“So you’ll stay for the week?” he asked.
She leaned into him. “Yes,” she answered quietly, without hesitation. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” It was true. She wasn’t just staying because she had no idea where to turn. She liked being here, with Jag.
He spun her around, his dark eyes looking over her face. Worry pulled his brow into a vee. “Is everything okay?”
Her glance fell to his bare chest, noting the way his jeans hung low on his hips. “I’m just—I’m not sure I ever want to go back.”
“Not ready to face what waits for you?”
“I know I’ll have to eventually.”
Jag gave a hard shake of his head. “Your ex is an asshole and a damn fool to cheat on a woman like you. Just so you know, I never would have sent you that invitation had I thought you two were happy and in love.”
She looked down, her body stiffening as she considered the wasted years she spent helping Nelson build his political career when he clearly wanted her only for her connections and because she was loyal and dutiful.
When she went quiet, he tipped her chin, his eyes moving over her face. “Alix, do you still love him?”
“If I loved him, I wouldn’t have done…” She paused and waved her hand toward the tent and said, “All the things we did.”
His face relaxed. “Did you ever love him?”
“No, I don’t think I did.”
“Then why were you with him?”
“Because he fit my mother’s criteria for a husband. Right family, right side of the tracks, right political career. No one outside her social circle was good enough for her only daughter.”
She felt Jag stiffen beside her and suspected her words hit like a sucker punch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest you weren’t good enough.”
“But wasn’t that why you had nothing to do with me in high school?” he asked, calling her out.
“Yes.” She placed her hands on his chest, emotions rising in her. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, her approval was always very important to me, but I don’t like myself, Jag. I don’t like the doormat I’ve become because of it.”
“It’s okay, I know deep inside you’re not a product of your mother any more than I’m a product of my father.” He raked his hands through his hair, and his voice dropped an octave. “To be honest, I’m kind of glad you avoided me in high school. I wouldn’t have wanted to bring you around my place anyway. My father was a drunken, cheating bastard, who hurt my mother more times than I can remember. She didn’t deserve that from him. She was the sweetest person. She was so good to me, Alix.” His voice hitched when he said, “Even when she was hurting, she tried to hide it, and shelter me.”
Her heart squeezed at the pain she heard in his voice. “I’m sorry.”
“He resented her,” he continued. “Resented having to stay because she got pregnant right out of high school. He forfeited a scholarship that was his ticket to a better life. He stayed behind and did what was supposed to be the right thing, but he grew to hate his life. He buried his sorrows in a bottle and in the beds of other women.”
“Why did your mother stay?” she asked quietly, her heart tightening from the fact that he would share something so personal, so painful with her.
“She stayed because by the time she found out, she felt it was too late to get out or start over again, especially with a kid in tow. She turned a blind eye, even though it slayed her. I hate what he did to her.”
“And to you.”
He shrugged, but she knew his pain ran deep. “And that’s why you became a private investigator specializing in infidelities.”
“Yeah, I guess. I figure if I catch these guys early enough, I can prevent what happened to my mother. ”
“Jag,” she began. “You know, you’re as sweet, kind, and caring today as you were all those years ago.”
“Shhh,” he whispered, his eyes glinting. “I have a reputation to uphold around here.” When she chuckled, he squared his shoulders and shot her an accusing glare. “Hey, wait, I thought you said you didn’t remember me.”
She shifted from foot to foot and gave him a coy look. “Yeah, well, maybe I remember more than I admitted.”
His mouth turned up at the corner, making him look boyish and adorable. “And maybe I know more than I admitted, too.”
She caught a mischievous twinkle in his eyes and asked, “Oh, yeah? Such as?”
He tapped her nose. “Well, I remember the straitlaced, straight A, popular girl who was perfect by anyone’s standards. But I knew her secret, something she kept from the entire world.”
She bit down on her lip. He knew about her fetishes, but how? “How did you know?”
“Do you remember that day I came by your place to collect the camera you borrowed?”
Alix’s mind raced back in time, remembering the day he’d shown up on her doorstep. “Yes,” she answered.
His hands spanned her waist, and she never felt such an easy intimacy with anyone. “You answered the door in a short pink robe.”
Her stomach quivered. Just before he’d arrived that day she’d been… “You…you knew what I was doing. How?”
“I saw you, baby. I heard strange noises as I cut through your backyard, and when I peeked through the fence and found you lounging by the pool, touching yourself as you flipped through pictures on your camera, I knew there was another side of you.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “You never said anything.”
“I didn’t want to embarrass you.”
“Thank you,” she whispered quietly. God, she would have been so mortified if he’d mentioned it to her back then.
She drew a breath, thinking about the sexy boudoir pictures she took at the studio. Heat moved into her cheeks.
Jag must have misread her reactions. He brushed his thumb over her lip and said, “Hey, don’t be embarrassed now.”
“Actually, I’m not,” she said, completely comfortable with Jag and becoming much more comfortable letting the other side of herself shine through. “But I’m wondering why you’re telling me now.”
“Because I want you to know you can be yourself around me, and I like that sexy side of you.”
He gave her a warm smile that robbed her of her next breath and then looked past her shoulders. Heart fluttering, she turned to follow his gaze. In the valley below, she spotted Coop coming from the small cottage at the back of the lodge.
“Does Coop live in the cottage?”
“No.”
She heard sadness in his voice and spun back to him. “What?”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin and said, “He doesn’t like to talk about it, so this is between us, okay?” She nodded, and he continued. “He bought this ranch for his mother. She’s the one who lives out back.”
“Oh, wow, I had no idea. Wait, didn’t you say you all owned it?”
“We do. His mother suffers from Alzheimer’s, and he bought this ranch because she grew up on one, and it helps her feel more content. Coop couldn’t afford it alone, so Mac and I went in on it with him.”
A bone-deep warmth flowed through her. Honest to God, he was the sweetest guy she knew, and how she thought she could have sex with him without feeling something more was beyond her. She briefly pinched her eyes shut and pressed her fingers to her temples. Emotions were not a part of this fantasy.
Her throat tightened, and she struggled to speak. “Does Coop live here full-time?”
“No, he has a caretaker for his mother, but we fly out whenever we can.”
She exhaled slowly. “If I owned this place, I’d live here full-time.”
“Really, you’d give up the rat race and move here?”
“Yeah, I would. I never wanted to be in politics, Jag.”
He touched a strand of her hair, running it through his fingers. She shivered again, remembering the way he touched her body with those rugged hands of his. “What is it you wanted to do?”