Rules of Protection(43)

Cowboy opened another beer and passed it to me with a sly, sexy smile. “You doing okay, darlin’?”

I nodded lazily, my brain buzzing with alcoholic contentment. “It’s not oil,” I slurred, pointing at the fire.

He cocked one eyebrow. “Oil?”

“We’re burning the midnight trash,” I mumbled, before bursting into hysterics and falling out of my chair.

Jake caught my arm, righted me, and snagged the beer from my hand. “Okay, slick, I think you’ve had one too many.”

I pushed my lip out, pouting. “Oh, Jake, you’re no fun.”

He tipped the bottle back and guzzled my entire beer. “Well, that was fun,” Jake said smugly, making the other guys laugh.

I leaned over to Cowboy, though my head tilted too far to the right and I had to correct it. “So what’s with the name? Why do they call you Cowboy?”

“Because I always rounded up the most cattle.”

“That’s it?” I asked, unimpressed. “I thought for sure there’d be a better reason for it than that. You should try something like, ‘because I can stay on longer than eight seconds, which is more than most men can.’ It would’ve done more for your image.”

He chuckled under his breath. “Not when the cattle we’re referring to are women.”

“Oh, jeez,” I said, looking over at Ox. “Well, what about you? Why Ox?”

Jake, Cowboy, and Judd all broke into chorus, “Because he’s hung like an ox.” I swear all three of them reached down and self-consciously rearranged their balls at the same time.

“No freaking way!” I laughed giddily, though I was the only one doing so. I looked to Jake for confirmation, and he nodded solemnly. My eyes widened and found their way back to Ox, who displayed a proud grin. “You’ve got to be shittin’ me.” I surveyed his pint-size frame and shook my head with disbelief. “No way!”

Ox smiled wider. “Want me to prove it?”

“Yes!”

“NO!” the men said in unison.

“Oh, come on, guys. He has to. There’s no way I’ll believe it until I see it for myself. You may as well have said he had the legendary Bigfoot dangling between his legs.”

“He practically does,” Cowboy mumbled under his breath.

Jake stood. “All right, I think it’s time to call it a night.” He tossed Cowboy the keys to our commandeered Explorer. “You can bring it back tomorrow.”

“That’ll work,” Cowboy said in agreement.

“Come on, Emily. It’s bedtime,” Jake said, as if I were his child.

“I’m not going inside yet.” Even if I did feel a little loopy.

He glared at me. “Well, you’re not staying out here alone.”

“You can’t boss me around. I’m capable of making up my own mind. If I want to stay out here then you can’t stop—”

Jake took two long strides, threw me over his shoulder, and carted me off toward the cottage. Damn Neanderthal. It would have served him right if I puked on him.

The guys laughed as they walked behind us toward the Explorer.

“You two fight like you’re already married,” Ox said to us. “You should go ahead and make it official.”

“We probably would if Emily didn’t have commitment issues,” Jake replied, hamming it up by slapping me on my butt. “All she wants is sex.”

God, I wanted to blow his stupid cover right then and tell them how Jake acted like a virginal schoolgirl who refused to part with his panties, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. And he knew it.

All evening I’d been helplessly drowning in male testosterone. I don’t know why I expected anything different at this point. If this was any indication of how Smurfette felt, she should’ve left Smurf village a long time ago and begged Gargamel to kill her estrogen-laden ass.

“I have commitment issues?” I said to Jake. “You’re a man, right?”

“You should know, honey.” Then he smacked my ass a second time.

I growled under my breath, “If you do that again, you’re going to have to sleep with one eye open tonight.”

…

I came out of the shower as mad as when I went in.

Jake pulled back the quilt on the bed. “Still upset with me?”

“Eat shit.”

“Guess so,” he said, shrugging. A brief silence passed before he spoke again. “Okay, I know I’m going to regret this. Tell me what the problem is.”

I glared at him. “You keep bossing me around. I’m starting to think Cowboy is right about you. You’re no fun.”

“We’re not here to have fun. I brought you here to hide you and keep you alive. Those are my two objectives right now. You want fun, go to Disney World.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to be boring. I have all this idle time to do nothing, yet I annoy you more when I’m left to my own devices. I can’t win.”

Jake closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “Okay, tell me what I can do to make this less boring for you and less infuriating for me.”

I grinned from ear to ear as I crawled into bed with him. “You know that’s a loaded question, right?”

“Something besides that,” Jake said.