“You always were a tough son of a bitch,” Jesse said with a wide grin. “Not to mention too stubborn to know what’s good for you.” He hefted the cooler. “Damn, this thing weighs a ton. What’s in it?”
“The bare essentials,” Daisy announced from the back door. “There’s beer, beer and, oh, just in case you get thirsty, some beer.”
“My kind of picnic,” Jesse said on a laugh.
She grinned back at him and for a second, Jericho felt like an outsider. He envied his brothers’ easy way with Daisy. There were no undercurrents between them.
No lingering sexual tension that ratcheted up every conversation they had. His guts were twisting and his mouth was dry just watching her.
She wore a dark green sweater with the collar of a white shirt poking out at the neck. Her jeans were worn, but clung to her legs like a lover’s hands and she was wearing those boots she’d tried to wear on their survival trip. She looked damn good and had Jericho’s heartbeat pounding so loud it was a wonder no one else could hear it.
He wondered, too, if she’d been there in time to hear him say he’d never marry anyone. Had she listened in to his brothers’ talk about family and babies, and had she heard Jericho’s refusal to be drawn into it all? He hadn’t heard her open the door, so it was possible.
And though a part of him hoped she’d missed it, another part acknowledged that it might be easier all the way around, for both of them if she knew exactly where he stood on this.
Nine
“The other cooler has sandwiches.” Daisy was talking to all of them, but her gaze remained on Jericho as she added, “Along with potato salad, macaroni salad, fried chicken and chocolate-chip cookies.”
“Ma’am,” Justice said and swept his Stetson off as he bowed, “you are a gift from above and we thank you.”
“No pasties?” Jericho asked, voice soft enough he half didn’t expect her to hear him.
He should have known better. Her whiskey-colored gaze landed on him, but her smile was less than brilliant. Had she heard him talking to his brothers? Or was this simply a sign that she was going to miss him while he was gone?
“Pasties, too,” she said, “since I know how much you like them.”
There was one long, simmering second that flashed between them and it was as if his brothers weren’t there. As if he and Daisy were alone on the mountain. And the depth of emotion rocking through him almost choked him. He hadn’t counted on this, Jericho realized grimly. Hadn’t counted on caring for her. The need for her had been so overpowering, he hadn’t noticed when it became leavened with affection. With… Deliberately, he shut down that train of thought before it could leave the station.
He couldn’t acknowledge, even to himself, that what he was feeling for her was anything more than a softening of a heart he hadn’t realized was still there. What they shared wouldn’t last. Couldn’t.
Not only because, as he’d told his brothers, he wasn’t looking for forever. But because there was still something she didn’t know. He hadn’t told her about Brant’s last mission. Not yet. But, he told himself, that was exactly what he was going to have to do. As soon as he got back from this trip with his brothers, he’d be up-front with her. Tell her everything. Then she’d leave and things would get back to normal around here.
If he missed her the rest of his life, that was just something he’d have to deal with.
She laughed at something Jesse said and Jericho’s gaze fixed on her. Everything inside him fisted up tight. The woman hit him on so many levels he couldn’t even identify them all. He wanted her and at the same time wanted her gone. Needed her and resented that need. Cared for her, but fought against it at every breath.
How could one small, curvy woman instigate so many different emotions in a man? Especially one who’d made it his business to never feel deeply for anyone? Hell, until Daisy had stumbled into his life, the closest Jericho had come to commitment was the two weeks he’d spent at his cousin Rico King’s hotel in Cancún, with a brunette he barely remembered.
For years, he’d carefully steered clear of entanglements, firmly believing that military life wasn’t suited to hearth and home and family. He’d thought then and still did that a man served his country best when there were no other distractions in his life.
Jericho had seen too many families disintegrate under the strain of long deployments. Or worse yet, he’d seen the damage done to wives and kids when their Marine didn’t make it home. His friends had insisted that he was looking at it all wrong, of course. They claimed the strength they got from their families more than made up for the worry of leaving them. And true enough, there were plenty of military personnel who made it work, balancing career and family so well they made it look easy.
But Jericho had drawn a firm line for himself. He’d chosen to live a solitary life while in service.
What’s your excuse now? a sly voice whispered in the back of his mind. He wasn’t in the military anymore and still he kept people at a distance.
It was cleaner, he told himself. Less cluttered. Though those excuses sounded pitiful even to himself.
“So what’s the big weekend plan?” Daisy was asking and Jericho came up out of his thoughts. Before he could speak though, Jesse was talking.
“To sit beside the lake and listen to my brothers’ lies,” he told her with a wink.
“The day you close your mouth long enough to listen to anybody will be the day they open an ice rink in hell,” Justice told him, giving Jesse a friendly shove.
“Well now, you and Jericho are so damned close-mouthed, it only looks like I’m doing all the talking.” He turned his smile on Daisy again. “You can testify to that, can’t you, Daisy? Jericho’s about as talkative as a rock, wouldn’t you say?”
She turned her gaze on him and Jericho felt the solid punch of her stare. Humor shone in her eyes again as she said, “I don’t know about that. He doesn’t seem to have much trouble when he’s telling me how he wants things run around here.”
He scowled at her, but it was more for form’s sake than anything else.
“Giving orders doesn’t count,” Jesse told her, leaning one hip against the back of the truck. “Because I’m the youngest, I can tell you I’ve been taking orders from my brothers since I first opened my eyes.”
“Not that you ever follow them,” Justice reminded him and lifted the heavy cooler filled with food so easily, it might have been empty. He set it in the back of the truck and glanced at Daisy. “His wife, Bella, came to my house just looking for a little peace and quiet.”