Simply Irresistible

Chapter 26

The insurance adjuster slipped out of his rain slicker and introduced himself as Benny Ramos. He was tall and lanky lean, wearing cowboy boots, a matching hat, and Wranglers that threatened to slide right off his skinny hips. It was impossible to tell if he was barely twenty-one or just really good with a razor.

Jax had led both Maddie and Benny back to their table. Jax gave Maddie a quiet, assessing look that she had no idea how to read and then left.

Her head was spinning. He’d given everything he had, and he wanted the same from her. He wanted her to fight for what she wanted.

Made sense. Made a lot of sense. It’s what any good, strong leading lady would do.

“So,” Benny said. “The cottage is a total loss.”

“No duh,” Chloe said. “Now tell us something we don’t know.”

“The fire department believes the fire originated with a set of old faulty Christmas lights that were strung…” He consulted his clipboard. “On a dead plant of some sort in the living room.”

Tara snorted.

Maddie closed her eyes. Poor Charlie Brown Christmas tree, may you rest in peace…

“Anyway,” the adjuster went on. “The inn isn’t as bad as it looks. The bedrooms upstairs need a complete renovation, new carpeting, walls and bathroom replacement. New roof. But the downstairs is all cosmetic and can be cleaned. You’re in decent shape there.”

They were in decent shape. Good to know.

Step into the ring.

Jax thought she was a fighter. That hadn’t always been anywhere close to true. She’d let life happen to her. She’d gone with the flow.

She hated the flow. The flow was working like a dog at a go-nowhere job, trying to please too many people who didn’t care. She was done with going with the flow. She wanted to be a fighter. “Excuse me,” she said to Benny. “But the downstairs is water damaged, so we’re not in ‘decent’ shape there. We expect proper compensation.”

Tara raised a brow, like Go, kitten. Show him those claws.

Chloe out-and-out grinned and gave her a thumbs up. “You heard my sister,” she said to Benny. “We expect proper compensation. You go back and tell your people that.”

“Actually, we’re on the same side,” Benny said and made some more notes on his computerized clipboard. Maddie was dizzy. She was heartsick. She was out of control, but she was having some serious clipboard envy. She needed a clipboard like that. She also needed to fight for her new life. “We’ll need rental compensation, as well.”

“Of course,” Benny said.

She blinked. Was it really that easy? Say what you want, get what you want? Jax had suggested it was, and it’d always seemed to work for Tara.

Benny looked over his clipboard. “I figure we can get all the paperwork taken care of by next week and get you a check to get started.”

“And I figure today or tomorrow would be better,” Maddie said smoothly. “Bless your heart.”

Tara grinned. Grinned. Maddie took in the rare sight and returned it.

Benny went back to his clipboard, his ears red. “Tomorrow. How’s tomorrow?”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Chloe said. “Thank you.” She beamed at him.

Benny looked a little stunned. “Uh… You’re welcome.”

Chloe walked him to his truck, then came back with a piece of paper in her hand.

“Are you kidding me-you got his phone number?” Tara asked. “He’s barely twelve. I bet they haven’t even dropped yet.”

“Hey,” Chloe said. “Don’t talk about my future boyfriend’s balls. He was cute, and Maddie scared the hell out of him.”

“I thought you thought Lance was cute,” Tara said. “And his brother.”

“Uh-huh. And your point?”

“And Officer Hottie. Sawyer, right? You were looking at him the other night like you wanted to eat him up alive.”

“If I was looking at him at all, I was planning his slow, painful death. Did you hear what we were just told? We’re getting a big fat check tomorrow.” Chloe looked at each of them. “Our plan?”

“Big fat checks divide into three nicely,” Tara noted.

“True.” Chloe nodded. “I guess that means by this time tomorrow, we’re cut loose.” She smiled. “You guys will miss me. Say it.”

Maddie tried to sit there calm and in control, but suddenly it was all too much. The fire. The terrifying escape. Tara’s revelation, making her realize that she’d misdirected her emotions. Her sisters all gung ho to take the check and run. Jax saying those three little words that she’d never heard before, three words that meant so much more than she’d imagined they could. Her heart clenched hard. “I’m the middle sister,” she said softly, then repeated it more strongly.

“Very good,” Chloe said. “Can you say the alphabet, too?”

“As the middle, I’m the logical choice for mediator. We have decisions to make, and they get made right now. Majority rules.” She looked at each of them. “We walk away or rebuild. We’re voting, now. Youngest first.”

Chloe pulled out an iTouch, which Lance had lent her in the hospital, and brought up a Magic 8-Ball application. “Magic 8-Ball,” she intoned with great ceremony. “Should I stay here in Lucky Harbor?”

Maddie was boggled. “What? You can’t leave your vote up to a Magic 8-Ball!”

“I can’t?”

“No!” But Maddie bit her lip, trying to see the iTouch screen. “What did it say?”

Chloe looked down and sighed. “Outlook not so good. Just as well. I’m ready to blow this popsicle stand anyway.”

Disappointment practically choking her, Maddie turned to Tara.

Tara held her hand out for Chloe’s iTouch. “Let me see that thing.”

“You aren’t serious.” Maddie’s throat felt like she’d swallowed shards of glass. “Please say you’re not serious.”

“Okay. I’m not serious.” Tara reached for Maddie’s hand, her smile a little watery. “I vote we stay here.”

“Me, too,” Chloe said. “I was only kidding before. We can’t leave now. Things are just getting good.”

“Two yeses,” Tara said. “Maddie?”

She was dizzy, overwhelmed, and confused as hell.

“Aw, look at her,” Tara murmured. “Like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

“She’s got fear written all over her,” Chloe agreed. “Definitely a high flight risk. Makes me wonder if she wanted us to vote the other way.”

“Huh,” Tara said, nodding. “Interesting. You mean she wanted us to make the decision for her so she didn’t have to be accountable?”

“Exactly.”

“I’m right here,” Maddie said. “I can hear you.”

“You know what you need?” Chloe asked. “You need to get over yourself.”

“Hey,” Maddie said. “When you first showed up here with your bad ’tude, did I tell you to get over it?”

“Yes, actually. Several times.”

Okay, true. Maddie turned on a smug Tara and narrowed her eyes. “And you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“I gave you sympathy. I want sympathy!”

“Are you kidding me? You have the sexiest man on the planet wanting you. You’re getting laid regularly. No sympathy for you!”

Maddie stood up. “I need some fresh air.”

“Last time you said that, you went to the bar, got toasted, and kissed a hottie.”

Halfway to the door, Maddie came back and snatched Chloe’s iTouch out of her hands. “And I need this.”

Just outside, she closed her eyes and whispered, “Am I going to get it right this time?”

The iTouch clouded and then cleared with her answer:

Ask again later

Dammit! She shoved the thing in her pocket and got into her car. She drove along the beach, which was dense with fog. The water was gray and choppy today, an endless cycle of unrestrained violence.

Sort of how her gut felt.

Somehow she ended up at the pier, ticket in hand, staring up at the Ferris wheel. Do it, the brave little voice in her head said.

Live.

Which is how she found herself in the swinging seat, clinging to the bar in front of her, her legs like jelly as she rose in the air.

And-oh, shit-rose some more.

And more…

And then, when she was as high as she could go-and not breathing-the Ferris wheel stuttered to a stop.

Her heart did the same.

Around her, the few others on the wheel with her gasped and woo-hoo’d their delight.

She wasn’t feeling delight. She was feeling stark terror. Whose idea had this been? What the hell had she been thinking? Life was just as good on the ground!

She tried to look at that ground, but her forward motion had the bucket tilting forward, and she felt her head spin. “Oh, God, oh, God-” She had a death grip on the bar now. She couldn’t feel her legs at all. And her stomach was sitting in her throat, blocking all air from coming through.

Stop looking down. Forcing her head up, she stared out at the view. It was incredible. If she discounted the vertigo, that is. From this high, she had a three-hundred-sixty-degree vista of the sparkling Pacific Ocean and the rocky shores for as far as she could see.

And the town. She could see all of Lucky Harbor from here, and it was as pretty as a postcard. It was a perspective she never would have appreciated had she not faced her fear and come up here.

Okay, so she hadn’t quite overcome the fear, and she was a minute from hyperventilating, but she’d get there.

Thing was, she had a lot of fears to overcome. She had a lot of “roads not taken,” or “rides not taken.” There’d been things she’d convinced herself she couldn’t do.

For instance, she’d convinced herself her mother hadn’t been interested in more of a relationship. It was too late for what-ifs on that one, but what about her sisters? It didn’t seem too late for them, even though she’d told herself that they hadn’t wanted her in their lives. The truth was, she hadn’t reached out, either, and she could have. She should have.

She’d done the same to Jax. He might not have been forthright, not completely, but he’d shown her from the beginning how he felt, without words. He’d pushed her to want more-more of the truth from him, more of everything. Why hadn’t she wanted to hear it?

Fear. She’d let it rule her.

That had to change. If she lived through this stupid ride.

Just as she thought it, the Ferris wheel jerked and her bucket swung as the ride started moving again. And ten minutes later, after she’d gone around three times and finally had her feet firmly back on the ground, she grinned.

She’d made it. She got back into her car feeling better and more determined and drove without a destination in mind.

No, that was a lie. She knew exactly where she was going. She pulled into Jax’s driveway and parked. It was forty-five degrees out, and she was sweating.

You know what to do, he’d said.

And he’d been right. She wanted to stay in Lucky Harbor, and she wanted to be a family with her sisters.

Both of those things were within her reach.

She also wanted Jax.

Hopefully he was still within her reach, as well. She knocked on his door, and when he didn’t answer, she twisted around and eyed his Jeep. He was home…

Then she heard it, the steady, rhythmic banging, and she followed the sound around to the back of the house. He was there in battered boots, a gray Henley, and beloved old Levi’s faded to threads in spots. He was chopping wood, the ax rising and falling with easy grace. His shirt was soaked through with sweat and clinging to his every hard inch.

He had a lot of hard inches. Just watching him gave her a hot flash.

He had to have seen her come around the side of the house. He had instincts like a cat, and she was making no move to be secretive, but he kept chopping.

Saying nothing.

Finally, she risked life and limb and stepped close enough that he was forced to stop or put her in danger from the flying shards of wood.

Lowering the ax, he leaned on it, his breath coming steady but hard.

Still saying nothing.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

Fair enough question, since she’d asked him the same only this morning. It figured that he’d get right to the point. He was good at that.

She wasn’t. “I was… confused. And I guess a little mad at everyone, and then I went for a drive and my car came here.”

His mouth quirked very slightly. “Did your car forget that you’re mad at me, as well?”

“Well,” she said, “out of all the people I’m mad at, I think I’m the least mad at you.”

“Why’s that?”

Maddie fought the urge to pull out Chloe’s iTouch and ask the Magic 8-Ball how she was doing with Jax, but she had a feeling she knew.

“Why, Maddie?”

Dammit, he wasn’t going to let her off the hook. She went with flippant. After all, it was her number-one defense mechanism. “You did recently put a damn good smile on my face. Maybe you get partial immunity. I don’t know.”

He eyed her for a long moment, clearly seeing right through her. “I gave you more than a smile,” he said, setting down his ax and walking into the house.

Jax headed into his kitchen and straight for the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle of water for his suddenly parched throat.

Do-or-die moment. Either she’d come to say thanks for the memories and vanish off into the sunset, or she was here to… Hell, he was afraid to hope.

When he’d been a lawyer, he’d walked into court every day knowing he was going to win. Always.

It’d be nice to know the verdict on this.

Distance. He needed some. He downed the water, tossed the bottle aside, and moved through the house. Not a total ass, he’d left the slider open in case she wanted to come in and destroy him some more, but without looking back, he went into his bathroom. Stripping out of his sweaty clothes, he cranked the shower up to scalding and stepped in. Bowing his head beneath the spray, he let the water bead down his back and tried to clear his mind.

Not happening.

Instead, images came to him: Maddie standing beneath the hot water with him, glistening and soapy, her eyes soft and warm on his; him gliding his hands over that body until those eyes glazed with passion, listening to her pant his name over and over as she came-

When the door opened behind him, he didn’t move, didn’t lift his head, didn’t open his eyes. Her arms came around him, and he felt her naked body press up against his.

And here was the thing. All his good intentions went out the window as those hands drifted down his chest and over his abs, because it was hard to remain distant with the hard-on of his life.

“Why are you here?” he asked again.

Maddie swallowed hard and tried to channel… which actress? Damn, she couldn’t think of an actress to save her life! She was on her own. “Well, you seemed pretty sweaty,” she said in her best come-hither voice. “Thought maybe I could help wash your back.” She leaned in and licked a droplet of water off his neck.

She felt him draw a deep breath. “Maddie.”

Okay, so he wasn’t in the mood for flippant. She could understand that. She paused, her eyes on the smooth muscles of his back. “You bared yourself to me.”

He turned to face her. “Yes, as it happens, I’m as bare-ass naked as it gets.”

They both looked down. Yeah, he was naked. Gloriously so. “I meant more than your body,” she whispered. “You bared yourself to me, and… and it took me longer than it should have to notice.”

God, he was perfect. Hard and ripped and heart-stoppingly perfect. She ran her finger over the drops of water on one pec, and, whoops, grazed his nipple.

“Maddie?”

“Yeah?”

“Up here.”

She tore her gaze off him and met his eyes. They were slightly warmer, and maybe, possibly, amused. Relief hit her so hard she nearly slid to the tile floor. “Oh, Jax. I’m sorry that it took me so long to get with the program. That I doubted you, that I pushed you away. I wasn’t looking for this. And I know you weren’t, either, even less than me, but you… you handled it better.”

His hand slid over her stomach and settled on her hip, which made it all but impossible to think, but she struggled to try. “I know I said some things… about where we’re at.”

“Actually, you made yourself pretty clear about where we weren’t at.” Reaching for the soap, he turned away and began to scrub up.

“About that. I was wrong.” She was a little breathless just from watching his hands run over his body, leaving soapy trails in their midst, and lost her train of thought.

He didn’t say anything, just finished what he was doing. Finally he put the soap back, rinsed off, and then moved unexpectedly, pulling her in close, wrapping his arms around her and just holding on. Tight. She didn’t mind. She could have stayed like that forever, feeling safe and warm and stupidly happy. But she had more to say. “Jax, I-”

“Whatever you want,” he said, his voice low and raw. “Except for letting go. I’m not going to let go.”

“I hope you mean that. Because you were right about something else, too. I was scared, scared to the bone.” She grimaced. “I might have panicked even.”

“You did do a lot of knitting,” he said with an utterly straight face and then moved his lips down her neck.

Shivering at the feel of his mouth brushing over her wet skin, she clutched at him. When he lifted his head, he was smiling. The sight threatened to short out her brain. Or maybe that was his touch. She wasn’t sure, except she was breathing hard and was dangerously close to leaping into his arms and impaling herself on him. “You said to fight for what I want. You said to get into the ring.” She looked down. “Um, not to change the subject, but you want me.”

“Hard to hide it.”

“I want you back,” she whispered, which isn’t what she’d meant to say. Exactly.

“For how long?”

“As long as you’ll have me.”

He drew a shuddery breath. “So this is you, fighting for what you want?”

“Yes.” It was hard to concentrate. His hand was on her hip, slowly making its way north until it cupped her breast. His thumb glided over her already pebbled nipple, his expression a mixture of heat, affection, need, and so much more that it took her breath. She slid her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest, shivering when he cupped the back of her neck. “I came to Lucky Harbor out of obligation, but really, I was looking for something.”

“Did you find it?”

She loved the way his voice rumbled through his chest, his body radiating into hers. “Yeah, I found it. I’m staying in Lucky Harbor, Jax. We’re going to rebuild. For the first time in my life, I fit. I have my sisters, a place that’s mine-well, it’s only one-third mine, and we still owe you a ton of money, not to mention it’s half charred-but you know what I mean.”

His lips twitched.

“And!” She drew a breath, because this was the big one. “I let myself love and, in return, be loved.”

He went utterly still, his eyes twin dark pools. His fingers brushed up her spine, sinking into her hair. “Did you?”

“Yes.” Her heart clenched that he’d doubted it, even for a minute. “I love you, Jax. And you love me back.”

“I do,” he said, warm emotion thickening his voice, and all her worries began to fade completely away. He pressed his mouth to the beat of the pulse at the base of her neck. When he lifted his head and met her gaze, his eyes were shining fiercely. “I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

Looking at him, she saw her future and felt all the ragged tears in her heart heal themselves. “I fit,” she whispered in marvel, stepping into him. “I fit with you.”

He nodded and wrapped his arms around her. “Perfectly.”