The Cowboy Who Lost His Ranch to a Size 20 City Girl novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Offer

The rich neighbor offers Nadia a fortune and an insult, she turns him down in front of Jace, and Jace kneels at the kitchen table.

I pulled on my jeans and a red sweater and got to the porch before Jace did.

It was the first time I'd worn jeans in front of him, and I felt him notice from the top of the stairs.

The stranger on the porch took off his hat.

He had a silver crew cut, a belly that pushed at a gold belt buckle, and a smile that stopped at his teeth.

"You must be Lottie's niece," he said. "Darrell Holcomb. I own the place next door."

"The big one," I said.

"Forty thousand acres. I'm the big one."

He stuck out a hand.

I shook it, and he held on a beat too long, looking me over from my black bangs to my boots.

I let go first.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said. "Lottie was a fine woman. Hard as nails, and I admired that."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Holcomb?"

"Darrell. I'll get right to it, because I know you've got a lot on your plate."

He gave a little chuckle at his own joke and kept his eyes on my chest.

He opened the briefcase and took out a folder.

"Lottie's half sits on the upper creek," he said. "Best water in the valley. I'd like a lease on it. Ninety-nine years. Two point four million, paid today."

I didn't say anything.

I'd run banquets for four hundred people, and I knew what a man's face did when he was lowballing.

"The will doesn't let you buy," I said.

"A lease isn't a sale."

"It's a sale with a different name."

His smile slipped half an inch.

Behind me the screen door opened, and Jace stepped out onto the porch with his hat in his hand and his hair still wet.

He didn't say a word.

He just stood at my shoulder and was very tall.

"Ransom," Holcomb said. "Heard you took it hard."

"Morning, Darrell."

"I'm making Ms. Haddad a fair offer."

"I heard."

Holcomb turned back to me and smiled again.

"Now, sweetheart. A girl who's used to a city comfortable life doesn't want to be out here fixing fence and hauling hay. Lottie's people always did like their comforts. Take the money. Buy yourself some more of whatever you like."

He let his eyes drop to my hips.

I felt Jace go still beside me.

His hand tightened around his hat brim.

"Jace," I said.

"Yeah."

"I've got it."

He didn't move, but he gave me a tiny nod.

I looked at Darrell Holcomb for a long moment.

I used the voice I'd used on drunk groomsmen and a bride's furious father.

"Mr. Holcomb, you're standing on my porch."

"Now, honey."

"My name is Nadia. You can call me Ms. Haddad. You can pick up your briefcase and your folder, and you can get your truck off my grass."

"You haven't read the lease."

"I don't need to."

"It's two point four million dollars."

"Then you can afford to carry it back to your truck," I said.

His face went a dull red.

He snapped the briefcase shut.

"You'll be back to me by Christmas," he said. "Everyone sells in the end."

"Goodbye, Darrell."

He put his hat back on, walked to the white pickup, and spun gravel on the way out.

I watched the dust settle, and then my hands began to shake.

"Nadia," Jace said.

I turned around.

He was looking at me.

"You didn't ask me," he said.

"Ask you what?"

"What I wanted you to do."

"Why would I?"

He laughed, short and surprised.

"I thought you'd sell," he said. "I really did. I figured you'd be gone in a week, and I'd put the money together somehow, and that would be that."

"And now?"

"Now I don't know what you are."

He stepped forward until the toes of our boots touched.

"I do know one thing," he said. "I've been trying not to think about it all night."

"What?"

"The way you said Ms. Haddad."

I laughed.

It cracked something open, and then he was kissing me on the porch in broad daylight with the sun coming over the pasture.

He backed me through the door and down the hall, his mouth never leaving mine.

In the kitchen he lifted me and sat me on the long pine table.

The wood was cool through my jeans.

He stood between my knees, pushed my sweater up, and looked.

My bra was black lace.

He made a sound I felt in my stomach.

"Take it off," he said. "Let me see you."

I did.

I pulled the sweater over my head and unhooked the bra, and I sat there on Lottie's table with my breasts heavy and bare in the morning light.

He didn't blink.

"Look at you," he said.

He cupped them in both hands, thumbs over my nipples.

They tightened right away, and my breath caught.

"Everything I imagined was wrong," he said. "It's so much better."

He kissed the tops of them and licked a slow line to my nipple and sucked it into his mouth.

I arched into him and said his name.

His hands moved down to the button of my jeans.

"Lift."

I lifted, and he pulled my jeans and my underwear down together and dropped them on the floor.

I sat naked on the table with my thighs wide open and my soft belly rolling over my lap.

I started to reach for the sweater.

He caught my wrist.

"Don't," he said. "Don't you dare."

"Jace."

"I've been thinking about this stomach since yesterday."

He bent and kissed it, right under the navel, open-mouthed.

Then he kissed lower.

Then he went down on his knees on Lottie's kitchen floor.

He pushed my thighs apart with both big hands and looked at my pussy for a long, quiet second.

"Pretty," he said. "God, you're wet already."

"Because of you."

"Say that again."

"Because of you, you idiot."

He grinned, chipped tooth and all, and put his mouth on me.

The first lick went from my entrance to my clit, slow and flat and so hot I nearly came off the table.

I grabbed his hair.

It was thick, and the wet ends curled around my fingers.

"Harder," I said.

He did it harder.

He sucked my clit between his lips and flicked it with his tongue until my thighs shook against his shoulders.

His hands held me open.

I had never had a man go down on me like he was the one being fed.

"Right there," I said. "Don't stop. Jace. Right there."

"Tell me how it feels."

"Like you're going to kill me."

"Good."

He pushed two thick fingers inside me and curled them, and the pleasure went white behind my eyes.

I pulled his hair and ground against his mouth, and he groaned into me like I was the best thing he'd ever tasted.

"You taste like heaven," he said against my clit. "Come on my face."

I came with a shout that bounced off the kitchen walls.

My whole body clenched around his fingers.

He kept licking through it, slow and greedy, until I was shaking and begging him to stop and begging him not to.

He sat back on his heels with his mouth shining.

"That was yours," he said. "Just yours."

I pulled him up by the shirt and kissed my own taste off his lips.

He rested his forehead on mine.

"I'm still mad," he said, breathing hard.

"I know."

"I'm still going to fight you for that half."

"I know."

"But I'm not going to stop doing that."

"Good."

His hand rested on my bare thigh, and his thumb drew a slow circle.

"Saddle up at five tomorrow, partner," he said. "You wanted a half. Come see what you got."

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