Wilde Forever (Wilde Women Book 1) (22 page)

Cradling the unusual bowl in her hands she took a deep breath and groaned. “Oh God. This smells soooo good Jax.” She was three bites in before she backed off from inhaling the spicy dish. “Anyone ever tell you what a great cook you are?”

He shrugged. “This is nothing, Brynn. Maybe if you’re a good girl,” he said spearing her with a pointed look, “I’ll make you my world famous lemon garlic chicken wings. They put that run-of-the-mill Buffalo Wing bullshit to shame.”

“Really?” she asked with a wary smile. “I’d like that but what exactly constitutes being a good girl? Don’t know if that shoes fits.”

Good girl. Bad girl. Brynn Wilde was an intoxicating blend of both. After downing a huge spoonful of the chili he sat back and looked at her.

“I can make that shoe fit,
baby
.” Her eyes instantly lifted to his when he placed a good dollop of taunt on the ‘baby’.

“M
mmmm
. I just bet you could,” she mumbled. “My sister Charlie made these bowls herself.”

Ah yes. Another conversational redirect. Clearly he was hitting close to home and Brynn wasn’t in her comfort zone.

“Is that so? Talented girl if some of the artwork littered all around is any indication.” He meant it too. The most amazing mini-mural was painted on the bathroom wall of what looked like an English countryside. He’d noticed it while he was shaving at the sink as it reflected in the mirror from the wall behind him. Made him feel like he was actually in the charming scenery. Clever placement and damn good artistry.

“Okay. So enough with the idle chitchat. Talk to me about the project. I’m a visual learner so what I see gets my mind running wild. I’m so glad you suggested opening up those walls and making a larger, more practical space. You said you had help though and I’m curious what that means.”

He snorted. “Yeah. Help would be a foreign concept to you, huh?” Jax’s head snapped back when she fixed him with a fierce smirk.
Whoa.
Touched a nerve.

“Well, as it happens Mr. Smarty Pants, I took on two people in the mentor program at the community college.” She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue at him in a hilariously bratty way. “So there,” she jeered as she picked up her bowl, cradled it, and shoveled an overflowing spoonful of chili into her mouth for emphasis.

“Good girl,” he jested. “Glad to hear it.” She glared at him with laughter and mischief in her eyes.

“Your turn,” she said as a glob of chili and a smile dangled on the corner of her lips. Jax reached across the table and swiped the dribble of chili, bringing his thumb to his mouth where he sucked it off while never looking away from her face.

When it came time to explain how he’d gotten so much done on the project, he chose his words carefully and simply put them out there with little embellishment.

“Stopped by the local V.F.W. post and hooked up with a couple of vets who were either out of work or under-employed.” There was a fuck ton more he could say but he didn’t, preferring to let that information sink in and then see what kind of comments she made.

She surprised the shit out of him when she set her bowl down and murmured, “Jax. I’m so glad you did that.” The emotion lacing her voice warmed him, as did the supportive gleam in her eyes. “We have a lot of veterans around here who could use the help. Once a month they have a get together at the Tea Room. Amy sets it up actually.” She smiled. “I can always count on them to devour whatever bakery items are leftover when they come by.”

Well, color him surprised as fuck. She had a soft spot for his brother and sister vets. She’d never know how close she came to being ravished right then and there. On the table. On the floor. Against the counter. Didn’t fucking matter. Her reaction couldn’t have pleased him more.

“We can revisit the budget if need be. Hire all the vets you need. I’ve absolutely no problem with that.”

“Won’t be necessary,” Jax muttered. This time it was him who was searching for an easy conversational pivot.

Brynn’s eyes narrowed and she stared at him with the intensity of a laser beam. “And
why
won’t that be necessary may I ask?”

He stood up and walked his empty bowl over to the sink. Keeping his back to her replied, “Because I pay them out of pocket.”

“Jackson Merrill, you come back here and sit down.”

Every muscle in his body tightened when he turned to face her. “Let it go Brynn.”

Her expression made him think of angry hornets looking for something to attack after their nest had been poked. “Uh, excuse me but I
so
will not let it go. Dammit Jax. You’re using your fee to cover their salaries, aren’t you?” She jumped up from the table and threw her napkin down, making a beeline straight for him.

He felt trapped by his own stupidity.
Should have just agreed with her, blown a bunch of sunshine up her skirt, and no one would have been the wiser
, he thought a little too late. Why the hell he opened up his mouth with what came next was beyond him.

“Actually, if you look closer at the budget, you’ll see that I didn’t take a fee for the project.”

Holy fuckballz. Her face morphed into an angry scowl as she crossed her arms over her chest and stood with her feet shoulder width apart looking for all the world like she was ready to drop kick him at any moment.

“What. The.
Fuck
?” she hollered. Next thing he knew she was waving her arms like a crazy person and pacing back and forth with heavy thudding steps.

“Nope. Absolutely not. I won’t have it. I’m not some poor little girly girl in need of a rescue. I take care of my own shit, thank you very much.”

Hmmm
. He learned a lot about her with those angry words. He already knew she was driven and conscientious. Apparently, anything that smacked of being taken care of was on the no go list.

“Settle down Brynn. I’m very much aware that as you say,
you take care of your own shit
but first of all, I’m here as a favor to my father who by his own admission is doing
your
dad a proper. Plus, letting me stay here is payment enough.”

“Don’t care. I don’t like it. Helping the vets is one thing but doing a freebie when it’s not called for well, it makes me…..
shit
. I don’t know what it makes me.”

Jax sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. She wanted control. He needed control.
Fuck.
What a pair they made. Getting into a verbal tug-of-war over something stupid was a deflection from what was really going on.

‘Babe,” he began tentatively. Her eyes flashed and he bit back a sheepish grin. It was so damn easy to get her worked up that it was funny. “Hate to burst your bubble but the fact is—” He rolled a shoulder and stood a bit taller. “I’ve got more money than I know what to do with.” She looked at him with clear skepticism but didn’t jump down his throat. Not yet anyway.

“Sit down Brynn. I think it’s time we had a talk about the fucking elephant in the room.”

He reached for her hand and held on tight, pulling her along on reluctant feet until she begrudgingly flopped on the sofa and pouted with the body language of a bratty princess.

“If this is about, well…you know,” she began, “I don’t really want to talk about it.” She crossed one leg over the other as her foot started a nervous shake that set the sofa vibrating.

“Tough shit,” he barked as he sat down and gave her body a distinct shove to make room for him. Flinging his arm along the back of the sofa he effectively caged her in with his presence.

“I knew the minute I laid eyes on you Brynn Wilde that you were going to be trouble. Nobody with such a sweet ass and a mouth that begs to be kissed who has a chip as big as the one you carry on your shoulders could possibly be a good thing for a guy like me. But the thing is babe,” he ran his fingers along the back of her shoulder, “you’re turning out to be a blessing in disguise.”

“It’s just sex,” she muttered. “And if I could come up with a good quote or a line from a movie to back that up, I would.”

“Need a quote? Fuck babe, I’ve got a million of them. In the immortal words of one Hunter S. Thompson, ‘Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.’

“Don’t talk to me about love, Jax. It doesn’t exist. At least not the way I see it in my mind.”

“Mmmm, okay. We’ll circle back to that comment but to some degree you’re probably right about the way we see it in our heads. That’s what I want to talk about. There are things about me you need to know.”

“How in the hell did we go from arguing about you getting paid to work on my house to debating love and sex?”

“Fuck if I know but since we’re here, we might as well go with the flow.”

Frustration and something that looked like worry crinkled her eyes. They’d both been burned in the past. She was working overtime to prove that she didn’t need a man and him, well—he was trying damn hard not to pretend to be something or somebody he wasn’t.

She shocked the bloody hell out of him when she suddenly asked, “Did you love her very much? Your fiancée?” Direct, to the point, and right on the money. Leave it to her to jump in with both feet.

“Probably about as much as you loved the anal probe you married.”

“Ouch,” she groaned.

“Exactly,” he agreed. “Not my best moment.”

“Nor mine,” she whispered.

“Heather, the fiancée that was, well, she was a mistake from beginning to end. I was playing a part. Something I suspect you’d know all about.”

“
Pfft
.”

He smiled at her grunted agreement, because it might be the last happy face he’d get out for a while. He’d never attempted a true confession with anyone before even though all the therapists and social workers that’d helped him over the years urged just that. Honesty was the only way to avoid inadvertently setting off a trigger.

“When I came back from Iraq that last time, a lot more than just my medical ambitions were left in shreds on the battlefield. Heather didn’t have time for my emotional, uh… wounds. When people in the media talk about PTSD it’s like some unknown, unseen trauma that defies description.
Shit
. They couldn’t be more wrong.”

Brynn shimmied to the side with her feet tucked under her ass so she was facing him as he spoke. It was comforting to know he had her undivided attention.

“At first, the folks you come home to are all focused on the celebration. The soldier’s homecoming and all that crap. For Heather, it was like a starting gun had gone off because it meant she could get on with planning her future as a doctor’s wife. She couldn’t have given half a fuck what I was going through. Everything bothered me.
Everything
. Crowded stores. Stopping at a red light. People talking on cell phones as they walked past like you weren’t even there.”

He shuddered remembering those awful first months as a low throb of anxiety gripped him. No matter how hard it was to tell her this story, he had to fight through it and lay it all out there.

“The first concrete change I made was buying a truck. Drove me batshit whenever I was in a car to have an empty space right behind me. Heather was not amused by my F-150. She envisioned something flashier like a Lexus or an Audi. I wasn’t able to do simple things like go to a movie unless I could sit in the very last row at the back, right in the middle. That situational awareness I was bitching at you about last night is a very big deal post war zone. Can’t sit too close to the doors and definitely can’t have anyone directly behind me. That’s the main thing about what we all went through over there. You just never knew where the next threat would come from. Those motherfuckers weren’t exactly dropping shit from the air, y’know? It was more about sniper shots, car bombs, IEDs, and suicide vests.”

Jax’s fingers slid back to Brynn’s shoulder. He needed to feel her solid presence. She reached out and put a hand on his thigh and gently squeezed. “Go on,” she murmured softly.

“Anyway, almost as soon as the dust settled from my homecoming I knew that pursuing a medical career wasn’t going to happen. Whatever high-minded aspirations I’d harbored before my military experiences about saving lives and doing good got blown to fucking bits. So, I started isolating myself with one project after another. It’s like a Zen thing with me, I suppose. Working with my hands, researching materials, spending hours sketching plans. Helped blunt the…anxiety.”

Brynn’s fingers pressed against his thigh. “I completely understand. Did you know I was a big time financial advisor before my marriage imploded? Looking back, I don’t even know what the hell I was thinking except that like you, I was playing a part. Being successful, wearing the power suit. I thought that was what was expected of me. The bakery is my Zen.”

He nodded in understanding. “My family was great. Completely accepted the one eighty and supported me every step of the way. Heather, on the other hand, wasn’t that sympathetic.”

Jax looked at Brynn and hoped the compassion he found in her gaze remained after what he had to say next.

“To make matters worse, our sex life changed too. All me. None of it her. She’d always been a reluctant partner anyway but something changed along the way. It’s hard to explain without sounding like a fucking freak.”

Brynn snorted, clearly amused, and tried to diffuse his tension. He couldn’t be more grateful if he tried. “Unless you’re confessing to hidden alien tentacles, I doubt the word ‘freak’ applies.”

“Y’know, I hate all the terms bandied about these days. Vanilla sex. Dominant. Pain rooms. Submissive. Shit like that. Makes what I feel seem like a circus but the truth is, I need all that. Need to be the one in charge. I’m not a sadist,” he quickly assured her. “It’s just that after almost having your balls blown off on a daily basis and spending your days piecing soldiers back together, sweet and tender takes a backseat to everything else. When you spend a couple of years contemplating your mortality and being faced with others’, it’s easier to cut through the bullshit once you’re on the other side of all that and embrace what really drives you. Heather didn’t want to fuck me at all if she didn’t have to. Being faced with a fiancé who wanted to tie her to the bed and pound her till she couldn’t walk the next day was a step too far for her delicate sensibilities. At least I knew how to be truthful,” he grumbled.