Page 12 of Hell or High Water

Thanks a lot, Jayda. I walked over and set the food on the counter and began pulling containers out of the bag.

“It’s my thing. I love cooking, baking—heck, I even love going to the grocery store. Well, Whole Foods. It’s my jam,” Jayda told her.

The corner of Montana’s mouth tugged up as if she was repressing a smile. The hint of a dimple appeared. I realized she’d not smiled until this small attempt right now. I wanted to see her smile. Was there one dimple, or did she have two?

“I’ve only been in a Whole Foods once,” Montana replied.

Her smile got a little wider. I was seeing another dimple appear.

“All right, you can’t smile like that and not tell me why,” Jayda told her. “And I’m just gonna toss this out there. Your mother must have had some excellent genes because your father…” She scrunched her nose.

Then it happened. The full thing. Two dimples. My gaze lifted to see her eyes as she stared back at Jayda. Sea glass as the light hit them. That was the only way to explain them. They twinkled.

Fuck! Realizing what I had been doing, I tore my gaze off hers to continue getting the other things out of the bag when I caught Jayda watching me with a knowing gleam in her eyes.

FEET! Look at her feet! I dropped my eyes, praying the entire time that they were ugly. No surprise that God had ignored my prayer. They were tanned, as if she’d spent time outside, barefoot, and she had small, perfect toes with pink polish on them.

“It’s…” There was a hesitancy to her voice that had my eyes doing their own thing and snapping back up to look at her. “Um, well, my momma. She and I went in one once. It had just been built, and she was curious. When she saw the price of the berries right when we walked inside, she…” Another small laugh slipped past her lips, but the sadness in her expression now had my complete attention. “She said that she didn’t get on a pole at night to pay that much for goddamn berries—loud enough for everyone around us to hear. And”—she paused and shrugged—“when she realized they were all staring our way, she placed a hand on her hip and flashed them a bright smile, as if posing for a photograph.”

Jayda’s burst of laughter snapped me out of my daze, and although I went back to getting out the food, my complete attention was on Montana.

“God, she sounds like she was fun,” Jayda said.

“Oh, she was that.”

The wistfulness in her voice took all my willpower not to look at her again. I had to stop this fucking chat session. I’d gotten Jayda here as a distraction, not to make it even more difficult for me to ignore Montana.

“That’s the sauce that goes with the wings. I wasn’t sure if Montana liked her wings sauced or not,” Jayda said.

I lifted my eyes from opening the different things she’d brought.

“Who said I was sharing with her?” I asked, trying to get my head right.

My dick was going to get hard around her—that was a given. She’d give a ninety-year-old man a woody, but that wasn’t going to distract me from finding shit on her and getting out of this cabin and back to my life. She’d brought this on herself by blackmailing her father. I felt not one shred of guilt about it.

Jayda reached over and slapped her hand over the next container I was about to open. “Don’t be a dick. I’ll starve your ass,” she warned.

“It’s fine,” Montana said.

Both of our gazes swung to her.

She held up her sandwich to Jayda. “I have this. I’m good. Uh, and it was nice to meet you. Thanks again for the food. I’m gonna go back to the bedroom. It’s been a long day.”

Her smile this time was tight and didn’t meet her eyes. There was no shine of amusement in them. No sun glistening on sea glass. No dimples.

Taking her water and sandwich, she closed the short distance between the kitchen and bedroom before I chanced looking at Jayda. Seeing the death glare she had aimed at me, I rolled my eyes and went to get a plate from the cabinet.

“What the hell was that?” she hissed at me.

I shrugged. “I can’t help that she’s so fucking sensitive.”

“Since when did you become an asshole?”

Walking back over to the food so I could load up on all the things she’d brought, I replied, “I’m being forced to be her babysitter because she’s blackmailing her father. Don’t go taking up for her.”

Jayda stood up. The look of disgust on her face was directed at me. “Baskin is a philandering bastard. The girl has no one. She did what she had to in order to get some help. Besides”—Jayda glanced past me to the closed bedroom door—“I bet you could get Gathe, Forge, heck, even your brother to take your place. It’s not like being stuck in a cabin with her is a hardship. You have looked at her, right?”

No, Jayda, I went blind recently.

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