Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Maisey Yates (inspirational books .TXT) 📗

“No,” Cash said, addressing his son. “I swear it. I swear to you I never did.”

“Well then. I guess that answers all those questions.”

“I’m not sure if I should apologize or not,” Cash said.

Cricket shook her head. “I should. I assumed something about you that wasn’t fair. And I did it because I… I’m not happy with my family. I’m not happy with my place in it. But that’s just the way it is. There’s no answer for it. So… So. That’s it.”

Then, she turned and ran out of the tasting room, back to the truck. She leaned against the door, breathing hard.

She was doing so much running.

And all she could think was—what a mess she’d made out of everything. She’d revealed to Jackson that she was interested in him, revealed that she had suspected he was her half brother… Every single thing that she’d been so bound and determined to have control over, she had gone and just made a huge mess of. He was never supposed to know that she was attracted to him. And she was supposed to time this whole thing…better. But did it even matter?

He came out a few moments later, looking like thunder. And she knew that the truth didn’t matter. She had managed to absolutely and totally… She felt stupid. And small. And wrong.

Every bad thing she had ever felt, it was magnified now.

“I can walk…”

“You cannot walk. Get in the damn truck.”

She didn’t even argue, because she felt too guilty. Too bad. So she got into the truck, and they made the drive back to the ranch in total silence.

She was going to send him away. Send him back to his place, because there was just no… There was no point in anything. She wasn’t a rancher. It wasn’t in her blood. She had spun herself all manner of fantasies about Jackson Cooper when she was a girl, when she didn’t know anything about anything. And then, when her family had imploded, she had spun different fantasies altogether. She had watched her beautiful, elegant sisters win over handsome cowboys, and Cricket had realized that her own darkest, most cherished secret—the thing that she had lied about for years—would never come true. Because Wren had gotten the interest of Creed, and Wren was…well, she was beautiful.

Elegant and sophisticated and refined and everything Cricket could never be.

And not only was Cricket too young for Jackson to ever evince an interest in, she was also just… She was just her. And so yes, it had been convenient to weave a new fantasy. About all the reasons why she might feel wrong. All the reasons why she might have felt connected to Jackson, ways that explained away the feelings that she had, but that would still mean he mattered.

She stumbled out of the truck when they got to the house.

“Jackson…”

He rounded the front of the truck quickly, his eyes filled with liquid fire. “First things first,” he said.

And before she could react, before she could open her mouth or say anything, his lips were on hers. And he was kissing her again. Deep and hard and longer than the first time. There was rage in this kiss. An intensity that she had never known a kiss could possess.

Wrong.

Small.

Ugly.

All the words that she felt inside—all the words she had used to describe herself—slowly began to fall away, each pass of his mouth over hers stripping them back. Creating something new inside of her. Something different. Something she had never experienced before. Like an avalanche. One of need and desire and hope.

It was the hope that stunned her. Suddenly that yawning, cavernous thing in her chest was filled with light. Suddenly it was lifting her, propelling her forward. Up on her toes and more firmly into his arms.

He angled his head, his tongue passing over hers.

And she felt right.

Because this had been the feeling all along. That first connection that she’d felt to him. When she had first known what it meant that she would be a woman some day, and that she would want to be in the arms of a man, and that she was certain that man was Jackson Cooper. In that one blinding moment he had taken everything that felt wrong and turned it around.

Because he had kissed her.

She wasn’t wrong about that. He was kissing her, and he was doing it with just as much passion as she felt inside of her for him. And if he felt that, then she wasn’t wrong.

She hadn’t been wrong.

Life had been wrong.

And she had altered her expectations, changed what she felt to make it easier to digest. She had been trying to create a story that was easier to live with.

One where her father didn’t love her because she wasn’t his.

One where her mother found her difficult because Cricket was a reminder of sins.

One where she was so different from her sisters because they were only half of each other.

And one where Jackson mattered not because she had an unobtainable crush, but because he was her long-lost brother.

One where she wanted to be a rancher because she came from a family of them, not just because she did.

But this was proof.

That she had her own dreams just because.

That she was herself, wholly and singularly, for better or for worse. That she wanted him, maybe because—like ranching—he was too big, too unobtainable and too impossible to have.

Maybe that’s who she was.

A pioneer. A person who saw what was possible and asked for that little bit more.

A person who looked around and said this doesn’t have to be just enough, I can have more, I can have better.

Maybe that was who she was.

It was a revelation. Just like his arms, just like his mouth.

But then, just as suddenly as he kissed her, he was pulling away.

“That had to happen. Because I had to… I couldn’t leave it at that last one. Not with what you said.”

Cricket launched herself back into his arms. Because she didn’t