Unridden: A Studs in Spurs novel (20 page)

He slid into her slowly, setting a lazy, gentle pace that was far nicer to wake up to than any alarm clock.

Jenna sighed. “Mmmm. I could get used to this.”

Slade drew in a deep breath behind her. His voice was soft when he said, “Me too.”

———

Slade pulled the car slowly up to the departures drop off area at Tulsa International Airport and the reality hit Jenna like a slap in the face. She was leaving and would most likely never see either of these men again.

Her throat constricted. Swallowing was almost painful. “So, I guess I better go in.”

Slade flung open the driver’s side door without looking at her. “I’ll get your bags out of the trunk.”

Jenna turned to Mustang, who’d been seated to her right for the drive as she squished in the middle of the front bench seat of the car. Jenna hadn’t minded the close accommodations between the two men. In fact, considering she’d most likely never be this close to them again, she’d liked it.

She glanced up and found Mustang watching her. “We have your cell phone number. We’ll call later and make sure you got home okay.”

Jenna nodded, tempted to point out how she didn’t have a cell phone number for either of them, but then she thought better of it. If she didn’t have their numbers, it was because they wanted it that way. She doubted any of their one-night stands, or even three-night stands, had their phone numbers.

The moment Jenna stepped out of that car, she’d be among the ranks of all those that had come before her. She’d be in their past, and a new parade of women would march into their future.

Jenna’s sad reverie came to an abrupt end when Slade yanked open Mustang’s door and leaned in.

His eyes met Jenna’s for the briefest of moments, then he pulled them away. She thought she’d seen a hint of sadness or regret, until he addressed Mustang. “We better get moving. The cop’s giving me the eye for parking here too long.”

He was hinting not so subtly she needed to go. Apparently Slade wasn’t having as much trouble with her leaving as she was.

Mustang hauled his large frame out of the door and then leaned down to help her. “We could park and wait with you if you want.”

Raising a brow expectantly, Mustang waited for her to give him the word and she was sure he’d do exactly as he’d offered. She’d like nothing more than to have them wait with her, but why prolong the inevitable? “Nah. It’s okay. I have to check in for my flight at the gate and I’ll have to pass through security to do that. They won’t let you go through with me without a ticket.”

Unlike Slade, who had been cold and distant for the entire drive to the terminal, at least Mustang was decent enough to look disappointed at that. He ran his hands up and down her arms. “Jenna, I just want to say I will never forget this past week and that’s entirely because of you.”

Oh boy.

She was going to cry. She really did not want to do that. Jenna laughed and blinked back the tears. “I can honestly say I’ll never forget this week either.”

Mustang grabbed her face in both hands and kissed her smack on the mouth. “You kick ass with that book of yours. Okay, darlin’?”

Forget about the stupid book. It was her heart she was worried about.

When Jenna nodded, not trusting her voice, Mustang released her and, after a quick glance at Slade, walked around to the driver’s side of the car.

Watching Mustang, Slade frowned. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting in and starting the car so it looks like we’re leaving. That way the cops won’t chase us off and you two can take a few minutes to say goodbye.”

That left Jenna alone on the sidewalk with her luggage and Slade, who seemed to have eyes for everything except her. He glanced at her suitcase. “Um, so, you got everything, right?”

She patted the laptop case she’d just slipped onto her shoulder and glanced at the large suitcase on wheels standing ready next to her. “Yeah. This is it. Just the two bags.”

He nodded. “Okay, then.”

Before Slade’s big brush off, Jenna had been concerned what the policemen would think if they noticed her kissing two cowboys goodbye. But just as she decided she really didn’t care what they thought, it appeared as if Slade might leave her there without so much as a peck on the cheek or even a handshake.

Closer to tears than she had been even during Mustang’s touching farewell, Jenna was about to say goodbye and flee to the bathroom to bawl in private when Slade wrapped one strong arm around her, hauled her up close to him and planted a knee-shaking kiss on her mouth. He released her just as suddenly and left her swaying in the aftermath. “Get home safe, Jenna.”

Slade grabbed the passenger’s side door, slid in, and slammed it shut without looking back. Mustang pulled the car away and another vehicle full of travelers instantly pulled in to take its place. The significance of that was not lost on her. She’d be replaced just as quickly in their lives.

Jenna stood watching Slade’s car disappear amid the traffic until the hot wetness on her cheeks brought her back to her senses.

She grabbed the handle of her bag and turned. Spotting a curbside check in for her luggage, she managed to thrust the suitcase and her ticket at the attendant without totally losing control. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally finished with the paperwork and usual questions and Jenna was free to go. She stumbled through the sliding glass doors, searching for the sign for the restroom through eyes blurred with tears.

Getting through airport security sucked on a good day but today proved harder than usual. Jenna had grabbed some paper towels from the bathroom, wiped her eyes and gotten in line, only to find she wasn’t quite done feeling sorry for herself yet. She had to get out of the line to go back into the restroom and, crushed into a tiny stall with her carryon hanging from the hook on the back of the door, Jenna let herself get it all out.

Finally, when there were no more tears left, she washed her face and attempted one more time to get through the security inspection without bawling.

Jenna eventually made it through the metal detector, red, puffy eyes and all. Shoeless and jacketless, she was just shoving her laptop back into its bag when she heard a familiar voice and froze. Just a few passengers back stood Lizzie, bitching to a security officer about his not being careful enough with her Author of the Year award.

The perfect addition to a perfectly hellish day.

“No. Please no,” Jenna whispered to herself.

“Excuse me?”

Jenna looked up to see the security guard eyeing her. “Um, nothing. It’s just this stupid thing never fits back in the bag once I take it out. I’ll just carry it and deal with it at the gate.”

With another look that suggested she should get the hell out of everyone’s way and do just that, he turned to the next person behind her.

Abandoning putting herself back together until she was out of sight of Lizzie, Jenna clutched her laptop to her chest. She grabbed her shoes and jacket in one hand and her laptop bag in the other and in just her stocking feet, shuffled away as fast as her size six and a half feet could take her.

Jenna located the gate and sunk gratefully into a chair, dumping her armload of stuff on the seat next to her. Systematically, she got her shoes and jacket put back on. She was just deciding if she could bear to look at her pitiful half written book and try to get some work done during the wait when she looked up and saw a most unwelcome sight.

It seemed the travel gods, much like the love gods, were not with Jenna this week. First she had the misfortune of falling for two cowboys she’d never see again and now, the last person she wanted to spend the next two hours waiting for a flight with was headed right for her.

“Jenna! Are you on this flight too?”

She seriously considered denying it but then what would she do when it was time to board? “Hi Lizzie. Yeah, I am. That’s why I’m sitting here at the gate.”
Idiot
.

Lizzie planted herself in the seat directly opposite Jenna, then claimed another spot for her Author of the Year award.
Gag
.

Jenna blamed that damn award of Lizzie’s for her own willingness to get so drunk at the bar, and consequently suck face with a twenty-one-year-old bull rider in the hallway outside the bathroom. Though what had happened when she finally returned to her hotel and found Mustang and Slade waiting for her, Jenna didn’t regret at all.

That memory of Slade and Mustang led to a return of the feeling of heaviness in Jenna’s chest.

“So, I see you have your laptop out all ready to work.” Lizzie broke into Jenna’s thoughts.

“Yeah, well, you know…deadlines wait for no man.”

“I really should do some work too. My editor wants a follow up to my last
New York Times
bestseller ASAP.” Jenna scowled, but Lizzie was too self-centered to even notice as she continued on. “So anyway, enough about me.”

Yeah, right!

“Tell me. Who were those two hunks in the cowboy hats and the hot muscle car I saw dropping you off?”

Uh oh
. “Um…” How much had Lizzie seen? Jenna couldn’t say they were her cousins if she’d seen them both kiss her, and not exactly with familial pecks on the cheeks either. Jenna needed a good lie and quick. “I went to college with them both.”

“I thought you went to school in upstate New York?”

Dammit.
Jenna needed to stop putting so much personal information in her public biography if people like Lizzie were going to use it against her. “Yeah. You know upstate. Tons of farms and horses, and stuff. So that’s where I met them. We keep in touch, you know, with a letter or a phone call here and there.”

Lizzie nodded. “Do they live here in Tulsa?”

Sure. That sounded good. “Yup. They sure do. Big coincidence, huh?”

“Yes, quite.” Lizzie laughed and shook her head. “I had a feeling it was something like that. I got off the shuttle from the hotel with Carolina Braun and she swore she recognized them. She said she’d seen them at the bar in our hotel.”

Jenna nearly choked. “Really? Hmm. That must have been the night they stopped by to say hi to me.”

“Yeah, I figured. Carolina had this whole scenario worked up that you met these strangers at the bar and picked them up. Not just one, but two cowboys! I knew that couldn’t be the truth. It sounds more like the plot for a bad romance novel than your life.”

No, it sounds like the plot for a great romance novel.
Why hadn’t she thought of it herself? It was much better than the storyline Jenna had started writing. Even Mustang had known her original story had no potential. Through her bitchiness and passive aggressive, derogatory commentary about Jenna’s boring life, Lizzie had given Jenna the perfect idea for her story and she was going to write it, dammit, just as she had lived it.

Jenna laughed aloud at the thought and Lizzie raised a brow. Jenna covered by agreeing with her. “Carolina really thought that I picked up two strange cowboys and took them up to my hotel room for some kinky
ménage a trois
? How funny. I guess the risk of being a romance author is that we suffer from overactive imaginations.”

“Some do perhaps, but not me. I manage to be able to separate real life and my books.”

Jenna ignored Lizzie’s smugness and instead flipped open the lid of her laptop. The entire book was right there in her head. She could see it. All she had to do was get it down on paper. Holding her breath with excitement, Jenna opened a new document and began typing.

Ignoring Lizzie, Jenna worked until they announced the last call to board the plane, and even then, she carried the laptop open to her seat. She only closed the lid during takeoff, then she had it out again the moment the flight attendant announced they could use approved electronics.

Her fingers couldn’t type as fast as her brain fed her the words. The characters, the conflict, the plot points, the story arc…heart pounding, Jenna realized it was all right there for the taking.

This was going to be good. No, it was going to be great. Maybe.
Damn
. Her insecurity started to kick in but she refused to let it and stomped it back down. It didn’t really matter anyway because, good or not, she needed to get this story out of her head and onto paper.

Chapter Twenty-two

Mustang downed one last sip of beer and stood. “Can I have Jenna’s phone number back for a second?”

While he was heading back to the bathroom, he might as well use the payphone and call Jenna too. She should have landed by now and he had promised they would call and check on her.

“What? Why?” Slade got unreasonably defensive over Mustang’s simple request.

“I want to call and make sure she got back to New York okay.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.” Slade took another sip of his own beer and made no move to give Mustang the number.

“I’m sure she’s fine, too. But I promised her we’d call so I need her cell number.” Slade didn’t make a move so Mustang reiterated. “So can I have it, please?”

Slade planted his bottle on the table with enough force to make foam bubble up out of the top. “Why would you promise we’d call her? What the hell were you thinking?”

Blindsided by that insane question, Mustang frowned. “I was thinking that I wanted to make sure the woman we’d just spent the last few days and nights with made it home safely. What the hell, Slade? What is your problem?”

Slade had been cranky and weird ever since they’d left Jenna at the airport.

“My
problem
is that this thing with
us
and her can’t go anywhere and by calling her, or even promising to call her, you gave her hope that it could.”

Us.
The way Slade said that one word caught Mustang’s attention. He let it go but stored it away as further evidence that Slade was acting like an ass because he was falling for Jenna.

“That’s bull, Slade. Jenna’s smart. She’s not going to get crazy just because we call to check on her.”

“Yes she will. Women are like that.” Slade shook his head. “And what the hell was with that shit you said to her by the car? Was it really necessary for you to lie to her?”

Mustang sighed. “What are you talking about now?”