Jade (Rare Gems Series) (3 page)

She snorted.
“Male genes? Look, Mr. Witt. I’m not really having a good day. You should just stay the hell away from me, and I’ll do the same to you. It’s better that way.”

“For who?”
He wasn’t sure why he wanted her, but he did. And he’d never wanted a woman as badly as he did her. “I’m sorry. But I did want to offer you back the job you had at the Green Touch. Margo told me that you didn’t have anything to do with Debra and her…antics. Margo said you were a good worker and that you did an amazing job.”

“You want to give me my old job back?” She looked at him
suspiciously. “What’s the catch? I’m not able to take a pay cut, and I don’t want any sort of perks from you.”

He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about job perks
, and that put his libido into overdrive again. Christ, what was it about this woman? Quentin shook his head when all the while he wanted to explore perks with her. Especially the perky tips of her breasts. He took two steps toward her because he had an overwhelming need to smell her.

“I don’t know what’s happening with me.” She took a step back from him
, and he wanted to snarl at her. “Just let me smell you. Please. I have no idea why, but if I don’t get to smell your skin, I’m going to go insane.”

“Don’t. You have no idea what you’re doing.” She was right about that
; he didn’t. But that didn’t lessen the fact that he wanted to taste her skin. “Stop right there.”

He hadn’t even been aware that he
was still moving toward her until she was backed to the wall. Moving slowly, he cupped his hand around her waist and pulled her body to him. They were groin to groin, hard cock to warm entrance. When she let out a breath, he felt it brush over his mouth, and he knew that he had to taste her. Her nipples seemed to send electrical pulses to the rest of his body until he knew that if he didn’t get inside of her soon, he was going to die. Quentin brushed his mouth over hers and heard her sigh. He touched his mouth to hers again, and was suddenly airborne.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Quentin was still trying to catch his breath when Allen started toward him. “You come into this house and rape one of my dearest friends? I’ll have you torn limb from—”

“Stop it.”
Jade was suddenly between him and Allen, and he was glad. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the man was going to make good on his promise and kill him. “You have to…just both of you get out. I’m…I have a headache, and neither of you is helping me.”

“Honey, he was going to…
he had his hands all over….” Allen glared at him when he stood up. Quentin waited for one of them to say something, anything, when Sapphire and Blair came into the room.

“Nothing happened. It was a mistake. I’m sure…I’m betting that Mr. Witt is regretting it as we speak.
It was just a simple…could you all just go away, please?” Jade looked at him and he could see her tears. Everything in him wanted to comfort her, but Allen stepped between them again. “I’d very much like to be alone. I’ve had a shitty day, and I need to take my bath and sleep.”

Quentin
thought about staying. But it didn’t look like he would be able to talk to Jade anyway, as she’d gone into the bathroom and locked the door. Blair stared at him for several minutes after the rest of them left and they stood in the hall outside her room. He wondered what was going through the other man’s head when he finally spoke.

“D
o you know what she is?” Quentin nodded, then shook his head. “Wolf. Same as the rest of us. The only reason I’m telling you that is because your brother is one and you have to know that.”

“I do. He converted about six years ago when a girlfriend thought it would be cool if he was one like her. She was killed three months later by a hunter.”
Quentin shook his head. “But that’s not all she is. There is something…I don’t know. I have this overwhelming need to have sex with her.”

He
looked at Blair when he realized what he’d said. He’d kill a man if he said that about his sister if he had one, but Blair only patted him on the back. As they moved down the hall to the stairs, Blair laughed.

“You’re so fucked right now
, I’m going to enjoy this. Jade is not like the rest of her sisters. Nope, not at all. She is going to give you a run for your money like you’ve never seen.” Quentin had a feeling he didn’t know the half of it. “I think you and I should have a long talk. After dinner, you and Thad and I will retire to the deck, and I’ll try to explain things to you.”

“I’m not going to like this
, am I?” Blair laughed again and told him no. “I didn’t think so. I don’t suppose this feeling will go away, will it? I mean after we…I don’t know, get this out of our system, I don’t suppose these feelings will fade.”

“
I wouldn’t count on it. In fact, the more you touch her, the more you’re going to want of her. And that, my good man, is going to save you both.”

Quentin thought maybe there was no saving him.
He hadn’t even touched her much, and he already wanted to go back upstairs, break down the door, and take her right on the bathroom floor. He flushed when he realized this was not helping him. Quentin thought that he was well and truly fucked.

Chapter 3

Thad watched his friend and partner.
He could almost feel sorry for him if it wasn’t for the fact that it was so fucking funny. When he looked at him again, he smiled. Blair was doing a good job explaining things to him, but his mirth was making it difficult not to join him.

“Jade is my mate is what you’re saying.” Thad nodded
, and Quentin shook his head. “That’s not possible. I’m not a wolf and she is. I don’t even know how that is supposed to work out.”

“It did for me.”
Quentin sat down hard again and stared at him. “I had some major issues when I first found out. You at least have an advantage in that you’re aware of us. Diamond almost…I made some major mistakes at first because I didn’t want to believe what she was, but now?” Thad shrugged.

“Are you telling me you’re a wolf
, too?” Thad nodded and waited for him to deny that, too. “You’ve not always been one, have you? I mean in college, were you a wolf then?”

“No. Diamond changed me
. It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. She and I are mates and when she married me last month, we also became husband and wife. I’ve never been more happy in my entire life.”

Quentin was doing pretty well
, he thought. The man was in over his head, but he wasn’t denying anything and so far hadn’t said anything about what he and Jade had been doing in her bedroom. Thad knew the feeling when you were near your mate. There was just no stopping the need to not only touch her, but to mark her as well. He thought about his own mate, and she touched his mind.

“Have you any idea what’s going on out here?”
He said that he didn’t.
“Sapphire wants to invite him to stay here, his daughter is crying because she’s afraid that you guys are going to kill her daddy, and Jade is crying, too. I swear to you, a great deal of money had better come out of this deal you’re putting together.”

“No deal, love. We’re explaining to Quentin what’s going to happen now that he’s figured out Jade is his mate.
”
He could feel her confusion and continued before she asked him something he didn’t have an answer for.
“I don’t think he’s going to be a fool like I was. He’s not unaware of us, but he is a little freaked out about the whole mating thing. I don’t think he gets it.”

“Do you think Jade knows?”
He told her he was sure of it.
“Then what is he going to do about it? Or her for that matter. Do you think I should talk to her?”

“I think we should let them do this on their own.
I don’t know why, but I have a feeling that Jade will bolt if she thinks we are going to force their hand. She’s not very…I don’t get the feeling from her that she’s all that experienced when it comes to nice men. And Quentin is one of the best.”
Thad knew about the money even though she’d never said anything, and she’d more than likely hurt him if he told her that he was looking for the prick
. “I’m going to tell Quentin about Kent, if that’s okay with you.”

“I don’t know what he can do that you haven’t been doing. Unless you think it will be something he needs to deal with because he’s her mate.
You men can be really stupid when it comes to us Erickson women. I don’t know why you think we’re in need of you taking care of us all the time.”

“I took care of you this morning very nicely, didn’t I?”
He felt her arousal and wanted to find her.
“The way you came in my mouth when I told you to. I can still taste you on my lips. And the way your nipples looked after I took the rings off? Christ, baby, I want to take you out to the woods right now and fuck you until you can’t move.”

“Master.”
She said his name in that breathless way of hers, and he had to shift on his chair or hurt himself.
“I want to please you. Will you let me?”

He didn’t answer her because he was afraid he’d tell her to come to him now and have her suck his cock.
Christ, he was hurting. When Blair looked at him, he knew the man was aware of what was going on, but he only nodded and stood up.

“We’ll talk more later. Right now
, I think your daughter needs you, and I have to see to something with my own mate. I think we should talk more tomorrow.” Quentin nodded, but before he left the room, Blair handed him the book Thad had been given not long ago. “This has a great amount of information in it, but don’t lose it. It’s very important to our families and could get us hurt by others.”

Quentin took the book and walked out the door.
Thad and Blair watched him gather up his daughter and leave. The man looked like he’d been poleaxed. Thad followed Blair to the kitchen where the women were. Blair pulled Sapphire into his lap. When he sat down, Diamond sat beside him.

“Will she
be okay?” Blair nodded at Sapphire. “If he hurts her, I’ll kill him. I’m not kidding around either. I just found out that the idiot she was living with before knocked her around a bit before he left her.”

“Quentin
won’t hurt her. He might say the wrong thing, but he’ll never raise his fists to her. His dad cured him of that.” Thad looked at the others in the room. “Kirk Witt is a sadistic bastard and should have been in prison long ago. But he made his son a man that I respect and admire. Quentin is nothing like him.”

“What do you think he’ll do about her?”
Thad wished he had an answer for Blair, but he didn’t. “I don’t want her hurt, but I don’t see this ending well for him or her. I think it’s going to be very volatile until they come together and realize that there is nothing either of them can do but go with it.”

Sapphire snorted.
“Like either of you did? I’m thinking she’ll just murder him in his sleep if he tries to do anything to her that she doesn’t want.”

“I disagree.”
Everyone turned to Annabelle. “I think she’ll be more terrified of him because he’s nice to her than if he were to hurt her. She’s not used to men like him, and she’ll be waiting for his fists to fly rather than him being a good man. It might be less than you think.”

Thad didn’t know. The one thing he did know about his friend that he was sure
Quentin didn’t know was that his brother was sleeping with his girlfriend, and he’d been the one to hurt little Angie. When he figured that out, hell was going to be paid, and he might need Jade to calm him down.

~~~

“The new owner wants us to keep track of what we’re planting and any waste that we have. I don’t know how he expects us to keep that all straight every day, but he’ll probably get bored with it soon enough and we can go back to the way things were before.” Jade nodded, knowing that she’d write down every ounce if that’s what it took to keep this place running. Vicky had been showing her around the place for the past hour like she’d never been there before. But she was learning what changes Mr. Witt wanted.

Just before lunch she was sitting down to start on the fall plantings when she thought of the man.
Christ, he’d had her toes curling when he touched her. She’d wanted nothing more than to tilt her neck and give him what he wanted when Allen had torn him away from her. Jade still felt her heart speed up when she thought of his mouth so close to hers. When someone said her name, it took her several seconds of staring to drag her mind out of what she’d been thinking about.

“I’m sorry, what did you need?” The woman tisked at her.
“I was concentrating so hard on what I was doing, I missed what you said.”

The woman didn’t look like she cared one fig.
When she asked Jade where the lettuce was, Jade took her to the herbs where the last of the spring plants were on sale. There was one thing of bibb lettuce left, and a few pots of some black seeded lettuce.

“That’s not lettuce.”
Before Jade could assure her it was, the woman snapped at her. “I want a head of lettuce. Fresh, so I can make a salad for my husband’s family. Not whatever that is. Where is that?”

“You mean you want a head of lettuce and not a plant to grow it from?”
The woman rolled her eyes, and Jade had to take a deep breath. “We only have plants here, not full-grown vegetables. I can direct you to the nearest health food place if organic is what you’re looking for, but I can’t help you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”
The woman put her hands on her hips as she glared at her, and Jade had to work very hard not to punch her in the nose. “Where is your manager? I’d like to have a word with him on customer service. You are just too ignorant of your job to be out where the public can come to you for questions you have no answers for.”

Okay, Jade thought
, this could have gone better. Instead of trying to defend herself, she led the woman to the new manager. He was just a young kid, probably no more than twenty, and didn’t have a clue what one plant was from the other. She knew because she’d had to help two other customers with items he’d assured them was one thing when it wasn’t.

“This woman
won’t tell me where to find the lettuce.” Dick looked at her, then the woman, and Jade could see the panic on his face. “I demand that you fire her.”

“Jade?”
She wanted to smack him but only came into his office with the woman and told him the same thing she’d told the woman. “You want a head of lettuce? Like the kind you get at the supermarket? We don’t have things like that here. We just sell plants.”

“And your sign outside said you have fresh vegetable plants. I want a head of lettuce
, and I want it now. And it had better not be one of the ones I can get at the local market either. Your sign says fresh, so I want fresh.” The woman sat down and glared when neither of them moved. “Well, get to it. I don’t have all day. They’re going to be at the house at five, and I still have to find a fresh roast.”

Jade walked out of the office and moved to her workstation. She almost felt sorry for
the butcher. She was going to demand that he kill a cow and cut it up for her on the store floor, she just knew it. When Dick yelled at her, she stopped.

“
Aren’t you going to take care of her?” Jade looked at his office, where the woman was smiling back at her. “You brought her to my office. Now deal with her. Get her some fresh lettuce.”

“I don’t have any on me at the moment.” She had to catch herself from saying that she couldn’t shit him one
either. “You’re the manager, you deal with her. I’ve done all I can do.”

“You’re refusing to do what I tell you?”
Jade opened her mouth and closed it twice before he continued. “You get her a head of fresh lettuce and be quick about it. If there is one thing I learned in college, it was that the customer is always right.”

“But she’s not right.
We don’t have that kind of lettuce here in plants, and we certainly don’t have a head of it. Tell her to go to the store and get it like everyone else.” Dick was shaking his head. “I can’t give her what we don’t have.”

“Then you leave me no choice but to fire you.”
Jade looked at him, trying to figure out if he was serious or not, when he turned on his heel and walked away from her. She stood there for several more seconds until she heard him telling Vicky to get some fresh lettuce. Jade pulled out the Touch mobile phone and called Blair.

“Do you know how to get in touch with that guy Witt?” He told her he was there.
“Tell him that his boss just fired me and he’s working on firing Vicky, too. In another ten minutes…never mind, the guy just fired his two employees, and he doesn’t know a bean from a tree.”

She was waiting on her ride when the big SUV showed up. Jade didn’t speak to him when he and Blair moved by her
, and when Angie stopped to sit beside her, she tried to get her to go with her dad.

“He’s pretty mad.
Daddy said that he has more important things to do than to run around finding people who know their job.” She giggled. “I think he’s mad at Debra, too.”

Good for him
, Jade thought. He was smarter than she thought. “He’s going to be fine. The guy he hired isn’t a fit for this job. Like your dad said, he needs someone that knows about this business before he can make it work.”

“He should hire you to be the boss. You can be scary when you want to.”
Jade wasn’t sure that was a compliment or not so didn’t say anything. “Besides, don’t you know the difference between a bean and a tree? I do and I’m only six.”

Jade burst out laughing. The little girl was cute
, and she was funny. Jade hadn’t realized how much she needed a good laugh until then. When Angie went on to explain other differences she knew, Jade thought about the man in the building behind them. She wanted him.

She had a feeling that he wanted her
, too, but she knew why, and she was pretty sure he didn’t. Having a mate, even one as charming as he seemed to be, wasn’t anything she was ready for. Not yet at any rate. The first thing he’d want to do would be to make her quit working, and then he’d pay off all her debt. Then she’d be beholden to him, like an indentured servant. The crunch of gravel had her looking up to see her taxi.

“I have to go. You should go in and find your dad. I don’t think he’d want you out here alone anyway.”
Angie nodded and moved into the building. When she went to the office and opened the door, Jade heard the woman say she wanted her lettuce now and someone had better bring it to her. Jade was laughing as she slipped into the car.