2

Chapter Two

Pulling the phone from her purse again long minutes later, Brenna breathed out a heavy breath as she made another call. This was her last chance to get a ride to the ranch. If Stacey wasn’t answering her phone, then she was screwed.

“Bren, where are you?” Her best friend from grade school answered the phone, voice feminine and filled with laughter. “I didn’t think you were coming in until tomorrow.”

“Neither did I.” She grimaced. “But the pilot called last night and informed me he was leaving early. I could leave with him or arrange for other transportation.”

Not that she would have minded flying in commercially, but she knew Jase hated the drive from the ranch to Houston. He had been the one to arrange for the private flight, and now he’d left her stranded.

“Now doesn’t that just sound like our friendly, less-than-social Noah,” Stacey laughed over the pilot’s renowned grumpiness. He was her uncle’s employee, so she well knew how temperamental he could be. “So, how did Jase greet you?”

Stacey was the only person in the world who knew what happened the night of Jase’s party. And Brenna wouldn’t have told her but for the fact that she’d been unable to get a flight to New York that night and Stacey’s apartment was only miles from the airport in Houston. If Stacey wasn’t at the apartment, Brenna knew where the key was, so she’d been assured of having a place to stay. Her friend had been there though, and after a bottle of wine and very little encouragement, Brenna had spilled her guts.

“By not showing up,” she sighed.

There was a moment of silence. “What do you mean?” her friend finally asked carefully, as though she suspected but couldn’t quite believe.

“Stacey, I’m stuck at your uncle’s hanger and Jase isn’t answering his phone. It’s going straight to voicemail. Is there any way you can pick me up?”

“You’re kidding me?” Outrage filled her voice. “Noah wouldn’t ever be so nasty as that, Bren.”

“I don’t know if it was Noah or if it’s Jase,” she stated. “Perhaps Noah wasn’t aware no one would be here. All I know is it’s hotter than hell, there’s no place to get out of the sun and I’m getting really tired, Stacey. I’ve been here for hours already and there’s not even a bottle of water in this hell hole to make it bearable.”

There was a moment of silence, heavy with Stacey’s concern and anger.

Like Stacey, Brenna found it hard to believe Noah would be so nasty, but somewhere, somehow, someone had arranged this, and she didn’t appreciate it.

“I’ll take care of it,” Stacey finally promised firmly. “Hang on and we’ll have you home and lounging by the pool in no time.”

The call disconnected, leaving Brenna to shake her head at her friend’s habit of simply clipping the phone closed.

Stacey refused to talk and drive, even Bluetooth enabled wasn’t enough to convince her to do it. She swore if she tried to talk she’d end up wrecking simply because she didn’t know how to coordinate properly.

She was one of the smartest women Brenna knew, but Stacey had a bad habit of paying too much attention to the conversation and not enough to what was going on around her.

At least her friend was fairly close, she thought. A half-hour at the most and she would be in the cool comfort of one of Stacey’s uncle’s vehicles and heading to the ranch.

How she had managed to keep Stacey as a friend in the past nine months, she hadn’t figured out. James Mayer, Stacy’s uncle, refused to speak to her unless absolutely necessary. He and Stacey had argued often over her friendship with Brenna. He considered Brenna a gold-digging little whore, as she heard it.

Not that his opinion mattered or that she had ever wanted the ranch. She was doing as Poppa Jason wanted her to do. The only thing he had ever asked in all the years he had cared for her and kept her life happy and secure.

The letter he had left her with his will had assured her he was only trying to protect Jase. She would be helping him look out for Jase’s future, he’d promised her. Personally, she thought Jase looked out for his future fine. He had ensured he had no heart, no weakness. It was hard to hurt a man who protected himself to that extent.

It didn’t stop her feelings from being hurt that Jase hadn’t been waiting for her though. The appearance that he was deliberately leaving her to sit and rot pissed her off further. She didn’t much care for the fact he was treating her so brutishly after all the years he had protected her. After all the years she had loved him.

He’d sent her straight back to New York and to college after the reading of the will. Her visits back, coinciding with the demands of the will, hadn’t been well received. He hadn’t left, but he’d glared at her continually, as though she had been caught stealing the silver or something.

Every two months she was required to spend at least one week at the ranch in addition to the three months, if she decided to sign the ranch over to Jase.

It was playing hell with her school schedule. It wasn’t allowing for the job she had hoped to take that summer, and it was beginning to wear on her nerves. She’d had to take a heavier class load to accommodate that last week, and the past six weeks had been even longer to allow for the three-month stay Poppa Jason had demanded in order to relinquish the ranch at the one-year anniversary of his death.

Three more months and she could simply turn the ranch over to Jase, she promised herself. Then, perhaps, she could get on with her own life. It was evident Jase didn’t want her in his.

That knowledge tormented her in the darkest parts of the night, and it hurt. The pain of knowing he wanted nothing more to do with her was destroying her. The least he could have done was simply ignore the weakness she had displayed that night. He hadn’t had to turn against her completely. It wasn’t as though she had forced him to break marriage vows or anything.

The sound of a vehicle racing toward the hanger had her standing, pushing the luggage into position and gathering the two extra bags that went with it. She was standing in front of them, waiting, when the vehicle came into view.

Her heart began racing at the sight of the black SUV that sped around the front of the hanger and came to a hard stop. The wheels only barely kept from screaming. The back door flew open, and as the driver stepped from the front, Jase jumped from the back, an irritable scowl on his face.

“Stacey called you?” She glared back at him, suddenly angry and feeling very betrayed by her friend.

“She called the house, which you could have done,” he informed her as the driver collected her luggage.

Standing in front of her, his hands propped on his muscled hips, a brooding glare shaping his expression, the dark brown, nearly black of his eyes framed by thick, heavy black lashes almost melted her.

Melted her heart, melted her body, definitely melted her thighs. They began to feel weak and her clit throbbed with an awakening sensation of arousal. He looked savage. Savagely handsome, savagely sexy, dominant and powerful.

Dammit, she hated it when that happened.

She hadn’t expected Jase when she’d made the decision to call Stacey, hence the reason for removing the bra. Now her nipples were standing tight and hard, pressing against the snug, soft cotton of her camisole.

And that melting thing? Her pussy was melting. She was suddenly slick and wet, the rush of liquid heat sensitizing her more than she had been to begin with.

“I did call the main house when the plane first landed and you didn’t answer,” she told him, her jaw tightening at the effort to push the words past her lips and her attention past her arousal. “No one answered.”

A frown vee’d the hard line of his forehead. “I’ll find out why,” he promised her as he turned back to the SUV. “Let’s go, I don’t have all day.”

She followed behind him, accepting his help into the vehicle before scooting across the wide seat to the other side as he also moved in.

“How long have you been waiting?” he asked as the slammed the door closed.

Brenna stared at the dark window between the driver and passenger areas. “Since about seven thirty this morning when Noah dropped me off.”

“Noah wasn’t supposed to leave New York until tomorrow morning.” His voice was more a growl now. “How the hell do you manage to get into these situations, Brenna?”

He sounded as though he thought it was her fault she was left stranded in the middle of nowhere, waiting on him to pick her up.

“Well, he called last night and said there was a change of plans.” Turning her head, she stared back at him angrily. “I’ve been calling your cell phone since then, and you’ve refused to answer. If you would stop ignoring my calls, then perhaps I wouldn’t get into these situations, now would I, Jase.”

“I wasn’t ignoring your calls,” he informed her, his voice growing tighter by the second. “I didn’t get them.”

She stared at him silently for a long second, wondering what she was supposed to say to that.

“Do you still have your cell phone?” she asked him.

His frown darkened. “Yes.” It was a tight, hard sound.

“And it still works?”

“Miriam has been answering my calls today while I was in meetings,” he finally admitted. “She didn’t mention you calling or having missed your calls.”

Miriam Dallas, his personal assistant.

Slinky, sexy, black-haired Miriam.

Brenna pursed her lips and nodded silently as she turned her head and stared out the window, watching the scenery pass by.

“I’ll ask her about the calls.” There was a vein of defensiveness in his voice.

Brenna shrugged as though it didn’t matter, but it did. She’d sat there at the hanger for hours calling him. It had taken Stacey to get through, to get him here. Miriam didn’t dare ignore Stacey’s calls. She lived too close and saw Jase too often for that to work. Besides, Miriam also knew Stacey well. If she hadn’t answered, then the other girl would have been at the ranch raising hell over being ignored.

What confused Brenna was why Miriam thought Brenna wouldn’t call Stacey? She and Stacey had been friends since they were ten. How had she thought it would work to attempt to keep Jase from knowing she was in?

No doubt, Miriam would have a completely logical explanation though, she always did. She was a master manipulator and she always seemed to get away with whatever game she was playing at the time.

It amazed her Jase didn’t see through the other woman. Instead, he defended Miriam every chance he had.

“If you called…”

“There is no ‘if’, Jase,” she shot back, her arms crossing over her breasts. “I did call. And whoever had your phone will know I called. According to you, that someone is Miriam.”

“You’ve never liked Miriam—”

“Oh, give me a break,” she retorted, turning to him angrily. “Miriam can’t stand me and we both know it. Don’t play games with me, Jase.”

His lips tightened, his dark eyes narrowing on her. “I know no such thing,” he stated coolly. “She claims differently.”

“Then by all means, believe Miriam over me.” The pain was almost more than she could stand. “You’ve known her practically all her life, haven’t you, Jase? You all but helped raise her.” Pain filled her voice. “She followed you around like a damned puppy and idolized you all her life, didn’t she, Jase? Oh hell yes, believe her, someone you’ve known for only two years. Believe her, Jase, because I’m sure you can tell when she’s lying, can’t you?”

Miriam Dallas had only worked for Jase for the past two years. It had been Brenna who had loved him, Brenna who had never been able to lie to him, and Brenna who had withstood the disgust and hatred of almost everyone they knew for the past nine months because of what his father had requested of her. To help protect him from whatever Poppa Jason thought he needed protection from.

Brenna had to fight the tears. She had to turn away from him. She had to cover her lips to keep from sobbing, but nothing could stop the single tear that trailed down her face.

“You’ve changed,” he said quietly. “You’re not the girl you used to be.”

“You’re right,” she whispered, her lips trembling, the ache in her heart too deep, too desperate to deny as she turned back to him. “I grew up, didn’t I, Jase? I went from that little girl to the woman who idolized you, and that’s what scares the shit out of you. That’s why you want to hate me so bad that you latched on to the first available excuse, isn’t it? Because God forbid that someone should actually expect you to care for them as well.” A sob, uncontrolled and tearing at her chest, tore from her. “Now wouldn’t that just be too uncalled for?”

She turned away again. Eyes closed, she pretended to stare out the window, to watch the landscape roll back. To try to contain all the pent-up anger and pain that seemed determined to escape now that there seemed to be an outlet.

She could barely breathe. She felt as though she were smothering. She hurt. She hurt from the inside out. The pain had been building inside her for nine months, lashing at her until it was a burning ache that never extinguished.

He was the man she measured every other man against.

He was the reason she was still a virgin.

And none of it would matter any longer. She had three months and she could leave. Three months, and he would be out of her life forever.