Making a Stand

“It’s poetry,” Mik said.

“Poetry isn’t visual,” Alex argued.

“Then art,” Mik said.

“Huh uh.” Teddy shook her head. “Foreplay.”

The three of them sat on the fence rail. Mik leaned forward to look around Alex who sat between her and Teddy. “Foreplay?”

“Well, yeah,” Teddy said without taking her eyes off the men approaching on horseback. “I mean just look at them. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see any of them on a horse?”

“Sex,” Mik said with a grin. “Definitely sex.”

“Yes,” Teddy agreed dreamily. “Hot, sweaty, back-scratching, heel-drumming, scream your throat raw sex.”

“For God’s sake!” Alex slid off the fence and turned her back on the sight of the riders. “Is that all you two can think about?”

Mik chuckled and hopped off the fence. “You’d be singing a different tune if you’d had some of what men like that have to offer.”

Alex rolled her eyes then her mouth formed into an “o” and her attention turned to Teddy. “Theodora Morgan! Have you had sex with Jake?”

Teddy grinned and climbed off the fence. “No. But I’ve been giving it some serious thought.”

“You two are hopeless,” Alex complained.

“You’re just jealous,” Mik said, her eyes still on the riders.

“Am not.”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

“Did you wake up a ten-year-old?”

Mik grinned at her sister. “You can’t tell me you can look at Jesse and not want to jump him. Hell, I’d like to jump him.”

“I’m sure Jed would be happy to hear that.”

“You know what I mean. Jesse’s five kinds of fine.”

“They all are,” Teddy commented.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Mik responded with a chuckle as the three riders reined their mounts to a halt in front of the women.

“Well?” Mik asked, looking up at Jed.

“So far no more signs that any of the remaining cattle are infected.”

“What a relief!”

They’d had more than their share of trouble lately on the Rocky River Ranch. From poisoned water supplies to a sudden infestation of mad cow disease. It was threatening to not only put them out of business but also cost them the ranch.

Jed dismounted and pulled Mik against his side. “Something I need to talk to you about. Walk with me to the stable?”

“You got it. Alex? Teddy? You gonna hang around?”

“Since we haven’t gotten around to discussing your wedding plans—which is what you asked us here for, I might add—I guess so,” Alex answered, pointedly ignoring Jesse as he reined to a halt beside her. “How long are you going to be?”

Mik cut her eyes up at Jed and he shrugged. “An hour?”

Alex blew out her breath. “Fine. I’ll wait on you at the house. Maybe I can talk Miss Ellen out of a piece of that pound cake she was baking this morning.”

Jed and Mik headed in the direction of the stable. Jesse dismounted, cut a look at Alex’s back as she marched away and then handed the reins to Jake. “I need to get to work. You mind?”

“No problem.” Jake looked at Teddy. “Want to hang out while I cool these fellas down and get them settled?”

“Sure.” She accepted the reins to Jesse’s horse, Whitefoot, and fell into step beside Jake as Jesse headed for the house.

“Everything okay?” She could feel worry rolling off Jake in waves.

“You doing that witchy thing and reading my mind?”

Teddy bumped her shoulder against him and responded to his tease. “Something like that. So what’s bothering you?”

Jake slowed his pace. “Jed got a letter yesterday. He just told us this morning. Apparently, someone dug up an old deed from the early 1900s when our great, great—don’t know how many greats—grandfather borrowed money against the ranch. The person he owed died before the note was paid and Dalton Manning found it and bought the note from the man’s ancestors. He called in the note and it’s gonna take everything Mik and Jesse have won and more to pay him off.”

“Which means nothing left to keep things running or settle up with the people who were boarding horses here and lost them when the water was poisoned.”

The look Jake gave her tugged way too hard at her heart. He might make light of things at times, but the ranch was his life. If they couldn’t get it back up and running they’d go down and that would break all the Nash men, including Jake.

“There has to be something we can do.”

Jake stopped at the door of the barn. “Like what? We’re down to fifty head of cattle we can’t sell thanks to that damn sickness, all but five of our boarders have moved their horses somewhere else and all we have left is our mounts and the three horses Mik and I are training and they’re nowhere near ready.”

“Well…well maybe Jesse and Mik can win at these next three rodeos, and they’ll make nationals and win, and…and everything will be okay.”

“That’s a whole lotta maybes,” Jake replied as he turned to lead the way into the barn. “And anything can happen that’ll knock one of them out of the running.”

Teddy fell into step behind him. She wished she knew something to say to comfort him or had an answer to the financial woes, but the truth was she was barely making ends meet.

Her shop had not exactly taken off. It had become clear that Monroe was not a city particularly open to the type of things her shop carried. In fact, most of the people who’d come in had commented on being surprised to find a “new age” or even worse a “witch” shop opening up.

Teddy had been lucky to make the rent on the shop and her house last month. Were it not for Mik and Alex, she’d have gone hungry. There just wasn’t enough coming in.

Maybe it had been a mistake for her to open the shop.

“Teddy?”

She jerked to attention, unaware Jake had been speaking to her. “I said you want me to take care of Whitefoot?”

“Oh, no, no, I can do it.”

“You okay?”

Embarrassed to have been caught up in her own woes when there was so much going on in Jake’s life, she quickly shook her head and led Whitefoot into a stall. “Fine. Just worried about all that’s going on.”

“You sure that’s all?” He asked a bit louder from the next stall.

“Yeah. Positive.”

There was no more conversation after that as they went about the task of tending to the horses. Jake finished before she did and walked to the door of Whitefoot’s stall.

“What?” she asked as she noticed him watching.

“Just appreciating the view.”

Teddy laughed and passed it off. “Yeah, right.”

“Yeah right,” he said and stepped inside the stall with her. “First time I saw you all I could think was fairy princess, all delicate and graceful and too damn beautiful to be real. Never for a second imagined you as a woman to do this.”

“I did grow up on a farm, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. You just don’t look like a farm girl.”

Teddy smiled. “Well what exactly does a farm girl look like?”

Jake’s eyes squinted and his lips pursed up a little. “Well…like Mik.”

Teddy couldn’t help but laugh. “Honey, that’s wardrobe, not looks. Mik could look like something out of a glamour magazine if she chose. She’s just not a girlie girl.”

“Like you?” He sidled over to her and ran one hand over her mane of blond tumbling curls.

“Oh no, you did not just say that to me,” she teased in mock anger.

Jake’s eyes registered a moment of concern before he realized she was kidding. “Well, you are…kinda. I mean, you always got on those flimsy, wafty skirts and these tops that have all the little beads and wispy things…” His hand moved from her hair to the neckline of her blouse where tiny tendrils of fabric formed a fall of color and movement over her breasts.

Teddy didn’t need to be empathic to know he was becoming aroused. She could see it on his face and hear it in his voice. She not only recognized it, but she also felt it. His touch had the power to excite her like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

“Don’t use that on me,” she warned, uncomfortable at the level of arousal she was feeling.

“Use what, honey?”

“That—that whisperer thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Mik told me. All of you have it—you can…you can project.”

“Project?”

“Yes. Make people feel what you want them to feel. Like desire.”

Jake’s eyes registered surprise and because of her empathic skills she realized that the surprise was not that she knew but that what he was capable of was more than mere charm and good luck.

“Jake Nash, you didn’t know? How could you not know?”

“I…I…Teddy, this is weird. Look, I know I’ve got a way with women. We all do. It just comes naturally. And yeah, we got that thing with animals. Jed the most, but I and Jesse got our fair share. But I swear to god, I’ve never—projected? I’ve never projected something onto a woman.”

“Oh but you have.”

“No. I swear to you—”

“Jake, I’m not criticizing. Just stating a fact. Let me ask you something. Just now. What were you thinking when you touched me?”

It took a moment for him to respond and when he did, she knew he was being honest. “I was thinking how damn beautiful you are and how much I want you and wishing you wanted me just as much.”

Teddy nodded. “I do Jake. I do. But every time you feel that or as you say wish it, it ramps up energy inside you and seeps out—into me or whoever your attention is focused on.”

“So what you’re saying is when you want me, it’s not really you?”

Teddy knew a split second before the words spilled from his lips that she’d stepped into a big pile. He was angry because now, he thought that she didn’t really want him at all, and he wanted her to want him all on her own.

“No, that’s not what I meant at all Jake. It’s just that—”

“No, no, that’s fine; you don’t have to say any more. I get it and I promise I won’t be projecting on you. And I got things to do so…”

With that he turned on his heel and walked away.

Smooth move, Teddy. She grimaced and started after him but stopped. Right now he was angry and until he cooled off nothing she said would get through to him. It was best to just give him some time. Besides, there were other things to consider other than her increasingly demanding libido when Jake was anywhere around.

She refilled Whitefoot’s water bucket then closed the stall and headed for the house. The closer she got the more it felt like wading through air that was thick and pressurized. It actually felt like a physical weight on her body. Teddy knew what she was feeling—the worry and anxiety of the people inside the house.

Perhaps she should work harder at keeping up her mental shields so she didn’t have to feel it. It was depressing. People worrying about what they were going to do to save the ranch, how in the world they were supposed to hold a wedding with all the worry that was piling in on them, whether Mik and Jesse could keep their winning streaks going. Worry after worry, the feelings bombarded her.

Teddy stopped dead in her tracks staring at the house. What in the world was she doing? Nothing about her so-called new life was going as planned. She was way too involved with a man who’d never had a serious relationship and trying to run a business that was analogous to a sinking ship.

In short, she was failing and at what cost? Mik had sold the farm, taking nothing for herself so that Teddy and Alex could pursue their dreams. And what was Teddy making of those dreams?

Not much, it seemed. It was time for her to take a hard look at her life and decide what it was she really wanted, and what mattered the most. Maybe then she could get her life on track.

Jake was tired, dirty, and depressed when he walked through the back door of the lake house. He toed off his boots and left them lying on the floor. After hanging his hat on the hat rank beside the door, he made his way straight to the refrigerator with a course of action in mind. Cold beer. Shower. Food. After that? Well after that hopefully he could find a way to take his mind off what Teddy had said to him this morning.

He hated to admit it, but her words had rankled him something fierce—and not just in anger. He felt ashamed. Had he been doing what she said and projecting desire on women all his life and not been aware of it?

God, he hoped not. He loved being the kind of man women were drawn to, mainly because he purely loved women. Loved the look, the feel, the smell, and the taste of them. But he damn sure didn’t want them to be attracted to him out of some feeling he was giving them and not on their own.

That kind of made him feel like a pervert or molester. If what they felt for him wasn’t real then what the hell kind of man did that make him to have taken from them?

Jake snatched a beer from the refrigerator and used the countertop to pop the cap. One long draught and he closed his eyes, letting the coolness ease its way down. Damn that was good.

That good feeling transformed into something else entirely when he opened his eyes. There in the doorway to the front room stood Teddy. And by the saints and angels, one look at her, and his heartbeat was speeding up.

In place of the flowing shin length skirt and wafty blouse she normally favored, she was wearing a dress that was strapless, displaying the top curve of her breasts. It was fitted down her lean torso and then flowed out over her hips in a bunch of little irregular lengths of fabric that stopped at mid-thigh, giving a real good view of her legs.

And what legs. The phrase “legs that go on forever” crossed his mind. She was barefoot and her long tumble of blond curls was worn loose, framing her face and shoulders like a golden halo.

Jake was pretty sure he’d never seen anyone so beautiful in all his life. Desire rose hot and fast, bringing thoughts of touching and tasting.

Almost as soon as it did, panic or something akin to it, tainted his mind. Was she feeling that? And if she did was she thinking he was trying to project something on her she didn’t want?

Damn, this shit was screwing with his head. So much so, that it threw darkness into his mood.

“Didn’t expect to see you.” His voice was harsher than intended, and he immediately regretted it.

His feelings were running so high that it was impossible for Teddy not to feel them. She had her own regrets and wanted to make amends, to let him know that her desire for him wasn’t something he was forcing her to feel.

“We need to talk.”

“Uh, I think you pretty much already covered all the important stuff this morning, didn’t you?”

“No, actually I think what was said this morning left the wrong impression.”

“How so?” Jake took another swallow of beer and leaned back against the countertop.

Teddy moved to stand in front of him. “What I said this morning, Jake. I wasn’t saying it to be critical, just…just kind of teasing. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

She felt his anger and discomfort and mentally kicked herself. She was handling this all wrong. But what could she do to assure him? Maybe it was time to take a page from Mik’s playbook.

“Look, Jake, we both know what you and your brothers can do. But I don’t believe you can force a woman to want you against her will. I think you just enhance what’s already there.”

He stared at her for a long time before speaking. “So you’re saying…?”

“That you’re hands down the sexiest man I’ve ever seen and if I’d been surer of myself, my life and…and a whole lot of other things, I’d have jumped you the first time I set eyes on you. I want you—honestly, more than I’m comfortable with. Truth is, I’m scared of it. I need more than sexual attraction and I need to know that the man I choose is someone I can trust with more than just my body.”

Jake straightened and the movement brought them closer, so close she could feel the heat from his body. He put two fingers under her chin to tilt her head up. “Honey, I’d never hurt you. And I want…well, it’s a given that I want you, but not just for a quick roll in the hay. I want more, too, Teddy and I think I can be more. I’d just really like you to give me a chance.”

“Well here it is, cowboy.” She kept her eyes on his as she peeled her dress down her body and let it drop to the floor around her feet.

Jake couldn’t stop his eyes from following the path of that bit of material as she worked it down her body. Breasts that were firm and graced with the prettiest pink nipples he’d ever seen made his fingers tingle to touch. But he held firm and allowed only his eyes to touch her flesh, continuing the trek down her body.

When he reached the junction of her thighs, his knees damn near went weak. Smooth and completely hairless, her sex drew him like the proverbial bee to honey.

“God almighty, Teddy. Girl, now’s your chance ‘cause if you don’t run in the next two seconds, I’m gonna put my hands and mouth all over you.”

“Seeing is believing, cowboy.”

That’s all the encouragement it took for him to reach out, grab her behind the neck and pull her to meet his lips. His free hand moved to her breast, thumb tracking over her nipple and feeling it harden. He’d kissed her before, but this was the first time he felt like she was kissing him back. And what a kiss.

There was nothing shy or hesitant in the way her tongue warred with his, or the way her hands moved to work at the buttons on his shirt. There was nothing delicate in the way she gave up on the buttons and ripped his shirt open to bare his skin to her touch.

She broke free of the kiss and lowered her head to trace her tongue down the center of his chest, all the while working to loosen his belt and jeans.

When she shoved his pants down around his knees and took him in her hand, fire swept through his mind, obliterating every other thought but wanting her. He grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up, cupping her firm rear as she wound those mile-long legs around him. Her fingers tangled in his hair, her lips seeking dominance over his.

He couldn’t fight it. Her sex was wet against his belly, her lips hot on his and little breathy sounds came from her throat.

Jake turned, backed her up against the refrigerator and reached beneath her to guide himself into that liquid heat. Teddy threw her head back, banging it against the refrigerator and screamed. “God yes!” as he slid inside her.

After that there was no room or time for thought. It was just them, locked in a primitive dance of mating, all at once completely physically and totally emotional. He’d never felt anything like it. It was intoxicating, overwhelming and irresistible.

“Oh god, yes. Yes, yes, yes!” The volume of her voice increased with each word, meeting him stroke for stroke, her body vibrating with the onset of orgasm.

One final “Yes” turned into a full-blown scream of pleasure.

And in almost the same instant came another sound.

“For god’s sake Teddy! The whole fucking county can hear you!”

Jake went stone-cold still and looked over his shoulder at the door. There stood Teddy’s sister, Alex with her hands on her hips.

“Knock much?” Teddy growled and when Jake tried to disengage, she swatted at him. ‘No, don’t you dare move. Alex, get out.”

“Fine, whatever. Just thought you’d like to know that Manning’s attorney called. We’ve got two weeks to come up with the money or he’s taking the ranch.”

That took the starch out of Jake’s sail and Teddy’s as well. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Fine.” Alex turned and left, slamming the door behind her.

Teddy looked up at Jake and to his surprise, burst out laughing. Before he knew it, he was laughing too, and it wasn’t long before they both were howling, unable to look at one another without inciting another wave. Finally she sobered, wiped her eyes with her fingers and blew out her breath. “Well, damn.”

“I can’t believe she just walked in like that,” Jake said as he allowed her to disengage.

“Yeah, that’s Alex,” Teddy replied. “Miss Buzz Kill.”

“And just when things were getting good.” He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Good doesn’t even come close to it, cowboy,” she said with a smile. “But we better get to the main house.”

“And later?” he asked.

The smile she gave him held promise. “Well, I do think I might be too tired to drive home so…” Her smile faded. “Is it wrong to be this way, Jake? I mean with everything that’s going on?”

“Trouble happens, honey. That’s life. But you can’t let it steal everything from you. If you do then trouble wins. You know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I do. I just wish there was something—oh my God! Jake, I know what to do!”

“Say what?”

“I know how to help.”

“How?”

“I’m about to tell you, but we need to get dressed and I need to shower off so…come on, I’ll tell you in the shower.”

Jake just shook his head and followed. This was turning out to be one hell of a day.