Riding Red (2 page)

“More like in this lifetime,” agreed Teresa with a small smile. “As for their whereabouts, last time I checked they were both at the stables making sure everything is in order before they leave tomorrow.”

“All right then.” Jason nodded. “I’ll just head out there and see if they need any help.” He bounded off the porch and took a few steps before he noticed Jeff wasn’t following after him. “Aren’t you gonna join me?”

Jeff shook his head, but his gaze never strayed from Teresa. “No, I’m good right here. I’ll just help Red finish up—”

“That’s really not necessary,” she quickly interjected, but before she could even finish, Jason was already headed in the direction of the clearing where the horses were stabled.

As soon as he disappeared from sight, she fixed Jeff with a cross look. “You should have gone with your brother,” she grumbled at the same time she stooped back down to continue digging through the flower bed. “We both know you’re just going to aggravate me, which will only slow me down. Besides, how much help could you possibly be?” She raked him with a derisive stare. “I know you don’t want to get those designer duds dirty.”

“What do you know about getting down and dirty, Teresa West?” Jeff teased, his deep voice now low and husky, as he dropped down on his haunches beside her. “You’d be surprised just how dirty I can get.”

Teresa didn’t imagine the darkly sensual air thickening around them. His provocative words whispered through her with a subtle tremor, but it was his nearness, the heat of his body drifting off him to singe her, which sparked tiny fires of raw, hot desire in the centre of her belly.

“Don’t start this again,” she told him when she finally managed to locate her voice.

He didn’t immediately reply as he stood for just a moment to lazily peel off his suit jacket and set it down on the front porch. It wasn’t until he began rolling up his sleeves that he questioned, “Don’t start what?”

She knew he spoke—she even heard his voice—but Teresa could barely discern the words tumbling from his lips with the blood pounding in her ears as she followed every shifting muscle straining beneath his crisp white dress shirt. Her heart hammered harder in her chest when he returned to her side.

“Don’t start what, Teresa?” he asked again and she shook her head in an effort to take hold of herself.

“Don’t start
this
,” she complained, gesturing between the two of them. “The flirty comments, the sexual innuendos… You’ve been doing this since the wedding and it’s getting old. Don’t you think you should call it quits? It’s been a year already.”

One eyebrow arched. “Call it quits?” He reached for the trowel by her side, deliberately grazing his fingers across her thigh as he did.

She sucked in a breath, then forced it down. She widened her eyes before she realised that every single movement, every response, Jeff noticed. She purposely hardened her expression and wrenched her gaze away from him as she returned to her task of raking back dirt.

“I will
never
call it quits, Red, not when it comes to you.”

Her spine stiffened, as every word of his declaration scorched through her, hot and carnal. “Well, I think you should. Every time you come here it’s always the same—
I’m not interested, never have been, never will be
.”

“Liar. You want me, you just hate that you do.”

Jeff’s crooked, self-satisfied grin infuriated her. He thought he knew her so well—he thought he needed only to wear her down, and eventually she would crumble. Teresa’s anger ratcheted a notch higher out of frustration, because the problem was he
did
know her well, and with every visit, she
was
crumbling. She would never admit it, and she would never go willingly, but Jeff Downing was slowly, steadily, getting under her skin, and he knew it.

“
When will you get it through that big, thick head of yours? There is one woman on this planet who doesn’t want you, and you’re looking at her.”

Jeff fought to suppress a grin as Teresa levelled him with golden-green eyes and pointed her trowel at his chest.

“I know you and Jason are here to run Cottonmouth while BJ and Jackson are on vacation, and there is nothing I can do but wait this week out, but let’s get one thing straight—I am not here for your personal amusement. I have work to do and I want you to let me be and leave me alone while you’re here so that I can do it. Understood?”

The grin that had threatened to spread across his face could no longer be denied as he studied the feisty, fiery woman before him.

Teresa Mae West—
Red…
His
Red.

She hated the nickname, but it suited her. She claimed to hate him, too, but Jeff had no doubt he would suit her as well.

With abundant curves and toffee-cream skin, she was a striking, exquisite beauty with a feisty mouth to match her riotous mane of burnished auburn curls.

From the moment he’d met her, he’d wanted her, and for a year she’d denied him. Just the thought had his cock swelling within the confines of his pants, so hard it could pound nails. She believed he was a playboy, and until he’d met her, maybe that had been true. But sleeping with another woman
now
? The idea alone instantly deflated his erection.

Just recalling the last time he’d even tried to get laid made him want to grimace. In a word, the experience had been
dismal
. So after that, he’d stopped pursuing other women altogether. He certainly wasn’t sleeping with any. It was just pointless, since he didn’t want anyone but her.
Which wouldn’t be a problem except she still claimed she didn’t want him.

For almost a year now, he’d been confined to an involuntary hell of celibacy because this one stubborn woman refused to admit she wanted him in return, and it would seem his cock would not be satisfied with anyone else.

Every sleepless night he spent with blue balls—and there were many—he cursed his body’s unswerving fidelity to Teresa West, though even he couldn’t blame it. Lush breasts strained against her shirt as her jeans rode low on her hips. Her figure was voluptuous—full and soft, and rounded in all the right places. Feminine though she was, Teresa was certainly no slip of a woman. If she stood, the top of her head would come to his chin. And if he managed to get her flat on her back, her abundant breasts would pillow his chest, while her beautiful, thick thighs would cushion the hard, pounding ride he was determined to give her.

Riding Red.

That was all he thought about these days—fucking her, pounding her, getting inside her tight, wet cunt and staying there all night…for several nights. Jeff could think of little else, especially in the last few days leading up to this trip. Teresa may be on some strict, misguided hands-off policy, but Jeff was there to bed the beautiful, ballsy woman before him, and when he did, he definitely planned to ride her all night.

“Do you understand me, Jeff Downing?” she demanded again.

His lips furled into a lazy grin. “Oh, I hear you all right, Red.” But that didn’t mean he was listening. “You want me to stay away from you while I’m out here.”

“Precisely.”

He pinned her with his gaze, the casual grin he knew irritated her still hovering on his face. “Well I hate to disappoint you, especially when all I want is to please you, but the last thing I plan to do is stay
away
from you.”

Her cheeks turned as red as her flaming hair, and her lips parted. Jeff knew she was about to explode, like a blazing, raging wildfire, but before she could go off on him, Jason returned with Jackson and BJ in tow.

“See? I told you. You owe me ten bucks, babe,” Jackson quipped as they rounded the corner, his eyes sparkling as he smiled down at his wife.

“I don’t think so,” she protested. “Look at Teresa—she looks ready to pummel him.”

“
Yes
, but you bet me when we returned they would be in the midst of a fight—”

“And if we’d been five seconds slower, they
would
have been,” BJ grumbled. She cast a baleful glare towards him and Teresa. “
Now
you two decide to play nice when it’s my ten bucks on the line.”

Jeff stood as his two brothers and sister-in-law drew nearer. He tried to help Teresa stand as well, but she batted his hand away before he could touch her, earning her a small grin. That was Teresa’s very problem when it came to him. She didn’t seem to understand why he was so relentless, but it was her staunch denial of the attraction between them that compelled him. The louder she protested and the more she resisted, the more it revealed to him just how much he truly affected her. For the past year, he’d been steadily and very effectively chipping away at the wall she kept firmly erected between them. Soon, Jeff determined,
very
soon, there would be nothing left to stand between them, and no place for her to run and hide.

BJ stepped up on the porch, momentarily drawing his attention away from the feisty redhead. Jeff’s smile was warm as he pulled his sister-in-law into his arms for an affectionate hug, before turning to embrace his older brother, Jackson.

Just to look at the two of them, the love they held for one another was evident, brimming over in their eyes. Jeff envied them, even as he was happy for his brother, especially since there had been a time when he’d worried Jackson would never find happiness, not after Camille had chosen Jacob over him. That had been a tense time between the four close knit brothers, but the moment BJ had barrelled into Jackson’s life, no other woman had existed for him.

Unwittingly, Jeff’s gaze slipped to Teresa. At first, he hadn’t understood what Jacob and Jackson meant when they proclaimed their wives were the only women in the world for them, but now he was starting to. Teresa was like an obsession to him—she seemed to claim every waking thought…and had long ago found her way into his night time fantasies that were filled with visions of her and only her.

“I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” Jeff said finally with a rueful smile, his eyes never leaving Teresa, even as he started to head into the house. “Red and I always play nice.”

The resounding snorts caused him to chuckle. All right, they were known to bicker quite often, but Jeff
wanted
to play nice with Teresa—it was she who was always putting up the fight.

He followed behind Jason but halted just shy of the entryway when he noticed Teresa didn’t join them. “You’re not going to stay for dinner?”

“Not tonight. I have a lot of work to get done, so I’m just going to head home and get started on it.” She turned to leave, and Jeff frowned as his gaze swept across the parking lot but didn’t find her cherry red convertible.

“Here, I’ll give you a ride back to your ranch.” He was already bounding down the porch steps when BJ stilled him with a light touch against his arm.

“Go visit with your brothers. I’ll drive her. Besides, it’s Jackson’s night to cook, and God knows he could use the help.”

He hesitated, glancing between the two women. Damn, he wanted to be alone with Teresa right now, but the expression on her face told him that was the last thing she wanted. He bit back a small smirk. She would prefer not to be alone with him right now or ever again…because she was running scared.

“You’re off the hook tonight, Red, but you’re all mine as soon as they’re gone.” He turned to leave before either woman could form a retort, but a quick glance at Teresa revealed the answering flush in her cheeks as her hazel-green eyes widened.

That’s right, Red, this ridiculous chase ends this week.

She could believe all she wanted that he was some big, bad wolf, and she was Red Riding Hood, but this wasn’t some folktale. She was still running scared but he wasn’t about to let her run for much longer, and he certainly wasn’t about to let her get away.

* * * *

“Well, that was definitely interesting,” BJ remarked as she slid behind the wheel of her pickup truck and shut the door.

“Do not start with me, Bria Jaslene Parker-Downing. That man is insufferable and you know how he grates my nerves, yet you invite him around every chance you get.”

“Every chance I get?” BJ couldn’t stop the laughter from bubbling out of her. “He’s my brother-in-law. What do you want me to do? Tell him he isn’t invited to his own brother’s home?”

Teresa’s response was to simply cross her arms over her chest and stare out of the window, revealing to BJ that was exactly what her best friend wanted her to do.

“Stop being ridiculous,” BJ said finally, as she cranked the engine then pulled out onto the paved road that would lead her to Westside—Teresa’s family ranch—just a few miles away.

Several seconds passed before BJ realised Teresa was determined to subject her to the silent treatment, even though she knew her friend wasn’t really mad at
her.
Truth be told, BJ knew she wasn’t mad at Jeff Downing, either. Teresa was mad at herself, because as much as she swore she wasn’t, she was attracted to the man, and had been for a long,
long
time.

When another silent minute ticked by, BJ told herself she should just leave it alone, but how much longer was she supposed to put up with Teresa’s constant refusal to date again, to love again, to be intimate with a man who actually
cared
about her happiness? Her friend could say whatever she wanted about Jeff’s playboy ways, but BJ knew for a fact those days were long gone. Jeff Downing wasn’t taking trips to Cottonmouth twice a month just to see his brother, he was there because almost from the moment he’d met Teresa, he’d staked his claim on her. He was there because he
cared
about her. Jeff was offering Teresa a second chance at love, and if she wasn’t careful, BJ was convinced her friend was going to let it pass her by.

“It’s been two years, honey,” BJ began, treading carefully upon a subject neither of them had broached in as many years. “How long are you going to shut yourself off from the rest of the world?”

“I haven’t shut myself off from the rest of the world,” she denied. “I am an active member of this community with many friends, including you, who I see
all
the time. Does that sound like a recluse to you?”