JO HAD NEVER EXPERIENCED such a struggle with another woman. Or gladly sent up the white flag once she saw the results of her suggestions.
It seemed Eric’s fiancée had an entire wardrobe full of summer dresses tailor-made for Texan barbecues—dresses that she herself couldn’t wear. She insisted that Jo at least indulge a toddling, pregnant woman her wish to live vicariously for one day.
“Of course, my legs aren’t nearly as long as yours,” Sara had said, tugging on the hem of the dress they’d finally agreed on after at least fifteen wardrobe changes that had left Jo’s cheeks red-hot and her temper up. “And it’s a little tight through the bust…God, I hadn’t thought you were that chesty.” She’d fastened a safety pin on the inside flaps of fabric between the buttons so the front wouldn’t gape. “But I do have to admit that the boots go with it perfectly, no matter how much I wish you’d fit into a pair of my strappy sandals.”
Now Jo stood just inside the front door to the living room of the main house, fussing with herself, a breath away from running back upstairs and changing into her jeans and plaid shirt. It was more than just the wardrobe change that left her feeling uneasy. If she were to listen to her gut instincts that Carter wasn’t her attacker—no matter the mounting evidence against him—then that meant the real assailant was out there somewhere. Possibly at the barbecue.
She squared her shoulders and stretched her neck. If that was the case, then she needed to have her wits about her. Stop thinking about what she was wearing and concentrate instead on drawing her attacker out of the shadows.
She looked down at her short red Laredo boots. The purchase had been one of her very few impulse buys six months ago, while celebrating her honorary discharge after six years in the marines.
Of course, she’d never really planned to wear them outside of her room. The flashy boots went against her image.
Then again, so did the light cotton, cream-colored dress with tiny purple flowers stamped all over it that cut to a deep V on her chest and had a hem that barely hit midthigh. Part of that longer-leg problem Sara had talked about. Because while the two women might wear the same size, Jo was at least four inches taller than Sara.
“As well as half the width,” Sara had joked. “At least currently.”
Jo took a deep breath now and stepped outside onto the front porch, resisting the urge to pull at the dress hem in a vain attempt to lengthen it. She knew that her preference for jeans over dresses had something to do with her discomfort at the moment, but she also recognized that last night’s incident had wreaked havoc on her normally steel-like nerves.
The summer sun hung like a flaming orange ball in the west, and the ranch was teeming with at least a couple hundred people. A bandstand and makeshift dance floor had been set up in the large yard near the fountain, and a well-known Texas country and western band was playing an upbeat number that a handful of couples gladly line-danced to. Tables with red-and-white-checked cloths stretched one after another as far as the eye could see, each with large flickering lanterns that would become more pronounced as the sun went down. A number of families with younger children had already staked their claim in the open yard with blankets and picnic baskets, getting an early run on prime real estate for the fireworks display later. Stretched across the front of the house was a banner that read in large letters Texas Welcomes Home Eric—An American Hero. And another one stretched the width of the driveway so that arriving guests passed under it.
Jo’s brows rose so high she was sure they met her hairline. When people said Wildewood did it up right, they were not kidding.
“Be still my heart. I think I just shit and fell back in it.” Jackson stood with some of the guys nearby. “I had to look twice just to make sure it was you, Atchison.”
It was too late to run back inside without looking like two kinds of a fool, so instead Jo started to walk down the stairs of the porch.
Jackson immediately stepped to one side of her while Milford appeared on the other, both of them offering an arm.
Jo hesitated slightly, looking at them in the same suspicious light she had every man she’d come in contact with since last night, outside of Trace and his family. Then there was the whole unwillingness to encourage this kind of behavior, which just wouldn’t do on the range.
But they weren’t on the range today. They were at a barbecue. And she liked that she looked feminine.
And she liked that Trace finally caught sight of her, his eyes widening to the size of the plate of ribs he held.
She took the men’s arms and walked at an angle down the stairs so the short skirt wouldn’t reveal more than she dared…
“IS THAT JO?” Clinton asked aloud.
Trace felt as if he’d been struck by lightning for the second time in a week.
It was indeed Jo. In a dress. And a short pair of fire-engine-red boots that emphasized her long, long legs to perfection.
He hadn’t broken a sweat all day, but now moisture dotted his brow. He felt as if the air temperature had just shot up at least twenty degrees. Probably the result of that arc of electricity that seemed to connect him to the woman coming down the stairs on the arms of two ranch hands as if it was something she was born to do.
“Holy Christ, it is,” Clint said.
Once she reached the ground, she thanked the men for their assistance and then began to walk in Trace’s direction. His hand had frozen in the process of lifting a rib to his mouth. But his actions were the only thing frozen. Everything else was burning-coal hot.
“Evening, gentlemen,” Jo said as she neared…and then passed them on the way to the buffet table.
Trace felt as if he’d just been sucker punched in the stomach.
“Whoowee. She cleans up nice, doesn’t she?” Jackson said, coming to stand next to him.
“Yep, doesn’t look bad at all once she brushes off all that ranch dust,” Milford agreed.
Trace handed his plate to Vern, who thankfully hadn’t said anything as he stood eating his food. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute…”
“DANCE WITH ME.”
Trace’s words weren’t so much a question as an order. Jo’s skin tingled merely from having him so near.
“What will everybody think?” she asked, liking the hungry, predatory expression on his handsome face.
“Screw what they think. I can’t concentrate on anything right now but my need to touch you.”
Jo suddenly felt the same way.
But she didn’t think it prudent to throw caution to the wind. At least not just yet.
“Can’t a girl get something to eat first?” she asked.
She’d never uttered a coy word in her life until now. And wondered why she’d waited so long. If the shadow in Trace’s tortured eyes was anything to go by, then she held a power over him that was completely intoxicating.
“You eat a single bite and you’re going to bust out of that dress,” he muttered, eyeing the button that was pinned closed.
Jo laughed. “Now that’ll earn you points.”
“I’m not trying to earn points,” he said, leaning in closer so that his breath tickled the skin under her ear. “I’m trying to figure out a way to get you somewhere private so I can get you out of that dress.”
She’d finished spooning food onto her plate, and turned toward him. “What, you don’t like it?”
Judging by his pained expression, that wasn’t the problem.
He took her elbow and steered her toward one of the tables, pulling out a chair for her at the end. “So hurry up and eat then.”
Jo felt the heat from his touch so profoundly that she didn’t know if she’d be able to swallow a single morsel.
She smiled at her tablemates, quietly introducing herself to what appeared to be a group from a ranch in the next county.
“I’ll be waiting over there,” Trace said.
Jo attacked her pulled pork with gusto. The older man to her right brought her a beer, and the one across from her offered a napkin, which she’d apparently forgotten to get for herself, earning him an elbow from his wife, who sat next to him.
Jo had never been the center of attention. Correction, she had been. As one of the few women on an all-men marine team, she’d received initial looks of disbelief and even disdain. Until she’d proved herself and become one of the guys. The same applied to the ranches she’d worked over the years.
But she’d never had this type of attention.
She paused momentarily, last night’s attack distracting her. Of course, she understood that rape was an act of violence, not of sex. Still, she couldn’t help having second thoughts about the way she was representing herself tonight. A part of her wanted to prove to everyone that she was all right. That it would take more than a degenerate male to bring her down physically or in spirit. But another part wanted to disappear into her bunkroom for days, until she felt ready to face the world again.
However, she’d learned long ago that the world didn’t cease to exist just because you wished it would. And that the sooner she got back up on that damn horse that had thrown her, the sooner she’d get to the other side of the field.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To move on with his life and look to the future, not dwell in the past.
She glanced at her plate, to find she’d completely emptied it, and drained most of the beer. She couldn’t have been more surprised, considering a few minutes ago she hadn’t thought she could swallow a bite.
“And she has a healthy appetite, too,” the guest to her right said. “A woman after my own heart.”
Jo smiled at the man. He was seventy years old if he was a day. And a bigger flirt she had never met.
“What is it you said you did again?” the wife of the man across from her asked.
Jo gathered her plate and bottle and got up. “I’m a hand on this ranch.”
She was vaguely amazed that word of her attack last night hadn’t made the rounds yet. Then again, maybe it was her temporary transformation that had thrown everyone off.
“Did I just hear her say she was a ranch hand?” the woman’s husband asked.
“Oh, yes, you did,” the seventy-year-old said. “And I’ve just decided I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
Jo laughed as she headed to a nearby trash bin and dumped her plate inside. And then she looked directly at Trace, who was standing next to the dance floor.
Her heart dipped low in her chest before bouncing back up again.
She didn’t dance. But in this night of firsts, she figured another one wasn’t going to hurt any…