“No fun in that.”
CHAPTER THREE
“I didn’t know you were flying back with Ethan, Annabelle. I thought you took your car into Brook,” Jake said, reaching for her harness.
“I did, but Ethan offered me a lift back so I took it.”
Annabelle watched Jake McBride frown. They’d been friends since taking their first steps, and he might have been messed up for a while after his time in the Army Medical Corps but that was no longer the case. One of the smartest people she knew, Jake would keep digging until he found out why she hadn’t driven her car back to Howling.
“Did it break down? You want me to arrange to have it brought back?”
Tall and well built, Jake was a heartthrob, like the man who had just kissed her. However, he was more like a brother to her, plus he was engaged to Annabelle’s best friend, another person with a sharp mind who’d also want to know the reason why she no longer had her car.
“I sold my car, Jake. Didn’t need it anymore, and Ethan knew someone who needed one and that’s pretty much that.” She found a smile, a wide one that usually made men blink. Jake, however, was immune; he simply folded his arms and braced his legs and stood before her, waiting.
“Is Branna home?” She looked over his shoulder to the low house squatting on the land behind him. Surround by big redwoods, it was built to blend in with the elements.
“Why’d you sell your car, Annabelle?”
Annabelle felt her smile drop as she looked into the dark eyes of her friend. This was the problem with growing up in a town where everyone knew you: they also knew your business. Well, most of it; she’d kept Cooper’s problems to herself.
“It was old, Jake. You were always telling me that, so I sold it before it broke down. Ethan got a good price for it, too.”
“Not sure about good, but it was fair.” He said the words from behind her as he fiddled with the switches on his control panel.
She watched Jake’s eyes go from her to Ethan and then back again.
“Okay, well, if you need the use of one anytime, we have a few.”
Annabelle couldn’t be sure, but the fact that Jake McBride had given up the interrogation told her that he and the Texan had shared a look that she had missed. She didn’t like that, didn’t like to think of anyone silently communicating about her.
“Go on in, Belle. Branna and her father are inside.”
She couldn’t do anything else. She had to go, even though she knew that they would talk about her as soon as she’d left.
“Thanks again, Gelderman number 5.” Annabelle forced herself to say the words with a flirty smile, then made herself look at the handsome bastard.
“No problem. Thanks for the company.” He didn’t smile, just nodded and handed her her bag, and she felt two sets of eyes on her as she walked the short distance to the house.
Inhaling the earthy scent of the redwoods that made Howling smell like home, Annabelle kept her back straight and her stride unhurried. Nature calmed her; the feel of it around her made the tightness in her chest ease. Here she was safe; here she would always find home, no matter how battered her emotions were.
Oh my God, he’d kissed her.
She’d often wondered what it would be like to have the Texan’s mouth on hers and now she knew and wished she didn’t. It had been brief, and the heat and passion those few seconds of contact had stirred up inside her scared her spitless. She’d always fought her attraction to him by treating him with indifference, pushing him away with insults and taunts, and now she knew why. The man spelled danger to her.
His reputation with women was well known. Both Buster and Jake had told her the stories, and there was no way in hell that she wanted to ever be just another number in the Texan Tomcat’s little black book.
She rounded the house, walked up the steps and straight inside. The interior had once been masculine, with no flowers or pretty things, but Branna had changed that since moving in. There was a bookshelf now along one wall, and a large ceramic statue in earth tones of two people entwined that Jake had been coerced into buying for his girl. Annabelle also saw colorful pillows and a few houseplants. Jake and Branna had combined their lives and it was all on display here in this house, the haven they had set up as their home.
“Coffee, stat, and if you have something baked I wouldn’t turn it down.”
“Oh look, Dad, it’s my sweet-natured best friend.”
Branna Rose O’Donnell was sitting at the table with her father, Declan. Both pale with bright green eyes and dark hair, their Irish origins were never more apparent than when they were together.
“Hey there, Declan.”
He got to his feet as she approached, forever the gentleman, and kissed her cheek.
