Claimed by Vicki Lewis Thompson
Chapter Ten
“Set ‘em up, Jo!” Alex came into the bar at noon wearing a grin bigger than Josie remembered seeing on her brother in ages. “I got the job.”
“Congratulations!” Signaling Tracy to get Alex a beer, Josie came around the bar to give her brother a bear hug. Maybe the pain of the divorce was fading. “That’s awesome!”
“They want me to start right away. I’ll see if Mom and Dad would be willing to supervise if I hire somebody to pack up my apartment and ship the stuff out here.”
Josie felt a pang of sympathy for their folks. “They’ll probably box themselves up and come along with your stuff.”
“I hope they do.” Alex was flying high, his beautiful smile flashing. “I want to sell them on this place as a retirement option in a few years. There’s that great B&B, the Bunk and Grub, where they could stay while they’re here. They’d love it.” He glanced over at the bar where Tracy had placed a glass of beer on a cocktail napkin. “Thanks.” He lifted the glass. “Here’s to being employed.”
“I’d drink to that, but I promised Tracy I’d help with the noon crowd.” Josie leaned over and kissed her brother on the cheek. “I’m thrilled for you, though.”
“I’m really happy about this.” Alex took a swallow of his beer. “In fact, I’m going to suggest the ‘rents each take some vacation time and come out ASAP so they can see why I’m so excited about the place.”
Josie tried to focus on the positives of having her family gather round and not the negative aspect to her reunion with Jack. Her parents had hated the way Jack had ended things last fall, so they wouldn’t be happy that she’d started seeing him again, either.
Not wanting to rain on Alex’s parade, she put out a mild suggestion. “If you invite them, you might want to suggest they come after Morgan’s wedding. I’ll want to spend time with them, and as co-maid of honor, I’ll be pretty busy between now and the wedding.”
“Good point.”
“Plus you’re invited to the wedding. I found that out this morning.”
“Right. Your riding lesson. How did that go?”
“Excellent.” She blocked all thoughts of being naked on a blanket with Jack and concentrated on her experience of cantering through the trees. “I’ve decided I want to get good at this. I like riding.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“So this Jack guy is actually teaching you to ride and not using the lessons as an excuse to make a move on you?”
Josie could feel her deer-in-the-headlights reaction as she struggled to think of a diplomatic answer to that loaded question. “He—” The cell phone clipped to her belt chimed, and she’d never been so happy for an interruption in her life. Then she recognized the ring. It was Jack’s.
“Excuse me a minute, Alex.” She moved away from the bar.
“Sure.” He returned to his beer, and Tracy came over to offer her congratulations.
Tracy had a mega-crush on Alex, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. Josie hadn’t thought much about it before because she’d expected Alex to leave. But now he’d be staying, and he was on the rebound from Crystal. Josie wasn’t sure how she felt about Tracy, who was a good ten years younger than Alex, lusting after him.
She moved back into her office to answer Jack’s call. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself. It occurred to me that your brother might know by now whether or not he got the job he was interviewing for.”
“He got the job.” She was a little surprised that Jack even remembered about the interview.
“Then I have a big favor to ask. Would you let me talk to him?”
“About what?” Josie’s pulse rate jumped at the very idea of these two guys having another conversation, even over the phone. The last time they’d met had been a complete disaster.
“For one thing, I mentioned the interview to Gabe, and he wants to offer Alex the job of handling the music for the reception. I said I’d ask him and find out what he’d charge.”
“You’re a strange choice as a negotiator if you really want him to say yes. But maybe you don’t.”
“No, I do. I’m not going to ask him over the phone. I’m going to see if I can buy him a drink tonight.”
Josie closed her eyes. “Look, when I said that about you two becoming friends, I didn’t mean you should become drinking buddies this very night. There’s no rush. Maybe after the wedding, when life settles down, the two of you could—”
“No, it needs to be right away. I should have figured out a time to apologize to him sooner than this, but I was guilty of thinking he’d leave and the whole stupid situation between us wouldn’t matter. But he’s not leaving, and so it’s past time for me to talk with him.”
“You’re not planning to tell him about us, are you?” Josie had visions of a bar fight to end all bar fights.
“I’m not a complete moron, Josie. I need to get him to tolerate me before he finds out that I’m—”
“Good, but I’m still not sure about this, Jack.”
“Give me a little credit, okay? It’ll be fine. Is he around?”
She considered pretending Alex was nowhere in sight, but that would only prolong the agony. She knew Jack, and once he grabbed hold of an idea, nobody could shake him loose. He’d decided to contact Alex, and he’d do it if he had to resort to smoke signals.
“Hang on a sec,” she said. “He’s in the bar, but you won’t be able to hear each other in there. I’ll get him to come back here to the office.”
“Thanks, Josie.”
“Don’t thank me yet. He might not want to talk to you.”
“If you ask him, he will, especially if he’s in a good mood because of the job offer. People will do all sorts of things when they’re in a good mood. Look at me. I’m calling to talk to your brother, a guy who currently hates my guts.”
That made her laugh. “So you’re in a good mood?”
“After this morning with you, my whole body is smiling.”
“Mine, too.”
“Just think how you’ll feel tomorrow at this time. I have big plans for you.”
Heat surged through her and settled in all her secret places. “Don’t say things like that. I’ve managed to convince Alex that all we do is ride, so if I get too perky, he’ll suspect we do more than ride.”
“That is all we do, Josie. First we ride horses, and then we ride each other.”
“Stop it, Jack. I mean it. I can’t take this phone to Alex if I’m blushing.”
“I wish I could be there to see you blush. Did you know you blush all over? Your cheeks, your neck, your breasts, your tummy, and especially your—”
“Either you cut that out or I’ll have to hang up. I’m telling you, my brother has a sixth sense. Don’t forget that you want him to tolerate you before he finds out what you’ve been doing with his sister.”
“You’re right, but I’d forgotten how much fun it is to tease you. I’ll shut up if you’ll go get Alex and put him on the phone.”
“All right. I’m going, now.” Josie laid her cell phone on her desk and walked back into the bar, breathing deeply the whole way. She wanted to appear calm and cool.
Maybe Jack was right to jump on this immediately after Alex took the job. If she continued to see Jack, Alex would have ample opportunity to figure out the relationship and he’d be ticked that she hadn’t told him the truth about it. But if Alex learned to get along with Jack, then maybe the revelation that she was involved with him wouldn’t be such a big deal.
As she approached the bar, Tracy was laughing at something Alex had said and Alex was looking at Tracy with way more interest than he had a day ago. Oh, boy. He might have recently had his heart broken, but he was fully capable of breaking someone else’s heart.
She tapped him on the shoulder. “Can I see you in my office for a minute?”
Alex turned and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You betcha. Can I bring my beer? I’m celebrating.”
“Of course you can bring your beer.” And if he’d bring his spirit of goodwill along, so much the better.
She led the way, and once he was inside, she closed the door and picked up her cell phone. She put it on mute and gazed at Alex. “Jack’s on the line. He wants to talk to you.”
“Jack? Jack Chance?”
“Yes. I told him about the interview, and he—”
“Sure, I’ll talk to him.” Alex took the phone and unmuted it. “Hey, Jack? My sister says that she’s enjoying the riding lessons, but I just want to reiterate that I’m watching you, buddy. If Josie comes home with a single complaint about your behavior, I’ll be at your doorstep with a bucket of cement.”
Josie rolled her eyes. So much for these two calling a truce.
“No, she didn’t tell me about the ant hill and the honey.” A smile flitted across Alex’s face. “You want what?” He looked at her and shook his head. “I don’t know, Chance. Accepting a drink from you might compromise my principles.”
Just as Josie was resigning herself to the call ending in an argument and a possible hang up by one or the other parties, Alex laughed.
“I would hate to miss that. Oh, what the hell. We’ll have a damned drink together, and if that doesn’t work out, we can step outside and settle this the manly way. What? No, I don’t think dueling is legal anymore. We’ll have to do rock, paper, scissors. Something like that. Want to talk to Josie, now?”
She stared at him. They were joking with each other?
Alex shrugged and handed her the phone. “What can I say? He made me laugh. It’s tough to hate a guy who makes you laugh.” Then he opened the office door and walked back out to the bar.
Josie put the phone to her ear. “What did you say to him?”
“That if he meets me at the bar for a drink tonight I’ll demonstrate how I can hang a spoon from the end of my nose.”
“You did not.”
“I did, too. It worked with you, and he’s your brother, so I figured it would work with him.”
“Jack, you’re insane.” But she remembered that the first night he’d started flirting with her at the bar, his opening act had been hanging a spoon from the end of his nose. She’d decided any guy willing to clown around like that in front of a woman he was interested in might be worth getting to know.
And Jack had been worth getting to know. She’d had more fun with him than any man she’d ever dated, which was why the abrupt end to their relationship had hit her so hard. She hadn’t been able to believe that Jack could change that quickly from a good-time guy to a silent drudge. Maybe he was emerging from the darkness at last.
“I’m insane about you,” he said softly. “I don’t want bad blood between your brother and me to get in the way. I created the problem, so now I’ll fix it.”
“By hanging a spoon off the end of your nose.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Nope. And you better believe I’ll be here to catch your act. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you perform that particular trick.”
“I was counting on you being there.”
“Just so you understand… you have to be careful to treat me like a good friend and nothing more.”
Jack sighed. “I know, and it won’t be easy, but I’ll manage somehow. Just so you understand… the whole time I’ll be mentally undressing you.”
* * *
As Jack drove into town that night, he remembered how often he used to do that, both before he got together with Josie and especially after. But he hadn’t done much socializing in the past ten months. Now that he was officially in charge of all ranch operations, socializing had seemed like a luxury he couldn’t afford.
And yet, because Sarah and Gabe had insisted on it, he’d set up the riding lessons with Josie, which took time away from his supervisory role. Amazingly, nothing had gone wrong while he was out of touch. The hands actually seemed to be getting more accomplished rather than less in the past couple of days.
Or at least that’s what seemed to be happening. Jack wasn’t sure he could trust himself to judge anything when he felt so damned good. The ranch could be falling down around him and he might not notice. That was worrisome, because it was that kind of inattention that had prejudiced his father against the relationship with Josie.
The running of the ranch had been Jonathan’s primary concern for as long as Jack could remember. Emmett had hinted at lapses in Jonathan’s perfect behavior. He’d lost focus after his divorce from Jack’s mother Diane, according to Emmett.
There’d been the brief affair with Nicole O’Leary, Nick’s mother. But from the time Jonathan married Sarah until the day he died, he’d concentrated nearly all his energies on the ranch and the registered Paints it was famous for. He’d seemed to relish every minute of it.
Jack didn’t relish it at all. He realized now that he’d never really wanted to be in total charge of the ranch operation, despite his father telling him that was how it would be. Jack had resisted the concept from the beginning. He’d even tried to demonstrate that he wasn’t right for the job by slacking off, especially once he hooked up with Josie.
Ironically, his slacker behavior had landed him right where he hadn’t wanted to be — in charge. But for the past couple of days, now that he was seeing Josie again, the burden hadn’t seemed so terrible. Maybe that’s because he was ignoring his responsibilities the way he used to do when his dad was alive.
If so, he didn’t intend to worry about it tonight. Tonight he was going to bring out the old Jack and show Josie’s brother that Jack Chance was an okay guy. If it took the spoon-balancing trick, then so be it. And Josie would be there. The prospect of seeing her again was enough to make him run the town’s only red light.
Elmer Crookshanks had been behind the campaign to install the light a couple of years ago, and it was conveniently located at the intersection where Elmer’s gas station happened to be. Jack, along with several others in town, had always suspected Elmer wanted the light in order to force people to stop long enough that they’d notice his station sitting there. Elmer’s business had picked up after the light went in.
That might have been partly because no matter when a vehicle came to the intersection, whether there was any traffic going the other way or not, the light turned red. That gave people time to see the station, check their gauge, and perhaps decide to fill up.
Jack had fallen into the habit of running the light on purpose, just for the hell of it. Elmer would report him to the county, and Jack would have fun arguing the ticket. He was in the mood to create a little chaos tonight.
No one was in the intersection except him. Stepping on the gas, he ran the light. The minute he did, he saw a flash, as if something or someone had taken his picture.
Now that was going too far. Hanging a quick left, he pulled into the gas station, climbed out of his truck, and walked into the small station with its permanent odor of gas and oil.
Elmer chewed on a toothpick as he sat behind the battered metal desk that had been part of the station’s furniture forever. Nobody knew exactly how old wiry little Elmer was. His hair was gray and his skin weathered, and people had estimated his age at anywhere from forty-five to sixty.
“Gotcha,” Elmer said.
“Was that you with the camera, Elmer?”
“I have it set up with a remote here in the office, so if somebody runs a red light, I can take a picture and send it to the sheriff’s department. They said they needed concrete evidence.”
“For God’s sake, this is Shoshone, not New York City!”
Elmer shifted his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Gotta obey the law everywhere. You ran a red light, Jack.”
“Which brings up another point. How come the light is always red when I hit that intersection?”
Elmer shrugged. “Bad timing, I guess.”
“I think you’ve found a way to alter that signal, or maybe you manually operate that, just like the camera, so it turns red whenever someone gets there.”
“How would you know? You never come into town anymore.”
“That’s about to change, and this traffic signal nonsense is about to change, too. I’ll give you a few days to fix it back so it cycles the way it’s supposed to. But the next time I come through here and there’s not another soul at the intersection except me, I expect the light to be green.”
Elmer chewed his toothpick a little faster. “Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. Can’t say for sure.” He looked worried, though.
“I can, and it had better be green.” Once Jack was outside, he allowed himself to grin. Now that was fun. Next stop, the Spirits and Spurs. Jack was back.
