The Stolen Suitor (17 page)

“Of course I wouldn’t—I would never do that to Jeremy,” Chris said with surprise.

“Swear.” Mrs. Rollingswell insisted.

Chris held up one hand. “I swear.”

“You’d be surprised the nonsense I see as a teacher.” She leaned back and considered it. “Well, all right. I know I shouldn’t, but that boy needs a kick in the behind. Maybe he’ll take praise more seriously if it comes from you. Give me your e-mail address, and I’ll forward it to you. And, oh! I’ll want to talk to you about it when you’re done!”

BILLY
had taken Janie out for a ride, so Trix had a few hours free. She went around to check up on things and found Eric in the tractor shed. He had the hood of their old Ford mowing tractor up and was on his knees, messing with the engine.

“What’re you doin’?” she asked, surprised.

“I wanted to mow out by the road, but Hemmy said the regular mower can’t handle that grade, so I should use this. It’s not startin’ right.”

“You know about tractor engines?” Trix asked doubtfully. That old Ford had been here for generations, and John had always had to tinker with it. Seeing Eric do it felt… weird.

He looked up at her and grinned. “I’ve owned some of the shittiest cars known to mankind. I pert much had no choice but to figure out how to fix ’em.”

There was a streak of grease on his chin and some of his bangs were plastered to his forehead with sweat. His plaid shirt was draped over the tractor seat, and he was left in a sleeveless T-shirt, the muscles in his arms bunching as he tried to tighten or loosen something.

Trix licked her lips.

That conversation she’d overheard in the diner had continued to niggle, even though she’d tried to dismiss it from her mind. Eric was working hard, and she was paying him very little, and that was all that should concern her. Vicious tongues loved to wag.

“Why did you ask me for a job here, Eric?”

He gave her a funny look. “I like workin’ on the ranch.”

“I know. I mean… that’s good. But at the start. Why did you want to work
here
, at Big Basin?”

His eyes assessed her even as his hands continued to work on whatever they were working on. A warm look came over his face. “Guess I always did have a thing for you, Trixie Sticks.” He said it so straight-forward, with no shame or apology. Like it was something a hired hand did every day, admit they’d wanted to work for you because they wanted to bed you.

“That’s not really appropriate,” she said stiffly.

He shrugged and stooped over to look under the engine.

Damn Eric Crassen. As if he knew he was gorgeous and all the women wanted him. As if he could just say such things and she should be flattered and grateful.

She should let it drop, but his words made her feel all itchy inside. “Well, whatever your reasons, you best know that I’m not lookin’ for a roll in the hay or anythin’ else. You’re my worker and nothin’ more.”

He looked up from what he was doing with an expression that was all doubtful raised eyebrows and smug smirk.

“I mean it!” she said loudly.

“Can you hand me that big wrench over there?” Eric asked in a calm voice.

She fetched it for him, annoyed that he was ignoring her words.

But when she held out the wrench, he took the end of it, and in one swift move, stood and pulled her around into his arms, so his chest was against her back and his arms around her. They were both holding the damn wrench.

“Eric!” she protested, and was horrified to hear the delighted giggle in her own voice.

“You don’t want nothin’ to do with me, is that it?” Eric purred into her ear.

“No!”

“That’s a shame. ’Cause you should know you’re the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”

She huffed a sound of pure disbelief, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. Not when his arms felt so sure and strong around her. God, she’d missed that feeling. She wanted to sink right into it and stay there. “You expect me to believe that bull, Eric Crassen?”

“I swear ta God. You’re the most beautiful
to me
. Everythin’ about you is exactly right, Trix. Your honey-colored hair, your long legs, the way these—” He brought his hands slowly from her wrists to her ribs and up, and God help her, she didn’t stop him. He cupped her breasts in both hands with just the right amount of pressure to make her inwardly groan. “—these fit in my palm like the angels created them as a matched set. Just like I knew they would. And then there’s your eyes. Your smile. The way you are with the horses and with Janie.”

“Don’t, Eric,” Trix said desperately. But she meant just the opposite.
Do, Eric
. He was just cupping her breasts from underneath, not moving his hands at all, and she wanted him to move them more than she wanted to breathe.

“I never thought I was good enough for you, Trix. You were so far outta my league. But now I know I can be. I can work hard, and I can be what you need in every way. In every way, darlin’.”

He pressed up against her back, and she felt the length of him, hard and wanting inside his jeans. She was tall enough that they were nearly of a height, and it pressed right in the cleft between her cheeks. Tip to base, she felt him—large, warm, and so hard—and it was like lightning shot through her, like a dam inside her exploded without warning. Sweet liquid heat poured through her veins in a flash flood and pooled in her groin. She heard herself moan as she went weak and relaxed back against him.

“Trix.” He groaned the word and began kissing her neck. His hands massaged her ever so lightly.

“I can’t,” she said weakly. “It ain’t right.”

“It’s so right, darlin’,” he said, his breath making her shiver. “So right. You and me, Trix. That’s the way it was always meant to be.”

At those words she suddenly remembered Eric at the start of her seventh grade year, how she’d come back to school so moony and excited and anxious to see him. And how he’d ignored her, how he’d ignored them all.

Jailbird Crassen
.
Sullen, stoned, good-for-nothing Eric Crassen.

Trix is smarter than that! Why would she give up a good boy like Chris Ramsey for someone like Eric Crassen?

She pulled away. “No!” She turned to face him from a safe distance away and watched as his face closed up over what was clearly hurt and shame.

He squatted down and went back to working on the engine like nothing had happened.

“It’s not like that, Eric! I… I still love my husband! And if you can’t respect that, you’d… you’d best not work here anymore.”

Without waiting for an answer, Trix stormed out of the stable.

She was halfway back to the house before she realized two things. First, she thought she’d never feel desire again, that it had died with John. But she’d just felt it, all right, dear Lord! Her body still thrummed with the force of it. And secondly, despite the easy excuse she’d given Eric, she hadn’t thought about John once, not one time from the moment she’d walked into that shed ’til just now.

Or Chris either for that matter.

She stopped in the middle of the driveway and put a hand over her mouth. Goddamn it, she was vulnerable to the wiles of that playboy after all. She could hardly believe it. She’d just have to avoid being alone with Eric. That was all there was to it.

She ignored the ache in her heart and the one between her legs that wasn’t at all happy with that decision. She walked determinedly toward the house to see if Janie was up from her nap. She was a mother and a grieving widow. From here on out, she would act like it.

IT
was a hot Sunday afternoon in July. Chris had gone fishing with Jeremy that morning, but Trix had called and begged off their usual Sunday afternoons together, saying she and Janie both needed some extra rest.

Chris was happier than he should have been to have the afternoon free. He finally had time to read the manuscript Mrs. Rollingswell had sent him. He sat up in bed with his laptop, his mind spinning off in crazy directions.

Like helping Jeremy get into college. Maybe in Denver at Chris’s alma mater.

Like getting to see Jeremy experience a big city for the first time.

Like watching him come into his own, away from Clyde’s Corner, where he wasn’t just
Jeremy Crassen
, the quiet kid from the trailer park with a bad family, the nearly invisible cook at Nora’s Diner.

Jeremy was so much more.

And Mrs. Rollingswell was right. Jeremy was talented. It was a raw talent, rough around the edges, but it nearly screamed off the page. It was in his down-home poet turn of phrase, in the rawness of the emotion, the vividness of his imagination, the way you felt connected to the main character from the first page.

Chris wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it sure wasn’t what he got. Jeremy’s book,
Shut Away
, was about a guy Jeremy’s age, Trevor, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got sent to prison. At first the conviction threatened to destroy both Trevor and his family, who were ostracized in their community, but slowly Trevor fought back with sheer will and basic decency. After he took a stand in prison and nearly died for it, he was protected by a massive man named Skully, a convicted killer who might or might not be innocent. They might or might not eventually become lovers.

Those answers might or might not be in chapter seventeen, which Chris would happily kill for.

Shut Away
was also a very personal book that made Chris understand Jeremy in a way he never could have done otherwise. He’d been around when Jeremy’s father was arrested, and he remembered the gossip, but he hadn’t realized how bad it was, the way Frank Crassen’s arrest had affected his family—the shame, taunting, and belittling that went with it. How Jeremy must have longed for his father to be a hero, even in prison. The book talked a lot about blood—bad blood, good blood. Did Jeremy think he had “bad blood?” Was that one of the things he feared?

Chris figured Trevor was both Jeremy and his father, but Trevor’s little brother, taunted at school until he essentially disappeared inside himself, was definitely all Jeremy.

There were other familiar faces from Clyde’s Corner in the book too. And it was very moving the way Trevor missed his small Montana hometown when he was in prison, the way he described it, detailed and loving. Jeremy might want to run off to college, but the book proved he had deep roots in Clyde’s Corner too, just like Chris did.

Maybe he and Mrs. Rollingswell
could
plot together. Maybe they could stage a coup. Or an intervention. Or a kidnapping. Just steal Jeremy right from under the nose of Mabe Crassen and Nora and plop him down in a college classroom somewhere far away.

If only it were that easy.

And what about you? How will you feel when Jeremy is gone off living his own life, and you’ve settled down with Trix and Janie? Taking care of what John left behind? Will you be happy then?

Chris didn’t have an answer.

IT
was the end of July, the last day of their six-week horseback-riding class. Joshua and Ben said they had barbecue waiting by the river as a special treat. But first they had to get to it. The trail ride included a hill they’d never done before.

Jeremy was riding behind Chris, and he could tell from the stiffness of Chris’s back and the way he kept glancing down into the ravine off to their left that Chris didn’t like the experience any more than he did.

By the time they reached the river and dismounted, Jeremy’s imagination had gone to hell and back.

Chris bumped Jeremy’s shoulder after he dismounted and tied up his horse. “Tell me you weren’t imagining us falling into that ravine.” He chuckled.

“Oh hell yes. There were snakes and bears and flash floods and all sorts of dire circumstances I came up with, a dozen reasons those horses could have bolted.”

“Aw!” Chris’s sympathy was purely fake. He put his palm on the top of Jeremy’s head playfully, and Jeremy’s body immediately leaned up into it, like a plant toward a window.

“I was imagining others things too,” Jeremy said, his voice low. “Like you and me on that hillside in the grass, and forget the damn horses.”

“Yeah?” Chris sounded interested, but then his stomach rumbled. “Damn, that barbecue smells good.”

It did. There was nothing quite like the smell of meat on the grill and sweet sauce as it mingled over the scent of pine trees and the river. Like, if Jeremy could bottle it, he’d name it “Best of Summer.” All that and Chris Ramsey, his
lover
, too. It was a damn good day.

“Let’s get in line before Eric eats it all,” Jeremy suggested. Eric, he noticed, was already hovering around Charlie by the grill.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

They got their plates and went to “their spot” on the riverbank to eat. There were ribs, chicken thighs, coleslaw, beans, and chips, and it was everything Jeremy could do not to fall on it like a starving man. He’d skipped breakfast, and the food tasted like heaven.

When he finally put his empty plate aside, Chris was watching him with an amused expression. “Hungry?”

“Um. Maybe,” Jeremy hedged with a laugh.

“Well, I reckon,” Chris said, imitating Joshua’s throaty twang.

It made Jeremy smile. “Hey, cowboy, wanna come over to mine after we’re done here? Eric’s working and Ma is too, all afternoon. We could have a real bed. Fool around some. And by ‘some’ I mean ‘a lot.’”

Chris grinned the grin that Jeremy treasured, the one that was 70 percent real happiness and 30 percent naughty thoughts. “Indoors, huh? Bear-free zone? Does that mean I won’t have to gag you?”

“You still can if you want,” Jeremy said with sly heat. He couldn’t believe himself sometimes, the things he did in front of Chris, the words that came out of his mouth. He might have been late to the sex party, but now he felt like he was just one big erogenous zone all the time. Fortunately, Chris wasn’t complaining.

“I was gonna do some work at the Merc this afternoon, but I can call my dad and beg off. He won’t mind.”