Jake opened his mouth.
And shut it again.
His brothers had tempers. Hell, so did he. They’d chewed each other out before….
But never like this. Never with such intensity …
And maybe never with such honesty.
Were they … Could they be right?
“We owe her an apology,” Travis told Caleb, who nodded.
“That’s if she’ll accept one.”
“Let’s go,” Travis said … and Jake held up his hand.
“Wait, okay?” He cleared his throat. “So, ah, so this wasn’t a setup.”
“Lucky for you that you didn’t make that a question,” Caleb said grimly.
“Okay. Maybe I went … overboard. Maybe I read things into things—”
Travis snorted.
Jake ran his hands through his hair. “Ah, man, she’s right. I am certifiable. It’s just … it’s been a while since—a while since …” He shook his head. “You guys don’t owe her an apology. I do.”
“She won’t talk to you.”
“She will.”
“She won’t. She’s tough.”
Jake eyed his brothers. “Trust me,” he said. “I’m not exactly made of spun sugar.”
“You mean,” Caleb said innocently, “you’re not a candy ass?”
Jake grinned. “Ten bucks says she’ll not only accept my apology, she’ll agree to have dinner with me tomorrow night.”
“Twenty,” Travis said, “and you’re on.”
The brothers smiled at each other. Jake started off the patio, toward the side of the house, then turned back.
“I left my car near the creek.”
“Why’d you—”
“He just did,” Caleb said.
“Oh. Fine.” Travis dug the keys to his truck from his pocket and tossed them to Jake. “It’s the black Tundra in the driveway.”
“Remember,” Jake said. “Twenty bucks.”
His brothers grinned. “All talk, no action.”
It was one of their old lines. Jake laughed on cue….
But his laughter died by the time he reached Travis’s Tundra.
For a little while there, he’d almost forgotten.
All talk, no action was no longer a punch line. It was the sad truth. His brothers couldn’t know it but he did.
And, yeah, that was the reason he’d gone ballistic. He’d responded to a woman for the first time in almost two years….
Only to find out that she wasn’t interested.
Definitely, he owed her an apology. As for asking her to dinner …
Jake put the truck in gear and his foot on the gas.
Forget it.
He’d pay his brothers the twenty bucks and write the whole thing off as a mistake.
CLOUDS HAD swallowed the moon and stars, turning the road into an inky ribbon that stretched toward infinity.
Addison had a head start but Jake drove fast, all but flooring the gas pedal. Every now and then, her taillights glowed crimson-bright ahead of him, but whenever the road curved, those lights disappeared.
She was driving fast, too. Dangerously so. Was she accustomed to dirt roads? Her world was surely one of limousines and taxis.
It surprised him that she could handle a car with such authority but then, everything about her surprised him.
He’d never seen such anger in a woman. Such fire.
And his stupidity had fueled it.
Jake frowned.
Talk about a man making fool of himself …
“Hell,” he muttered.
Apologizing wasn’t going to be easy. How did a man look a woman in the eye and say, “Okay, I’m an ass.” Or, better still, exactly what she’d called him, an arrogant jerk.
What kind of justification could he come up with to explain his behavior?
Not the truth.
Not that that second he’d seen her, he’d wanted her, that he’d reacted to her in a way he’d all but given up thinking he’d ever react to a woman again—
That believing she’d put on an act had all but destroyed him.
There wasn’t a way in the world he could admit any of that to her.
Nothing showed ahead of him but the bright tunnel created by the Tundra’s headlights. He goosed the gas, the truck shot forward and his reward was another quick wink of red taillights.
“Wilde,” he said through his teeth, “she’s right. You’re an idiot.”
Maybe he’d be lucky.
Maybe a simple “I’m sorry, I was wrong,” would be enough.
Right.
And she’d tell him, in explicit terms, precisely what he could do with those words.
Jake flexed his hands on the steering wheel.
This was not going to be fun.
He could imagine how she’d look while he stumbled through an apology.
Her cheeks would be pink with anger, her eyes as bright as molten silver. That I-can-take-on-the-world chin would be lifted to an angle that spelled defiance.
She’d be a veritable portrait of rage.
And sexy as hell.
Just thinking about it made his temperature rise and, hell, that was not what he wanted right now.
He had to concentrate on how to approach her. What to say. He worked on that while the truck ate up the miles, but nothing logical came to him.
He’d have to play it by ear.
And she’d make him jump through hoops.
That was the one certainty.
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
There was a time he’d have looked forward to the challenge. A woman, standing up to him? Except for a couple of tough-as-nails nurses who’d taken him on when he’d tried to refuse meds or therapy, women had always tended to say yes to whatever he wanted.
No surprise there.
If a guy had money, some kind of status, if he had the kind of looks women liked, that was the way things went.
He—for that matter, he and his brothers—had all those things.
For starters, they’d been born to money. Their father’s, sure, but beyond that, their mother had left each of them a hefty trust fund.
Jake had let his sit in the bank. Then he’d wised up and invested it with Travis.
Even now, driving through the night in pursuit of a woman who’d probably love nothing more than to kick him where he lived, remembering