of pain, so I’m not sorry. And one part of me is definitely working.” He stroked his palm down his pants, his dark-honey eyes still lit with desire.
Her stomach bottomed out, and her legs felt weak.
“Don’t,” she said shakily.
“You can take over. We can move to the couch.”
The invitation in his eyes, combined with his words, was shockingly seductive, and for once she wanted to kick caution aside.
And that piercing longing was reason enough for her to hold on to her no.
“I had ground rules,” she reminded him, although she’d forgotten them.
The heat doused in his eyes. “Your house. Your rules.”
“It’s not my house.”
“Rohan said…”
“No. Not anymore. After my father and brother left, it never felt like home. I left here after high school graduation, and never came back.” She sounded bitter. She hated that. “What are we going to do so this—” she waved her hand between them “—doesn’t happen?”
“You work nights, right?”
“Four nights a week. Twelve-hour shifts. Sunday through Wednesdays, but maybe five nights some weeks, depending.”
“I’ll be working—” his mouth twisted “—during the day so you’ll be able to sleep, and we can avoid distractions.”
Practical, but boring.
Boring is good.
“You need to rest.”
“I need to fulfill my vow to Jace and help my brothers with a memorial celebration of his life. The goal is Memorial Day so tick-tock.”
“You were just in an accident,” she said mulishly. “Just because you were a badass soldier and now are in Marietta to play cowboy doesn’t mean you’re immortal.”
“I know I’m not immortal. I’m counting on that. I’ll rest when I’m dead.” He palmed the keys to his truck. “Now I got a job. Kai, let’s roll.”
Jory scrambled after him, seizing the keys out of his hand, and she was surprised that it was so easy. She tucked them in her back pocket.
“You rest.” She glared at him. “Tomorrow after my shift we’ll start the hunt to look for…clues? Do you even know what you’re looking for?”
His eyes looked like fire, and his face had the expressiveness of a rock.
He narrowed his eyes. “This is my mission. My search. There is no we.”
“There is now, Cowboy. Pick a room. Get some rest. Plenty of time to hunt for clues and ghosts.”
*
Jory woke upto the smell of a something sizzling on a grill. Her stomach rumbled. Calhoun didn’t comprehend the concept of rest, but then again, she too rarely ‘took it easy.’ Too much to accomplish in a small window of time. She took a quick shower out of habit, a bit shocked at how nice the bathroom was. When she’d been a kid, the family had all shared one bathroom. Now her childhood bedroom had its own bathroom with an antique desk that had been converted into a vanity, and a matching mirror had two globe lights on either side.
“Not my house,” she murmured, but still the tension and dread that had balled in her belly when she thought of returning to Marietta had dissipated.
She dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and button-down oxford-style shirt tied around her waist and, as usual, she didn’t bother with makeup beyond moisturizer with sunscreen. She went downstairs and froze at the bottom step at the sound of a female voice chatting happily, confident of belonging. Jory’s heart sunk. Once again she was on the outside, looking in, even in her old house that no longer belonged to her.
Calhoun moves fast.
But that wasn’t fair. They’d agreed to one night, and she couldn’t change the rules now, but that kiss…
She steeled herself to walk into the kitchen and face Calhoun. Maybe Rohan hadn’t meant the groceries for her, but she had to eat something before she headed to work. She had a couple of hours. She’d thought they could discuss a strategy for finding more clues about what had happened to her dad and Josiah.
But did she really want to learn the truth? Was it better to think her father had left her? Chosen Josiah over her? Or that they were dead?
She brushed away the hot tears.
The truth was always better.
Jory’s mind stuttered, unsure if she was ready for the truth, but she definitely wasn’t letting Calhoun set off on some damn quest that didn’t include her.
“Oh, hello, you must be Jory. I’m Shane.”
An Amazon, no a supermodel, looked up from chopping vegetables, wiped her elegant hands on a hand towel and strode forward, hand out, dazzling smile decorating her face.
She shook Jory’s hand. “Welcome home.”
Jory blinked at the tall platinum-haired beauty, dazzled by the turquoise blue of her eyes. Those must be contacts, right?
Some women definitely won the genetic lottery.
“How’d you meet Calhoun?” Jory asked warily.
“I haven’t really. The boys took off with Kai looking hot, enigmatic and stone-faced flipping me the ‘need to know’ attitude so Willow and I thought we’d start dinner early so that you could eat before you headed to work.”
“That was a super-stealth stink bomb. I think Jacie is eating dog turds at the stable. I thought breast milk ensured less stinky poops. Oops! TMI. Hi, I’m Willow.” A petite woman with a huge smile and a long, dark ponytail that nearly brushed her ass strode into the kitchen, holding a baby.
“Don’t worry. I washed my hands.” She laughed as she shook Jory’s hand.
She looked like an advertisement about Montana cowgirls and motherhood. The baby girl had bright blue eyes and a mop of curls and looked to be just exiting the bobble-head stage of infancy. Jory had an unexpected pang.
What if the condom mishap with Calhoun led to a baby?
She’d been in denial about that possibility, and yet weirdly passive. What if this was her one chance at motherhood?
“She’s a cutie,” Jory said, feeling awkward. She’d wanted to cook something since she finally had a kitchen, but the impromptu dinner party made that tricky. Hopefully there was some bread, apples, jam and peanut butter. That was usually her go-to.
“Thank you. I’m lucky Huck was so busy doing the bro handshake with Calhoun, that I could finally pry Jacie out of his arms. That man. You’d think he invented fatherhood the way he puffs out his chest.”
Willow paused for breath. “You may not really remember me. We didn’t really know each other too well growing up, but we were ranch neighbors.”
“Ranch is a stretch,” Jory said.
“Us too,” Willow confessed easily. “Welcome back to Marietta. I’m Willow McBride. Did the howling wake you?”
“What?” Jory blinked.
Willow and Shane laughed. “The boys. They were all on a Special Forces team near the end of their service and had this team name of Coyote Cowboys. They have tats, a handshake and a greeting where they end up howling like they’re drunk sorority girls.”
Jory laughed at that image.
“Gotta keep them humble and in line,” Willow said.
“Or they’ll think they have all the answers,” Shane said. “So you and Calhoun?”
The question dangled and Jory flushed, grappling for an answer that didn’t have ‘hookup’ in it.
“Oh, I gotta get the biscuits,” Willow saved her. “Hold my little stink bomb.”
Before Jory could respond, she was holding the baby, who wore a light pink ruffled onesie with a pattern of horses on it.
“Hello,” she said softly, falling into the curious expression in Jacie’s eyes. “I’m Jory.”
*
The truck lurchedto a stop, and Huck popped out before Cross had even cut the engine.
“It’s fantastic. You need to see the views. The scope. There’s some huge chunks of granite that tumbled down the mountain range millennia ago. We could do bouldering, rock climbing,” Huck enthused, continuing to walk away from the truck.
“How are you?” The reflection of Cross’s unnerving silver-gray scrutiny speared him in the rearview mirror.
“Good.” Calhoun swung open the passenger door and carefully got out of the truck. He couldn’t believe he’d taken a nap. A nap. He hadn’t napped since he was two—maybe. “Beat up but nothing a couple more days won’t handle.”
Kai jumped out on his heels, but he heard Cross’s derisive snort.
“You so worried about me, why drag me out on this field trip?”
He still felt sluggish. He’d lain down to catch his breath and to try to ease some of the pain, but he’d woken up hours later and only because Kai alerted him they had company.
Not even a week out of the service and his instincts were shot.
“We wanted you to see this,” Cross said. “We want you all in.”
He looked out over the section of Paradise Valley that rose up toward the mountain range, with one craggy peak dominating. Off to the right an alpine lake glittered in the May sun.
“We need you,” Huck said. “We all need this. It’s what Jace wanted.”
“A mountain?” Jace had dreamed and talked big, but he’d been realistic.
“Our future.”
The reverence and certainty in Cross’s resonant deep voice along with Huck’s hope had him reaching down for Kai’s massive head, which tucked in under his hand.
“I told you I wasn’t planning to stay in Montana.”
He’d be too easy for his father and extended family to find, and he’d left that vociferous greed, toxicity and narcissism far behind.
If he’d expected them to protest, he would have been disappointed.
Cross gave him a scathing look. Huck sort of smiled.
“I rode into Marietta on my bike. Thought I’d camp one night. Say my piece the next day to Jace’s high school friend and ride out that afternoon. But Fate got her teeth in my ass,” Cross said.
“With an assist from a blonde, blue-eyed beauty,” Huck added dryly.
“Like you resisted Willow for longer than a hot minute.”
“Probably less than that,” Huck said amiably.
Calhoun looked at his two friends. They looked well. Happy. Huck seemed to have fully healed, and there was a lightness in his body and face that hadn’t been there when Calhoun had served with him. And Cross had always seemed supernaturally serious and still—more ancient warrior than a modern man, but now he teased Huck, and the expression that he fixed on Calhoun was serious, but open, almost pleading.
“We found a new path,” Cross said. “We’re all in—Ryder, Huck, me and Rohan. There’s even a…cousin of mine I recently met, Laird Wilder, who occasionally leads outdoor adventure groups when he’s not brewing whiskey, and he’s willing to merge with us. We want to offer something more intense—survival-oriented. There’s some land coming up for auction we have a shot at.”
“Or we can lease, but we want to buy so we can make some adaptations.”
Calhoun didn’t listen to the words as much as he homed in on how they said it, how they looked.
Happy. Hopeful. What Jace wanted.
“We all got ranch jobs—so this would be more like weekend warriors or some week-long adventuring camps a few times a year, but we need someone to run the business—the financials, marketing.”
Calhoun stared at them. “Me?”
“You’re the only one of us who has any college,” Huck said, all reasonable.
“You and Kai would definitely be out in the field,” Cross said, as if having a desk job was the problem, but that didn’t begin to cover his objections.
But he could see how much his brothers wanted this. Ryder had tried to talk to him about it, and he’d blown him off. Rohan had hinted. And now the pitch from Huck and Cross. They wanted him all in. A team again. For a moment he let the idea percolate. A home. His brothers. A job that challenged and interested him and would suit Kai.
A woman of his own. Friends.
He was shocked at how much the dream beckoned.
But then his father would viper his way in somehow, poison it all, turn everyone against him. Hurt his brothers.
But the land. He could stake his claim on the land for his brothers. Ensure they had their dream.
“I haven’t even finished my task for Jace,” he stalled, not yet able to nut up and tell them ‘no.’
“You’ll get it done,” Cross said quietly, no doubt in his voice.
“But we wanted to give you a taste of what we’re thinking.” Huck’s voice rang with enthusiasm. “Nothing full-time, but something we can build on, keep our skills and instincts fresh. Maybe employ other vets. Wolf’s thinking about getting out. We can build a legacy for ourselves and family and honor Jace. He wanted us to have a business together.”
Calhoun turned away from the view of the beautiful valley bathed in the shadow of the watchful mountain. He had no intention of having a family. Building a legacy. Everything the Lael-Millers touched thrived financially, but was shadowed, allowing the rot to spread, and with nature and ‘nurture’ colliding, who could guarantee that he didn’t have the same black thumb?
“Let’s get your girl dinner before she heads to work. We can talk some more when Ryder and Edi arrive.”
“Jory’s not my girl.” He sounded defensive and felt like a liar.
The look Cross shot him said it all.
They drove back to the farmhouse. Kai, as if sensing his dark thoughts, leaned against him, instead of sticking his head out the window.
When Cross pulled up to the house, Calhoun was jolted out of his brooding because Jory sat on a porch swing with an infant cuddled on her lap. He winced getting out of the truck, feeling like his insides had been jostled into a new place.
Jory met his gaze, and he had no idea what she was thinking, but for him, it was pure panic. What if their condom mishap resulted in a baby?
She said she hadn’t taken the Plan B yet and though it seemed a logical choice, it was hers.
He barely knew her, and yet he yearned to know more. And that was dangerous.
And while all the nos played in his head, the baby let out a cooing sound when Huck ran up the steps, arms out, smile wide, and Calhoun had an icy premonition that quitting Jory and Marietta and his brothers and their hopes and dreams was not going to be as straightforward as he’d anticipated.