Rules of Protection (Tangled in Texas #1)(38)

“Mine? What’s yours? I’m sure they’ve heard the word balls before. Hell, I bet your uncle even has a pair.”

“Damn it, Emily. I don’t want to think about my uncle’s balls before I eat,” Jake said, crinkling his nose at me.

“Well, neither do I, but I was making a point.”

Jake shook his head. “Jesus Christ, you have an issue with censorship.”

“No shit!”

“Next time, think about what you say before you open your mouth,” Jake warned. “Didn’t your parents teach you to respect your elders?”

“No, I’m sorry they didn’t,” I snarled. “They were too busy dying to bother.”

Jake froze, realizing what he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“Tell your aunt thanks for dinner, but I’m not hungry. I’m going to bed.” Then I walked out the front door.



Chapter Eight

Jake found me sitting on the cottage porch an hour later, rubbing my fingers through Dog’s white coat and scratching behind his speckled ears. Dog never moved, but his warm body suggested he was still alive. Barely. Maybe.

He disappeared during the day, but by the time the sun went down, Dog was back on the porch and dead once again, at least to the world.

“Taming the savage beast?” Jake asked as he sat next to me.

I grinned, but my heart wasn’t in it. “He’s blowing his image. Aren’t country dogs supposed to be hunters? He might as well be mounted on the wall.”

“Nah, the possums are big enough around here that we use them as coon dogs.” Jake paused for a thoughtful minute. “I figured you’d be asleep by now. Having trouble winding down?”

I shook my head. “No, I needed some male action.” Jake raised one eyebrow. “Not that kind,” I said. “There’s a spider the size of a small horse in there. I wanted you to kill it. You know how I am about spiders.”

A muscle twitched in his strong, angular jaw. I think he wanted to laugh, but refrained from it. Then his eyes turned to me, his face becoming more serious. “Emily, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say…”

“It’s okay, Jake. No need to apologize. I know it wasn’t what you meant. Besides, there’s some validity to what you said.”

“But I shouldn’t have brought up your parents. It wasn’t right.”

At the mention of them, tears stung my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I hung from a cliff by my fingertips, and the emotional weight pulled at my feet. I managed to push back the sadness and smiled crookedly. His eyes locked on my trembling mouth. I nervously glanced away, gathered my hair at the nape of my neck, and braided it together.

“Floss told me she mentioned the funeral,” Jake added. “She didn’t know I hadn’t said anything to you about it.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t—”

“My parents died last year. At the same time, on the same day. It nearly killed me. It’s part of the reason I haven’t been back here.” He swallowed hard, struggling with his speech. “They died because of me.”

Minutes crept by silently. I didn’t want to ask him to share anything he wasn’t willing to. We stared up at the glass dome of stars while Jake marinated in his guilt.

Sometimes in life, you need to be able to throw something out into the universe, a rhetorical statement warranting no judgment from others. It’s what I wanted to give to Jake because it’s what I wished someone would’ve given to me when I thought the same thing about my own parents. They died because of me.

His dark hair was slightly disheveled, and his gray eyes drooped with weariness. The manual labor he performed under the sun had taken a physical toll, but the mental strain of his parents’ death still weighed heavily on him. I understood that feeling well.

“Tired?” I asked, unsure how he managed to stay awake.

“I’m beat,” Jake replied. “I’ll go take care of your spider problem so we can go to bed.”

My temperature rose slightly, thinking about snuggling into his warm, hard body. And he must’ve noticed the little smile gathering at the corner of my mouth.

“Emily, I don’t think either of us got much sleep last night with the…uh…tension in the room. Unless you want a repeat, we’re going to have to pretend there’s a crossing guard between us tonight.”

“A ménage à trois?” I said with a teasing laugh. “Might be interesting.”

Jake paused. “Shit.”

…

It took me forever to fall asleep, but I must’ve finally dozed off, because when I opened my eyes, Jake was asleep next to me. Actually, he was under me. I had draped myself across his chest, capturing his body heat. It was like cuddling with a high-temperature furnace. As cold as it was in the room, the cottage could’ve been easily mistaken for a cabin in Alaska.

It was five o’clock when the stupid rooster started crowing relentlessly, robbing me of my sleep. The sun hadn’t even risen yet. Dumbass bird should be on Prozac.

I shifted slightly against Jake to get more comfortable. His body tensed as his muscled forearms tightened their grip around my back, pulling me further in to him. A knee slid up between my thighs. His warm breath quickened, blowing against my neck. Suddenly, the room changed from cold to hot, like Jake was a sunray burning into my skin. Flustered, I considered cranking down the air conditioner in the room before I melted.