The Dangerous Jacob Wilde

“Jake,” Caleb said quickly, “man, we never—”

“One look at my ranch, they said, and, poof, you’d know exactly what it needed.”

“And?”

“And even though I didn’t see any point to getting your assessment of something any fool can see is a disaster, I thought—thought,” she said coldly, glaring at Travis and Caleb again, “that I could trust them.”

“You can,” Travis said quickly. “We never—”

“And,” Addison said, ignoring the interruption, “because I was also foolish enough to believe your brothers were my friends, I said, okay, I’d give the Ranch Guru five minutes of my time.”

Jake wanted to laugh. Ridiculous, when he was so ticked off. Instead, he folded his arms over his chest.

“How generous,” he growled.

“Addison. Jake. You guys are both—”

“Which is why,” Addison continued, with a withering glace at Caleb, “which is the only reason I came to this—this hail-the-conquering-hero party where I endured being hit on by every dumbass cowboy over the age of twelve, and the way the women looked at me, as if my sole purpose in life was to steal their homely, fat, drooling husbands.”

Travis made a choking sound. Caleb rubbed his forehead. Jake had a hard time keeping from doing the same.

“And I waited, patiently, for the main event.”

“The what?” Jake said.

“The main event, Captain. You. I waited and waited, and you finally showed up, but did your sainted sisters or your magnificent brothers introduce us?”

“Our sisters don’t know anything about this,” Travis said. He looked around. “And could we take this in another room? We really don’t need an aud—”

“I watched the three of you standing there, swilling beer—a disgusting beverage but then, what could anyone expect from Texans?”

Dammit, Jake thought, the McDowell woman was some piece of work. Beautiful. Tough. And flawlessly delivering insult after insult, as if this whole thing wasn’t her fault.

It was, of course, and he disliked her intensely, but he had to admire her for her guts.

“Beer, from the bottle,” she added, with a visible shudder. “And you looked at me. Talked about me.” Addison extended her hand, poked Jake in the chest. He jumped in surprise. “Although actually, Captain, you didn’t look. You stared.”

He felt heat rise in his face. “I did not stare.”

“Oh, please! You stared. And when I got tired of it, tired of cooling my heels and waiting for you to come over, you know, do the polite thing, introduce yourself, shake my hand, I thought, okay, if he doesn’t have any manners, I do. So I gave you a little salute.”

Jake frowned. The raised wineglass?

“I even smiled.”

Yes. Yes, she’d smiled, but—then she’d taken that slow, sexy sip of vino …

“You didn’t so much as blink, so I drank a little wine to give you the chance to start moving in my direction.”

Caleb cleared his throat.

“Addison, if you’d calm down—”

“I am calm,” she said coldly. “Very calm. And, by the way, the two of you are fired.”

“Why fire them? I’m the one you’re ticked off at.”

“Your DNA is their DNA. That’s good enough for me.”