She stared at him for a moment and then made the decision. She sat back down, her mouth set in a mulish line. Rather like Cade. Why the hell was he here? He must just like stubbornness.
“Look, Gemma, I’m willing to put up with a lot of shit. It’s expected in a relationship and quite frankly, I know I’ll be the easy one to deal with. But I expect honesty, respect, and some politeness. I get that you won’t always be polite. I won’t either. I want passion and that doesn’t always leave room for courtesy, but I expect you to start being more polite to the people around you. This isn’t New York. This is small-town Colorado, and you’re going to put people off with the gruffness. You had to be that way in New York. You don’t here. I’ve just told you I’ll be honest so let me state this flat out. Any relationship with me is going to involve a little discipline. I tend to keep it to the bedroom, but if you’re mine and I catch you being blatantly rude to the people around you, I will likely spank you.”
It wasn’t just her face that flushed this time. Her whole body went bright pink. And her pupils dilated. Her breath hitched. “That would be assault.”
No, she wasn’t scared at all. “Only if I did it against your will, Gemma. If you were mine, we would have all sorts of rules. They would be set up so we both know how to make each other happy. We would talk about it. You could stop me, but you wouldn’t want to. I would make sure of it.”
She went quiet, and Jesse decided she’d had enough honesty for the day. It was time to back off and let her think about it. And it was time to go and work on Cade. He stood up and handed her the small package. It was addressed simply to Gemma Wells in Bliss, Colorado. The elderly mail carrier had asked Roger if he knew who she was. Jesse had jumped on that chance. And now it was time to let the whole thing go and allow Gemma to make the next move. It would be frustrating, but he wasn’t going to push her.
“Think about it, Gemma. That’s for you. I told the mail carrier where to send anything else you get. If you want to talk some more, you come and see me.” He started to walk away. He could smell the delicious aroma of sizzling steaks.
“I like baby and darlin’. I wouldn’t have said I like darling, but I like the way you say it. It’s the accent, I think. And for some reason, baby sounds sweeter than babe. But not honey. My mom calls me hon. So does Stella. Honey makes me think of maternal women trying to feed me.” She stood up, clutching her package.
He didn’t even try to stop himself now. He hugged her, wrapping his arms around her and letting himself breathe in her scent.
“Are you smelling my hair?” Gemma asked.
“Yep.” Honesty.
“You’re kind of kinky, aren’t you?” She said it with a little laugh. “And I shouldn’t have called you the Sweet One.”
He pulled back, but not before giving her a little kiss. Not on her lips. They weren’t even close to being there yet. On her forehead. “You have no idea, baby. And I can be very sweet. You just have to get me in the right mood. Good night.”
He turned and walked away, more hopeful than he’d been just moments before.
Chapter Three
Cade watched from his place at the grill. Jesse had started his whole herding thing. It was the way he handled a woman he was really interested in.
Damn, was Jesse going to fall for Gemma Wells and finally leave him behind? He wasn’t an idiot. Jesse had been ready for something serious for the last few years. Cade was the one holding them back.
Jesse would never understand why Cade wouldn’t, couldn’t do the whole relationship thing.
“He seems interested in the new girl.” Zane Hollister flipped over the steak he was grilling, his eyes trailing back to where Jesse was hugging Gemma. Really hugging her. Like rubbing himself all over the girl.
“Looks like it.” Cade looked around. Shouldn’t there be some beer around here somewhere?
“Hmmm.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”
Zane shrugged. “I thought you two were, well, partners.”
They were, but Jesse didn’t blindly follow him. It would be easier if he did. Jesse tended to prefer to take a backseat, allowing Cade to make most of the day-to-day decisions because he didn’t really care, but when he put his foot down, the man didn’t move.
What the hell was Cade going to do if Jesse put his foot down over Gemma Wells? Would Cade be forced to make the decision he’d dreaded for the last couple of years? Would he leave and not look back? Would he finally be alone—like he’d always known he should be?
“We’re best friends. We’ve shared a woman before, but that doesn’t mean we always will.” He’d never expected to share a family. He’d kind of expected to be that sort of sad-sack best friend who hung around way too much and creeped out Jesse’s wife. And then they’d come to Bliss and Jesse had started talking about a real family, a shared wife, and kids they both raised. Fuck. He loved Bliss, and it terrified him, too.
“You don’t like her?”
Cade stared back her way. She clutched the package in her hand as Jesse walked away. It was the softest he’d seen her, her blonde hair nearly glowing in the light from her porch. She was a little thin, but she had curves in all the right places. If she did belong to him and Jesse, he would cook for her, make sure she filled out those sweet curves. He couldn’t think that way.
He was terrified of her. She was just his type—the type to rip his heart out when things went bad. “I don’t know her. I don’t just throw myself in the way Jesse does.”
Jesse was walking toward him with a grin on his face. Gemma turned and disappeared inside her house.
Zane tested the steak, cutting slightly in the middle. “You’ve been here for a couple of months, and you haven’t even tried dating anyone.”
“Oh, I’ve tried. I don’t think you’ve noticed, but there’s a distinctly low available-female-to-male ratio in this town.” He and Jesse had actually been very interested in a couple of women. They’d hit town and it had seemed like they were kids in a candy store. The town was full of attractive, sweet women who looked like they could use a man or two to take care of them.
The trouble was every woman they got interested in was unavailable for one reason or another. Lucy Carson reminded him of his sister who’d died in the same car accident as his parents. Hope McLean had flipped his switch, but she was married to James Glen and Noah Bennett. He’d been really attracted to Holly Lang, one of the waitresses at Stella’s, but he’d decided to keep his head on his body after a single, deeply confusing conversation with Alexei Markov where he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to keep the balls of his eyes off the Russian’s girl or his grill. Either way, the dude sounded serious, so he was giving both a wide berth. And he’d heard some horror stories about how thorough the doc could be during a physical when he was pissed off. Yeah. Holly was safe from his roving eye.
Then the new girl comes into town with her honey-blonde hair and swaying ass, and she turned out to be such a hot mess. Fuck. She moved him in a way the others didn’t. He really kind of liked them with just the right amount of psycho chick.
Things with a woman like Gemma Wells would go one of two ways. Either she would view them as nothing but a hot fling or she would want way more than Cade was willing to give. The first would please Cade but hurt Jesse, and the second would hurt them all. Why her? He loved really intelligent, ambitious, creative women, and they tended to see him as a Neanderthal.
Bare-Chested Ape Man. Yep, that was him.
The fact that he came with a built-in partner, ready set for a permanent ménage, had really aided in his quest to find a little sex. He could see the personal ad. Bare-Chested Ape Man seeks incredibly intelligent mate to share with his over-the-top Dom partner. Must like being topped in the bedroom and small spaces since neither makes a decent paycheck.