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Johanna shot a pointed look at him in case he might be harboring any thoughts of using this situation to wrangle his way back into her bed. Even when she’d broken things off, he’d been persistent for a solid month before accepting that she wouldn’t change her mind.
He simply arched an arrogant eyebrow before shifting his glacial gaze toward his grandmother. Only then did his eyes warm.
Mariah shook her head. “I’m not trying anything of the sort. I have trusted you with my animals for years. I’ve watched you grow up, known you since you were in elementary school. You also understand Stone. He won’t pull off anything questionable with you watching him. Can you think of anyone else he can’t charm?”
Johanna conceded, “You have a point there.”
Stone frowned, speaking for the first time, “Hey, I think I’m being insulted.”
Mariah reached up to pat his cheek. “If you only think it, Stone, then I must not be making myself clear enough. I hope you will be successful in proving yourself, but I have serious reservations.”
He scratched along his jaw, which was perpetually peppered with beard stubble no matter how often he shaved. “You trust Johanna over your own flesh and blood?”
“I do,” Mariah said without hesitation. “Case in point, you wanted to keep the expansion a secret, even from me.”
“Just until I had the details hammered out, to surprise you. To impress you.”
“Our company isn’t a grade-school art project to tape to the refrigerator. You need to show me you understand the importance of teamwork and compassion. That’s the reason I came up with this test.” Mariah’s calm but unwavering tone made it clear there would be no changing her mind. “Johanna, you’ll go with him to all the interviews with prospective families that I’ve lined up.”
“You’ve already found the families? You’re making his test too easy,” Johanna said suspiciously. “There must be a catch.”
“No catch. But as for easy?” Mariah laughed softly. “That depends on you two and your ability to act like grownups around each other.”
“Civility during a few interviews,” Johanna echoed. “We can handle that.” Maybe.
“More than during interviews. There’s travel time, as well.”
“Travel?” So there was a catch. She glanced at Stone who was looking too damn hot—and smug—leaning against the fireplace mantel. He simply shrugged, staying tall, dark and silent.
“These families I’ve lined up don’t live around the corner, but the corporate jet should make the journey easier.” Mariah patted her diamond horseshoe necklace. “You should be able to complete the meet and greets in a week.”
Stone stepped forward. “Gran, I can handle our travel arrangements.”
“You can. But you’re not going to. I’m calling the shots on this. My plan. My test,” his grandmother said succinctly.
Stone’s jaw clamped shut, and Johanna could see the lord of the boardroom holding himself back because of his grandmother’s condition.
“A week...” Johanna repeated. A week away from work, a week of more than just crossing paths for a few meet and greets. “Alone together, jetting around the country on the McNair corporate airplane?”
“I don’t expect the two of you to reunite. This truly is about Stone showing me he’s capable of the compassion needed to run a company.” Her hand slid up behind her neck and she unclasped the chain. “But I do hope the two of you can also find some way to reconcile your way back to friendship.”
Understanding settled over Johanna. “You want to be at peace—knowing your dogs are loved and that Stone and I won’t hurt each other again.”
Mariah’s fingers closed around her necklace and whispered, “My grandson’s well-being is important, more so than any company.”
Mariah had found Johanna’s Achilles’ heel. Was it an act from Mariah, to get her way? Heaven knew the woman could be every bit as wily as Stone. But given Mariah’s illness, the woman did deserve peace in every realm of her life.
“Okay,” Johanna agreed simply.
Mariah pressed the necklace into Johanna’s palm. “Good luck, dear.”
Johanna started to protest such an extravagant gift, but one look in Mariah’s eyes showed her how much it meant to her...a woman at the end of her life passing along pieces of herself. The horseshoe was so much more than diamonds. It was a gift of the heart, of family, a symbol of all Johanna wanted for her life.
All that Stone had thrown away without a thought.
She pitied him almost as much as she resented him for costing them the life they could have had together.
Her fist closed around the necklace, and she stood, facing Stone with a steely resolve she’d learned from Mariah. “Pack your bags, Casanova. We have a plane to catch.”
Two (#u72d34d13-40c7-5cc5-97a4-021f60838f20)
Staring out the office window, Stone listened for the door to click closed as his grandmother and Johanna left, then he sank into the leather desk chair, his shoulders hunched. He couldn’t believe Johanna had actually agreed to a week alone on the road with him.
Heaven or hell?
He’d started to argue with Mariah, but she’d cut out on the conversation, claiming exhaustion. How could he dispute that? If anything, he wanted to wrap her in cotton to protect her even as she made her way to her favorite chaise longue chair up in her sitting room.
The prideful air that had shone in Mariah’s eyes kept him from following her. Not to mention the intuitive sense that she needed to be alone. He understood the feeling, especially right now. He and his grandmother were alike in that, needing privacy and space to lick wounds. A hard sigh racked his body as he tamped down the urge to tear apart the whole office space—books, computers, saddles and framed awards—to rage at a world that would take away his grandmother.
The last thing he wanted to do was leave Fort Worth now and waste even one of her remaining days flying around the country. Even with Johanna.
What exactly was Mariah’s angle in pairing them up on this Mutt Mission of Mercy? Was she making him jump through hoops like one of her trained dogs to see how badly he wanted to run the company, to prove he had a heart? Or was she matchmaking, as Johanna had accused? If so, this wasn’t about the company at all, which should reassure him.
More likely his multitasking, masterminding grandmother was looking to kill two birds with one stone—matchmaking and putting him through the wringer to make him appreciate what he’d inherit when he took the reins of the company.
He just had to get through the next seven days with his former fiancée without rehashing the train wreck of their messy breakup where she’d pointed out all his emotional shortcomings. He couldn’t give Johanna what she’d wanted from him—a white picket fence family life. He wasn’t wired that way. He truly was aptly named. He might have overcome the rough start in life, born with an addiction, spending most of his first ten years catching up on developmental delays—but some betrayals left scars so thick and deep he might as well be made of stone.
He understood full well his grandmother’s concerns about him were true, even if he disagreed about the company needing a soft-hearted marshmallow at the helm. Although God knew he would do anything to give his grandmother peace, whatever her motivation for this doggy assignment. The business was all he would have left of her and he didn’t intend to throw that away because hanging out with Johanna opened him up to a second round of falling short. His hand fisted on the chair’s armrests as he stared out at the rolling fields filled with vacationers riding into the woods.
No, he didn’t expect a magical fix-it with the only woman he’d ever considered marrying. But he needed closure. Because he couldn’t stop thinking about her. And he was growing weary of her avoiding him.
Truth be told, he would give his right arm for the chance to sleep with Johanna again. And again. And most certainly again, because she ruled his thoughts until he hadn’t been able to touch another woman since their breakup seven months ago. That was a damn long time to go without.
The life of a monk didn’t suit him. Frustration pumped through him, making him ache to punch a wall. He dragged in breaths of air and forced his fists to unfurl along the arms of the chair.
A hand rested lightly on his shoulder.
Stone jolted and pivoted around fast. “Johanna? You’ve been there the whole time?”
He’d assumed she’d left with his grandmother.
“I started to tell you, but you seemed...lost in thought. I was searching for the right moment to clear my throat or something, and that moment just never came.”
She’d stood there the whole time, watching him struggle to hold in his grief over his grandmother’s announcement? The roomy office suddenly felt smaller now that he was alone with Johanna. The airplane would be damn near claustrophobic as they jetted across the country with his grandmother’s pack of dogs.
“What did you need?” His voice came out chilly even to his own ears, but he had a tight rein on his emotions right now.
Johanna pulled her hand off his shoulder awkwardly. “Are you okay?”
There was a time when they hadn’t hesitated to put their hands all over each other. That time had passed. A wall stood between them now, and he had no one to blame but himself. “What do you mean?”
Her sun-kissed face flooded with compassion. “Your grandmother just told you she has terminal cancer. That has to be upsetting.”
“Of course it is. To you, too, I imagine.” The wall between him and Johanna kept him from reaching out to comfort her.
“I’m so sorry.” She twisted her fingers in front of her, the chain from the diamond horseshoe necklace dangling. “You have to know that regardless of what happened between us, I do still care about your family...and you.”
She cared about him?
What a wishy-washy word. Cared. What he felt for her was fiery, intense and, yes, even at times filled with frustrated anger that they couldn’t be together, and he couldn’t forget about her when they were apart. “You care about my family, and that’s why you agreed to my grandmother’s crazy plan.” It wasn’t that she wanted to be alone with him.
“It influenced my decision, yes.” She shuffled from dusty boot to dusty boot, drawing his attention to her long legs. “I also care about her dogs and I respect that she wants to look after their welfare. She’s an amazing woman.”
“Yes, she is.” An enormity of emotion about his grandmother’s health problems welled inside him, pain and anger combatting for dominance, both due to the grinding agony that he couldn’t fix this. Feeling powerless went against everything in his nature.
It made him rage inside all over again, and only exacerbated the frustration over months of rejection from Johanna.
Over months of missing her.
Something grouchy within him made him do the very thing guaranteed to push Johanna away. Although arguing with her felt better than being ignored.
He stepped closer, near enough to catch a whiff of hay and bluebonnets, and closed his hands over her fingers, which were gripping the necklace his grandmother had given her. Johanna’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t move away, so he pressed ahead.
Dipping his head, Stone whispered against the curve of her neck, “Do you feel sorry enough for me to do anything about it?”
She flattened a hand on his chest, finally stopping him short. But her breathing was far from steady and she still hadn’t pushed him away.
“Not anything.” Her eyes narrowed, and he knew he’d pushed her far enough for now.
He backed away and hitched a hip on the heavy oak desk he’d climbed over as a kid. His initials were still carved underneath. “You’ve come back to offer comfort. Mission complete. Thanks.”
“You’re not fooling me.” Her emerald-green eyes went from angry to sad in a revealing instant. “I know you better than anyone.”
He reached for her fist, which was still holding the necklace from his grandmother, and drew Johanna toward him until her hand rested against his heart. “Then tell me what I’m feeling right now.”
“You’re trying to get me to run by making a move on me, because I’m touching a nerve with questions about your grandmother,” she said with unerring accuracy. He never had been able to get anything past her. “You’re in pain and you don’t want me to see that.”
“I’m in pain, all right—” his eyes slid down the fine length of her curvy, toned body “—and I’m more than happy to let you see everything.”
She tugged away from him, shaking her head. “For a practiced, world-class charmer, you’re overplaying your hand.”
“But you’re not unaffected.” He slipped the necklace from her fist deftly.
Standing, he put the chain around her neck as if that had been his reason for coming closer. He brushed aside the tail of her thick braid. Her chest rose and fell faster. As he worked the clasp, he savored the satiny skin of her neck, then skimmed his fingers forward along the silvery links, settling the diamond horseshoe between her breasts. Her heartbeat fluttered against his knuckles.
“Stone, our attraction to each other was never in question,” she said bluntly, her hands clenched at her sides and her chin tipping defiantly. “Because of that attraction, we need to have ground rules for this trip.”
“Ground rules?”
She met his gaze full-on. “No more of these seduction games. If you want me to play nice, then you be nice.”
“Define nice.” He couldn’t resist teasing.
“Being truthful, polite—” Her eyes glinted like emeralds. “And above all, no games.”
“I thought your only agenda here was making sure the dogs end up in good homes.” He toyed with the diamond horseshoe, barely touching her. A little taste of Johanna went a long way.
“I can place the dogs without you,” she said confidently. “I’m agreeing to your grandmother’s plan to give her peace of mind on a broader spectrum. She wants us to make this trip together, and the only way I can manage that is if you stop with the practiced seduction moves. Be real. Be honest.”
“Fine then.” He slid the horseshoe back and forth along the chain, just over her skin, like a phantom touch. “In all honesty, I can assure you that I ache to peel off your clothes with my teeth. I burn to kiss every inch of your bared skin. And my body burns to make love to you again and again, because, hell, yes, I want to forget about what my grandmother just told me.”
He dropped the charm and waited.
She exhaled long and hard, her eyes wide. “Okay, then. I hear you, and I believe you.”
Shoving away from the desk and around her, he strutted right to the door and stopped short, waiting until she turned to look at him.
“Oh, Johanna, one last thing.” He met her gaze dead-on, her eyes as appealing as her curves. “I wanted you every bit as much before my grandmother’s announcement. This has nothing to do with me needing consolation. See you in the morning, sunshine.”
* * *
Johanna had until morning to pack her bags and get her hormones under control.
Moonlight cast a dappled path through the pine trees as she walked the gravel lane from the barn to her cabin. Her heart ached as much as her muscles after this long day. Too long.
She opened her mailbox and tugged out a handful of flyers and a pizza coupon. Laughter from vacationers rode the wind as they enjoyed a party on the back deck of the main lodge, the splash of the hot tub mingling with the trickling echo of the creek that ran behind her little hideaway house.
Since graduation from vet tech school four years ago, she’d lived in a two-bedroom cabin on the Hidden Gem Ranch, the same cabin model used by vacationers. She liked to think of it as home, but truth be told she hadn’t had a home since her parents’ trailer had burned down when she was eighteen. She’d lived in an apartment during her two years of vet tech training, thanks to a scholarship from Mariah McNair. Then Johanna had accepted a job at Hidden Gem after graduation, her girlhood crush on Stone flourishing into full-out love.
Day by day, she’d earned a living, marking time, doing a job she adored but never putting down roots of her own, waiting on Prince Charming to pop the question. Once he did, she discovered her prince was a frog. A hot, sexy frog. But a frog nonetheless. She couldn’t blame Stone for how things shook down between them. She was the one who’d worn blinders, refusing to accept the truth until it was too late.
But with the silver chain around her neck, the diamond horseshoe cool against her skin, she could only feel the weight of impending loss, the finality of closing the book on this chapter of her life. Once Mariah died, there would be nothing left holding Johanna here. Nothing other than her tenacious attraction to Stone, but that only kept her from moving on with another man, finding a future for herself with the family she craved.
She pushed open the gate on her split rail fence. The night air carried the refrain of square-dancing music from the sound system that fed the pool area. Maybe she needed this trip away from the ranch for more reasons than she’d thought. Perhaps this wasn’t just about finding peace for Mariah, but snipping the last bonds that held her to Stone so she could move on without regrets.
She climbed the three wooden steps up to her dark log cabin, katydids buzzing a full-out Texas symphony. A creak just ahead stopped her in her tracks. She searched the railed porch, wishing she’d remembered to leave on a front light, but she hadn’t expected to come home so late. She blinked her eyes fast to better adjust to the dark and found a surprise waiting for her in one of the two rocking chairs.
Amie McNair sat with a gray tabby cat in her lap, a Siamese at her feet, both hers, soon to have feline siblings when Mariah’s pride joined them.
“Well, hey, there,” Amie drawled. “I didn’t think you would ever get home.”
What was Amie’s reason for waiting around? Was she here to talk about Mariah’s announcement? The impending loss had to be hard on the whole family. She and Amie weren’t enemies but they weren’t BFFs, either. They were more like childhood acquaintances who had almost been related. And because of that connection, she felt the need to hug this woman on what had to be one of the most difficult days of her life.
Johanna unlocked the front door and reached inside to turn on the porch light. “I worked late preparing to leave tomorrow, but I’m here now.” She let the screen door close again. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“Ah, so you’re actually going through with my grandmother’s plan.” Amie swept her hand over the tabby, sending a hint of kitty dander wafting into the night air as her bracelets jingled.
Even covered in cat hair and a light sheen of perspiration, Amie was a stunner, totally gorgeous no matter what she wore. She’d been the first runner-up in the Miss Texas pageant ten years ago, reportedly the first beauty competition she’d lost since her mother had teased up her hair and sent Amie tap-dancing out on the stage at four years old. She’d tap-danced her way through puberty into bikinis and spray tans. Johanna remembered well how Amie’s mama had lived for her daughter’s wins.
