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  “A few years now,” Christa admitted. Her shoulders had finally relaxed. “It’s not that you two aren’t great guys…”

  It was simply they were two men with somewhat perverse needs. That was what he understood and Sam did not. “I understand.”

  “If we’re great guys, then why didn’t we ask her out?” Sam rarely gave up.

  Christa looked utterly miserable. “It’s not that I don’t think you should. Honestly, if you could keep it all quiet, I would tell you to go for it, but Abby’s been burned by this town before.”

  “I don’t give a damn what the town thinks,” Sam began.

  “But she will,” Jack finished for him. “And she does. Her momma lives here. Hell, Sam, how many women do you know who are happy to date two men at the same time? There’s a reason they don’t do it. It’s considered perverted.”

  “Well, of course it is. It wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t perverted,” Sam replied. His eyes held an implied “duh.”

  “Did she seem like the kind of woman who does things for kicks?” Jack asked. “Who has a sexual bucket list?”

  Sam frowned.

  “You know people who have sexual bucket lists?” Christa asked.

  “Yeah, I do. I know them because Sam and me, well, we help them check off the ménage portion of that list.” He utterly hated the fact that here he was playing the bad guy again. “It’s not going to happen with her. You need to leave her alone, Sam. She’s here to take care of her mother. Let her do that in peace.”

  Something died in Sam’s eyes, a little light. When he smiled this time there was no joy behind it. “Sure thing, Jack. You’re right. She wouldn’t want to have anything to do with us. Not if she knew the truth. Christa, it was good to see you. I’ll go run my errands and see you back at the house, Jack.”

  “Sam,” Jack said, unwilling to let him go without some kind of offer to make things better. “We’ll head up to Dallas in a week or two. We’ll spend some time in The Club.”

  This was all his fault when he thought about it. He’d gotten wrapped up in work and they’d missed their last two planned trips into Dallas. There was a club there that catered to men like him and Sam. They needed a good weekend of indulgent sex to get their heads straight. He wouldn’t let it go so long next time. It would be kind of like setting an appointment to change the oil in their cars, routine maintenance. If they got regular, rocking-good sex, maybe Sam would settle down and stop going after women like Abigail Moore.

  “Sure thing,” Sam said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  He strode out of the house and Jack’s stomach sank.

  “There’s a club?” Christa asked.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about,” he replied. A nasty thought hit him. Christa and Mike were the only people in town who knew for sure about their “proclivities.” Well, besides the women they’d fooled around with, but he thought he’d managed to keep it mostly to rumors. But what if it bothered her? “Unless you would rather we stayed away from you and Mike altogether.”

  She rolled her eyes. Had she been in the lifestyle, she would have made a glorious brat. “I’m so shocked, Jack.” She sobered a bit. “I didn’t mean to hurt Sam like that. Abby’s been gone for twenty years. We’ve kept in touch. She’s my best friend, but I’m not a hundred percent sure she’s ready for any of this. Don’t take it wrong, Jack. Believe me. I want her to stay here, and if she fell madly in love with the two of you…”

  He held a hand up. “Stop right there, Chris. I’m too old to believe I’m going to magically fall in love with someone. I will admit that she is one fine-looking lady, but I can’t see myself falling in love with anyone. If anything, I suspect Sam is going to be the one who’ll get married. If the woman he loves is on the open-minded side, perhaps we can work something out, but I don’t expect more than sex.”

  “That sounds sad,” Christa said.

  “I’m a realist.” He had to be. One of them had to be. He left, following Sam and hoping his best friend in the world could forgive him.

  * * * *

  Two days later, Sam eased into the booth at Christa’s Café with a brighter outlook on things.

  “You get to look at the reports?” Jack asked, pulling out a newspaper.

  Once or twice a week they came into town and had breakfast at Christa’s. There was always some errand they needed to run. Today they were picking up feed. Jack said it forced them to socialize, but what he really meant by that was it forced Jack to socialize. Sam socialized plenty.

  He glanced around the café. Yeah, he’d socialized with a couple of the women here, but for the most part he managed to stay friendly with them.

  Ah, there was the one he didn’t want to be friendly with. Well, he did, but he wanted it to go way further than friendly.

  Abby Moore stepped out of the kitchen and she was wearing one of the short pink dresses Christa’s waitresses all wore, though she filled that sucker out way better than the teenagers Christa hired. He had zero interest in those babies. He wanted a woman, and the perfect one had just walked out.

  “Sam? You listening to me?”

  He smiled. “Yep. I read the reports. The cattle are healthy and happy and exceptionally eager to get sold and made into hamburgers.”

  The herd this year was in excellent health, with most of them at prime weight to be sold in the next few months, but then he didn’t need a report to tell him that.

  Jack followed his line of sight and went still. That was interesting. There were times when Sam could read his partner like a book and this was one of them.

  Jack didn’t want Abby? Bullshit.

  He’d seen the way Jack reacted to her, how he’d covered her small hand with both of his. He’d watched Jack go from pissed off to sad when he realized what kind of woman Abby was. Hell, he even knew why Jack had come running. Normally Sam had terrible taste in women. Well, that was what Jack would say. The truth was he had excellent taste in women. It was simply discretion and Jack’s pickiness he lacked. If there wasn’t a fabulous woman waiting around on a Friday night to go home with him, he’d take the mean one home because it wasn’t like he was planning on having a pleasant conversation with her. Sex was easy.

  What he wanted to try with Abigail Moore…now that was going to be a bit trickier.

  Because he had conversed with her. Because despite his very clever ruse the other day, he’d walked straight out to his truck, gone about his errands, and then happened to find himself at her sad single-wide trailer. He’d wanted to make sure she was safe. He hadn’t spent more than thirty minutes talking to her, but he’d called later on and that had led to a much more detailed conversation and now, two days later, he’d spent roughly four hours on the phone with her.

  Oh, he liked her quite a bit.

  “Seriously? I thought we had this conversation, Sam.”

  Sam let his eyes go wide. “What are you talking about? We eat here every time we come into town.” He huffed a little. “Are you saying I can’t get my waffles because you don’t like the waitress?”

  Jack sat back, setting the newspaper down. “It’s not that I don’t like her.”

  “You don’t even know her so how could you dislike her?”

  “She seems very nice.”

  “I think she’s lonely. Have you noticed how some of the people won’t talk to her?”

  Christa stopped at their table with a pot of coffee in her hand. She filled their mugs. “Hey, boys. Abby will be with you both in a moment. Unless you want another waitress.”

  Jack looked around the diner. “Why are we the only ones in this section?”

  Christa sighed. “It’s what I like to call ‘church lady’ day. At this time of day, it’s all women who meet for the church or the public school. They plan events and activities. They don’t much like Abby, but she can use the money and it’ll pick up come lunchtime. The highway workers don’t give a crap who brings them their burgers.”

  Abby seemed to realize she had cu
stomers and smoothed down her tiny skirt that could easily be flipped up so he could have access to her pussy. She looked slightly flustered as she tried to find her notepad. She gave him a bright smile and then it seemed to dim as she saw Jack.

  He was going to have to be charming enough for both of them until Jack got his head out of his ass and realized that the world wasn’t all dark and dim. The man brooded too much.

  “Why does she need the job here anyway? I thought she was a nurse,” Jack said, obviously unable to take his eyes off her.

  He was probably thinking about that pink skirt, too. And the wealth of beauty that lay under it. Though he would bet Jack was thinking about her pretty ass.

  “Her husband’s cancer treatment was very expensive. Even the co-payments nearly wiped her out. Not that she had much to start with. She paid her own way through school and raised her daughter by herself. She has enough savings to get Lexi through four years of school and for a down payment on a small house or condo. She can use some spending money until she can find work again.”

  Jack’s hands made fists on the table and he moved them under. “We’ve got a hospital.”

  “They told Abby they didn’t need her services, but they would call her if a position opened up. Small towns work in mysterious ways,” Christa said as Abby joined them. “So, Abby is going to help you boys out today. Have a good breakfast.”

  Abby had a smile on her face that didn’t quite reach her eyes, as though she wasn’t certain of her welcome. “Hello, Sam. Mr. Barnes.”

  “It’s Jack, Abigail. You can call me Jack.” Jack’s hands made a reappearance, reaching for his coffee. “You are looking lovely today.”

  Score one for his freaking team. All he needed was to poke that place in Jack that couldn’t stand not lifting up the underdog. In this case, they would be lifting her up and setting her right back down on one of their dicks.

  She flushed slightly. “Thank you. It’s been a while since I wore a waitress uniform. Now, what can I get you two for breakfast?”

  “What do you like here?” Jack asked as though he hadn’t ordered the same damn thing for the last ten years. “I’ve heard the waffles are pretty good.”

  Abby grinned. “They are. They’re excellent. Of course, everything is. Christa’s mom used to run this place and Christa still uses most of her recipes.”

  She was off, talking about how she and Christa used to play in the kitchens when they were kids.

  When they left, Sam noted the overly large tip Jack left.

  It was only a matter of time.

  He had to be patient. A wee bit manipulative.

  His best friend had taught him that. Sam went about his day with a spring in his step. This was going to work out. He knew it was.

  Chapter Three

  Abby sniffled as she tried to figure out how to get the cracked board off the stairs that led up to the tiny trailer she’d grown up in. The stairs probably hadn’t been properly taken care of since her father died. They’d been tricky to maneuver even back when she’d lived here.

  She took a deep breath and tried to remind herself why she was here. Her mom needed her. When she didn’t need her, Abby would head straight for Austin to see how she liked the city.

  Her baby sure seemed to like it. Lexi was thriving in college. That had to be enough.

  The unmistakable sound of heavy tires crunching on the gravel road brought Abby’s head up and she got off her knees. There was no way she was having this conversation on her knees.

  “Hello, Ken,” she said, recognizing her old high school classmate despite the fact that he was wearing a deputy uniform instead of a football jersey. He’d been the best running back in the area until he’d blown out his knee in his sophomore year at LSU.

  Maybe he’d seen her struggling and this was a friendly call. So far she’d been lucky. With the exception of the Thursday morning brunch club refusing to sit in her section, she hadn’t felt unwelcome. The community around her mom had given her a warm welcome, but given Ken’s frown, she thought her luck might be about to change.

  “Ms. Moore,” he began and then sighed. “Hey, Abby. Damn, you look good. Have you aged a day since high school?”

  She’d so aged. His voice had softened, but she noted he wasn’t moving any closer to her. No welcome-home hugs. “You look good, too, Ken. What are you doing out this way?”

  His face flushed, another sure sign this wasn’t going to go well. He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, she got his hard lawman voice. “How long do you think you’ll be staying here, Abby?”

  “As long my momma needs me.” She wasn’t seventeen years old and desperate. She couldn’t be bought off for a thousand bucks and the promise of being left alone.

  “Do you have any idea how long that will be?” He stepped toward her.

  She held her ground. “She had surgery. I’m going to be here probably six weeks. Maybe eight.”

  “That’s a long time,” he said with a frown. “Shouldn’t she have a nurse? Why hasn’t her insurance brought in a professional?”

  How little they knew about her. “I assure you there’s no one they could bring in who could do the job better than me. I’m a registered nurse with fifteen years of service under my belt. My degrees have degrees, Ken. Do you know how I managed that? I managed to get my degree while raising a child alone and working thirty hours a week to support us. So you tell your boss Ruby Echols that the girl she shipped away is not the woman who came back.”

  His jaw tightened and she knew she’d rubbed him the wrong way. She talked to doctors like that all the time and they rolled their eyes and usually did what she told them to because those men were perfectly confident in themselves. That was what she’d learned. It took confidence to be able to listen to other people. Ken looked hard and mean as he stepped into her space.

  “My boss is the sheriff of this county and you better not forget that, little girl,” he began.

  She heard the sound of another car coming down the road, but she knew she couldn’t count on anyone to save her. Not from the law. She kept her eyes on the deputy. “Like I said, I’ll be here until my mother is on her feet again.”

  He loomed over her. “And like I said, your momma needs a professional, someone who isn’t related to her.”

  “You mean someone who doesn’t make Ruby Echols mad.”

  He stopped, his eyes looking down at her. “You know it strikes me that we could work something out, Abby. That old lady doesn’t have to know you’re still here. Not if you promise to stay in this trailer. Hell, I wouldn’t even leave you alone. I’d come and visit you.”

  She could bet he would. She fought back tears. Damn but would this ever stop? She wasn’t safe here.

  He stared down at her. “What do you say, Abby? You want to stay here, you gotta pay the price.”

  “Is there a problem, Deputy?” A hard voice broke through her fear.

  Abby looked over and Jack Barnes was standing in her momma’s tiny, well-kept yard. He was big and solid and she kind of wanted to run over and throw herself into his arms.

  She didn’t, but she wasn’t sure if she’d ever been more grateful to see a man than she was to see Jack.

  Ken glanced over at Jack and took a step back. “Now, Mr. Barnes, I was discussing a situation with Abby here. Get back into your truck and move along.”

  “Is that what he’s doing, Abigail?” Jack asked. “Is he having a normal discussion with you? A consensual discussion?”

  She had two choices. She could keep the peace or she could throw herself behind that big, broad body and let him protect her. Would she be getting him in trouble? Would she be making Jack Barnes’s life worse for stopping to help her out?

  “Abigail…” His deep voice broke through the questions running through her mind. “I want to know what’s happening. Do you understand me? I don’t want some bullshit because you think we should avoid conflict.”

  Ken turned toward him. “Mr. Barnes, there’s zer
o reason for you to be here.”

  “Except that I want to know what’s happening with Abigail,” he replied, his voice steady.

  There was a moment when she wasn’t sure what was going to happen, when she worried she was about to get Jack Barnes into serious trouble. And then Ken stepped back, his shoulders coming down and his whole demeanor changing in a second.

  “Nothing at all, Mr. Barnes,” Ken said. “Just checking in on an old friend. Abby, good to see you. Think about what I said.”

  She stared at him, not giving him a single word. He didn’t deserve one. She stood there with her stupid hammer in her hand and wondered why the hell she’d thought this could work.

  Jack moved in, taking Ken’s spot, though he turned his back to her, watching Ken as he got into his car. He was a big bulwark between her and the cop. He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched the deputy drive away.

  Abby took a deep breath.

  Jack turned to her. “You all right?”

  She nodded.

  “But he wasn’t being pleasant, was he?”

  She felt tears pierce her eyes. Shame, that old nasty friend, flushed through her. She managed to shake her head.

  Jack Barnes stepped in, crowding her, but not the way Ken had. Somehow she knew she could back away and he would let her go. He wasn’t trying to take something from her. He was trying to give, to give her comfort, to let her know she wasn’t alone. His hands came up and he used his thumbs to brush away her tears.

  “You call me if he comes around again. You get in the house and lock the door and call me, you understand?” Jack’s voice was low, deep and solid.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  His jaw tightened and for a second she could swear she saw a flash of something hot in those green eyes of his. “Damn it, Abigail. You’re killing me.”

  He turned away and looked down at the porch.

  “I was trying to fix it but I couldn’t get the board off.” It was way easier to talk about the stupid steps than it was what had almost happened.