Page 24 of The Woman Left Behind

Because he was right. The son of a bitch was right.

Eight

Jina didn’t sleep that night. Her mind wouldn’t shut down, wouldn’t let her forget the searing humiliation. Levi had seen through her, likely from the start; she’d wasted all that time and effort staying away from him, not talking to him if she could help it, not evenlookingat him, all for nothing. Damn it, it wasn’t as if she were inlovewith him—God forbid—so she should have been able to play the situation better. The good Lord help any woman who loved Levi Butcher, because she’d need the backup.

What she felt was just potent physical chemistry, and she wasn’t a fool; she knew that acting on it would be a disaster between team members. Moreover, that strong survival instinct of hers warned her to steer far, far away from him, at least in a personal sense. Levi was intense; controlled, but intense. Sex with him might be incandescent enough to renderherblind, but at most he’d walk away thinking,Okay, tension relieved, that was good, hey isn’t it almost time to change the oil in the truck?They came at life from two different levels. She was normal, and he wasn’t. He was like Rambo with Kama Sutra training, considering what he did to her hormones, and it wasn’t fair.

How classic could the setup be? In a team of alpha males, he was the most alpha, the super-high-octane alpha. As the only woman—and by default the alpha female—on the team, according to biology and anthropology and probably a lot of other -ologies, within their little group she had no other option than to choose him as her mate.

Except she had an option, all right, and her option was to say no.“I don’t want to mate,” she growled into the darkness of her bedroom, though she had to acknowledge that wasn’t strictly true. She didn’t want tomate,as in form a bond and procreate, but she sure wouldn’t mind trying him on for size. She’d never had sex just for the sake of having sex, but for him she’d be happy to make an exception... if circumstances were different. And if he wasn’t such an asshole.

Except not now. Now she wanted to geld him.

How was she supposed to function with the team now, when she dreaded every minute she’d have to spend in his company? This wasn’t not liking someone; she’d worked with people she didn’t like before, and she’d made the best of it because her parents had always told their kids that life wasn’t perfect and they’d have to deal with problems all their lives, so deal with them and stop whining. This was different; this was so uncomfortable and humiliating that she wanted to punch him and be done with it. Punching him would get her kicked off the team, right?

Since this whole deal had started, over five months ago, she’d often comforted herself with the idea of quitting, knowing the whole time that she’d rather eat maggots than quit because her streak of stubbornness was so ingrained from years of keeping up with her brothers that she didn’t knowhowto quit. But she could have if she’d wanted to, and having that as an out had been nice because she liked having options.

Now she had no option. None. She couldn’t quit under any circumstances, because that would mean Levi had won and she’d rather break every bone in her body than give him the satisfaction. No way would she let him think she couldn’t take the stress of being near him and not being able to have him—hah! If she’d been chasing after him and embarrassing herself, she could understand why he’d felt the need to say what he did, but she hadn’t. She’d kept to herself, never let herself eventhinkof flirting with him. He could have maintained the status quo; he didn’t have to rub her nose in her hormonal insanity. She hadn’t acted on it, wouldn’t have acted on it.

Her only path now was to stay the course, to try not merely because she couldn’t bear to quit, but because she wanted to become a real member of the team. Her focus had to be on something more than just getting through the next day, something bigger, something more important.

As of right now, she swore savagely, Levi was nothing to her other than a team member. He could take his damn overflowing testosterone and entice some other woman, and she hoped he developederectile dysfunction. Maybe he could be in one of those television commercials, sitting in one of those stupid side-by-side bathtubs in the middle of the woods.

The ridiculousness of that thought so entertained her that she chuckled out loud in the darkness. Ah, hell; she wasn’t sleeping, at least not until she calmed down some, so she might as well get up and do what she could to get ready for the taco bar tomorrow. She checked the time, saw it was almost one-thirtya.m., and changed that “tomorrow” to “today!” What on earth had possessed her to invite everyone to her little condo?

Oh, well; she’d get to know the wives, mainly because everyone would practically be sitting on top of each other. And as her mom always said, it wasn’t the surroundings, it was the company. And the food. She couldn’t stretch her condo and make it bigger, but she could make sure the food was both fun and good.

And thank God, because the event was right on top of her, and that gave her something else to focus on; otherwise, she’d have lain in bed and wallowed in fury and self-pity all night long. As it was, she got up and muttered irritably to herself the whole time she cleaned the condo. After all, it was one-freaking-thirty in the morning—now two in the morning—and she was cleaning instead of sleeping, and it was all Levi Butcher’s fault, damn his black heart and eyes and every other part.

She wanted everyone who came to have agreattime and spend the next day telling Levi all about it. And she might even indulge in a little PDA with Donnelly... Brian... no, that wouldn’t be fair to him, not when she knew there’d be no romantic relationship with him, ever. Damn.

She went back to bed at four and was so tired she slept like a rock for all of three hours. After months of getting up early, her body evidently thought that was what it was supposed to do. Supposedly the guys had perfected what they called the “combat nap,” so they could grab a quick nap whenever they needed it, but that wasn’t something they’d taught her yet.

Because there would be kids—and men, even if the kids were left with babysitters—she made a big sheet cake with her mother’s special chocolate frosting. She got fancy and made another batch of frosting, colored some of it red and some green, and piped some roses and leaves onto the cake. Baking was something she enjoyed, and she was the only one of three daughters to have inherited her mother’s touch with cakes. Then to make the kids laugh, she piped some big red lips and a tongue sticking out, right in the middle of the cake. There—something for everyone. She would have added teeth, but she didn’t know the ages of the kids and she didn’t want to scare them.

She’d told everyone to be there at six, but she was dressed—such as it was, in jeans and sneakers and a lightweight sweatshirt—at five-thirty, because she didn’t trust the guys not to show up early. They were guys, after all. “I must be psychic,” she said smugly, when the doorbell rang at exactly five-thirty-eight.

After a peek through the peephole, she opened the door to Jelly and Crutch. “Hi. Did y’all come together?”

“Naw, we stopped dating a year ago,” Crutch said, then laughed at his own joke. “We always have our own wheels, and our gear, in case we get called out on a mission.”

“I’ll have to do that, too,” she said in dawning realization. She was on the brink of full membership on the team. She’d been so engrossed in training she hadn’t thought it through to all the ways, big and small, that her life would change.

“Yep.” Jelly put his hands on his hips and looked around. “Nice place.”

It wasn’t, not really. For starters, it was an upstairs unit, which wasn’t ideal. It was on the small side. Her furniture tended more toward comfy than stylish. But they were bachelors, so what did they know? Some framed prints on the walls, a rug or two, window treatments other than plain blinds, and the place likely seemed almost luxurious to them. Oh—and clean. Clean went a long way.

“Glad y’all could come. Can I get you something to drink?”

“You have any beer?” Crutch asked, looking less than hopeful.

“Beer, soft drinks, bottled water, fruit juice for the kids. Come on into the kitchen.” She’d stocked some popular brands—Bud, Coors, Corona—and had them all iced down in a cooler. She’d barely gotten the beers opened and in their hands before the doorbell rang again. Donnelly stood in the small entrance alcove, a six-pack of beer in his hand.

“I didn’t know if you’d have enough,” he said, holding up the beer.

“Thanks. Want to take it to the kitchen and put it on ice? Crutch and Jelly are already here.”

“Cool.” From his eager look, she thought he was looking forward to hanging with some of the team guys. None of the other team leaders had followed Levi’s lead and involved themselves in their training, so she was the only one who so far had had any real interaction with them.

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