Page 13 of One Lucky Cowboy

“What kind of help you gonna need?” he’d asked Bennett.

Instead of looking him in the eye, Bennett had busied himself with the tack hanging up in the stables instead. “Jill and you can chat about that at dinner tonight. We’d like you two to work that out.”

He and Jill? What did she have to do with MBE?

Then, a different kind of worry had set in. Jax had taken another job, one that started the first week in January and it was already September. If Bennett needed him to stay beyond that, he couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care what his brother and Maggie were facing, but at some point, he needed to take care of himself, too.

I didn’t peg you for a guy who’d leave his family in the lurch. Jax rubbed his temple. Jesus, his conscience sounded an awful lot like Bennett.

He held up his wrist again. Seven thirty-five. He needed Jill to get here already so he could speak his piece before he lost his nerve. He’d do whatever she needed of him until December and then she’d have to figure it out on her own.

A sleek, black Mercedes S-Class pulled up to the valet, and Jax froze in place. All he could see of the driver was a thick head of glossy, vermillion hair curled at the tips, paired with painted-red lips. But he knew. Or rather, his heart knew.

Jill.

Granted, when he’d met her, he’d thought everything sleek or shiny about her was obnoxiously overdone, but then why couldn’t he forget about the way those glossed lips looked when they sipped on her chardonnay?

And why—even after he’d overheard her call him incompetent—couldn’t he stop imagining what she’d look like bareback on one of the mares from the ranch, her hair left to its natural wave, wild and feral as the monsoon storms?

Because you’re a Neanderthal.

Not untrue, but he’d seen what it might look like if she weren’t an irritating perfectionist and didn’t give him shit for being less-than every chance she got. When he’d stopped by Maggie’s two nights after the wedding to drop off MBE paperwork, Jill had answered the door and left him speechless. And he was never speechless.

Her hair had been curly and fell halfway down her back, and she’d hadn’t had a hint of makeup on. The small rips in her clothes spoke of a hundred possible adventures she might have taken, but it was the overall lack of polish that had stuck in his chest, making it hard to think about much else.

Neanderthal, indeed.

So, when she stepped out of the car in sky-high heels and a suit, he tried to swallow back a wave of emotion, but his throat was as dry as the ranch dirt in late summer. Jesus, she … she …

She’s effing gorgeous. She’d worn a billowy yellow ankle-length dress to the wedding and yeah, she’d been beautiful then, but there was something about the way the suit hugged her silhouette and showed off her in-charge attitude and at the same time made him half hard.

But she’s still the same woman who treats you like you’re covered in cow manure.

Also not untrue. But to be fair, most of the time, he was.

Her emerald-green eyes seemed to pierce through to his center, even from underneath her manicured, furrowed brow. Instead of bright curiosity, they were replaced with a cutting edge that sliced through his resolve to tell her how it was going to be the minute she arrived. Also gone was the rough-around-the-edges attitude from that day at Maggie’s. Instead, she was all curves—nothing resembling the hardened woman he’d dreamed of the past couple of months.

But she was definitely stunning. Enough to take his breath away.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Jackson Marshall,” she said, striding up to him with the same confidence Maggie had the first time she’d come back to Deer Creek after her father died. The difference was, Maggie always had a smile tucked away, whereas Jill looked like she didn’t believe in the gesture.

“I think you mean ‘the idiot brother who can’t hold up his end of things with a tent pole’?”

Jill frowned, an unfortunate move for him since the crescent-shaped dimple between her brows was freaking adorable.

“Since it looks like we’ll be working together, I suppose we should at least act like we get along. I’m sorry about whatever I said at the wedding, but can we start over? For Maggie and Bennett’s sakes at least?”

He twisted his lips, biting the corner of them. Consider him properly chastised. “Yeah, okay. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I just think we should make this dinner about figuring out how to help them and leave whatever grievances we have with each other behind. I mean, we’re adults; surely we can work together and get along, right?”

He nodded, not sure if being an adult was enough to thwart the multitude of feelings he had about this woman. Sure, he could put aside the negative ones, but the tightening behind his zipper he’d felt when she stepped out of the car? That would take a herculean effort to forget.

She leaned in to shake his hand at the same time he reached out to hug her, resulting in an awkward embrace that left her trapped against him while she tried to regain her balance.

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