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“That’s brilliant.”
“It is, indeed.”
“Well, that’s fine. Because if you’ve dumped my brothers, there’s no need for me to hold back.”
Addison barked out a laugh.
Jake’s mouth thinned.
“That ranch you own? It’s worth exactly what you paid for it.” He smirked. “Unless, of course, you put a higher price on what you gave the poor sucker who left it to you than those services were truly worth—”
Addison slapped his face.
Hard.
The imprint of her hand stood out on his cheek in crimson relief.
“Oh, man,” Travis said, but the words were lost in the sound of a hundred shocked party guests dragging air into their lungs all at the same time.
“No wonder your brothers want to keep you where they can see you,” she said. “You can’t be trusted in polite society.”
His dumbfounded expression told her she’d just scored a perfect shot.
Why hang around and ruin it?
Addison turned her back and faced the crowd.
“Move,” she said, and a path opened like the parting of the Red Sea.
She stomped down that path … and stopped, halfway to the front door. What the hell, she thought, and she turned to face him one last time.
“You’re also a nasty, egotistical, despicable jerk.”
The crowd gasped again, then erupted in a frantic buzz of delighted whispers.
She’d given Wilde’s Crossing enough to talk about for the next decade.
So what?
She was out of here. Not just the Wilde house. She was out of the town, out of the state of Texas.
Back home, at least, she knew the enemy. She wouldn’t be taken in by a pair of brothers who looked like they’d stepped out of an old John Wayne movie, or by a man so tragically beautiful he’d made her heart ache.
Someone stepped out in front of her. A Wilde sister, Emma or Lissa or whatever in hell her name was.
“Miss McDowell. Please—”
“It’s Ms. McDowell. And you have my deepest sympathy.”
Addison stepped around the sister, yanked open the door and stepped into the night.
Travis and Caleb watched her go.
Then they looked at each other, grabbed Jake by the elbows and quick-marched him in the other direction, out the French doors that led to the patio.
“You,” Caleb said, “are an effing idiot.”
“You two are the idiots,” Jake snarled. “Thinking a woman like that could use her wiles to keep me in town—”
“Her wiles,” Travis said to Caleb. “He thinks we set it up so Addison would use her wiles.” His dark blue eyes narrowed. “Nobody’s used their ‘wiles’ since the nineteenth century, Jacob. And even if she had wiles, do you really think we’d ask her to use them?”
“Listen, I understand. You want me to hang around. And she’s a hot piece of—”
“She’s our friend,” Caleb said coldly. “At least, she was, until you got your nose out of joint because you realized she wasn’t coming on to you.”
Jake reddened.
“Why would I want her to come on to me?”
His brothers barked out matching laughs.
“Okay, she’s good-looking. But she was only coming on to me to get me to work for her.”
“Not even you can possibly believe that.”
Jake thought about it. And felt his belly start to knot.
“Okay. Maybe I, ah, maybe I overstated it, but—”
“Here’s how it went down, Jake. You wanted her to come on to you. And when you found out she wasn’t, you were too damned ticked off to admit that was what you wanted, so you decided to accuse her of coming on to you.”
“That,” Jake said coldly, “makes no sense at all.”
“It makes more sense than you do,” Travis said grimly.
“Hey. Just because your plan didn’t work—”
“Goddammit,” Caleb said, “she was right. You’re an egotistical jerk.”
Jake opened his mouth.
And shut it again.
His brothers had tempers. Hell, so did he. They’d chewed each other out before….
But never like this. Never with such intensity …
And maybe never with such honesty.
Were they … Could they be right?
“We owe her an apology,” Travis told Caleb, who nodded.
“That’s if she’ll accept one.”
“Let’s go,” Travis said … and Jake held up his hand.
“Wait, okay?” He cleared his throat. “So, ah, so this wasn’t a setup.”
“Lucky for you that you didn’t make that a question,” Caleb said grimly.
“Okay. Maybe I went … overboard. Maybe I read things into things—”
Travis snorted.
Jake ran his hands through his hair. “Ah, man, she’s right. I am certifiable. It’s just … it’s been a while since—a while since …” He shook his head. “You guys don’t owe her an apology. I do.”
“She won’t talk to you.”
“She will.”
“She won’t. She’s tough.”
Jake eyed his brothers. “Trust me,” he said. “I’m not exactly made of spun sugar.”
“You mean,” Caleb said innocently, “you’re not a candy ass?”
Jake grinned. “Ten bucks says she’ll not only accept my apology, she’ll agree to have dinner with me tomorrow night.”
“Twenty,” Travis said, “and you’re on.”
The brothers smiled at each other. Jake started off the patio, toward the side of the house, then turned back.
“I left my car near the creek.”
“Why’d you—”
“He just did,” Caleb said.
“Oh. Fine.” Travis dug the keys to his truck from his pocket and tossed them to Jake. “It’s the black Tundra in the driveway.”
“Remember,” Jake said. “Twenty bucks.”
His brothers grinned. “All talk, no action.”
It was one of their old lines. Jake laughed on cue….
But his laughter died by the time he reached Travis’s Tundra.
For a little while there, he’d almost forgotten.
All talk, no action was no longer a punch line. It was the sad truth. His brothers couldn’t know it but he did.
And, yeah, that was the reason he’d gone ballistic. He’d responded to a woman for the first time in almost two years….
Only to find out that she wasn’t interested.
Definitely, he owed her an apology. As for asking her to dinner …
Jake put the truck in gear and his foot on the gas.
Forget it.
He’d pay his brothers the twenty bucks and write the whole thing off as a mistake.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_063c9a18-dfdd-5b2d-8a91-3dcc941fc103)
CLOUDS HAD swallowed the moon and stars, turning the road into an inky ribbon that stretched toward infinity.
Addison had a head start but Jake drove fast, all but flooring the gas pedal. Every now and then, her taillights glowed crimson-bright ahead of him, but whenever the road curved, those lights disappeared.
She was driving fast, too. Dangerously so. Was she accustomed to dirt roads? Her world was surely one of limousines and taxis.
It surprised him that she could handle a car with such authority but then, everything about her surprised him.
He’d never seen such anger in a woman. Such fire.
And his stupidity had fueled it.
Jake frowned.
Talk about a man making fool of himself …
“Hell,” he muttered.
Apologizing wasn’t going to be easy. How did a man look a woman in the eye and say, “Okay, I’m an ass.” Or, better still, exactly what she’d called him, an arrogant jerk.
What kind of justification could he come up with to explain his behavior?
Not the truth.
Not that that second he’d seen her, he’d wanted her, that he’d reacted to her in a way he’d all but given up thinking he’d ever react to a woman again—
That believing she’d put on an act had all but destroyed him.
There wasn’t a way in the world he could admit any of that to her.
Nothing showed ahead of him but the bright tunnel created by the Tundra’s headlights. He goosed the gas, the truck shot forward and his reward was another quick wink of red taillights.
