Montana Reunion (5 page)

“Sweetheart, I’m a guy. I know that
guys do shitty things to women all the time, but it doesn’t mean whatever he
did to you was your fault. You got that?”

“Can I ask you something?” Her
voice was quiet, lower than usual, and she only had the confidence to ask Jack
because she wasn’t looking at him.

“Anything.”

“Do you, well, do you honestly find
me attractive? I mean, would you…”
“Hold up,” he said, retrieving his arm and sitting back to look at her. He was
holding a beer bottle in his other hand, and he took a swig before shaking his
head at her. “You’re seriously asking me that?”

Her skin was burning. She never
should have asked him, but after what Peter had done to her…

“
Maddie
,
come here,” he ordered, holding out his arm again. But this time he didn’t
cradle her like a friend giving comfort, this time he set down his beer bottle
and put his arms right around her. “Maybe I wasn’t clear enough before…”

Jack leaned in more aggressively
this time, nothing like the slow, gentle embrace and kiss earlier.
This time his lips crushed hers hard, his fingers spearing through her
hair, anchoring her in place, forcing her to tip her head back and surrender to
him.
Every inch of her was screaming out to tell him to stop, that this
was taking it so much further than an innocent kiss between friends, but
another part of her – that part was telling her she deserved to feel wanted
after what she’d been through.

Jack pulled back,
then
leaned in for another quick kiss, his lips hovering
over hers, teasing her.

“You get it this time?” he asked.
“Or am I still not making myself clear?
Because there’s a
whole lot more where that came from.”

Maddison
shook her head, bottom lip caught between her teeth to try to stop from
laughing.
“Yeah, got it.”

“Just a yeah?
Jeez, what’s a guy got to do to convince you?”

His words hit home, made her straighten
up a little. “Not sleeping with another man is probably a good start,” she
muttered.

“Hold up, what?” Jack’s eyebrows
were pulled close together. “I don’t like
men
,
Maddison
. I mean,
fuck
.
Where the hell did that come from? You’re not talking about me right now, are
you?”

She wished she hadn’t even said
anything. But not telling Jack had suddenly become impossible.

“Not you, you idiot,” she said,
shaking her head to try and push the mortification away.
“My
ex.”

“Liked men?” Jack asked, leaning
forward for his beer. “You mean he was gay?”

Maddison
sighed. “What I mean is that I found him in bed with a man. I walked in on
them, in our bed, doing…”

“I get it,” he interrupted, holding
up his hand to make her stop. “And you had no idea?”

She shrugged. “Three years and a
marriage proposal later, and I had no idea he was using me.” She looked to the
sky, wondering for the hundredth time how she’d been so stupid. “But the worst
part was that he didn’t even try to explain himself, like he didn’t even care
that he’d hurt me so badly. We’d been planning our wedding, I’d gone off birth
control because I thought we would be trying for a baby, and he’d been using me
so he didn’t have to tell anyone that he wasn’t straight.”

“And you’re, well,
shit
Maddie
.”
Jack clearly had no idea what to say. “The son of a bitch,” he cursed.

“He liked my lifestyle, I guess,
and having me on his arm made him look good to his colleagues. And I stupidly
thought I loved him.”

Jack reached for her hand, lifted
it to drop a kiss to her skin. His eyes were searching hers, and she knew she’d
been right to tell him. It had taken all her courage to tell her sisters, and
she’d never thought she’d tell another soul, but Jack… well, now Jack knew too.
Maybe she’d needed another man’s perspective just to make her realize that
there was nothing she could have done to make things turn out any differently.

“And that’s why you had to ask me
if I was genuinely attracted to you, isn’t it?” His voice was soft, but she
could hear the anger in his tone too, knew he was furious that she’d been hurt.
“Because you’re second guessing everything.”

Maddison
nodded. She’d been needy and she hadn’t been able to help it.

“How can I ever trust that a man
wants me for who I am, Jack?
How?”

He shook his head. “The guy liked
other
dudes
,
Maddie
.
That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, but it means he was a dickhead for
playing you.”

She blinked away tears, but not
before Jack saw them.

“Can you ever see me chasing after
another guy?”

That made her
laugh
. She couldn’t help it. When she’d been younger Jack and his
brother had driven her mad because they’d had girls flocking around them, and
they’d loved it. Jack was a
ladies
man; she knew it
and so did he.

“Did he ever kiss you like I just
did?” Jack’s voice was deep, gravelly this time.

Now she was squirming in her seat.
That kiss had been… stormy, sexy,
hot
.
Definitely not sweet.
And definitely not convenient.

“You need me to do it again?” Jack
asked, waggling his eyebrows and giving her a wink.

“You’re bad, you know that?” she
told him.

His face was so close she could
feel his breath on her cheek, could sense the smile on his face as he drew even
closer.

“I thought going from friends to
lovers was supposed to be difficult.” His voice was so raspy it sent a chill
through her body.

Lovers?
“Who said anything about
lovers?” she managed, barely louder than a whisper.

Jack traced one finger down her
cheek, arcing down her neck then all the way down to her thigh. His lips moved
softly against hers, caressing her, his body close but not close enough.

Maddison
needed to stop, needed to push away, no matter how good this felt. Because
she’d just had her heart broken, because this was too much too soon, when it
was meant to be about convenience, not
attraction.
This
wasn’t something she could just do on impulse and damn the consequences.

“Jack, I think,” she said, putting
a hand between them to force some distance.
“That we need to
take a rain check.”

He was smiling like he knew exactly
how to change her mind.
And she didn’t
doubt he could.

“It’s too soon, I get that,” he
said.

“Yeah, and because we’re friends,”
she told him, eyes never leaving his. “We never let anything happen
before,
and now…”

He raised an eyebrow.
“Now what?”

Maddison
sighed. “I just think we need to think this through before we let things go any
further. You mean way too much to me, Jack. I don’t want to lose you just
because we couldn’t behave like adults.”

Jack laughed. “You know I could
argue that we’ve been behaving exactly like adults should, right?”

“I’m going home.” She was enjoying
herself, but stopping Jack if things got hot and heavy again?
Probably not going to happen
.

“So are we still engaged?” he
asked, standing and offering her a hand to help her to her feet. “Or going to
be?”

“If it means saving your ranch,
then yes,” she said, trying to tug her hand away from his, needing to put space
between them. “But we’ll have to make it look real. I don’t want anyone to know
it’s
fake except for me and you. Do you really think
there’s a chance you could lose the place?”

He nodded. “I keep telling myself
that I could easily win the court case. But really, how long would that take?
Would I lose the ranch in the process for months?
A year?
Would it cost me everything I have, financially? I don’t know if it’s as
straight forward as my lawyer’s indicated.”

Maddison
smiled. “So we’re agreed that if we do it, we make it look real?”

Jack smiled straight back at her.
“Sure.”

“I don’t want dad figuring out that
we only got married so he could walk me down the aisle, which means we have to
make an effort to convince everyone. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She went to walk away but Jack had
hold of her hand still, was keeping her from leaving.

“Thanks for tonight,
Maddie
. Whatever happens, I appreciate the whole offer of
marriage thing.”

She could see the sincerity of his
words reflected in his eyes.

“Maybe it’s me who should be
thanking you,” she said, squeezing his fingers before letting go of his hand.
“For making me feel like a man could actually want me again.”

He gave her a wink and slung his
arm around her shoulders once she’d grabbed her handbag, like he would have
done when they were kids. “There are plenty of men who’d want you,
Maddie
. A person can’t help being gay, we are what we are,
but the way your guy used you? That’s what makes him an asshole.” He dropped a
kiss to her head as they walked. “You didn’t make him that way, either. You
know that, right? Because it sounds to me like he played you from the start.”

“I don’t want to ruin this, Jack,”
she told him.

“Me neither.” He laughed. “But it’s
kind of your fault, you know that? Before was just a kiss, but when I had to
prove to you that you were hot? Well, that was definitely your fault.”

Maddison
watched as he opened the door to her car, before stepping back and waving her
in.

“Always the
gentleman.”

He grinned and shut the door after
her, before leaning in when she rolled the window down, arms folded. “Goodnight
Maddison
.”

“Goodnight Jack,” she replied,
knowing she needed to think things through long and hard before giving in to
how she felt right now.
 

Because
Jack was doing strange things to her, making her want things she’d started to
give up on ever having. And she wanted him.

Maddison
only let herself glance in the rearview mirror once before concentrating on the
long dirt road ahead. They were neighbors, but it was still a solid five minute
journey home. Thank God she’d stopped at two glasses of wine with dinner,
because otherwise she’d never have even been able to leave his place.

And
that would have been very dangerous.
Very dangerous indeed.

CHAPTER
FIVE

JACK stared out across the fields
and surveyed his land. Ten thousand acres of property that had been in his
mother’s family for generations, and it finally had a willing captain back at
the helm again. All he had to do now was convince his brother to come back, to
claim the half share he wanted to transfer to him, and everything would be
right in the world. Or at least as far as he was concerned it would be.

And
then there was
Maddison
.

Could he really do it? Marry the
one girl he’d loved all his life, but who’d never been more than a friend to
him? The night before had been… exhilarating.
Interesting,
enjoyable and
exhilarating.

He had to make his mind up soon,
because if he gave
Maddison
his word, he wasn’t going
back on it. She deserved honesty above anything else, especially after how her
ex had treated her, and that meant that if he actually proposed, he’d have to
go through with it and not back down.

But
so long as she was happy with his terms, he’d have no reason to change his
mind.

He picked up his phone and sat down
in the shade cast by his truck. His dog flopped at his side, tongue lolling out
as she watched him. Jack dialed his brother’s number, put the phone to his ear,
then
opened his water bottle. He took a few swigs
before holding the bottle high and pouring it slowly so Rosa could have some.

“Hey Scott,” he said when his
brother answered.

Jack leaned back against the wheel
of his truck and listened to his brother.

“I think I’ve found an answer to
our problem,” he told him, wishing he could see the look on his brother’s face
when he told him. “I told
Maddison
about the will,
and she, well, she offered to marry me.”

Scott laughed so hard that Jack had
to hold the phone away from his ear. He scowled at it in his hand. He’d
expected surprised, but not quite that level of amusement.

“What’s so damn funny?” he asked.
“The fact that she agreed to it at all, or the fact that I’m
proposing to shack up with my former best friend?”

Scott was laughing again.

“You know what,
screw you
Scott. Maybe I’ll keep the
ranch for myself,” Jack grumbled.
“Unless you’re actually
planning on returning.”

He said
goodbye, jumped to his feet and waited for Rosa to get in the cab. Scott might
find his getting married hilarious, but right now it sounded a hell of a lot
better than taking the will to court to contest it, and spending another year
stuck out here alone. He loved the solitude of being a rancher, but after being
around
Maddison
, maybe he’d underrated company.

Maddison
stretched, hands high above her head, before bending forward at the hips to
reach for the ground, trying to imagine
herself
being
as supple as she’d like to be. She almost leaped from her skin when her mobile
started ringing.

So much for a quiet morning doing yoga.