Maggie came marching up to him in all her fiery glory. Her eyes, dark and distrustful, met his, and again he got the impression that she hadn’t come willingly. He didn’t care. The urge to touch her, to pull her close, was just too irresistible. When was the last time he’d been so electrified by doing something he hated doing, such as dancing?
He nodded appreciatively when the music began. Etta James’s “At Last.” Hey, Mason knew his classics.
Maggie gave him her hand. He liked the feel of it, feather-soft and unadorned. Her only jewelry appeared to be the pearl earrings all the bridesmaids wore. There was intense satisfaction in slipping his arm around her waist and pulling her close. Palm-to-palm, he swayed her gently to the music, the scent of her perfume rising and mixing with the heat of her skin.
They weren’t the only ones on the dance floor—all the bridesmaids and grooms had been herded out here—but it sure seemed like he and Maggie were alone. Jake was used to having his radar out at all times, taking in information, looking for problems, assessing his odds.
Right now, all he saw was her.
“If I weren’t afraid you’d accuse me of resorting to flattery, I’d tell you how beautiful you look.”
“Ah, but see, pretending you’re not flattering me doesn’t mean you’re not flattering me,” she replied. She seemed very sure of that. Also a little confused.
“Let s face it, Magdalene. You hate weddings.”
“No, I don’t.” He wondered if she got that bland, insufferable look every time she lied. He kind of liked it.
“Of course you do.”
“It was hot. We were in a barn.”
“Oh, come now. Weddings are bullshit and you know it. You’re better than that. You’re better than Cuervo.”
That surprised her, he could tell. Her eyes were still wary, but there was a searching quality to them that he recognized: radar. He used radar himself to suss out integrity in an employee or a business partner or to gauge whether an owner might drop his asking price. But in his experience, you didn’t develop radar unless you’d gotten pretty burned.
“You have a lot of crazy ideas,” she said. “You may think it’s pathetic, but I happen to love my life here.”
“So you want to spend the rest of it frosting cupcakes and wearing a hair net? Gotta tell you, princess, it’s not your best look.”
The muscles under his hand went taut. Uh-oh. Was it Mason who’d told him once; Jake, sometimes you really should just shut the fuck up.
“I’m sure you think women should just hang out all day in heels and a thong,” she said testily.
“Too distracting. How would I get any work done?” He imagined her in heels and a thong. Now that was worth thinking about. It fired his blood in ways that made standing close to her a problem. If she felt anything banging up against her, she’d run like hell.
What could he do? He hadn’t had this problem since junior prom when Angela Berglomini’s bra strap broke during a slow dance, which was, come to think of it, a lot like this one.
“So with the whole world at your feet, you decided to stay here?” he asked. “Ever been out of Texas, Maggie?”
He could tell before she opened her mouth that he’d struck a nerve. Again. “Summer trip after high school,” she said. “Me and my friends. California, Arizona and New Mexico. I actually lived in New York City for six months when I studied pastry making.”
Now the image in his head morphed from her wearing heels and a thong to her wearing heels and a thong and bending over to pull something hot and delicious out of the oven. He was pretty sure that was the single most regressive, chauvinist thing he’d ever come up with. If she knew, she’d rightly punch him in the face. But Christ, it turned him on. What were they talking about?
“When I cook,” he confessed, “I’ve been known to use the smoke detector as a timer.”
He was surprised to feel her suppressing a giggle. His spirits took an uptick. It had never occurred to him that Maggie could giggle. Now that she had, he wanted more than anything to make her giggle again.
If he could piss her off and make her laugh? How wasn’t that progress?
Meanwhile, she was warm and supple in his arms and her hair smelled like peppermint. A crescent moon hung in the night sky, which was vast and clear and full of stars. As a boy working on his uncle’s farm, he remembered nights such as these when the air itself seemed alive with promise. Uncle Marty would take him and his brother Dillon night hunting for feral hogs down by the Sabine River. He had that same feeling of keenness now, of racing excitement.
“You don’t come to Cuervo that often, do you?” she asked, gazing up at him with those magnificent eyes. “I mean, aside from Mason and my sister, there really isn’t anyone you know here, is there?”
He was confused by the question, but it was hard to focus when her lips were so close. Plus, the song had ended, the dance floor was filling up, and he hated crowds.
“Let’s take a walk,” he suggested.
She hesitated, that bitable lower lip caught between her teeth. His heart beat a little faster as he waited for her to decide. He didn’t know a lot about Maggie, but he’d figured out at this point not to sweet talk her. She’d clearly had plenty of that in her life. No way was she buying it now.
She glanced around and then gave him a faint smile.
Bingo.
They headed toward a gazebo surrounded by a moon-drenched garden full of silver ghost roses. Maggie kept darting glances at him like maybe she needed to make sure he wasn’t going to try anything funny.
“I grew up in Texas,” he said, trying to win her over. “A place called Palestine. Not exactly as charming as your Cuervo, though. Being here reminds me how fast life changes.”
“Ah ha. So that’s why you think we’re all a bunch of hayseeds. Because not too long ago, you were one yourself.”
And she comes out swinging. “I said you hated weddings, not that you were a hayseed.”
“I don’t hate weddings.”
“The hell you don’t.”
She pulled her shawl around her defensively. “Okay, maybe I’m a tiny bit allergic.”
“Allergic to the point of almost passing out?”
Her startled expression was its own reward.
“Poker,” he told her. “Not your best game.”
They reached the gazebo and climbed the steps. The yearning to touch her pulled at him again, stronger this time because now he’d gotten her alone.
“It’s complicated,” she said. “Maybe I don’t love weddings, but I do love my sister. And it’s not true that I don’t belong here.”
“Oh, so you don’t crave adventure, Magdalene?” She sat down on a bench and he slid in beside her, half-hidden in the shadows. “There’s nothing weird about a beautiful woman like you hiding out in a town the size of a parking lot?”
He wasn’t trying to sweet talk her. But usually when he told a woman she was beautiful, she would smile coyly or deny it so he’d say it again. Maggie didn’t blink. She wasn’t even his type—“skinny, blond ice queens” his brother, Dillon, called them. The brother he hadn’t talked to in years. Yet here he was thinking Maggie might be one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.
“You make it sound like I’m doing something immoral,” she said. “I’ve worked hard to build my business.”
“Maybe there was a guy who done you wrong.”