How to Rope a Real Man (17 page)

He appeared around the corner, fingers outstretched, nostrils flared. When he saw the rake, his eyes narrowed on it and he gave a snorting laugh. “A rake? Real nice, Jenna. You think I’m going to hurt you?”

Her heart hammered against her ribs. “Yes.”

Grinning malevolently, he smoothed a hand over the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles. “I’m going to hurt you, all right, just not like you’re assuming. But let me just tell you that it feels damn good to be on the right side of fear for a change. Tell me, how does it feel, knowing someone who’s bigger and stronger than you could do anything he wanted to you and you’d be powerless to stop him?” He took another step nearer. “You feel pretty helpless right now, don’t you?”

His words sent a fresh chill through her bones. She brandished the rake in front of her.

“Yeah. You’re terrified of me. I can see it in your eyes.” His smile turned to a sneer. “That’s how I felt when Bucky, Kyle, and Lance surrounded me. Now you know.” With stone-cold eyes, he pulled his shirt on and fished truck keys from his pocket. “Brace yourself, Jenna. It’s almost time for Judgment Day in Catcher Creek.”

When Jenna opened her front door in response to Matt’s knock, she was winded, her cheeks flushed. Dressed in the same clothes she’d worn that day, she shook her disheveled hair away from her face and gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Hi.” She said it with a bit too much exuberance, like she was forcing cheeriness because she was hiding something.

Matt’s defenses were instantly on alert.
Steady, man. You already laid your heart on the line for her, so you might as well stay the course.
He offered her his best smile. “Hi. You told me not to come, but I couldn’t help it. I need one more kiss from you to last me the week.”

“Oh. That’s sweet.”

He’d heard corporate litigation attorneys speak with more convincing sincerity. “Am I interrupting your Sunday night study group?”

“No. Not at all. I didn’t join the group tonight. I’m too worn out from the wedding to study.”

Awkward silence descended over them. Rather than invite him in, she maintained a hand on the doorknob and another on the frame. A full-body block of the entrance. Hard not to take that personally since just that morning he’d been in her bed and his skin still carried her scent.

She blinked and looked past him, her eyes shifting, scanning the darkness. He cocked his chin over his shoulder and followed her line of sight, seeing nothing but rolling hills and scrub grass.

On his way to her house, he’d passed a truck leaving their property. It hadn’t looked like Vaughn behind the wheel, but it was hard to tell in the glare of the headlights. It could’ve been one of the farm workers pulling a late night or one of Vaughn and Rachel’s friends. Other than that, the night had been quiet, the roads empty. “Expecting someone else?”

She swallowed, her expression blanking. “No. I thought I saw something move, like a coyote.”

Right. Something was definitely going on. Clearly, she didn’t want him here. It’d been a mistake to push her like this. But here he was, so there wasn’t anything left for him to do than kiss her like he’d been determined to and hit the road. “Is Tommy asleep?”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her upper arms.

He held his hand out. “Do you have time to join me outside for a minute, so we don’t take a chance of waking him?”

After an inhale, she placed her hand in his, gripping it tight, and allowed him to coax her out past the concrete slab in front of her door, into the sultry summer night.

It hit him that this might well be his last opportunity to fight for Jenna’s love. She may have already made up her mind about him, but rather than sinking into offended self-pity about the emotional wall she’d erected, he owed it to his renewed sense of optimism and hope to do his best to remind her how great they were together.

He pulled her up against him and wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back and kissing her hair until the stiffness in her spine yielded and she melted into him. Her cheek and palm rested on his chest. He tightened his hold on her, rocking them a little.

She sighed deeply and melted into him even more. “How did you know I needed this?”

Relief swept through him. It was possible he’d read her body language wrong. Maybe she’d had a tough night with Tommy or was worried about her midterms or something. Maybe he was a big, fat narcissist for thinking her emotional world revolved around him. “I needed it, too. I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

She turned her face up and smiled, though her eyes were shiny with wetness.

The plot thickens . . .
He skimmed a finger along her jaw. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

“No.” She gave a slow blink and dabbed at her eyes with her fingertip. “I want you to kiss me.”

Fair enough. He pressed his lips to hers, tender and sweet in a kiss that went on and on. He wished he didn’t live and work so far away. But in a way, he recognized the distance as a blessing because it’d force them to take their relationship slower than his heart was telling him to go. Asking Jenna to think about children may have catapulted their thoughts into the distant future, but Matt knew there were no shortcuts to a forever kind of love. They had a lot they still needed to figure out about each other—quirks and habits, the little things that made up a person.

By the time Jenna moved to Santa Fe in late August, they’d be ready to speed things up. She could meet his family and they could talk about when it’d be okay for Tommy to see that they shared a bed.

That was, if Jenna decided she could accept his infertility. That was one hell of an
if
, too.

Dark thoughts crowded closer to the forefront of his mind. He pushed them away. He was here to make the most of his one last chance to woo Jenna and he had one more card up his sleeve.

He ended the kiss and loosened his hold on her. She watched him with a dreamy smile, looking tons more relaxed than when he’d arrived.

“Is that what you needed?” she asked.

“Yes. Big-time. But there’s one more thing I’d like to do before I hit the road.”

Apprehension clouded her features. “I’m not sure I’m good for much tonight. I’m pretty wiped out.”

Oh, geez. He had a robust libido, but he wasn’t sure even he’d be up for more sex after their marathon love fest the night before. “Then it’s a good thing that wasn’t what I had in mind.”

On his phone, he scrolled through the music library on his phone until he found the perfect song. He slid the volume button to high and set the phone on a nearby rock. As the first notes of a country waltz poured from the speaker, he offered her his hand. “Dance with me?”

She swayed where she stood and her expression relaxed again. She set her hand in his and allowed him to bring her into closed hold. “Do you have any idea how many things I love about you?” she asked.

Enough to give up your dream of having more babies?
But now wasn’t the time to dwell on problems. All he wanted was a dance.

He stepped her back, waltzing in basic steps around the perimeter of her fenced yard. Nothing fancy. It was too dark and he didn’t want to take the chance of stepping her into a hole or tripping, and frankly he was loving the way she felt in closed hold, hand to hand and face-to-face.

“This morning, you asked me to think hard about what I wanted, and if it bothered me that if we worked out, we couldn’t have more children.”

His stomach dropped. Oh, man. He just wanted to dance with her. Not this. Not now. “Yes. And I know you haven’t had enough time to think about it yet. It’s okay. I wasn’t trying to pressure you by coming back here tonight.”

He looked past her to double-check that the ground was even, then spun her in a triple turn so he could regain his faltering composure.

Back in closed hold, she strummed her fingers on his shoulder. “That’s not what I meant. I thought about it all day. I don’t need more time to think.”

Her declaration caught him by surprise. He lost his rhythm and missed a step, tripping over her foot. So much for him being a competent dancer. Apologizing, he dropped his hands from hers and stood, cowboying up to handle with grace whatever she said next.

Smiling, she stroked his cheek. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you misstep, Mr. Smooth.”

He didn’t feel smooth at the moment. He felt exactly the opposite—vulnerable and anxious. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “I want you in my life in a bad way. I’ll respect your decision, of course. But—”

She cradled his cheeks with her hands and cut his words off with a kiss. Not a
good-bye, I have to let you go
kiss, but one full of passion and promise. His heart started to beat again. She wouldn’t kiss him like that if she had bad news, right?

“Do you remember before Amy’s wedding, I told you that you were all I wanted?”

“I remember.” That had been a pathetic moment of self-pity for him. He’d be eternally grateful that he’d met that Lynch guy in the parking lot and recognized that he didn’t want to become such a jaded, pessimistic man.

“It’s true. I don’t need to be pregnant again. I really don’t. I was watching Amy last night. All that barfing and weepiness. Been there, done that. I’d rather have you. It would be an honor to have you as my man.”

He looked into her eyes, for any hint of reservation, any reason for him to wonder or worry that she’d change her mind someday. He couldn’t find one. Gathering her in his arms again, he kissed her. “I’m going to fall asleep tonight with a smile on my face, thinking about you and me. What do you say about getting a babysitter for next Saturday night so I can take you out?”

She fiddled with the collar of his shirt. “Let’s plan on it, but I don’t think I can hold off until next weekend to see you. How would you feel about me and Tommy coming up to Santa Fe to spend time with you this week? I know you have to work, so during the day, Tommy and I could start apartment hunting and checking out his new school, things like that.”

Even though her suggestion took him by surprise, he kinda loved that she was having as much trouble as he was with taking things slow. Wade-in-slowly guy reared his prudish head with a warning that rushing things with Jenna wasn’t a good plan, but Matt was getting better and better at ignoring him. “Whenever you want. I have a house on my family’s ranch, a lot like your setup. My mom and dad would love to help you entertain Tommy while I’m working.”

Her smile turned radiant. Thank goodness she’d gotten over whatever melancholy had been plaguing her when he’d arrived. “Tomorrow? We could meet you at your place when you get off work.”

“Tomorrow is good.” He brushed hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. “I’m going to make you happy, Jenna. As happy as you’ve made me.”

She cocked her head toward his phone, from which another country ballad was playing. “I know you need to get home, but do you think we could dance one more time before you go?”

He took her hand in his and straightened to proper dancing posture. “Do you think I could ever deny you anything?”

He swept her into a two-step, his soul buzzing with joy.

“Hold up, did I hear you right? You’re at the clueless lawyer’s house?”

Jenna watched Tommy climb up a maze in the play area of the fast-food restaurant where they’d stopped for lunch after a morning of apartment hunting in downtown Santa Fe. Hard to fault Carrie for her bewilderment after their last conversation the night of Amy’s wedding. “We’re on our way there. And it turned out Matt wasn’t clueless.”

“He gave you the royal kiss-off at the wedding, remember? So what changed? Help me understand because you’re not that girl with the self-esteem issues who hangs around a guy who treats her like garbage. We’ve seen those girls at the UNM campus and it’s not a pretty sight.”

Jenna pushed a cold, limp French fry around the tray. What Carrie didn’t know was that Jenna was that girl—at least she had been. Born to a house of neglect, to a father who’d escaped his wife’s mental illness by gambling and drinking and staying gone for days at a time. It was impossible to live through a childhood like that with one’s self-esteem intact.

It was why she’d gotten pregnant, why she’d drank and partied. Because even the wrong kind of attention was still attention and she’d been starved for it. A ride in the back of the sheriff’s patrol car or a night spent in a stranger’s bed had been better than feeling invisible, as she had at home.

Tommy had snapped her out of her spiral of recklessness and regret, and had granted her a huge dose of awareness of why she did what she did, but that insecure girl who was used to feeling unseen and unwanted would live on inside her forever like a scar on her soul. Probably, that was why she’d pined so long for Matt, a man who hadn’t given her the time of day for months. In a sick, twisted way, that dynamic was her comfort zone.

She might’ve had all the wrong reasons for wanting Matt, but she was grateful she hadn’t given up on him because it turned out that he’d been ignoring her because of his own fears. It turned out he had as much baggage and scarring from his past as she did hers. All it had taken was a shot of courage for him to open his heart to her.

It was nobody’s business that Matt had been gun-shy because he was nursing a broken heart for three kids he’d wanted to be a dad to, but hiding the truth about his medical condition from Carrie seemed pointless. Everyone close to them would eventually know once she and Matt decided it was time to adopt. “He has a genetic issue that makes him infertile and he was worried that would be a deal breaker for me.”

Silence on the line. “Oh. Damn. I didn’t see that coming.”

“Neither did I. The hardest part was thinking that far into the future to decide whether it was a deal breaker or not. I mean, I’d never given adoption much thought before. But he’s worth it. I really like him, Carrie. Actually, I think I’m falling for him.”

“Okay, wow. That’s fast.”

“Yes and no. It feels like I’ve been waiting for him forever.”

“And by forever, you mean, what, a year? Less than that?”

“Come on, Carrie. Cheap shot.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Jenna rotated her jaw, which had grown uncomfortably tight. “I won’t. And I know you have a right to be skeptical, especially since he pushed me away for so long. But we’re past that now and we’re going to give this relationship our best shot.”

Carrie sighed, resigned. “Well, I look forward to meeting him.” A heavy pause ensued, then, “Please don’t hate me for sounding like a harpy, but you’re going to have to tell him you’re going to school. I know you’ve got some weird hang-up about your sisters finding out, but—”

“I already told him.”

“You are serious about this guy.”

Jenna rolled her eyes with affectionate exasperation. “Yes, I am. And before you go there, I know I need to tell my sisters about UNM, too.” Tommy sprinted by, grabbing a handful of fries as he passed. “No running with your mouth full,” she hollered after him.

He skidded to a halt at the base of the slide and jammed them in his mouth, chomping noisily.

“What are you waiting for?” Carrie asked.

“I just need a little more time to work up to it. The plan always was to talk to Rachel as soon as Amy’s wedding was over.”

“And yet, you’re spending the week after the wedding in Santa Fe. That doesn’t sound like coming clean to Rachel. It sounds like running away from your issues.”

She had no idea how right she was. “I know. Let me get through midterms and then I promise I’ll sit Rachel down and tell her everything. Maybe you could lay off the stern best friend act until then, okay?”

“I care about you is all, but I’ll give it a rest. So you’re staying the week at Matt’s house?”

“Yes.” Jenna felt the defensiveness ease in her chest. Carrie had waved off her apology about flaking on study group, probably because she thought Jenna’s distractedness had to do with Matt. Jenna didn’t want to lie to Carrie, but correcting the assumption would’ve involved Carson’s confrontation and that was one truth that was going to stay buried for now. “But he knows I need time to study and he’ll support me on that. In fact, would you have time for a one-on-one webcam with me tonight? With the midterms coming up next week, I bet I missed a lot of good notes last night at study group.”

“That would be great. If you want, I can ask my parents to babysit Tommy during computer lab on Wednesday. They already watch my sister’s boy, who’s four,” Carrie offered.

Usually, Charlene Delgado watched Tommy on Wednesdays to spare him from having to make the weekly errand run for the farm to Albuquerque, as Jenna told everyone. One of the many little adjustments she was going to have to make sooner than she’d anticipated was finding reliable, trusted childcare in the Santa Fe area, but this week was complicated enough without adding childcare worries to the mix.

“Thank you. If they’d be willing, that would make my life easier.”

They made plans for that night and ended the call. She and Tommy weren’t supposed to arrive at Matt’s family’s ranch until that night at five, when Matt got off work, but after performing her morning chores alongside Rachel, Jenna had been too twitchy and anxious to run down the clock in Catcher Creek, deciding instead that she and Tommy could get a head start on apartment hunting.

She’d let Rachel in on her plans to stay at Matt’s house, not giving her any other reason except that she didn’t like the idea of not seeing him for a whole week. Rachel had been nonplussed, reiterating her words from the night of Amy’s wedding that it was about time she and Matt figured things out.

Jenna didn’t have it in her to feel guilty for taking advantage of Matt’s generous spirit. Was she staying at his house for the wrong reasons? Yes. She was woman enough to admit that fear of Carson’s return had her skipping town. But was she using Matt? Absolutely not.

She was still riding high on the newness of their connection, and it was the absolute truth that she didn’t like the idea of being apart for the workweek. Sure, if she didn’t have Tommy’s safety to consider, she would’ve put off overnight visits at least until they had a few dates under their belt, but as a mom, protecting her son was her number-one job. More important than her sisters or school or a new relationship.

Matt understood about family first and self-protection. They’d talked about their philosophies before the wedding, about his ancestors coming to New Mexico and the challenge of choosing whether to fight or run when the shit hit the fan. What her choice boiled down to was that she needed somewhere safe to regroup and make plans. What better place to do that than at her boyfriend’s house?

Several times that day, she’d picked up the phone to call Vaughn and alert the sheriff’s department to Carson’s return and the possibility that he might hurt the men who’d tried to kill him, but she couldn’t figure out what to say that wouldn’t put her in the position of fielding questions from Vaughn and his deputies that she couldn’t risk answering. As far as she knew, Bucky, Lance, and Kyle were off touring with the rodeo and out of danger, but she couldn’t just sit helplessly by knowing a potentially violent man was loose in Catcher Creek.

With her eye on Tommy through the glass, she slipped out the fast-food restaurant’s door and dropped coins in the grimy, clunky pay phone. Using her cell phone as a reference, she dialed the sheriff’s department’s dispatch desk. When Irene answered, Jenna lowered the timbre of her voice. “I have an anonymous tip that something bad’s going to go down in Catcher Creek soon.”

Keeping the tip general, she told Irene that Carson Parrish was in town and was planning to commit violent acts against the Kopec, Schultz, Parrish, and Davies families, while skirting Irene’s clarifying questions about who she was and how she’d come about the information. She felt better after ending the call. Maybe Carson would be arrested. Maybe he’d get spooked by the police buzzing around him and leave town. A girl could dream.

She and Tommy hung out at the fast-food restaurant playground until he was worn out and bored, then checked out another couple apartment complexes within a few miles of the state building she’d be working at.

She’d never before had to pay rent, and everything in her price range was dinky, run-down, and dark. Despite all those detractors, the complexes she’d decided to take a closer look at boasted pools, which Tommy had informed her was a consideration of the utmost importance. His buy-in to the move would make the relocation go all the more smoothly, so she’d indulged him on that point.

She had a solid list of possible apartments going, and several more she wanted to check out, but Tommy had had enough. “Can we
pleeease
go to Matt’s house? I can’t take this anymore.”

He said it with such earnest panache, Jenna couldn’t find it in her heart to get upset with him for asking her about it again even after she’d commanded him to stop begging.

“Almost, buddy. You’re being very patient today and I appreciate it. Matt still has three hours before he gets home from work and I don’t have a key to his house, so we’ve got to hang in there for a little while longer.”

“We can sit outside or walk around. He told me there were so many horses at his ranch that I couldn’t count them all. I want to try, Mommy. Can’t we just go already?”

She was as restless with curiosity as Tommy to check out Matt’s family’s ranch, but the thought of having a potty emergency or inadvertently running into Matt’s parents without knowing if Matt had given them a heads-up about Jenna’s arrival had her dragging her feet. “Soon. I have one more stop I’d like to make first.”

Using the GPS on her cell phone, she found Carpe Diem with no trouble. She pulled into a spot out front, and through the window could see that the woman behind the counter wasn’t Tara. It made sense that Tara would have employees, even if it hadn’t occurred to Jenna.

“This stop might be faster than I thought. This is Matt’s sister’s flower shop, but it looks like she might not be here.” She unlatched her belt, got out, and opened Tommy’s door. “Do you remember Tara from Aunt Amy’s wedding?”

Tommy already had his seat belt undone. He bounded out of the car. “She’s the one with all the pictures on her arm. What do you call those again?”

“Tattoos.” She took his hand and led him toward the store. Maybe Tara was in the back room. Since they’d made the trip, it was worth asking.

“Can I get a tattoo someday?”

Jenna cringed. “When you’re thirty, sweetheart. Then we’ll talk.”

“What? That’s ridiculous! I’m not going to be thirty for a really long time.”

She loved the way he said
ridiculous
like he was an old soul in a kid’s body, outraged by the innumerable indignities of youth. She had to work to keep a grin from her face as she opened the door for him. “I know. Life stinks like that.”

She followed Tommy in. The woman at the register smiled in greeting. She looked to be around Jenna’s age, with straight brown hair falling around her shoulders. On the counter was an open textbook. Ever the nosy one about books other people were reading, Jenna did some eyeball stretching to look at the page of differential calculus equations. Nice. Calculus had been one of Jenna’s favorite classes.

“Is Tara here?”

“I’m afraid not. She’s making a delivery and isn’t expected back for an hour. Is there something I can help you with?”

An hour? Must be quite a delivery. “No, thank you. We’re friends of the family and were in the area. I thought we’d stop by and say hi. Another time, perhaps.”

“May I have your name so I can tell her you were here?”

“You can tell her Jenna and Tommy,” Tommy said. “Are those suckers?” He pointed to a glass jar of rainbow-colored lollipops next to the register.

The woman chuckled. “They sure are. You may have one if it’s okay with your mom.” She raised an eyebrow in Jenna’s direction.

Jenna nodded. Keeping Tommy away from sugar was like trying to keep flies off a horse’s ass. Impossible. His sugar radar was more highly developed than that of anyone else she knew. Thank goodness he was an active kid who never stopped moving. If only she could get him to brush his teeth without a fight, then she might feel a more worthy opponent in her battle against sugar.

She’d made him get milk with his lunch and no dessert, even though the ice-cream sundaes at the fast-food restaurant were dirt cheap and darn tasty. A lollipop wasn’t so bad and might keep his mouth too busy to pepper her with questions about Matt’s ranch on the way there.

After he selected a green lollipop, they bid the woman behind the counter good-bye and set off to Matt’s family’s property in the eastern outskirts of the city.

In the directions he’d given Jenna the night before, Matt had explained that he had his own entrance to the property three-fourths of a mile past the main gate. Jenna was impressed by the privacy that having his own road afforded him. Her cottage sat a quarter mile from the big house, which doubled as an inn three seasons out of the year, but her family’s farm boasted only a single, unpaved road that forked to the separate houses. With the dust kicked up by a vehicle’s tires, anybody standing on the big house’s front porch or in Jenna’s yard could see if someone was coming or going.