The Wedding Gift (4 page)

“You're a jerk.” Jan backed it up with an elbow.

Amelia looked thoughtful. “The New Jan Plan. I like it.” She smiled kindly. “Not that you need to change, sweetie. But you can count on me and Ray to support you. Right, Ray?”

Ray lifted his beer. “I stand firmly behind women in short skirts.”

“Especially when they're walking upstairs.” That was Tyrell chiming in. He smiled all over Jan, and her cheeks went up in flames. The rest of her body followed.

Mick muttered something under his breath about Texans staying in Texas with the other Texans, where they belonged. Jan looked down her nose at him. “What's your problem?”

“No problem,” he grumbled. “Except that bogus drawl, like he's got a mouthful of cotton candy.”

“That's how much you know. That drawl is pure gold. If you had that drawl . . . well, you've already got women throwing themselves at you. The drawl would be wasted on you.”

“I wouldn't want it anyway. It sounds phony.” He faked a twang in Jan's ear. “Howdy, ma'am, I just swaggered in from herdin' steers on my ranch.” A cynical snort. “As if any idiot can't sit on a horse and push a bunch of dumb cows around a field—”

Tyrell chose that moment to unfold his rangy frame from his chair. “I'd like to make a toast,” he said, lifting his glass. “To the bride, a beautiful lady with a heart of gold. Julie, honey, welcome to the family.”

Cody leaned over and kissed her as everyone clinked glasses.

But Tyrell wasn't done. “Growin' up on the ranch,” he drawled, prompting a triumphant snort from Mick, “I would've given just about anything for a sister. Somebody smaller than I was, who Cody could stuff into a feed bag, or dangle from the hayloft, or shove into the manure pile instead of always picking on me.”

He flashed that smile, and Jan melted.

Mick grunted derisively. “Speaking of manure.”

She ignored him, hanging on Tyrell's words.

“I finally got my wish,” he went on, beaming at Julie, “a little sister to distract my big brother. And Julie, darlin', you've got all his attention. He hasn't shoved me in a manure pile since he met you.”

Everyone laughed except Mick. He draped his arm across Jan's chair and said in her ear, “Any minute he'll start in about his horse—”

“Shh!”

“You can't seriously think this guy's funny.”

“Yeah, I do,” she hissed through her teeth. “And I think you're jealous because he's just as hot as you are. Maybe hotter.”

J
EALOUS?

Hotter?

Mick sat back and simmered, watching Jan watch Tyrell as he droned on about—wait for it—his horse. As predicted.

Eventually the guy sat his ass down and everybody clapped.
Clapped
, for Christ's sake, like he was Jimmy Kimmel or something.

Amelia stood up to toast Cody, but her words flowed past Mick without making a dent. He was fixated on Jan, his focus so tight and deep he could almost hear her heartbeat.

She looked beautiful, lit up from inside, glowing like a candle, and it dawned on him that he'd always taken her beauty for granted, selfishly glad it was invisible to everyone else. Like it was meant only for him.

Like
she
was meant only for him.

But her beauty had always been there, hidden just below the surface, just waiting for her to pull back the screen and let it shine. It hadn't taken much. She let down her hair, changed her clothes, and there it was.

Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. The real change, the change that had her catching eyes and turning heads, was her attitude.

For the first time, Jan was
willing
to shine. More than her hair or her clothes, it was the set of her shoulders, the lift of her chin, that invited men and women alike to notice her.

She still didn't know what she had, but she'd learn soon enough with players like Tyrell Brown panting all over her.

Okay, to be fair, Brown wasn't panting all over her. He was all about Vicky, like the sun rose and set in her eyes.

But he'd noticed Jan—
noticed her
—and he let her know it.

It went straight to her head, of course. So would all those Toms, Dicks, and Harrys. She'd lose what little perspective she had. Make one tragic mistake after another.

It was an apocalypse waiting to happen.

Everybody started clapping again, and Amelia sat down. Someone slid a plate in front of Mick, a frizzy salad with tiny sections of orange. He ate it like a robot.

A toe connected with his shin. He looked up into Ray's knowing eyes.

Christ, Cody's right. Everybody's on to me.

“Sox are looking good,” Ray said, an obvious ploy to get Mick's head back in the game. “We're driving up to Fort Myers on Monday to check out spring training. Want to come along?”

Mick shook his head. Shook it off. “Can't. Back to work on Tuesday.”

“You took some time off after the fire?”

The Fire.
As if he didn't fight fires every day. But he knew which one Ray was talking about. The only one anyone was talking about.

“They sidelined me for few weeks,” he said, “because I got brained by a beam.”

“Concussion?”

“So they tell me.” Mick shrugged. He wouldn't have known he had it if they hadn't forced him go to the hospital.

Beside him, Jan let out another giggle. He cut a glance at her. She was leaning forward, eyes shining as Cody charmed the ladies with tales of his youth, Tyrell inserting asides that had everyone in stitches.

Ray kicked him again. “Why don't you tell her?”

Mick played dumb.

Ray rolled his eyes, lifted his chin in Jan's direction. “The good old days just ended, my friend. You've got twenty-four hours—if that—before the competition lines up. Time to get your head out of your ass and make a move.”

A move. Right. Jan wouldn't recognize a move if it bit her in the ass. Which, come to think of it, was a move he'd really like to make.

Not that he would. No way.

Besides, she wasn't interested in him. If she was, she would've made her own move.

Wouldn't she?

“She thinks you're out of her league,” Ray put in.

Everyone was a mind reader tonight.

Mick quit playing dumb. “I doubt that,” he said, “and if she does, she's got it backward.”

“I agree.” Ray grinned at Mick's misery. “But it's never too late to reform.”

Easy for Ray to say. Ray didn't really know him. None of these people did.

Sure, they knew he got around. His brother liked to say he parked his hard-on in a different garage every night. Which was an exaggeration, but still.

What nobody understood was that what seemed like an endless pussy party had long since ceased being fun. Now it was just . . . necessary. Sex was like breathing for Mick. He needed it like he needed air.

His doctor swore nothing was wrong with him, that he simply had a strong sex drive, a “problem” he'd look back upon fondly when his testosterone levels dwindled someday.

For now, Mick dealt with his problem by spreading it around, which created its own set of problems in the form of disgruntled lovers with disappointed expectations.

As for
the Fire
everyone couldn't shut up about, he'd give his left nut to forget it.

So no, he wouldn't be making a move on Jan. He might be jealous as all hell, but he was also proud of her, and truly glad she was shedding her old skin and showing the world the incredible woman he'd always known her to be.

The last thing he'd do is saddle her with a failed firefighter who couldn't keep his dick in his pants. Even if she wanted him.

Which she didn't, or she would've made a move on him long ago.

Wouldn't she?

 

Chapter 4

T
HE WARM BREEZE
snuck up under Jan's skirt like fingers, tickling her bare thighs, an unfamiliar and wonderfully sexy sensation.

She liked it.

She liked Mick's arm around her waist too.

Not that he meant anything by it. He was simply keeping hold of her, not easy to do at ten o'clock on Duvall Street. People streamed along the sidewalks in both directions at once, jostling and stumbling, detouring in and out of bars so jammed they overflowed onto patios and balconies.

It was insane, more crowded and rowdy than St. Paddy's Day in South Boston. Not usually Jan's kind of scene. But tonight she kept moving, enjoying the guys checking her out for the first time in her life. They traveled in pairs and in packs, making eye contact, grinning suggestively, even wolf-whistling.

Had Mick noticed the attention she was getting? Probably not, with so many pretty girls to look at instead, batting their eyes at him, brushing against him accidentally on purpose.

She glanced up at him. Surprisingly, he was ignoring the girls, eyeing the guys instead. And the look on his face said,
Fuck with me and die.

She elbowed him, and he dropped his narrow gaze to her. “What?”

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fan-freaking-tastic.” He went back to threat-assessing the crowd.

She stopped walking and swung around to face him. The current tossed them together in a chest bump, then sucked them apart. He leaped after her, wrapping her up in both arms.

“This place is a fucking zoo,” he snarled. Pinning her to his side, he shouldered through the worst of it until he could push her up against the wall of the nearest bar.

Beside her, people poured in and out through the wide-open doors, and music spilled into the street, adding to the din.

Bracing his hands on the wall on either side of her head, Mick caged her with his body, taking the bumps so she wouldn't have to. “What's the problem?” he wanted to know. “Why'd you stop?”

She touched her wrist to his forehead. No fever, but his eyes burned too bright. “Are you sick?” she asked.

“I'm sick of fighting this mob.”

“Mr. Cranky. Do you want to go back to the room?”

“Hell yeah.” His smile broke out like sunshine. “Let's go.”

“I meant
you
. I'll stick around. Maybe get a drink.”

Storm clouds gathered again, dark and forbidding. “Fine.” He gritted it. “You want a drink, we'll get a drink.”

Muscling back into traffic, he propelled her along as he cased each bar, finally settling on one that seemed merely crowded instead of crammed to the rafters.

“It's a fucking fire hazard,” he snapped out as they battled through the door. Hooking her hand in the back of his belt, he blasted her with a no-bullshit glare. “Do
not
let go.” And he headed for the bar, wedging his shoulder between bodies, dragging her along in his wake.

She trailed him until a hand caught her arm. A frat boy with a Yankees hat and a buzz cut. “Hey, babe. Nice hair.”

He reached out to touch it, and just like that Mick was up in his face. “She's with me.”

“No prob, man.” The guy raised his hands and moved away.

She turned on Mick. “Why'd you do that?”

“Jesus, Jan. That guy's after one thing.”

“So am I.”

“No, you're not. Not really.” He drove all ten fingers through his hair. “Think about it, Jan. A lot of these guys are still in college. They're young and stupid and selfish. They can't give you the experience you want.”

Honestly, she'd been thinking the same thing herself. Besides young, stupid, and selfish, most of them were really drunk too. She'd made out with drunk guys before, and it hadn't been much fun.

She bit her lip. Wavered.

Then Mick leaned in close, his scruff scraping her cheek, his breath warm on her ear. She let herself inhale just a tiny whiff of his Mick-scent . . .

And he said three words. “Walking. Dead. Marathon.”

She pulled back and stared at him. “Right now? No way. Why didn't you tell me?”

He shrugged. “You had your heart set on this.”

She followed his glance around the crammed room. Men and women alike churned around the floor, shit-faced and horny. A cheer went up as two drunks hoisted a blonde onto the bar. She started twerking; guys started whistling.

Jan turned back to Mick. He lifted one brow. A half smile played on his lips.

Drunks and twerkers, or Mick and zombies?

She jerked a thumb at the door.

B
ACK IN THEIR
room, Mick second-guessed his strategy.
The Walking Dead
marathon had seemed like an inspiration back in that bar full of drunks.

But now reality hit him: they'd have to lie in bed to watch it.

Still, he'd have faced worse to get her away from that scene. Christ, when that fucked-up frat boy started pawing her . . .

Pulling a cold one from the fridge, he rolled it across his forehead. He knew all too well what that guy had in mind. He'd had it in his own mind often enough.

Jan came out of the bathroom. “Your turn,” she said.

Without thinking, he looked over at her.

Cotton boxers and a short cotton T-shirt.

She shouldn't look sexy in them. But she did.

She peeled the blanket off the bed. “It's too hot for this, don't you think?”

He managed to grunt. He was hot all right. Sweating.

She folded it at the foot of the bed, and—
finally
—slid her slender legs under the sheet. “Can I have this side? I always have to pee during the night, and I don't want to crawl over you while you're sleeping.”

“Yeah, sure.” Like it was no big deal. Like the thought of her crawling over him didn't have his dick knocking at his zipper, begging to come out and play.

Swamped with lust and despair, he sucked on his beer and helplessly side-eyed the action on the bed.

She shook back her hair so it shimmered in the lamplight. Reached for the remote, so her white T-shirt rode up over her ribs. Twisted around to stack pillows, so one creamy cheek popped halfway out of her boxers . . .

He peeled his eyes away, slowly, like unsticking tape from a package.

Then he drained his bottle and reached into the fridge for another.

“Hand me one?” she said.

He brought it to her. She'd finally stopped wriggling, thank God. Now she sat back against the pillows, sheet folded primly across her lap, scrolling through the channels.

Eyes on the TV, she took the beer without looking, and for a moment her warm hand clamped his palm to the cold bottle. The contrast was insanely erotic.

Blissfully unaware of his agony, she found the channel. “They're already into season three,” she announced. “The Governor.”

She shot him a smile, then swigged her beer. The bottle dripped sweat on her chest. His gaze followed the drips, their slow rolls down white cotton. This close up, her T-shirt was nearly transparent.

“I need a shower,” he mumbled, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Caging himself in the tiny shower stall, he quickly took matters into his own soapy hand, and for ten humming seconds let himself fantasize about the lovely girl in his bed, palming the breasts clearly visible through her tee, sucking the pink nipples that jutted against the fabric.

Then he shoved Jan ruthlessly out of the picture, pressed his forehead to the wall and spread the twerker out on the bar, forcing his brain to focus on her—only her—while he savagely finished himself off.

All of which should have bought him at least an hour of peace. But no. The instant he was done with the twerker, she vaporized.

Jan and her transparent T-shirt filled his mind's eye again.

He toweled his head hard enough to leave his scalp tingling, then confronted the mirror.
You can do this. Just lay there. Think about puppies and kittens, and don't touch her. Don't even look at her. And do not
—he leveled his no-prisoners stare—
under any circumstances, fall asleep.

Bad enough if Jan discovered he was a pig who couldn't lie in bed without panting for her. But if she learned he was a pussy who couldn't close his eyes without falling into a screaming nightmare?

Well, that he couldn't live with.

Stiffening his spine, he summed up the game plan: No looking. No sleeping. Puppies and kittens.

He made it to the fridge without looking, got a beer, and stood staring blindly at the TV.

Now to get into bed. Unfortunately, it was jammed against the wall. He'd have to crawl up from the bottom, keeping to his side, which should be easy since Jan took up, like, eighteen inches at most . . .

A pillow hit him in the back of the head.

“Mick, I won't bite.” She grinned when he glowered. “I know it's weird, but come on, it's
me
.”

Which was the whole problem in a nutshell.

Still, on some level, she was right. It was
her
, his best and oldest friend. Sure, they'd never shared a bed before, but they'd shared practically everything else. They knew how to hang out. They'd been doing it for decades. In fact, having Jan around had made a girlfriend superfluous. Except for sex, she was all the company he needed.

Falling back on old habits, he pointed his bottle at her. “Snore, and I'm shoving you on the floor.”

She put her nose in the air. “I don't snore.”

“We'll see. You've been warned.” Crawling up beside her, he stacked his pillows, leaned back against them, and made himself focus on the screen.

See? It's no different than any other night. Zombies and beer. We could just as well be on my couch.

A walker took it in the eye. Blood spurted, gore oozed. “I wish we had pizza,” Jan said, predictably.

Mick's shoulders eased. He scrunched down, got comfortable. The episode played out, and they watched another. Had another beer. Talked at the TV. Analyzed Rick and the gang like they were based on Shakespeare instead of a comic book.

And they laughed. The best night of his week so far.

Then he glanced over just as she lifted her arms to sweep back her hair. Her T-shirt went taut, her nipples stood out against it, and desire roared back to life, closing his throat in the middle of a sentence.

She lowered her arms, but it was too late. Testosterone flooded his veins. His cocked hardened and throbbed.

She glanced over, her mouth forming words, but he couldn't make them out over the rushing of blood in his ears.

This was why he was no good for her. She was Snow White, and he was all seven fucking dwarves, looking for action every fucking day of the week.

What he needed was a girlfriend as oversexed as him, but it was a lost cause. He'd found a few women who could keep up, but none he wanted to spend time with long-term.

He always ditched them to go and hang out with Jan.

Jan, who'd never shown the least bit of interest. Oh, she liked hanging out with him because they shared a history and a comfort level that made it easy, nonthreatening. Like hanging out with a brother.

Which was just as well, he reminded himself, coming full circle back to Snow White. She was way too fragile for a guy like him. He had all the experience she lacked, and then some. And his huge appetite would scare the hell right out of her.

He knew it, accepted it. Usually, took it in stride.

But Jesus, her nipples.

He crawled down the bed and closed himself in the bathroom again.

Another shower would be too weird, so he bit down on a towel while he did the deed.

J
AN SMOOTHED THE
sheet over her lap. This was going to be weirder than she thought.

It was one thing to flop with Mick on his couch as Rick and the gang hacked their way through a herd. It was quite another to lie in bed together.

Even zombies couldn't make it seem normal.

Mick came out of the bathroom and grabbed two beers from the fridge. “Thanks,” she said as he swapped a cold one for her empty.

He flashed a quick smile, then crawled up on the bed and made himself comfy, one long leg stretched out, the other bent at the knee. His beer rested on his abs, as flat as a table. The tanned fingers he curled around the bottle were nicked with white scars.

Jan stole a look at his face from the corner of her eye. A mistake, because in the lamplight's glow he was even more McGorgeous than usual.

His lashes looked longer, his lips fuller, his jaw more defined. And his hair, disordered from his shower, cried out for her fingers to comb it back from his brow.

The situation was
so
not conducive to a good night's sleep.

Yet Mick seemed annoyingly unaffected. He was Mr. Relaxed, while she kept popping a sweat.

Lifting her hair off her neck, she fanned herself with it. “Are you hot?” she asked.

“So they tell me.”

“Har har. I mean should I turn on the AC?”

“Up to you. I'm good either way.”

She turned it on, a low hum.

Season four began. The room cooled, and she slid down under the sheet. “Are you cold?” she asked. “I can turn it off.”

“Whatever.”

Why was he being so difficult?

She punched her pillows. “I might fall asleep.”

“Go ahead.”

“Can I turn off the light?”

“If you want to.”

Grrr.

She left it on. “Are you getting under the sheet?”

“Eventually.” He sipped his beer, eyes on the TV.

“This mattress is pretty comfortable.” She jounced her hips.

He sipped his beer.

Jerk.
Why was he unfazed, while she had ants in her pants?

“So, do you think they'll be happy?”

“Who?”

She rolled her eyes. “Cody and Julie, who else?”