Savage in a Stetson (Crossroads Book 4) Read online

  On her desk.

  As adversaries.

  Who gave a damn what they were?

  He unzipped her fly and dipped two fingers into her panties. Her slick seam just about unhinged him.

  Rearing back, he stood over the desk and looked at her splayed out for him. A glance down at the strip of denim no wider than two of his fingers and he knew he had to go in that way. He’d been fantasizing about it all evening.

  Using a finger, he plucked the fabric aside and then ran the pad of his thumb over the drenched crotch of her panties. When he found the tiny bump of her clit, she trembled and cried out.

  He rubbed the spot, watching pleasure cross over her beautiful face.

  When he drew her panties aside, he growled, “This shoulda happened a long time ago.” He planted his palm on her inner thigh, flattening her leg to the desk as he dipped his mouth to her pussy.

  Tunneling past the denim strip, her panties and straight to the honey.

  He buried his tongue into her sweetness, listening to her raspy cries of bliss while he learned the contours of her and all the pleasure spots that made her cute ass lift off the desk.

  Before he got too deep and could no longer use any brain power he had remaining, he straightened and yanked her shorts and panties down her hips and off her booted feet. He cast them aside and went for his own fly.

  As soon as she realized what he was doing, she made quick work of it by assisting him. She flicked open his belt buckle and he went for the button. She unzipped his jeans and he reached inside his boxers to pull his cock free.

  “God, I knew you were big.” She ran her tongue over her lower lip in; a sight that would torment him till his dying day.

  He grabbed his wallet and located a condom. In another display of teamwork, he opened it using his teeth and she fitted the rubber at his mushroomed head. Looking into his eyes, she rolled it over his shaft.

  With a soft moan, she planted her hands on his ass and yanked him in. He slid deep and then threw his head back on a groan as her slick, fevered walls surrounded him.

  Claiming her mouth again, he fucked her like he should have ten times before leaving. All those months between them vanished in the fusing of their mouths and bodies. He withdrew inches, and she rocked upward to take them all again.

  Need blasted up from the toes of the boots he still wore and settled as a dull throb in his balls that compounded with each soft sucking noise of her body holding tight to his cock.

  She clutched him to her hard, gave a single shudder and then began to come.

  “Fuuuuuck!” He’d been inside her for mere heartbeats. Seconds. Each snug squeeze of her pussy around his cock stole his last bit of control. Cum spurted from his cock, and his body rocked with each pulse that echoed hers.

  He slowed his mouth over hers, drawing on her sweet, sexy moans and committing them to memory in case this was the one and only time he’d experience such bliss.

  Surely she’d never let herself slip again. Not the woman he knew.

  But did he know her as well as he believed? The Jada he knew never would have left the nursing home let alone taken a man on the office desk in her barbecue restaurant.

  He slowly edged his way from her body. She sat up and hopped off the desk, making a grab for her clothing. With those cutoffs and her top wadded against her naked body, she pointed to the door.

  “You’d better go.”

  He looked into her eyes. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted the pillow talk and all the ‘afters’ that came with making love.

  Only this hadn’t been lovemaking—it was sex on a desk following an argument.

  With a nod, he drew his boxers and jeans back into place and fastened them without looking her way.

  She pivoted from him and commenced dressing. When he slipped his arms into his shirt, he shot her a glance from the corner of his eyes.

  “See you later, Jada.”

  She didn’t respond in any way, not even with a flicker of an eyelash, so he showed himself out.

  Chapter Four

  She couldn’t believe her moment of weakness. Who had sex on a desk while arguing? If the moment wasn’t a direct reflection of her and Dom’s relationship, she didn’t know what was.

  After a shower and a long snuggle with her cat named Thimble, Jada had a good think on the matter of sleeping with her ex.

  She was young and unattached. She didn’t have a thing to fret over.

  “You’re here early!” Carolee had a way of bringing sunshine to any moment of the day as she bustled into the kitchen for her shift.

  Jada looked up from mixing her pork rub with a smile. “I thought I’d get a head start on the pork for tomorrow.”

  Carolee moved to wash her hands and after that started preparing chicken breasts for the Saturday afternoon rush. They worked in companionable silence, and she was super relieved the woman didn’t mention her competition, because she didn’t want to blurt anything about sleeping with him.

  She sliced a look toward the small kitchen window that overlooked the side lot where employees parked. From here, she could only see part of Savage’s Barbecue sign and luckily, no sign of gorgeous, muscled—hung—former rodeo stars.

  “What was that, hun?” Carolee drawled.

  “I didn’t say anything?” But she must have made a noise.

  “Oh thought you did. Did you happen to turn the fryers on? They take a while to warm up.”

  “I’ll do that.” She dropped what she was doing and wiped her hands on a kitchen towel before crossing the room to the fryers. She flipped a switch and nothing happened.

  She peered down at the grease, watching to see if it moved around the fryer as it began to heat. Two full minutes later, nothing happened.

  “I don’t think there’s power.”

  Carolee’s brows shot up. “I thought you were just working by the sunlight until closer to opening time.”

  “That’s true, but now I’m wondering if we don’t have power.” She strode to the wall of light switches and flipped them on. All of them. Not a single one lit up.

  She groaned. “This can’t be happening.”

  Carolee abandoned her workstation to join her at the power box. “We must have blown a breaker or something. Let’s have a look.”

  After both of them tested the switches in the electric box, Carolee put a call in to her hubby for help. But Jada had another way to find out if they had power.

  She walked outside and looked toward Savage’s. No lights were on there either, but as she stood there, he pulled into the parking lot in his truck. He parked, jumped out and circled to the bed of his truck.

  Shielding her eyes with a hand, she tried to make out what he was unloading. Then she saw the familiar black bulky shape of a barbecue grill. And another. Actually, after a close inspection, she counted six of the babies!

  She fisted her hands and took off at a run-walk across the road. As her boots crunched on his fresh gravel parking lot, he looked up. His expression remained blank, but she saw his eyes dip over her body.

  “I’m not wearing cutoff shorts today, so you can quit lookin’. In fact, I burned those ones as soon as I took them off last night.”

  He returned his attention to the sixth completely assembled grill he lifted off his tailgate.

  “What are you doin’ with all these grills?” She set a hand on her hip.

  He tracked the movement, and she dropped her hand, not wanting to give him any more invitations with her body even if her mind gave off a totally different vibe.

  “No power at my place.”

  “Mine either.”

  He nodded. “I know. I called the electric company. Apparently, they’re working on the matter, but it might be as late as tomorrow morning.”

  “What!” She whirled to look at her restaurant, sitting in darkness. She spun to face Dom again. “Tomorrow morning?”

  “Yep. That’s why I invested in some grills.”

  Her mind raced. No power meant no
food, and that resulted in empty cash drawers. Her monthly payment to Mortimer Brown required that she needed to earn a set amount per day for him as well as overhead. So far, she was already sinking.

  She couldn’t let Dom win the day’s customers simply because he had food to sell.

  She whipped around and without another word to the infuriating man, she set off for her own restaurant. She opened the door and called out to Carolee that she was making a run to the hardware store and then jumped into her truck.

  Three minutes down the road, she entered the Crossroads hardware store. She didn’t see any display models of barbecues, but maybe they had them in the back.

  “Hi, I’m looking for a grill,” she told the man at the counter, who’d happened to graduate a few years before her.

  He gave a lamentable shake of his head. “Sorry—I just sold the last one.”

  “Last one?” she echoed.

  “Actually, sold them all to the same guy. You might know him—Savage Cole, the rodeo guy who just opened Savage’s Barbecue.”

  She nearly bit off her own tongue to keep from releasing the sharp scream of fury rising up her throat. The words to “Greased Lightning” revolved through her head as her nervous habit of singing threatened to come forth.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Sorry, Jada. If I had another to sell ya, I would.”

  She turned on her heel and started to walk out of the store, but she stopped in her tracks at the huge cart stacked with bags of charcoal. She spun to stare at the clerk again. “Those grills you sold Savage”—his name came out as a growl—“were they propane?”

  “Uh…no, they’re charcoal grills.”

  “And did he happen to purchase any charcoal from you?” She already knew the answer—she hadn’t seen a single bag in the bed of Dom’s truck.

  He straightened. “No, he didn’t.”

  “I’ll take every bag you got.” She yanked her credit card out of her wallet.

  What had the man said to her last night, right before he took her on her desk? All’s fair in love and barbecue joints.

  She’d see how well his grills worked without any charcoal.

  On the road back to her restaurant, she passed Dom making another trip to the hardware store. Laughing to herself, she slammed her boot down on the gas pedal to rush to the two gas stations in town that might sell charcoal. She planned to load her truck with the stuff and leave not so much as a briquette for her competitor.

  When she bumped back into her own parking lot, Carolee and her husband stood outside waiting for her. Carolee greeted her the minute she climbed from her truck. “Still no power.” She shot a look at the charcoal heaped in her truck. “What on earth?”

  She pointed at Savage’s. “He’s got all the grills—I bought all the charcoal.”

  Carolee shot a look at her husband and they both howled with laughter. Between snorts, the woman said, “Girl, remind me never to get on your bad side!”

  Seconds later, tires squealed on asphalt in front of Savage’s, and then Dom drove fast and furious into a space in front of his building.

  “Hurry, help me unload so he sees.” Jada ran around to the back of her vehicle and eased her tailgate down. The three of them began hefting bags of charcoal out and carrying them up to the front of the restaurant.

  The plan did the trick—after only two trips to the truck, Dom stood in front of Jada, hands on hips like a gunslinger.

  “I can’t believe you.” His voice sounded as a rough rasp.

  She set her fists on her hips too. “Looks like I learned from the master of deceit.”

  “Deceit?”

  “Yeah, you bought up all the grills knowing full well that it’s the only way for us to earn any money at all today!”

  “And you bought all the charcoal. It looks like we’re at a standoff.”

  * * * * *

  She was clever, he’d give her that. And adorable. He wanted to find the nearest desk or picnic table and have his way with her again.

  But he had only an hour before he needed to open his restaurant, and he’d just dropped a fortune on grills he had no charcoal for.

  “Neither of us can serve customers.”

  She folded her arms, plumping her breasts up higher. “Looks that way.”

  He swung his gaze from her huge stack of charcoal to his grills. “I’ll share if you do.”

  She hiked up a thin blonde brow. “You’ll give me a grill for what?”

  “Ten bags of charcoal.”

  “Deal.” She thrust out her hand, and he wrapped his fingers around it. The feel of her silky skin reminded him of other silky parts he wanted nothing more than to touch, lick and nibble again.

  She started to withdraw her hand from his grasp, and he yanked her in. She reeled forward and thumped into his chest. When she tipped her face up to shoot him a glare, he bent down and took her mouth.

  It wasn’t gentle or a promise. It was a claiming, and they both damn well knew it.

  He latched onto her waist and tugged her closer. When she issued a moan, he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. As he plundered her, he realized he had to figure out this lust between them and how to tame it.

  She worked a hand up his chest and then shoved hard. He released her and stepped back. Chest working, he gazed into her eyes.

  “The deal was charcoal. Not kisses.” She pointed at her pile. “Take your ten bags and get out of here.”

  He dropped her a slow wink, loving how her jaw dropped. She whirled away from him and took off to collect her grill. He watched the sway of her hips for a heavy, ball-throbbing moment before he hefted two bags onto his shoulder and crossed the road.

  While she dragged her grill, singing some show tune as she did, he hopped in his truck to drive over and load up the other eight bags of charcoal.

  “Nice doin’ business with ya,” he called out to Jada.

  She raised a hand and gave him a very unladylike gesture.

  He chuckled the whole way to his restaurant and through the task of loading three grills with charcoal and lighting them. He figured he won that round. He got the kiss, didn’t he? And Jada’s dazed expression and the wetness on her lips would linger on his mind a long time.

  When he had some fresh racks of ribs grilling over the charcoal, the scent made his mouth water. Maybe having no power wasn’t so bad after all. A few vehicles drove by, saw the fragrant smoke coming off the meat and then circled back to purchase some. He had his employees set up outside with a table to take orders and without lights in the dining room, they ate outdoors.

  While the grills worked their magic, he switched on the radio in his truck and cranked up the tunes to create a block party feel to the day.

  He glanced over at Jada’s to see that she seemed to be gaining some customers as well. He almost felt bad about only trading one grill. Then he saw her talking with a couple guys, moving her hands around in the air in that animated way he hadn’t seen from her since he left Crossroads and he stopped feeling bad and started feeling irritated.

  Was she flirting? Had she dated since their brief relationship? He hated the way she distracted him without even knowing it. She probably wasn’t dwelling over him at the moment as she smiled and served up her pulled pork sandwiches.

  She saw the men off with a wave and a smile Dom could see from here. Shaking his head, he returned to his work and threw himself into making his grandpa proud. In the morning, he’d pay him a visit and tell him about his resourcefulness.

  His kitchen manager waved him over.

  Dom walked toward him. “What’s up?”

  “You got any more charcoal hidden somewhere?”

  They both looked up at Mortimer’s.

  Dom shook his head. “Man, I can’t ask her. I’ll be lucky to walk back across the road with both my balls.”

  His manager bent at the waist with his laughter.

  “Can you make do with what we got?”

  “I’ll have to, but we need to sto
p the brisket for the day. It takes a lot of cooking time, even being pre-smoked yesterday.”

  “Cut the brisket. We’ll have power tomorrow and we’ll use it then.” As soon as he spoke the words, a guy approached the table and asked the clerk for brisket. Dom quickly interrupted.

  “Sorry, no brisket today. We’re operating on a limited menu due to the power outage.”

  “Man, I really wanted that brisket.” The customer stared over at Mortimer’s. “I think I’ll see what they’ve got on menu. Sorry.”

  Dom watched his customer drive over to Jada’s. He got too busy to see if she sold him what he wanted, but how could she with only one grill and brisket taking so long to cook? Next time he glanced up, he noticed the guy’s truck was gone.

  He also noticed Jada looking his way at the same time. He lifted a hand in a wave, and she spun around to speak with her employee.

  Dom sighed. He didn’t want to be enemies with her. He saw that his idea to make this the part of town where people came for barbecue really wasn’t going to earn him any points with Jada.

  Did it matter?

  He twisted his lip. Yeah, it did. He wanted Jada on his side. In his arms, actually. He’d screwed up with her by leaving, but he’d damaged their relationship further by not backing down on his location for the restaurant. He could still move—sever his lease agreement on the building. But moving all the equipment when he just got settled, and finding a spot to accommodate his needs, wouldn’t be easy.

  He’d just have to wait for her to calm down. In time, they’d settle in like a pair of old friends, her with her infamous barbecue chicken and him with his brisket. Simple.

  When he glanced over again, he saw her drag a heavy bag of charcoal across the lot to her grill. Then she heaved it into her arms and dumped the briquettes into the bottom of the grill.

  He swore she was grinning at him the whole time.

  “Hey, buddy. Heard you were out here without power and grilling for the masses.” The familiar voice had him turning toward the parking lot. There, he saw the big white truck with BELLAMY RANCH on the side.

  He smiled as Cort sauntered over. “Man, the sight of that truck brings back some feelings.”