Clear Intent Read online

  “That doesn’t mean things can’t change.”

  Dory stood at the kitchen counter, more than a little surprised at Jack’s comment, and that he wasn’t immediately returning to the party. He leaned back against the sink, thick forearms crossed over his chest.

  She cast a wary glance up to find that disconcerting gaze still focused on her. “You’re staring at me. Don’t you have friends to play with?”

  “Don’t be a brat. Maybe I’m right where I want to be.”

  “In your brother’s kitchen.”

  “Could be it’s not the where, but the who.”

  The comment hung in the air. Dory chanced another quick look at his face. Normally, Jack kept a neutral, even distant expression whenever they got into it, but today the directness of his gaze brought a warm surge to her cheeks.

  She gave a nervous laugh. “Right. You’ve avoided me like I was a TB carrier for most of the past decade, so I don’t buy it.”

  “I’m done with that.”

  “Done with what? I have no idea what you’re talking about. Really, Jack, I think your little friends are outside. You should run out and play.”

  “Want to hear my theory?” he asked, ignoring her comment.

  “About what?”

  “Your brattiness, toward me specifically. About why you’re prickly with me, but with everyone else you’re sweeter than sunshine.” Not waiting for her response, he went on. “I think I make you uncomfortable, and you hide behind the snarky comments.” He paused, then continued in a voice that held a low, gravelly quality that made her shiver. “Do I make you uncomfortable, Dory?”

  Well, yeah, but she’d never admit it. “Hardly. We’ve just never gotten along.”

  “There’s a reason for that. Think about it.”

  He straightened, but instead of making for the door, he reached around her to open a cupboard. That he could stand behind her and easily reach the highest shelf without having to go onto tiptoes was enviable, and put him a bit too close. The dress left her back exposed and Dory could feel the heat of his hard body brushing against her. She sidestepped under his arm and went to the sink, ostensibly to rinse her hands, but more to get away from the uncomfortable feeling of Jack Morgan’s encircling presence. He set a large platter next to the cutting board, then turned and walked out of the kitchen.

  Dory grabbed a paper plate to fan herself and took a steadying breath before picking up a large knife. Jack was so…potent. She would’ve thought that because they constantly sparred, she’d be immune to all that potency. Apparently not.

  Maybe it was a mental versus physical thing. Mentally she was immune, but her body refused to fall into line. She needed to work harder on that. With renewed resolve, she cut the watermelon into wedges, then carried the weighted platter outside at the same time Garrett’s wife, Stacy, rang the old-fashioned triangular dinner bell.

  Pretty soon Dory was settling Adrian at the kids’ table, his plate loaded with a hot dog smothered in ketchup, chips, and carrot sticks. Piling hers with a grilled chicken sandwich, baked beans, and fruit, she took a seat next to Emma, whose plate held only a small pile of potato chips. Emma’s husband, police chief Bradley Gallagher, sat on her other side, their toddler Owen on his lap.

  Dory glanced at the chips, her eyes narrowing. She leaned her head close to Emma’s. “Emmaline Gallagher,” she began in a quiet tone so as not to be overheard by others, “do you have something to tell your exceptionally good friend Dory?”

  Emma put an arm around Dory’s shoulder in a half hug and whispered, “We’re going to make an announcement after everyone has eaten.”

  Dory’s heart melted into a warm ball of mush. She rested her head briefly against Emma’s. “I’m so happy for you.” She blinked back tears as she straightened in her seat, determined not to give away the surprise.

  She swallowed past the lump in her throat. She’d been miserably sick when she’d been pregnant with Adrian and was convinced potato chips had saved her life. She’d shared her discovery that they helped with early pregnancy nausea when Emma had been expecting Owen. Emma and Brad were among the best people she knew, and she loved that their family was growing.

  Dory was a little surprised when Raquel Flores made a beeline to the spot across from Dory since they’d never been friends. When Jack took the seat on her other side at the same time, she understood. Raquel had never been subtle in her pursuit of Jack. Dory was small enough to admit to a tiny stab of pleasure because Jack didn’t appear to notice Raquel at all, despite her ample breasts, which looked to be in danger of spilling out of her too-tight scoop-neck top.

  Instead of ogling the display, he turned to Dory. He must have noticed her emotional state, because he asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s the pessimist in you, Jack, always assuming something is wrong.” There she was, back on an even keel once again.

  Chapter Two

  Jack clenched his jaw to keep from making a sharp remark. Of course he’d tortured himself by sitting next to Dory, but what else was new? Earlier, he’d been watching out for her arrival. He’d tried not to, but he couldn’t keep himself from wandering to the front windows of the house to see if the little Civic was coming up the road. He’d walked out when he’d spotted her getting out of her car. Then she’d turned her back to open the trunk, and, holy smokes, he’d felt like the time a bull had kicked him in the gut and knocked the wind out of him. The back of her dress dipped to expose the long, olive-toned length of skin, the long tail of her dark hair adding a seductive accent. Occupying his hands with carrying her bags of food had been a much smarter move than doing what he’d wanted to do—run his hand up and down all that glorious skin. He’d never act on that impulse. If he did, she’d cut him off at the knees and he’d lose the progress he’d made over the past two years. In that time, she’d lost that wounded doe look that killed him, the one she’d worn whenever he spoke to her. He figured at the pace he was going, he could work up to holding her hand in about a century or so.

  He stifled the restlessness that had been plaguing him of late. He was thirty-one years old. He had a good-paying job with decent benefits, plus part interest in the ranch. During the past week, he’d spent his evenings doing the prep work to refinish the floors of the house he’d recently bought and was rehabbing top to bottom. A good start, but he wanted the rest of it: a woman he could love, and who would love him, and their kids to share that home with. He knew good and well Dory would fall over laughing if she ever suspected she was the one he wanted to build that life with. But there it was. His heart had fallen splat on the ground the first time he’d laid eyes on Isadora Morales. Dory, whose heritage had given her the sleek black hair and the slashing cheekbones, had been hands down the most beautiful girl Jack had ever seen. But on that day in high school when he had first seen her, it had been Rodrigo Calderon who’d won the girl.

  Shaking off the memory, he ate his burger, talked baseball with Logan, who was sitting diagonal from him, and yet, not one moment passed that he wasn’t hyperaware of the woman sitting beside him.

  Adrian walked up to his mother, a smear of ketchup on his lip. After a wary look at Jack, he wrapped an arm around Dory’s shoulders. “Can I have a cookie, Mom?”

  Dory used her napkin to wipe the boy’s face. “Did you eat your carrots?” Jack hid a grin at the typical mom response.

  “Yeah.” Adrian paused. “Well, mostly. One of them was bad.”

  “The carrot was bad?”

  “Yeah, it didn’t taste right.”

  “Hmm. Give it a few minutes until everyone is done with dinner, because I think there’s homemade ice cream, and the cookies are for making ice cream sandwiches.”

  Adrian kicked at the grass with a scuffed sneaker. “Mom, Cam and Robby and Christy are riding together to the fireworks show tonight with guys from the Broken Arrow.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.” The tuft of grass got a bigger kick. “They said I could go with them, and Ben Cutte
r said it would be okay.”

  “Do you want to go with them?”

  “Kinda. But I don’t want to leave you by yourself. Maybe you could come with us.” The pleading look Adrian used was an exact duplicate of Dory’s.

  “Adrian, you go with your friends. I’ll be fine.”

  “But what if the car breaks down like it did yesterday? You’ll be by yourself and that could be dangerous.”

  Jack cocked his head, no longer acting like he wasn’t listening.

  “Like I said, I’ll be fine.”

  “If I go with them, will you still come to see the fireworks show and sit with us?”

  “I will, and I’ll take you home from there.”

  Adrian seemed to be giving the arrangement undue consideration for a kid his age, but finally he nodded. A shout from across the yard had him running off to join the other kids.

  “Adrian always act like he’s forty years old?”

  Dory’s quiet sigh tugged at his heart. “I’m working on getting him to be a kid, but he’s always been protective of me.” The flash of pain across her face was stark evidence that the past often rose up to bite her. “My fault.”

  “The hell it is. You know exactly where blame lies, and so do I.”

  She turned in her seat to face him and spoke in a low voice. “It lies with me. I should never have stayed with Rodrigo.”

  “Then why did you?” Old feelings washed through him in a bitter flood. “Why didn’t you get out when I tried to help you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” Her expression closed, and, as always, he forced himself to wall off his feelings. “Okay, then tell me what’s going on with your car.”

  “Despite what Adrian says, it didn’t actually break down. It’s been running rough, especially at idle, and a check engine light came on.”

  “Your dad can fix about anything under the sun. Did you have him take a look?”

  “No, he’s busy being mayor and I didn’t want to bother him.”

  “Dory, you’re his daughter. He’d be pissed if you said that to him.”

  “I didn’t say it to him, I said it to you.”

  “I’ll take a look at it.”

  “I’m not your responsibility, Jack.”

  He shrugged, trying to make it look like no big deal. “I’ll look at it anyway.”

  ***

  Dory wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, but somehow she ended up sitting in the passenger seat next to Jack as he drove his big pickup into the town of Hangman’s Loss for the evening fireworks at the high school stadium.

  “This has to be inconvenient for you, Jack. I would have been fine with my car.” She pulled her white canvas jacket tighter around her, glad she’d thought to bring a change of clothes so she’d be comfortable when temperatures dipped with the setting sun.

  “I’m the one who looked at your car. You need a new EGR valve, so it’s not fine. I can replace it for you.”

  Dory had made it a practice to figure things out for herself. In addition to being elected mayor, her father’s occupation was as a self-employed handyman, but he was more of a traditionalist than he cared to admit, and hadn’t passed down his knowledge or skills to his daughter. Dory relied heavily on YouTube videos and fix-it books from the library. And while she was willing to tackle just about anything around the house—for heaven’s sake, she’d managed to rewire the outlet in her bathroom, hadn’t she?—the workings under the hood of her car were a vast and complicated mystery. She was worried that if she did one little thing, the whole engine would fall apart and she’d be in an even bigger mess.

  “I’ll get it in to a mechanic, you don’t need to worry about it.” She glanced at Jack to find him clenching his jaw. “You’re going to crack a molar doing that.”

  “It’s better than the alternative.”

  “Which is?” He flashed her a hot look. “Wait,” she said hurriedly, “you better not answer that.” Despite rubbing each other the wrong way, she’d known Jack Morgan long enough to understand that he held a lot back. Though not friends, they’d tolerated each other because their friends were friends. And now their connection in that community meant he was driving her to the high school stadium.

  She dug out her cell phone. “I need to call my parents and have one of them pick up me and Adrian after the fireworks show.”

  He caught the hand that was holding her phone, his skin warm to the touch. “I talked to your dad and told him I’d take you and Adrian home.”

  Dory gave him a sharp look as he released her hand. “Tell me you didn’t make arrangements without consulting me.”

  “You were busy trying not to cry when Emma made her baby announcement. I didn’t want to interrupt the moment.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “Yeah, really.” They entered the town of Hangman’s Loss, the rustic streetlamps casting bars of light across Jack’s features set in what she considered his cop face. That assessment was only reinforced by the fact that he’d strapped on a belt with his badge and sidearm before leaving the Circle M. “You busting my chops for every single thing I do is getting a little old, Isadora.”

  She tapped a finger on her denim-clad knee. “You know what our problem is, Jackson?”

  His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I have an idea, but tell me yours first.”

  “Our friends are all matched up. Everybody’s getting married and having babies, and being two of the few singles left, we keep getting thrown together. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a bit of matchmaking going on.”

  Jack took the turn into the stadium parking lot, hitting the brakes when a group of teenagers ran in front of them. He shook his head, then pulled into a parking space. In the shadowy darkness with the engine turned off and sound from outside muffled, the two of them sitting together inside the cab created a shroud of intimacy.

  “I don’t see how that’s our problem.”

  Dory wasn’t sure why her heart rate had kicked up, or why suddenly Jack seemed dangerous. Not serial killer type dangerous, but dangerous in an emotional storm kind of way. She didn’t allow her voice to betray the weird nervousness suddenly afflicting her. “It’s our problem because there’s this expectation that we wouldn’t mind being fixed up. That we could actually get together, and we both know that’s not ever going to happen.”

  In the dim glow cast by a light standard a row over, his gaze sharpened. “But you would mind.”

  “We’d both mind, because we both understand that we argue constantly. We would never do well together.”

  “You’re sure about that.”

  “Of course I’m sure. You were Rodrigo’s friend, so when my marriage fell apart, that put us on opposite sides. Move ahead a dozen years, and we bicker pretty much every time we’re in the same room.”

  He stared out the windshield, fingers drumming on the steering wheel until seemingly coming to a decision. Abruptly, he turned to her again. “First, I was never on Rod’s side. Ever.” She opened her mouth, but he barreled on before she could reply. “And second, I have an entirely different theory about why we argue.” He paused, gaze direct. “Want to hear my theory?”

  Was it her imagination, or had the temperature inside the truck spiked? The intensity of his gaze wasn’t helping her heartrate settle any, and nerves had her fumbling as she opened her jacket to help bring some relief from the sudden heat. “Umm, maybe we should shelve this discussion until another time. We’re going to miss the fireworks.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not starting something and then walking away.”

  “I didn’t start anything, Jack. I was trying to explain.”

  “Good, then you’ll want to hear my explanation.” He glared at her a beat before continuing. “My theory is we argue, Isadora, because, deep down, we do like each other. A lot. All the shit that happened around Rodrigo convinced you that we couldn’t be friends, that there could never be anything between us. So we fight the attraction.”


  Was he saying that he liked her? As in like, like? That he was attracted to her? The ground shifted under her, and Dory felt like the earth had given way and she’d been dropped into an abyss and was freefalling. “That’s not true. You know that’s not true. You hate me.”

  “You can say how you feel, Dory, but you can’t tell me how I feel. I don’t hate you.”

  Yet to hit bottom of the chasm opening beneath her, Dory tried grabbing for a lifeline. “Wait a damn minute.”

  “I’m getting tired of waiting. How about we conduct a little experiment.”

  “An experiment?” He’d tilted her world on its axis and he wanted to conduct an experiment?

  “Yeah. We kiss, and if there’s nothing, if we don’t feel anything, then I’m wrong. We go back to the way things were. But if I’m right, and there is something more between us, we acknowledge the fact and deal with it.”

  “I don’t need to kiss you to know what I know.”

  “Scared?”

  Absolutely, but admitting it was backing down, and she’d fought hard to keep backing down from being her default response. “Fine.” She leaned forward, using a hand behind his neck to bring him closer, and touched her lips to his. A snap like the zap of static electricity sparked between them, but it was gone in an instant. She rubbed her lips together, an action that had Jack’s gaze locking on her mouth. “There. Like I said, there’s nothing.” Mostly.

  “Oh no. That wasn’t a kiss.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Uh-uh. My turn.” Her eyes widened as he turned fully to face her. Long fingers threaded into her hair as hard palms cupped her cheeks. Dark eyes glittered when he paused, his expression unreadable, then he bent his head. She braced herself for the touch of his lips to hers, but sneaky bastard that he was, he caught her off guard when warm lips pressed first to her temple and, when her eyelids fluttered shut, to her eyes. The jolt to her heart was entirely unexpected. Emotions scarier than she’d ever before experienced struggled to surface, blinding her in her freefall. “Jack, I can’t—”