Chapter Eight
Jake found me sitting on the cottage porch an hour later, rubbing my fingers through Dog’s white coat and scratching behind his speckled ears. Dog never moved, but his warm body suggested he was still alive. Barely. Maybe.
He disappeared during the day, but by the time the sun went down, Dog was back on the porch and dead once again, at least to the world.
“Taming the savage beast?” Jake asked as he sat next to me.
I grinned, but my heart wasn’t in it. “He’s blowing his image. Aren’t country dogs supposed to be hunters? He might as well be mounted on the wall.”
“Nah, the possums are big enough around here that we use them as coon dogs.” Jake paused for a thoughtful minute. “I figured you’d be asleep by now. Having trouble winding down?”
I shook my head. “No, I needed some male action.” Jake raised one eyebrow. “Not that kind,” I said. “There’s a spider the size of a small horse in there. I wanted you to kill it. You know how I am about spiders.”
A muscle twitched in his strong, angular jaw. I think he wanted to laugh, but refrained from it. Then his eyes turned to me, his face becoming more serious. “Emily, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say…”
“It’s okay, Jake. No need to apologize. I know it wasn’t what you meant. Besides, there’s some validity to what you said.”
“But I shouldn’t have brought up your parents. It wasn’t right.”
At the mention of them, tears stung my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I hung from a cliff by my fingertips, and the emotional weight pulled at my feet. I managed to push back the sadness and smiled crookedly. His eyes locked on my trembling mouth. I nervously glanced away, gathered my hair at the nape of my neck, and braided it together.
“Floss told me she mentioned the funeral,” Jake added. “She didn’t know I hadn’t said anything to you about it.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t—”
“My parents died last year. At the same time, on the same day. It nearly killed me. It’s part of the reason I haven’t been back here.” He swallowed hard, struggling with his speech. “They died because of me.”
Minutes crept by silently. I didn’t want to ask him to share anything he wasn’t willing to. We stared up at the glass dome of stars while Jake marinated in his guilt.
Sometimes in life, you need to be able to throw something out into the universe, a rhetorical statement warranting no judgment from others. It’s what I wanted to give to Jake because it’s what I wished someone would’ve given to me when I thought the same thing about my own parents. They died because of me.
His dark hair was slightly disheveled, and his gray eyes drooped with weariness. The manual labor he performed under the sun had taken a physical toll, but the mental strain of his parents’ death still weighed heavily on him. I understood that feeling well.
“Tired?” I asked, unsure how he managed to stay awake.
“I’m beat,” Jake replied. “I’ll go take care of your spider problem so we can go to bed.”
My temperature rose slightly, thinking about snuggling into his warm, hard body. And he must’ve noticed the little smile gathering at the corner of my mouth.
“Emily, I don’t think either of us got much sleep last night with the…uh…tension in the room. Unless you want a repeat, we’re going to have to pretend there’s a crossing guard between us tonight.”
“A ménage à trois?” I said with a teasing laugh. “Might be interesting.”
Jake paused. “Shit.”
…
It took me forever to fall asleep, but I must’ve finally dozed off, because when I opened my eyes, Jake was asleep next to me. Actually, he was under me. I had draped myself across his chest, capturing his body heat. It was like cuddling with a high-temperature furnace. As cold as it was in the room, the cottage could’ve been easily mistaken for a cabin in Alaska.
It was five o’clock when the stupid rooster started crowing relentlessly, robbing me of my sleep. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. Dumbass bird should be on Prozac.
I shifted slightly against Jake to get more comfortable. His body tensed as his muscled forearms tightened their grip around my back, pulling me further in to him. A knee slid up between my thighs. His warm breath quickened, blowing against my neck. Suddenly, the room changed from cold to hot, like Jake was a sunray burning into my skin. Flustered, I considered cranking down the air conditioner in the room before I melted.
When something hard pressed heavily into my pelvis, I knew Jake was awake. I leaned my mouth closer to his, brushing my lips lightly over his. “Jake…”
“We can’t,” he whispered, sounding painfully unsure of himself. “Stop before this goes any further.”
“I don’t want to stop,” I said softly, letting my tongue flicker across his briefly. “I want to feel you inside me.”
A definite pause on his part. Then he dumped me back onto my own side of the bed. “Jesus Christ, Emily. I’m a man. You can’t say that sort of thing to a man and expect him to maintain any sense of self-control.”
I narrowed my eyes and pursed my lips, stopping myself from saying, Duh. That’s the point, dipshit! “You don’t have any problems with self-control. In fact, you’re good at pushing me away. Must be all the practice you’re getting.”
“Don’t give me a hard time.”
“I’m not. What I want is for you to give me a hard time.”
He sighed wearily, throwing his head back onto his pillow. “Once the trial is over we’ll be able to—”
“The trial could be months or even a year away. You’re crazy if you think I’ll wait that long for something that’s not a sure thing.” Okay, so it was a lie. I’d wait for him if I had to, but I wasn’t stupid enough to tell him that. At least not yet.
“Oh, it’s a sure thing,” he said with a sardonic laugh. “When I do finally get inside you, you’re going to wish you hadn’t teased me the way you have.” Then he raised his eyebrows and lifted the corner of his mouth in a smirk.
I wanted to respond, but the words caught in my throat. After a moment, all I could say was, “God, I hate you sometimes.” Then I rolled to my side, facing away from him, and went to sleep with hard nipples.
And he thinks I’m a tease?
…
Two days went by, and I was bored out of my mind.
Hank found me sitting in the backyard on an old, rickety bench overlooking an aboveground pool filled with cloudy, urine-colored well water, littered with bug corpses and dead leaves. At least I think it was a pool. It looked more like the horses’ watering trough.
“You okay, honey?”
I nodded. “I don’t have anything to do, so I’m watching the squirrels.”
“I hate those damn things,” Hank said, scowling up at the tree. “They get up in the attic, build nests in the insulation, and shred everything up. I’ve been battling them ever since Floss planted a pecan tree and it produced nuts.”
“How do you get rid of them?”
“Shoot ‘em.”
I gasped. “Hank, that’s mean!”
He grinned with amusement at my reaction. “Last squirrel I shot had its nuts still in its mouth when it went down.”
That made me laugh. “Didn’t want to let go, huh?”
“Came down to a choice—its nuts or its life. Damn squirrel chose to keep its nuts.” Hank nodded toward Jake, walking toward us from across the yard. “I reckon most men would do the same.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but somewhere in his words there was bound to be a pearl of wisdom. I had a few choice comments, but I didn’t say anything, figuring Jake would get mad at me again.
“I’m burning the last of the brush pile from the back of the property,” Jake said to Hank. “What do you want me to do now?”
“Take a break,” Hank demanded.
“I’m fine,” Jake said. “I’ll rest after the work’s done. I’m trying to keep you off your bum knee as long as I can, old man.”
“I’ll make you think old man, you piss ant.” Hank glared at Jake, but the taunting smile on his face led me to believe he wasn’t serious. “If you want something to do, why don’t you take the culled birds down to the pond? Take Emily with you. She’s bored. It’ll give her something to do.”
Jake started to argue but decided against it. “Come on, Emily.”
We strolled to the barn, where Jake picked up a bucket covered with a lid and continued toward the pond. Almost there, we heard the sound of a truck rumbling down the driveway. Jake tensed for a moment and reached for my arm but relaxed as three young men and a pretty blond woman slid out of the tan Ford. All four of them waved at Hank, then walked in our direction.
“Can’t say I’m surprised to see them,” Jake said, undeterred from his mission.
I stumbled after him but curiously glanced back at the new arrivals in the distance. “Who are they?”
“Friends of mine,” Jake said, stopping next to a moss-covered tree and removing the lid on the bucket.
The pond sat closer to the back of the property, surrounded by red oak and cypress trees. A green scummy film of algae floated on the surface around the lilies, and small turtles rested on a log within the cattails at the water’s edge. Between the thick, stinky black mud on the shoreline and the green climbing vines and weeds, the pond resembled a cross between a jungle and a swamp.
I leaned over to check out the contents of the bucket and saw nothing but dead birds. “Oh, gross! Why are there dead birds in there?”
Jake picked one up and threw it in the pond. “Got to get rid of them somehow.”
“How’d they die?”
“Disease or sometimes gnats. Most of these were already dead,” Jake explained, picking up another. “Well, except for this little guy right here. He was on his deathbed. Hank pulled his head off this morning.”
My God! First squirrels and now his own birds? If Dog wasn’t already dead, I’d worry about his safety.
“This is disgusting,” I said, openly disapproving of Hank’s methods. “I’m not going to stand out here in the weeds, watching you throw dead birds into a smelly pond.”
I turned to walk off, but a dragonfly flitted past my nose. Flustered, my right heel caught on a cypress knee, and I stumbled backward into the pond. I was surprised at the depth. No shallow area to stand in, just a sheer drop-off into deep water. I broke the surface of the water, used my hands as a squeegee to wipe the slimy film from my face, and thought about crying.
Hank peered over the old tractor he tinkered with and laughed. “What you doing in there, honey? Checking to see if those fish have balls?”
Jake grinned as he continued throwing dead birds into the pond. Three young men ran out to join Jake on the bank, but no one appeared overly concerned about my situation.
One wearing a white straw cowboy hat asked Jake, “You going to fish her out?”
“Nope.”
“Mind if we do?”
“Have at her,” Jake said, throwing the last dead bird into the pond.
I waited for one of them to produce a rope or lean down on the bank and offer me a hand, but nooo…the morons stripped off their shirts, hats, and boots, then jumped in.
“Might want to hurry,” Jake told them. “Charlie’s lost interest in the birds.”
I splashed some floating algae away as the man who wore the cowboy hat reached me. “Who’s Charlie?” I sputtered, clueless.
The man grinned. “Hell, darlin’, he’s the gator you’re sharing this pool with.”
I shrieked and flailed my arms, trying to grab anything I could on the side of the bank to pull myself up. The man grabbed me and hauled me quickly toward the side of the pond as the other two men swam next to us. I screamed all the way there.
“Sweetheart, I’m starting to go deaf. Now, stop thrashing around before you drown both of us.” We reached the side where the slope of the bank wasn’t as severe, and he dragged us both out of the water, dropping me on the muddy bank. “See, you’re fine. That hissy fit you threw was uncalled for. God always takes care of helpless creatures.”
Yeah, sure. Tell that to the squirrels and the birds.
Once the other two men crawled out of the pond, the man who saved me pulled me to my feet. “You must be wearing lotion or something. I’ve caught salamanders in here that weren’t as slippery as you,” he said, making me want to roll my eyes. Sure, it had nothing to do with the green slime clinging to me. “You all right now, sweetheart?”
“Yes, thank you.” I glanced over at Jake, who casually talked to the pretty blonde with the overinflated chest. She walked up and hugged him, which made my eyes narrow. “Excuse me for a moment. I have to go borrow a gun from Hank.”
I stormed past the man, but he grasped me firmly by the arm and threw me over his shoulder. “Oh, no you don’t, Tiny. I haven’t seen Jake in over a year. You can’t kill him until I’m through with him. Now, let’s go get you cleaned up.”
The man carried me up to the house before putting me down. He turned on the hose and sprayed me from head to toe. The well water sprayed out warm at first, but quickly changed to freezing cold. I shivered.
“Cold?” he asked.
“F-f-freezing.”
He pulled me to his chest and kept his arm around my waist as the hose rained down over the both of us, rinsing off the green algae. I tried to move away, but he tightened his grip.
“Stay still, darlin’. I’m trying to keep you warm.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about some strange guy—especially a friend of Jake’s—holding me against his shirtless, nicely toned body. That is, until the others walked closer to the house, the blonde’s arm looped through Jake’s and her right breast resting comfortably against his bicep. They were deep in conversation, smiling at each other, and…and well, it pissed me off.
I did the only thing I could in this situation. I leaned into Jake’s friend and wrapped my arms around the back of his neck. His green eyes sparkled like emeralds and the color deepened. My lips were close to his as I breathed out, “Is there anything I can do to thank you?” I purposefully made my tone sultry.
Jake’s mouth hinged open, followed by the mouths of the men and the woman on Jake’s arm. The only one who didn’t look shocked was the man holding me, though his breathing was a little ragged. He turned the hose on himself and sprayed his chest, letting the ice cold water run down his front. The ridge in his pants led me to believe it wasn’t the algae he tried to do away with.
“Oh, daaamn. I wanted to hose her down,” the biggest guy said. “Why does Cowboy get to have all the fun?”
I looked back at the man with the hose, knowing Jake was walking toward us. “Cowboy, huh? That’s a strange name.” Cowboy winked at me and grinned. My eyes scanned to the swell in his jeans. “So, Cowboy, is that a kink in your hose or are you just happy to—”
A hard hand bit into my arm, turning me around. All I saw was Jake’s intense glare. He didn’t say anything, but dragged me off toward the cottage.
He wrangled me into the bathroom, turned the water in the shower on, and yelled at me. “What the hell was that?”
“What?” I asked innocently.
“You’re supposed to be my girlfriend, remember? Do you always hug up on strange men like that?”
“The water was freezing, and I was covered in slime.” I stepped into the shower, closed the stall door, and stripped out of my wet, nasty clothes. “No thanks to you, of course.”
“It’s not like I pushed you in.”
“Well, you sure the hell didn’t pull me out. You left me in there with an alligator. A fucking alligator! I could kill you.”
“You know, it’s against the law to threaten a federal agent,” Jake warned, his tone lightening with amusement.
“Are you going to arrest me?” I asked, my tone bordering on a dare.
“No.”
“Good. Fuck you, then!” I threw my bra and panties over the rail, hoping they smacked him in the face, but he just laughed. I stepped under the spray, splashing warm water on my face and letting it run over my hair, warming my cold body as it trailed down. “Who’s your friend?” I asked, trying to lighten my harsh tone.
Jake paused before answering. “Look, Cowboy may be a friend of mine, but I don’t want you to—”
“Not him. I’m talking about the blond chick.”
“Oh, you mean Bobbie Jo?”
“Bobbie Jo? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”
Jake chuckled. “Not around here it’s not. It’s her name. She and I go way back. You’ll like her. Sweet girl.”
My eye roll was lost on him through the steamed up shower door. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure we’ll be besties.”
“Finish up in here. Then I’ll give you a proper introduction—one where you shake hands instead of rubbing against each other’s body parts.”
“Funny,” I said, though I heard the door shut and realized he was already gone.
I got dressed, blow-dried my hair, and dabbed a little makeup on before returning outside. It wasn’t hard to find them, since I could hear the sounds of them clowning around in the backyard. When I walked up, they were throwing back beers and laughing, though Cowboy was no longer with them. That was probably a good thing.
Jake motioned to the others one at a time. “Emily, this is Bobbie Jo.” The thin, pretty blonde with the perfect glowing complexion and large boobs smiled and waved politely, as Jake motioned to a little guy next to her. “And this is Ox.”
“Ox? Does anybody here have a normal name?” The dig was meant for Bobbie Jugs. I mean, Jo. God, why do I do that? I don’t even know the poor girl. It’s not her fault Jake has me so tied up in knots.
Laughing, Ox stepped over and shook my hand. His earsplitting, boisterous laugh seemed out of place with his little body. “Judd does,” Ox said. “And Jake, of course.”
I looked over to Judd, who was squeezing superglue into a cut on his leg, and reveled at his size. He was a big boy—not fat, but big. Everywhere. He had a large barrel head, broad shoulders close to three feet wide, and bulges in places that were unnatural. He gave a quick nod and went back to what he was doing.
“What happened, Judd?”
“It’s no big deal. I banged my knee against a root or something when I jumped into the pond. Must’ve gashed my leg open.”
I stepped closer for a better look. “It looks like it needs stitches,” I said, appalled by the angry-looking laceration. “And the pond water is probably crawling with bacteria. You might want to get it checked out.”
Everyone around me burst into laughter.
Jake shook his head at me. “He’ll be fine. Each of us has stepped out of the pond at some point with a knick on us.”
A knick? Was he kidding? That’s like saying the scar left after open-heart surgery resembled a cat scratch. Jesus. They were all fucking nuts.
“Good thing you didn’t get hurt, Emily. You probably would’ve cost me a trip to the emergency room,” Jake said, suggesting to everyone I was a wuss.
“Actually, I hurt my finger when I tried to climb out. I think I broke it.”
“No you didn’t,” Jake said, resting his arm on the bench behind Bobbie Jo. “You probably jammed it.”
I gritted my teeth but held my ground. “No, I think I broke it. Besides, how would you know? You haven’t even seen it. My finger could be mangled and twisted into some weird shape.”
Jake sighed. “All right, you big baby, let me have a look at your finger.” After a silent pause, his friends chuckled. “Not that one, smartass.”
Somebody approached me from behind, and I turned to get a better look. Cowboy stood there in all his handsome perfection with an incredible smile flattering his already-gorgeous face.
“Emily, this is—”
“We’ve already met,” Cowboy said, interrupting Jake as he lifted my hand to his lips, kissing it lightly. “Intimately,” he added, his smile widening.
“Briefly,” I corrected, pulling my hand from his.
“Jake takes all the fun out of everything.” Cowboy’s glittering green eyes playfully probed mine. “Most of my encounters with women are not nearly as short-lived.”
My mouth twisted with sarcasm. “Do women agree with that statement, or is that just your perception?”
“Holy shit!” Ox said, laughing. “Where’d you find this girl, Jake?”
Cowboy’s jaw tightened, as if I had issued a challenge. He lowered his head to my ear and whispered, “Why don’t you take a test drive and find out for yourself?” He didn’t wait for an answer before walking over to grab a beer from the cooler.
I doubted many women turned him down. If ever. He had a confident, loose-hipped gait and was the most genetically perfect specimen I’d ever laid eyes on. But I decided right then he had a flaw. He was too perfect. No one is that handsome, that confident, or that charming. Definitely something wrong with him. I mentally giggled to myself as I considered he had a small endowment. The universe does have to keep a certain balance in the world, after all.
“Jake,” Bobbie Jo said, “I need to get going, or I’m going to be late picking up my mama. Can you give my guys a ride home? I’m sure they all want to stay awhile longer.”
“Yeah, no problem.” Jake reached over and gave her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Stop by again when you get a chance. We’ll catch up.”
“I will. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you,” she said, her eyes glimmering.
Oh, jeez. I think I just threw up in my mouth.
By the time she drove away, the sun dipped behind the trees and mosquitoes invaded the backyard. We took refuge near the burn pit.
“So what are you boys doing here?” Jake asked.
“Had to see if the rumor was true,” Judd replied.
“What rumor?”
Judd grinned widely. “The rumor about you being engaged.”
Jake’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. “What? Who told y’all that?”
“Ran into Junior at the hardware store. He said you were going to marry this one.”
I couldn’t help but smile since I figured Bobbie Jo probably heard the same rumor.
Jake’s eyes flitted to me and back to Judd. “She’s my…girlfriend. That’s it.” He wasn’t a good liar. Even I sensed his hesitation to answer.
Cowboy leaned over toward me. “Pregnant?”
“Of course not,” I replied, shocked by his assumption.
The corner of his lips curled upward, and his voice grew huskier. “Want to be?”
“Does that approach render most females helpless?”
“It’s been known to light a few fires,” he said, winking. “Lucky for you, I’m a fireman.”
“You’re a fire fighter?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He waited for me to be impressed.
“Well, Cowboy, if my pussy is ever in need of being rescued, then I’ll be sure to give you a call. Until then, you’ll just have to play with your own hose.”
Jake’s three friends stared, slack-jawed and silent, as he shook his head. “You’ll get used to it,” Jake told them. “Emily has a bad habit of using colorful language.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Ox said with surprise. Then he turned to me and said, “We don’t normally hear that kind of talk from women. They tend to mind their Ps and Qs around here.”
“She isn’t a southern belle,” Judd said, smiling. “That’s for damn sure.”
“I like it,” Cowboy said, shrugging his brows at me. As if that surprised me.
I rolled my eyes. “You mean to tell me Bobbie Jo doesn’t use bad language? Ever?”
“Bobbie Jo was head cheerleader, as well as valedictorian,” Jake said in her defense. “She always set a great example of a lady, and the other girls admired her for it.”
Damn. Miss Perfect was getting on my nerves, and she wasn’t even there. “Yeah right, and I bet all the guys admired her oversized pom-poms.”
“Emily, don’t be crude,” Jake said, scrunching his nose. “She hasn’t done anything to you. She’s a good person, and you’d like her if you gave her half a chance.” He stood and walked away, mumbling something about getting more beer.
Ox and Judd set off after him, leaving Cowboy alone with me. Great. Smart move, guys. Then again, I was being a little bitchy. Bobbie Jo didn’t seem so bad. Maybe I should spend some time getting to know her. And who knows? We might even end up friends.
“Don’t worry,” Cowboy said. “He’ll get over it. Jake’s a little overprotective when it comes to her.”
“And why’s that?”
Cowboy leaned back in his chair and stretched out his long legs, kicking one scarred boot over the other. “Jake dated Bobbie Jo in high school. They took each other’s virginity.”
Now, I had to compete with the virgin he deflowered in high school?
Fucking great.