Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Read online

  CHAPTER THREE

  This was Jackson’s favorite part of the day. When the sun hadn’t risen yet, and he put the coffee on. As strong as he could make it. When the world outside was quiet, and still. When the whole day had a wealth of possibilities in it.

  Once upon a time, he’d spent mornings like this with his mother at the kitchen table. His father wasn’t one to enjoy mornings. A rancher he was, but he also was always half stumbling out the door after the first rays of light had begun to filter over the mountains, his coffee in a to-go cup, his eyes bleary.

  Not Jackson. And not his mom. Four o’clock had been his wake-up time for as long as he could remember. Plenty of time to get a jump on the day. To plan everything that needed to be done. To do it without all the damn people cluttering up the world. Let them sleep.

  Those times had become especially precious when his mother had been ill.

  He had lived in his own place at that point. But he still worked the family ranch. He got up, he drove over, he sat with his mother and had coffee. And then he went out to work the ranch.

  In the years since, he had begun to exclusively work his own place. His father had enough hands on deck to handle the family place without Jackson. And anyway, once his mother had been gone, there had been no real reason to stay. There had been no one to have coffee with in the morning.

  Jackson had realized at that time that the only reason he had stayed was that he was hanging on to something in his past that he had known wouldn’t last forever.

  And once she was gone, it had been time for him to move on too.

  Anyway. His father was still barely dragging his ass out of bed and making it out to work on time.

  Jackson didn’t mind having coffee alone.

  He walked down the hall, taking note of each squeaking board as he went into the kitchen and started the pot of coffee. This was not the kind of coffee maker he was accustomed to. But in truth, he could make coffee anytime, anywhere. He could MacGyver coffee with nothing but a tin can, a cheesecloth and a campfire. He could do what needed to be done. He could make this little plastic job work. But he preferred his programmable machine at home. Which had everything waiting for him as soon as his feet hit the ground.

  He might enjoy this hour of the day, but there was nothing wrong with wanting everything to be in its place, and as easy as possible. At least, not to his mind.

  He thanked the good Lord that Cricket had coffee, and got it all started, his mood lifting immediately as the sound of the water beginning to heat filled the room, as the scent of the freshly ground beans hit him.

  He really did love mornings.

  He had a feeling Cricket didn’t. Because she wasn’t up. That actually suited him just fine.

  He still couldn’t figure out what the hell she actually wanted.

  For a woman who said she couldn’t wait to run a ranch, she really didn’t seem to have a concept of what it took. And then there had been the way she’d behaved last night.

  Like you don’t know what it is?

  Dammit. It really wasn’t worth examining. He had been sure that when she wasn’t in that dress, when she was back to being the Cricket he had known since she was awkward and had those buck teeth she’d been talking about earlier—which he did remember—those feelings of lust that he’d felt the night of the poker game would vanish.

  But the problem was, now he’d seen the potential in Cricket. And he didn’t much like it.

  He wasn’t a man for relationships. He had arrangements. Satisfying, adult relationships with women his age who, for whatever reason, didn’t want relationships either. Divorcées, single mothers, busy women who traveled through in a group of friends, or with a bachelorette party. City girls looking for flings with a cowboy.

  Yeah, he was down for all that.

  But not young, earnest looking girls who had roots in this valley as deep as it was possible to have, who had already been wounded by her father, and who clearly had issues. Daddy issues.

  That made him grimace. He supposed being a bit more than a decade older than her put him squarely in the territory of daddy issues.

  And what did that make him?

  Just a man, he had a feeling. Men were basic. And while he prided himself on maybe not being as basic as some of them, the fact of the matter was… He wasn’t any different. He liked arrangements because he liked sex. And he didn’t go without.

  Come to think of it, though, he’d been without for a while.

  He’d had to increasingly spend more time at the vineyard. Their father hadn’t really gotten better since their mother had died, he’d only gotten worse. He was withdrawn. And he wasn’t functioning in quite the same way that he used to.

  Which pissed off Jackson, since he wasn’t quite sure why his dad had fallen apart so much, all things considered. But the blowback was hitting the vineyard, and it was hitting Honey, and Jackson didn’t want that to happen.

  He had no idea how to fix it. Not when he had never really reconciled his own grief, or the accompanying anger at his dad.

  His mother had been the single most important person in his life.

  She had been a strong woman. And she’d sacrificed everything for Jackson. Everything. He hadn’t realized just how much until he’d gotten older. And he’d never had the chance to repay her. He’d been planning on it.

  But there hadn’t been enough time.

  Grief about all that was always close at hand. But here in the silence of the morning, he could remember his mother as she’d been.

  And he felt a little closer to her, instead of impossibly far.

  He waited until he had his first sip of coffee. A smile touched his lips and he looked out into the yard. Everything was quiet. There were still stars in the sky. Then, once the caffeine had begun to do its work, he decided it was time to make his move. He went down the hall, doing nothing to modify the sound of his steps, and threw open the door to Cricket’s bedroom.

  “Get up, princess. There’s chorin’ to do.”

  “Mfffmmmmmgh.”

  “What’s that?”

  The indignant figure in the bed moved, then sat up. It was dark, but he could see that her pajamas consisted of a white T-shirt. And he wondered if there was anything else. Or if she was bare underneath that thing. Then he quickly turned his focus away from that.

  “Go away!”

  “It’s time to start doing work.”

  “It’s…” She whipped her head around to look out the window. “It’s midnight.”

  “It is 4:30.”

  “Basically midnight.”

  “Not in my world. And not in your world either. Not if you want to be a rancher. I thought this was in your blood?”

  He couldn’t see her face. Obscured as it was by the fact that the light was off. And she was lucky. Because if he’d been in a really mean mood, he might have turned it on. But while he enjoyed harassing Cricket, there was no real reason to poke at her quite that much.

  “I think sleep might be in my blood at this hour of the day.”

  “Too bad. If you have animals, you’re going to have to get up and take care of them.”

  “I…”

  “Sorry. That’s how it works. You gotta get up early to be ready to work.”

  “That seems obscene.”

  “I grant you, I like an earlier morning than most.”

  “Go away. Morning people are suspicious.”

  “I made coffee.”

  She made a rumbling sound again.

  “I’m going to go into the kitchen and pour you a cup. Don’t make me come back in here and wake you up.”

  He turned around and walked down the hall. He did not need to see her get out of bed. He did not need to answer any of the questions he had about what she was or wasn’t wearing under that T-shirt.

  He didn’t
like the whole thing. This whole sudden, errant attraction to Cricket. It could definitely be argued that it would be a fine enough thing in theory. Because it wasn’t like they weren’t both adult people, even if he was a bit older. But he couldn’t give her anything. And that… That didn’t seem fair. She was young and scrappy and trying to make it on her own, and the last thing he wanted to do was…

  Well, none of it bore thinking about because he was a grown man. And thinking a woman was pretty didn’t mean acting on anything.

  He wouldn’t do it. Most especially because he was here to talk her out of her ranch. He had his limits.

  He got a small, chipped mug out of the cupboard and poured some coffee in it. Just in time for Cricket to appear, in what he thought might be the same T-shirt, her blond hair resting on top of her head in a messy knot, jeans and a pair of boots.

  “Good morning,” she groused.

  “You said you wanted to be a cowgirl.”

  He handed the coffee mug over to her.

  “I was unaware that being my own boss would involve being woken up at a specific time. Hey. I’m your boss. You’re not my boss.”

  “Yes. But the land waits for no one, Cricket. That’s your first lesson in being a real, bona fide rancher.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Why do you love the idea of being a rancher?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You have to do better than that.”

  “I feel… I don’t know. I feel weird and wrong most of the time. I feel like I don’t fit. But outdoors, I always felt like maybe I belonged. You know, I was better at riding horses, at dealing with bugs and dirt and all of that kind of stuff than my sisters. It was something I was just naturally more comfortable with. And maybe that’s not right or fair. Maybe that’s a little bit smug. To like something simply because I was better at it, when I couldn’t be better at school, or being pretty.”

  “Better at being pretty?”

  “Oh, come on. Wren and Emerson are naturally elegant and completely and totally perfect in every way.”

  “They’re perfect when it comes to their particular kind of pretty, I’ll give them that. And I’m not going to say people don’t tend to have their favorite kind of flower. But all flowers are pretty.”

  “Surely not all of them.”

  “You’re messing with my metaphor.”

  “It’s too early for metaphors.”

  “It’s never too early. Drink your coffee.”

  He didn’t know why he felt the need to be nice to her. It was just that she seemed…utterly lost. He related to the feeling. He supposed that in some ways, losing whatever connection with her father that she’d had—though she claimed that it wasn’t a very deep one—was a lot like a death.

  And he knew what it was like to lose a parent. It was hard. It had left him feeling… Honestly, he hadn’t known what to do after his mother had died. He hadn’t been ready for it. No one was ever ready. But he had felt deeply and profoundly unprepared for the way the grief had rocked his life. For all the things he’d left unsolved and unsaid. For all the regret he felt on her behalf.

  He knew she’d felt stuck in a loveless marriage. Even though she’d loved their family. Loved the kids.

  Sometimes he felt…responsible for her unhappiness.

  His dad was mired in grief, as if she’d been the love of his life, but sometimes Jackson thought the real reason his dad was mired in grief was that he’d known they weren’t the loves of each other’s lives and they’d trapped each other.

  Sometimes, as a family they’d been so happy…

  It didn’t matter. All he knew was there was something in Cricket that he recognized. Didn’t matter that she was a completely different creature than him. He knew what she was feeling.

  And he might resent the position he found himself in, but honor prevented him from backing out. Anyway, now that he was here, he wanted to help her.

  She sat at the table, her shoulders hunched up by her ears, and sipped her coffee a bit too slowly for his taste. He liked a leisurely morning, but you needed to get yourself out of bed a bit earlier if you were going to be that sluggish with it. Granted, they didn’t actually have specific chores. But this was her lesson. Her lesson in ranching. And if she really thought she was going to do it… Well, then she had better get used to this.

  He didn’t think she would, though.

  In fact, he had a feeling he was a step closer to being able to make his move than he’d thought he’d be at this point.

  “Come on, little Cricket,” he said as soon as she had drained the last drop of her coffee.

  “I’m not little,” she said.

  “You are to me.”

  “I’m quite tall,” she sniffed.

  He looked down at the top of her head. “Again. Not to me.”

  “Well, you’re ridiculous. Height runs in your family,” she commented.

  “Honey is short.”

  “But you and Creed are very tall.”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  She seemed suddenly renewed, and he opened the front door and held it for her, and she went past him, going straight down the steps. “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, why don’t we start by looking at your pastures and your fencing. Then we’re going to take a look at the barns and see what kind of shape they’re in.”

  “That’s all a very good idea,” she said.

  “Well, that is why you hired me. Or rather, won me.”

  “Yes,” she said, frowning. “I suppose you are the expert.”

  “Say that again?”

  “You’re the expert,” she said, but this time angrily.

  “Just remember that.”

  He opened the door to his truck.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I figured we’d drive.”

  She got in, grumbling the whole way. They started driving out on one of the access roads that went toward the back end of the property. They would start there, and work their way back. At that point, the sky was beginning to lighten, and turn a bluish gray. The mountains were like sloping ink spills bleeding down into the fields. It was a beautiful piece of land. Hell, if Cricket didn’t want to keep it, he’d be happy to add it to his own portfolio.

  “Except,” she said. “You do kind of have to admit that there is no actual reason for us to be up this early since there are no animals.”

  “Again,” he said. “Practice. And also to give you a little dose of reality.”

  “You think I need a dose of reality?”

  “Before you go committing to having lots of animals, I do think you probably need to have an understanding of what you might be in for.”

  “Bully for me.”

  “Yeah, well. You chose me to be your consultant.”

  “Ranch hand,” she corrected.

  “Yeah, who’s calling the shots?”

  She sputtered. But at that point, he put the truck in Park and got out. “Oh boy,” he said, going up to the edge of one of the fences. It was light enough to see now, now that the sun was rising, the sunlight spilling rapidly over the landscape. “This fence is a mess. You’re going to have a lot of work ahead of you.”

  “Well, we need a crew.”

  “We’re going to have to figure out your budget.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. I do understand that. I know I haven’t lived on my own, and I know that I come from money, but I also know there has to be money. Don’t worry. Like I said, I sold my stake in the vineyard. So I have a bit of cash.”

  “Great. You’re going to need quite a lot of cash.”

  “I’m sure you have an idea of how much a winery like Maxfield Vineyards is worth.”

  “True.” Cricket was probably a fairly rich wom
an at this point. Even selling a quarter stake would’ve probably netted her quite a lot. “But it still wouldn’t hurt you to have training. There may be an emergency, and you may not be able to get someone out here in time. What’s going to happen if part of your fence comes down and you’ve got horses everywhere? You’re going to have to know how to solve some of your own problems. Fortunately, I have tools. This,” he said, indicating the whole fence line, “is going to be a hassle. And you’re right. We’re going to need to get a crew out here. But we can start it together.”

  “That sounds unpleasant.”

  “No, sweetheart. It’s ranch work.” He handed her a hammer and a pair of wire cutters. “Living the dream.”

  * * *

  Cricket was exhausted and sore by noon. But at least then Jackson produced beer and sandwiches, and she found herself sitting happily on the tailgate of his truck, eating and watching as he continued to work. He never stopped.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s head to the barn.”

  “We’re not done?”

  “Nope. And this is ranch work when you haven’t got any animals. I’m just letting you know what you’re in for.”

  “I feel like you’re trying to actively discourage me.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “If you can be discouraged from being a rancher, then you should be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That it’s a hard life that often produces very little profit. And if you don’t love it, you should do something else.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s the kind of thing that needs to be said, Cricket. If the work doesn’t deter you… Then it doesn’t. But you know, you could still live here without being a rancher. You could lease the fields to someone. Or you could sell up, get yourself a nice farmhouse and a couple of chickens.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” she said, feeling resolute. “I want to have my own life. My own land.”

  That statement was clarifying.

  Because honestly, he had worked her ragged enough today that she had begun to question some things. And yeah, she was having to admit that she was a little sheltered. That she hadn’t done all that much work in her life. She had done a lot of running around in the country, and she had managed to equate that with doing this kind of work. But it wasn’t the same.