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She’d tried to deal with it by changing focus.
She’d taken a mouthful of wine….
And everything had gone to hell.
His brothers said something. Jacob Wilde swung toward them. There was a fast, obviously unpleasant exchange of words.
And then he’d headed straight at her, and all she could think of was that mountain lion and how she’d felt when it had turned its savage eyes on her….
Except, he wasn’t a lion and she wasn’t a scared kid, and she’d be damned if she’d let him intimidate her.
The thing was, it was all happening in slow motion.
His single-minded approach.
His brothers hurrying after him.
“Jake,” Caleb called. “Jake, wait a minute!”
“Dammit,” Travis said, “you’re making a big mistake.”
By now, heads were turning. People were staring. That was the last thing she needed.
A public scene over who-knew-what when she’d spent the past weeks doing everything she could to avoid public anythings!
Okay.
She took a step back.
Forget facing the lion. Forget refusing to be intimidated. The man was crazy, and she was absolutely not going to permit him to—
Too late.
His hand, hard as steel, wrapped around her wrist.
“Going somewhere?” he said in a low voice.
Addison’s heart was racing. It was difficult to speak calmly, but she did.
“Let go of me.”
“Why? My brothers said you were eager to meet me.”
“Hardly eager.” Her gaze went from his face to her wrist, then back again. “Are you deaf? I said—”
“Deaf as well as blind?” He smiled thinly. “No, Miss McDowell. One disability at a time is my limit.”
She winced. The guy was a nut-job but she had no intention of insulting him.
“I can assure you, I didn’t mean—”
“No. And you can also assure me you didn’t tell my brothers how much you wanted to meet me.”
“Jake,” Travis said in a warning tone.
Addison looked past Jacob Wilde. His brothers had positioned themselves slightly behind him, one on either side. They seemed ready to grab him and march him away.
The idea should have been comforting. It wasn’t. All three Wildes were big and strong and hard-bodied, but she had no doubt that this one’s icy rage would surely give him an edge.
Maybe a calm approach would work.
“I told them I’d agree to meet you,” Addison said. “It seemed to mean a lot to them.”
“You wanted to meet me,” he said coldly. “And when they told you they knew damned well I wasn’t going to be interested in taking you on as a client—”
“A client?” Her eyes narrowed. “What they wanted was for me to give you a job.”
“The hell they did.”
Addison felt her resolve to stay calm slipping.
“They close to begged me to give you a reason to hang around.”
“Right,” Jake snapped. “That’s why you went into that—that routine.”
What was he talking about?
“Look,” she said carefully, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding—”
“The look. The smile. That last little touch, the sip of wine and that sexy lick of your lips.”
“You,” she said flatly, “are a lunatic.”
“Holy hell,” Caleb growled, “Jake. Man, you’ve got this all wrong.”
Jake ignored him.
“Has it ever failed you before, or is this a first?”
Addison stared at him. The ridged scars below the black eye patch were red and angry-looking.
She felt a twinge of compassion.
His visible wounds were brutal. Maybe they went even deeper. Was his behavior yet another indication of what he’d gone through?
He’d sacrificed for his country. For people like her. If he’d come away from the war with some idiosyncrasy, some behavioral tic—
“Don’t,” he said sharply.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t look at me as if I were a dog lying by the side of the road.” His hand tightened on her wrist; he gave a little twist that brought her to her toes and she gave a soft, inadvertent gasp. “I don’t need your pity any more than I needed your come-on.”
So much for compassion.
“Come-on? You think I—” Addison glared at his brothers over Jake Wilde’s shoulder. “Get your lunatic brother away from me,” she said through her teeth, “and do it fast!”
“Jacob,” Travis said, “let’s go outside, okay? Get some fresh air—”
“Jake,” Caleb said, “man, let go of the lady.”
The certifiably insane Wilde brother didn’t respond. Then, after what seemed an eternity, he dropped his hand from hers.
She wanted to look and see if his fingers had left marks, but she’d sooner have let her hand fall off than give him the satisfaction.
“I want to be sure you get the message, Ms. McDowell,” he said. “You can pull out all the stops. I still won’t assess the Chambers ranch.”
“It’s not the Chambers ranch. It’s mine. And I’d sooner see the place dry up and blow away before I’d let you step on it.”
He flashed a cold smile.
“It’s yours because you managed to con a sick old man into buying it for you.”
“You,” Addison said, “are a horrible man.”
“Why? Because I’m not an easy mark the way he was?”
Travis and Caleb groaned. Addison’s gaze flew to them again and seared them with fire.
“My, oh, my,” she said with a deadly calm, “you boys had quite an interesting chat.”
“Addison,” Travis said, “if you’re suggesting—”
“What I’m ‘suggesting,’” she snapped, “is that I’d sooner take advice from Elsie the cow than from this—this all-ego, no-brains brother of yours.”
“Listen, lady—”
“No,” Addison said, “you listen!” She took a quick step forward, lifted her chin, slapped her hands on her hips and glared. “Your brothers spent hours trying to sell you to me. You were a genius. You were brilliant. You—you were in communion with the soil and the grass and the horses—”
“Jake,” Caleb said quickly, “man, we never—”
“One look at my ranch, they said, and, poof, you’d know exactly what it needed.”
“And?”
“And even though I didn’t see any point to getting your assessment of something any fool can see is a disaster, I thought—thought,” she said coldly, glaring at Travis and Caleb again, “that I could trust them.”
“You can,” Travis said quickly. “We never—”
“And,” Addison said, ignoring the interruption, “because I was also foolish enough to believe your brothers were my friends, I said, okay, I’d give the Ranch Guru five minutes of my time.”
Jake wanted to laugh. Ridiculous, when he was so ticked off. Instead, he folded his arms over his chest.
“How generous,” he growled.
“Addison. Jake. You guys are both—”
“Which is why,” Addison continued, with a withering glace at Caleb, “which is the only reason I came to this—this hail-the-conquering-hero party where I endured being hit on by every dumbass cowboy over the age of twelve, and the way the women looked at me, as if my sole purpose in life was to steal their homely, fat, drooling husbands.”
Travis made a choking sound. Caleb rubbed his forehead. Jake had a hard time keeping from doing the same.
“And I waited, patiently, for the main event.”
“The what?” Jake said.
“The main event, Captain. You. I waited and waited, and you finally showed up, but did your sainted sisters or your magnificent brothers introduce us?”
“Our sisters don’t know anything about this,” Travis said. He looked around. “And could we take this in another room? We really don’t need an aud—”
“I watched the three of you standing there, swilling beer—a disgusting beverage but then, what could anyone expect from Texans?”
Dammit, Jake thought, the McDowell woman was some piece of work. Beautiful. Tough. And flawlessly delivering insult after insult, as if this whole thing wasn’t her fault.
It was, of course, and he disliked her intensely, but he had to admire her for her guts.
“Beer, from the bottle,” she added, with a visible shudder. “And you looked at me. Talked about me.” Addison extended her hand, poked Jake in the chest. He jumped in surprise. “Although actually, Captain, you didn’t look. You stared.”
He felt heat rise in his face. “I did not stare.”
“Oh, please! You stared. And when I got tired of it, tired of cooling my heels and waiting for you to come over, you know, do the polite thing, introduce yourself, shake my hand, I thought, okay, if he doesn’t have any manners, I do. So I gave you a little salute.”
Jake frowned. The raised wineglass?
“I even smiled.”
Yes. Yes, she’d smiled, but—then she’d taken that slow, sexy sip of vino …
“You didn’t so much as blink, so I drank a little wine to give you the chance to start moving in my direction.”
Caleb cleared his throat.
“Addison, if you’d calm down—”
“I am calm,” she said coldly. “Very calm. And, by the way, the two of you are fired.”
“Why fire them? I’m the one you’re ticked off at.”
“Your DNA is their DNA. That’s good enough for me.”
