Just Give In… (14 page)

During the daylight hours he worked very hard to keep from touching her, but right now, all he wanted to do was push the dress aside, put his mouth to her, pull up her skirt, while the long, tan legs wrapped around…

“What do you think?” she asked, twirling in front of him, the skirt floating dangerously high.

Jason reached for the tools on his kitchen table, found a screwdriver, and jammed the metal head into his palm.
Better.
“It’s okay.”

At his half-hearted comment, Brooke stopped her twirling abruptly. “Okay? That’s all?”

Realizing that, yes, he’d disappointed her again, Jason tried to make amends, while not sounding like a man with a raging hard-on that didn’t give a damn about a dress. “Pretty,” he told her.

Instantly her smile bloomed, and once again she twirled like a kid, her red high-heels clicking on the old floors. “Thank you,” she said, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

The cheek kisses were becoming standard. He wasn’t sure whether they were supposed to be sexual or paternal. In his mind, little girls kissed their grandparents on the cheek, but when Brooke kissed him, her lips stayed on his skin one second longer than seemed proper, her mouth a little more slack than what Jason thought paternal entailed. It was a lot easier to blame her kissing skills for the steel in his cock, rather than this own dirty mind, but no matter how hard he tried to erase the image, his mind always came back to one naked Brooke Hart.

Her chest brushed against him.

“You look pretty, too,” she said, eyes lingering on his face.

Jason laughed, glad to not think about one naked Brooke Hart. “I’m not pretty.”

Her fingers brushed at his unruly hair, traced the line of his freshly shaven, thankfully un-nicked jaw. “You are to me,” she said, her voice soft and floaty, and he didn’t want to justify her foolishness with a smile. It would only encourage the foolishness, but he smiled anyway.

“We’ll take two cars tonight. You’re trying to be respectable and people will talk if I drive you home.”

“You think they might guess that we’re doing the nasty?” she teased, and he didn’t want to be teased. Not while he kept picturing her skirt around her waist.

“Can we not talk about this?” he said, putting his screwdriver away, forcing his good eye off her legs.

“I’d like to talk about it,” she said, and his good eye wandered back to her legs, up over her cherry nipples.

“Where are your car keys?” he asked, his voice polite and sensible.

“I hid them.” She tilted her head, long hair falling around her shoulders. “Want to know where?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll have to take your truck. I can sit close if you’d like and you can slip your hand up my skirt.”

Jason swallowed, feeling his jeans start to cut off his blood flow, only a good thing. He didn’t like this flirty, butterfly Brooke. He didn’t like to think about slipping his hand up her skirt. “Have you been drinking?”

“Nope. Not a lick.” Her mouth curved up, and tonight it was extra red, extra glossy, extra wet.
Hell.
Jason took a step back.

“You can’t do this at the cook-off. If you want Austen to like you, you can’t be picking up strange men and having sex with them.”

“You’re not a strange man. You’re very normal.” She took a step forward, her hand sliding over his fly. Jason bit through his tongue. “Wonderfully normal.”

Regrettably, he removed her hand. “Brooke.”

She moved an inch closer. “Captain.”

Sweat pooled at the back of his neck. “We need to leave.”

“Why?” she asked, so close that he could feel the burn of her breasts.

“You don’t want to be late,” he explained, very logical, very rational, all while some odd perfume was seducing his nose.

“Better to be late than early.” Not content with nose-seduction, she unbuttoned the top button on his shirt, pressing a possessive kiss to his chest. When she raised her head, there was a bright red lipstick mark on his chest. Definitely not a grandfather kiss.

His hands reached out to grasp her hips and move her away, but accidentally landed underneath her skirt, discovering nothing but hot skin and a tiny thong.

“Captain,” she whispered, her voice shocked and shameless, exactly like in every porn movie ever made. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for your car keys.”

She raised a brow and wiggled beneath his clumsy hands. “Very clever. Do you think they’ll guess?”

Of course they would guess. They would see the lust in his eyes, they would see the way his fingers were always reaching in her direction. They would see the world’s most obvious hard-on in his jeans. “You’re going to hate yourself if you ruin your chances with Austen.” Even while he was warning her, his thumb was stroking the slit between her legs, feeling the swollen skin already damp with desire.

She closed her eyes, and he heard a pleased hum in her throat. When she opened them again, the longing there shocked him. “I like seeing you like this, crisp white shirt, no ballcap to hide your hair. You have great hair, like old copper, but soft, touchable.” Her fingers tangled there. “You should get dressed up more often.”

The wistful comment only cemented his belief that Brooke, much like every other woman, wanted a traditional man with a traditional job in a traditional house, but his cementlike beliefs didn’t stop his hands from staying between her legs, finding her slick, swollen and traditionally aroused.

When his finger slid inside her, she gasped, small crooked teeth clutching her lower lip. He knew just how that lower lip felt. “We’re going to be late,” he warned, feeling his restraint slip away. “You might mess up your dress. And think of all the time you spent getting it just right.”

“Save the dress,” she ordered with a laugh.

Not giving her a chance to change her mind, Jason fisted the material in his hand, raised the dress higher, until he could see the bare legs, the strapping red heels, and the tiny red scrap of silk.

No, there wasn’t a woman alive who was hotter, livelier, more giving than Brooke Hart, and although he knew her infatuation wasn’t going to last, he still wanted this. Part of him knew he had to be careful with her dress and he turned her around, bent her over the back of the couch, her dark hair falling low down the slender curve of her back. His hungry gaze traced over the ripe curves of her ass, and she was completely relaxed, completely trusting that he wouldn’t hurt her at all. Quickly he unzipped his fly, sheathed himself and then slid between her cheeks, pushing higher, watching her body arch in response.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised, his voice tough as nails, and he leaned over her, sliding loose one shoulder of her dress, baring her breast. She took his calloused palm, cupped it over the flawless skin, sighing as his thumb rolled back and forth over those cheery nipples that had mocked him earlier.

Slowly, ever so carefully he filled her, listening to her quiet sighs of pleasure, feeling her heart race under his hand.

Dog rolled closer, the red eyes unblinking, unseeing, but still accusing, and Jason swore.

Brooke turned her head, met his eyes and laughed. It was a great laugh, filled with life and joy, and Jason didn’t want to laugh back, but he did.

She leaned lower, hips tilted higher, and Jason wanted to swear again because this was not gentle and careful. He closed his good eye, but he could feel the clench of her muscles around him. He could smell her sex, and he moved faster, plunging deeper inside her, fingers pulling at the fragile material of her dress.

Her head lolled, her breathing as hard and as fast as his cock. Her hand squeezed his, pressing hard into the soft tissue of her breast. His ham-fisted fingers tightened and twisted on her skin, her dress, and he drove her even faster, not gentle, not careful. He could hear her words, nonsense, and her hips moved with him, making this too easy, too good. Wanting to feel her come around him, his free hand slid between the front of her thighs, stroking her where they were joined.
Temporary,
he reminded himself.
Only sex.

“Please,” she gasped, and his finger pressed hard against her clit, telling himself it was only sex. Instantly she froze, smooth legs locked against him. Long shudders racked her body, and unable to resist, he pushed aside her hair and pressed one small kiss on her neck. Her skin smelled like perfume, rich and exotic. Perfume mixed with sex. Rich, exotic sex.

The kind of sex that was never enough. Jason thrust one last time, nothing rich, nothing exotic. As he spilled himself into the condom, his fingers clenched, and the fragile material of her dress split into pieces.

There was a second afterward when he didn’t want to leave her, when his hand refused to release the soft skin of her breast, but it was that quiet ripping sound that jerked him back to reality. That and the stiffening of her shoulder, the way she didn’t meet his eyes.

Quickly he withdrew, pushed the ruined fabric down over the dream of her hips and cleaned himself up.

She turned, examined the torn dress, and then looked at him as if nothing was wrong.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, but she waved it off.

“It doesn’t matter. I liked the jeans and shirt better. Let me change, find my keys, and after that we can go. And look, not too late after all.”

T
HERE WERE CERTAIN
indignities that a man wasn’t supposed to endure, namely any TV show with Housewives in the title, bubble baths or competing for an apron that said “Kiss the Cook.”

Tables lined the high school parking lot, covered with sterno pans and red-checkered cloths. The air was filled with the scent of peppers because everybody knew that if the late afternoon sun wasn’t hot enough to kill you, then the food should. Jason arrived a good fifteen minutes behind Brooke, not that it mattered since he picked her out of the crowd right away.

Even in jeans and a yellow button-down she was gorgeous, dark hair waving around her face, dreamy eyes that saw life better than it was. No, in Brooke’s world, jeans were just as nice as a ripped sundress.

For a man who had seen a lot of bad, a ripped sundress shouldn’t be eating at his gut. Jason told himself not to dwell on ripped sundresses or past mistakes. No, for tonight, all he would do was buy himself a beer, find an unoccupied lawn chair, and pretend that he could dissolve into the ground.

After he’d found an isolated spot, Austen Hart dragged a chair over and clinked his bottle. Obviously Jason was failing at pretty much everything today.

“Howdy, neighbor! Gotta say you look like you’re having a hell of a time. Got some chili in the competition?”

Jason stared with his one good eye. “Do I look like I wear an apron?”

“Didn’t think so. Me, neither. I’m just here for the free beer because the bartender likes me.” Austen waved at the older woman who was pulling beer from the cooler in the back of her truck, who promptly waved back. “Gillian warned me not to get liquored up, but I’m thinking that several cold beers is the only way to escape judging this event.”

“Got that right,” Jason agreed, and then realized if he acted too miserable, Brooke’s older brother was going to wonder why Jason even bothered to come at all. Because he was a sap. That was why he bothered to come.

He had come to help her. That was why he was here. Once he’d pulled his face into some semblance of cheerfulness, he waded into the conversation that he thought would help Brooke. “How’s it going with your relative? Who’d you say was visiting? Your brother, your sister? Ah, hell, I don’t remember. Who’s the relative?”

“Little sis. That’s her over there.” Austen pointed his bottle in the direction of the woman who only minutes ago Jason had bent over his couch. Oh, not the time to think about sex. Really, really not the time. Discreetly Jason moved his bottle lower in his lap.

“She looks like a nice kid,” he commented innocently.

Austen shook his head sadly. “I think that’s the problem.”

“Why?”

“She looks so normal, so ordinary, so average. My old man, well, let’s just say things were very not normal, and…I don’t know.”

“What?” prompted Jason, now curious.

“You really care?”

Quickly Jason backtracked because he didn’t want to care and most of all, he didn’t want Brooke or Austen to know that he did. “It’s either listening to you or taste-testing chili and possibly revisiting the experience for the next five days. I think your family history sounds fascinating.”

“I like you, Jackson,” Austen told him, taking another swallow of beer. “It’s Jason.”

Austen clicked his tongue. “Oh, yeah. The Captain. Were you a captain in the service?”

“Staff sergeant.”

Brooke’s brother threw back his head and laughed, and Jason noticed Brooke looking curiously in their direction. Jason looked away.

“And how did that turn into captain?” Austen asked, and it seemed only fair to give the guy the truth.

“My ex didn’t like being married to a staff sergeant, so she told her aunt and uncle that I was a captain, and it stuck.”

“It’s better than Sarge.”

“True,” he acknowledged, and then steered the conversation away from himself. He was here to help Brooke. Help her establish a relationship with her brother, help her find a better place to stay. Yeah, he was here to help her, absolutely nothing more.

Jason took a sip of beer, then kicked back in his chair, looking as thoughtful and wise as a one-eyed man could be. “I have a lot of brothers and sisters, and we were never that close, but family is important. I mean, I have one brother, Richard, and he’s a total ass, but he’s family and I have to stick by him. You need to stick by your sister, too.” It wasn’t the truth, but the lie was for the greater good. Lately, he’d been justifying a lot by the greater good, which smacked of bullshit, but what the hell.

“I’ll stick by her as long as she’s in town.”

Austen talked as if Brooke Hart was temporary. “Maybe she’ll want to settle here.”

“I don’t think so. She’s a city girl, used to neon lights, high-dollar shopping and spa treatments involving mud.”

Was Austen really that blind? Hell, Jason was at fifty percent vision, and even he knew that was wrong. “She doesn’t look like a city girl to me.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. Besides, every woman is a high-dollar shopper.”

“Including the future missus?”

Austen laughed again. “Gillian just wants people to think that. Although she does pay more for a haircut than I pay for a suit.”

“She seems nice, your future missus—for an officer of the law.”

“Thanks.” Austen studied Jason and the laid-back expression was gone, his eyes a little sharper than before. “You were married to one of the Hinkles?”

“Sonya.”

“Oh, yeah. She was a cheerleader when I was a freshman.”

Jason held up his hand. “Don’t tell me any more.”

“I was only going to say that she seemed nice.”

“She’s okay.”

“The bloom’s off the rose?”

“I was never a rose. I think she wanted a rose.” Jason took a long drink of cold beer, realizing that what she’d done didn’t bother him so much anymore.

“Sucks.”

“Nah. I don’t think it would have lasted anyway. We spent more time apart than together.”

Austen considered that for a second. “Don’t you get lonely out there?”

Jason’s first instinct was to lie, but he liked Brooke’s brother, and so he settled on the truth. “Maybe.”

“You should get out more. Go to Smitty’s and get a beer. I’ll tell Ernestine that you’re a friend and she’ll set you up with a free drink. You know, the town’s not too bad. Not that there’s a lot of women in Tin Cup, but there’s some. I could ask Gillian to ask around. She knows everybody.”

Jason coughed suddenly. “Not in the market.”

“Probably smart. If you change your mind…”

Across the parking lot, Gillian Wanamaker strode onto the stage and Jason noticed the way Austen stopped talking and drinking to stare. Then the mayor shuffled up the stairs and stood next to her, and Austen resumed the conversation again. “You ever watch football?”

“The Redskins. Not a popular choice in Texas.”

“Did you grow up in D.C.?”

“Maryland, around Baltimore.”

“All right, I’ll let it slide, but don’t tell anybody, will you? Trust me, people in this town don’t ever forget.”

On the stage, Gillian raised a longneck high. “Ladies and gentleman, children of all ages, it’s finally happened! Mark your calendars because three weeks from now, a mere ten days before my wedding, the mayor will be breaking ground on the new train station, and I want all y’all to come out and watch the future of Tin Cup begin to unfold. As you know, none of this would have been possible without Austen Hart, and I’d like everyone to raise a glass, because the Hart name means something to this town, not just to me. To Austen.”

Bottles clinked. There were a few cheers and just as many boos, but Austen laughed good-naturedly and looked at Jason. “Like I said, they got a long memory in this town, and if they know you’re a Redskins fan, you’re dead.”

It wasn’t his football loyalties that bothered Jason the most. Although she was pretending not to look, Jason could see Brooke staring at her brother, so much loneliness in her face. “I bet she’d like it if you spoke to her. You know, like a brother. She seems a little lost.”

“Brooke?”

Jason tried to sound astoundingly innocent. “Oh, is that her name?”

“Yeah. Brooke Hart.”

“Then you should go over and talk.” Jason sipped his beer and then nodded wisely. “It’s family. It’s what you do.”

LATER THAT NIGHT
, the crickets were out and somewhere a coyote was howling at the moon. An ordinary Texas night, except for the bubbling chatter of the woman sitting next to Jason on the porch.

“I think he’s coming around. He didn’t act too nervous, and even asked which chili I thought was the best.”

“None of the chili was the best. What happened to hotdog eating, or pie eating or even turkey legs? Chili is just a recipe for disaster.”

“You’re making a funny, aren’t you?”

“Bad chili is nothing to joke about.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Sucked,” he told her, but he smiled and she knew he was lying, and he didn’t mind.

Repeating her brother’s words, she told him, “You should do more. Get out more.”

He leaned back on the seat, stretched his legs in front of him. “Why? If there’s one place in the world that God meant for man to be alone, it’s here.” In complete contradiction to that statement, Jason moved his foot to press the tiny button at the base of the swing. Instantly, the canopy netting was full of twinkling lights like a thousand fireflies brightening up the night.

Jason watched, fascinated with the excited glow in her eyes, the bubble of laughter in her throat. For Brooke, everything was new and wonderful. He was going to miss this. He was going to miss her. She pressed her lips to his cheek, to his mouth, and he felt his body stir.

In the scarred remains of his heart, he knew that she wanted more. He knew she wanted the life that she’d never had. He knew that not encouraging her infatuation was the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do, but it didn’t stop his hands from tangling in her hair, from him feeding on her mouth, from pulling her into his lap with a thousand fireflies twinkling behind her in the sky.

The right thing wasn’t supposed to hurt. The right thing had never hurt before. Hardly anything had ever hurt before. It was a helluva bad time to start getting sensitive now.

And that was what he told himself when she undressed under the lonely Texas moon, when she impaled herself on his cock and he watched her dark eyes as he moved inside her, and no matter the bright watts burning overhead, it was only her that he could see.

W
HEN IT CAME TO FAMILY
, Gillian Wanamaker followed strict Emily Post protocols, and no matter how fast Austen wanted to run away from his sister, Gillian believed that in the end, Brooke’s wistful smile and brand-new boots were bound to win him over. After all, not that he would ever admit it, but Austen Hart was a soft-touch.

And in the interim, when Austen didn’t conform to Gillian’s ideals of hospitable behavior, Gillian would fill the void with a visit and some snicker-doodles and mini-pies.

Since she was on a mission, and wanted to be casual, she dragged her best friend, Mindy, along.

“Now remember, she’s family and doesn’t know a soul, so be nice.”

Mindy folded her arms over her post-baby stomach. “I’m always nice, Gillian Wanamaker. The post-partum hormones might have taken over my body, but they can’t steal the mind.”

“I’m rambling. I’m nervous.”

“And why in Sam Hill are you nervous? Don’t make me call you silly Gilly again. Once in a lifetime is enough.”

Gillian slid her sheriff’s cruiser into the inn’s parking lot and scanned the scene. Then swore.

“What?”

“She’s not here,” Gillian deduced, then glanced over her shoulder, looking at the cute autumnal baskets stacked neatly in front of her shotgun and Kevlar vest. “Let’s go ahead and taken them in. The chocolate is going to die in the heat, and what sort of sister-in-law gives out melted chocolate?”

“Delores will eat those suckers up if you leave them at the front desk with her.”

Good point. Gillian considered it for a minute. “Unless I pick up the hotel phone and leave a voice message in Brooke’s room saying that the basket is at the front desk, and making sure that Delores can hear.”

“She could delete the message.”

“She’s not that smart.”

Mindy met her eyes. “You’re right. Hormones again.”

Sure enough, inside the Spotlight Inn, Delores was working the desk.

“Girl, look at you,” Gillian gushed. “I swear, you get prettier all the time. You’ve lost weight, haven’t you?”

Delores smoothed the blouse over her definitely trimmer stomach. “Weight Watchers. Down nine pounds in four months.”

Gillian pumped her fist in the air. “You go, girl.”

Right then, Delores noticed the basket. “That sure is kind of you, but sweets are taboo.”

Gillian laughed, one of those “I’m such a ditz” laughs. “Actually, I brought it in for Austen’s sister, Brooke. Cute little thing. Walks around like she’s a bit lost. I didn’t see her car in the lot, but you tell me which room she’s in and I can plop this on her bed. Maybe add a little note.”

“Who?” Delores looked at her blankly, and although the desk clerk had many faults, she
always
knew her paying customers.

Mindy started to talk, but Gillian nudged her in the side. “Did she not check in yet? I could’ve sworn that Austen said she was staying here.”

Delores shook her head. “No reservation. All we got is four dentists from Abilene and the railroad surveying crew from Austin. That one foreman is kinda hot. Too bad you’re taken.”

Gillian flashed her ring, which she was in a habit of doing, which her mama always told her was ostentatious, but Gillian believed that a newly engaged woman should be a little ostentatious, unless she wasn’t in true love, which Gillian most definitely was. “Listen, if you see Brooke, don’t tell her I stopped by. I want this to be a surprise.”

“Do you want me to call you when she checks in?”

“Do you mind? I want to make sure she feels right at home.”