All Jacked Up (Rough Riders #8)(26)
“Keely?”
“In the living room.”
She’d curled up in her favorite corner of the couch and flipped through the three channels. “When is the cable company supposed to be here?”
“Tomorrow. Between eight and noon. Will you be around?”
Keely’s gaze flicked to him. “Why? Aren’t you gonna be here to take care of it since it was your idea?”
Jack plopped on the couch. “Things went to shit today and I’m flying to Iowa first thing in the morning to straighten it out. I’ll be back Friday night, Saturday morning at the latest.”
“Whoa. Wait a second. Saturday night is our engagement party. You cannot miss that! The whole reason we’re having the stupid party is for people to think we’re getting married. Do you know how humiliating it’ll be if you don’t show up—”
“I’ll be here, okay?”
“You’d better be. I mean it. So help me God, Jack Donohue, if you aren’t standing beside me wearing a fake-ass smile to rival mine, I will track you down and flay off every bit of your yellow skin with a bullwhip.”
Her lack of faith in him rankled. “Don’t threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise.”
“Big talk, tough girl.”
“Just sayin’…” She turned away.
“Give me the damn remote.”
“Fine.” Keely threw it at him.
After ten minutes of enduring an insipid sitcom, she spoke. “Where does jetting off to Iowa leave my project this week?”
Her petulance wasn’t from the interruption in the restaurant, but a business-related snit? That annoyed him even worse. “It wouldn’t matter if I were here or not at this stage. I’ve stuck around because I was cementing our cover.”
“Anxious to get back to your fast-paced lifestyle in Denver?”
“Yeah, some great lifestyle. I’ve been busy trying to play catch up the last couple years after everything went to hell. Living high on the hog hasn’t been my number one priority.” He looked at her, wondering if he sounded bitter to her. “What?”
“Which is worse? The fact she left you for him? Or losing the partnership?”
No one had ever asked that question. “Both. Everything tumbled like a house of cards.”
“Did your folks meet her?”
Jack laughed. “Are you kidding? Talk about an episode of Green Acres.”
“So you’re embarrassed about bein’ raised on a farm?”
“Yes. Could we please—”
“Why? Justin wasn’t embarrassed.”
“Justin was a rodeo cowboy and it fed into his persona. I’m an architect and it detracts from mine. Big difference. How many guys did you bring home to meet the parents?”
“Point taken. But not bringing dates here wasn’t because my rural roots mortified me. Mostly I was embarrassed about the kind of guys I’d been dating.”
Her honesty shook him to his core and spurred him to follow suit. “Look. My parents didn’t know anything about Martine except I dated her and we broke up. They didn’t know why my partnership with Baxter hit the skids either. None of it mattered because my dad had a fatal heart attack a month later.”
“Is that why Justin dropped out of the PBR tour?”
“Yeah. He’s taken over running the farm, which is what he and Dad always wanted. None of us expected it’d be so soon.” It infuriated Jack that his dad had worked himself into an early grave. Infuriated and saddened him. “Anyway, Justin keeps an eye on Mom.”
“Do you ever help out?”
“If you mean throwing money at them out of guilt, yes. If you mean sitting in the combine or—” going home to face my past, “—slipping on a pair of coveralls and shoveling manure, no.”
“So they don’t know—”
“No. I keep my business and personal lives separate,” he said curtly.
When she opened her mouth to argue, Jack silenced her with a harsh look.
“Don’t presume to dissect the way I handle my family life when you handle yours awful damn close to the same way.”
Keely’s head fell back into the couch cushion. “We’re never gonna pull this off, Jack. We can’t go five minutes without snipping at each other.”
“We managed more than five minutes in the restaurant.”
“Pure luck. Lightning won’t strike the same place twice.”
“Then let’s force it to strike again.”
“Wow. That sounds fun. Not.”
Just to be obstinate, he scooted closer to her. “Your middle name is West. What’s mine?”
“Jack… Off Donohue?”
“Funny. My middle name is Michael.”
“Jack Michael. Kinda sounds like—”
“Chas Michael Michaels,” they said simultaneously.