Ramagos, Tonya - Running from Angel [Sunset Cowboys 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

He shot her a questioning glance over one shoulder and held her gaze just long enough to make her squirm in her chair. Sweet God Almighty, who knew watching a man make a pot of coffee could be such a frigging turn on?

“This and that.”
Thinking about you, anticipating this moment, hoping like hell I would know what to do with you if I got you
.

She still wasn’t so sure about the last. He did a lot to bolster her confidence on the side of the road. She now felt certain the returned desire she had seen in his eyes all those months ago had been real and not a figment of her own desperate wishes. She had been blindsided that day, not just by her ex’s sudden, violent appearance but by the intense needs that slammed into her when Jacob and Mitch intervened. She never felt emotions so immediate, so debilitating, before or since. More, she never experienced such dark, wicked longing.

“Getting my life together,” she admitted after a long pause. That got her another over-the-shoulder glance. This time his gaze held an understanding that wound through her chest and helped to calm the butterflies in her belly.

“Glad to hear it.” Heartbeats passed before he broke eye contact. He pulled two cups from the nearby cabinet and filled them with coffee.

Making small talk with this man proved hard enough without the weight of silence settling between them every few minutes. Unease didn’t factor into the equation, at least not for her. She could be content in his company without uttering a word. The words that needed to be spoken, however, the ones they both seemed intent on avoiding as long as possible, created a thick awkwardness in the air.

“It took a while.” She gave him a half smile when he handed her one of the cups of coffee and watched as he took the seat across from her at the table. His attention never left her, though it did move over her from time to time. Her flesh prickled with the sensations of his gaze on her neck, her arms, and her chest. Her nipples beaded to the point of a deliciously anticipatory pain as he hesitated his focus on her breasts before slowly lifting his eyes to hers once more.

“Sometimes it’s meant to.” He was taking a trip down memory lane and knew she was right there with him. That much she saw in the depths of his eyes. She saw his thoughts, too, and realized he believed her to be weaker then, maybe even now, than she had truly been.

“What you prevented that day wasn’t the first time he got that violent, but it was the last. It surprised me only because I was already inches away from being out.” She wanted him to know that, to understand his presence and her inexplicable desire for him had nothing to do with her breakup with Mack. She hadn’t latched onto that moment, to him or Mitch, as a way to freedom. Nor had she sought them on the rebound. She had relied on herself, on her own confidence and bravery, to break away, and she let her heart and deepest desires guide her now.

“He would’ve gotten more violent.” Jacob lifted his cup and sipped his coffee as he studied her over the rim.

Angel couldn’t argue with that. Mack’s violence, the abuse he inflicted, had become increasingly worse through the course of their relationship. It amazed her to the point of astonishment the hell a person could put another through in such a short time.

“I never planned to give him a chance.”

Jacob slowly lowered his cup, one corner of his mouth inching up in a hint of a smile. “You’re feistier than I remember.”

“You caught me on a very bad day.” His grin stretched a little more, and she felt the effects of it sizzle through her system.

“Yeah, I suppose I did.”

“You both did.” Awareness flashed in Jacob’s expression, and his earlier words reverberated in her memory.
Not here. Not now. Not alone
. She could still feel the heat of his breath as it fanned her lips, still marvel at the enormity of the desperation that had burned through her as she had waited for a kiss he didn’t give her.

Angel let another span of silence fall between them before she put voice to the question burning the tip of her tongue. “Has he responded to your text yet?” She had seen Jacob reach for his cell phone when he rounded the front of the truck just before climbing in beside her, back on the side of the road. Whatever he had texted had been short, an SOS call, perhaps? “That was Mitch you were texting, right? I would hate to think you were carrying on a conversation with another woman when you had one sitting in your truck you were about to bring home with you.”

She meant the last as a lame joke, but he didn’t crack a hint of a smile. Instead, he leveled a look at her full of enough guarantee to rock her hormones.

“When he responds, you’ll know it.”

Angel held that gaze and absorbed the certainty of his words. “He left Applebranch.” She didn’t need Jacob’s confirmation of the fact but caught his almost-imperceptible nod just the same. “He came to Sunset.”

“You went looking for him.” Jacob’s words were as much of a statement as hers had been, a show of knowledge between the two of them that proved neither had let that fateful day rest.

Angel made a sound that was half laugh and half resentment. “A lot of good it did me. I couldn’t get anyone on the APD to tell me what happened to him, where he went, if he ever planned to return. It was like he was there one minute and gone the next.”

“That’s not too far off from how it really happened.”

“Why did he leave?”

Rather than answer her, Jacob asked a question of his own. “So when you couldn’t find Mitch you came looking for me?”

Though her cheeks heated, Angel admitted to the one thing she figured would erase any further doubt about her intentions today. “I knew if I found one of you, I would find the other. You’re a package deal, right? That is what you meant when you said ‘not alone,’ right?”

“I’m starting to think you understand more than we’ve given you credit for,” Jacob mumbled and pushed away from the table.

Angel let her lips slide into a slow, triumphant grin as he moved past her on his way to the kitchen sink. “Then there should be no question about whether or not I’m ready for the can of worms I’m opening.”

She tossed his earlier words back at him. Maybe they weren’t entirely true. In her quest to find Mitch and, later, to find Jacob, she uncovered stories about them that sent her desires for them to all new heights. She learned Mitch and Jacob were indeed what she called a package deal. If a woman wanted one of them, she better be prepared to please them both. Angel wanted them both with every ounce of her being. That want, coupled with the mountain of other rumors she managed to drag out of the townsfolk, exposed other longings within her, too arousing to be evil, despite their specifics. Rumors of control, of bondage and requirements for submission, whispered at a world she knew little about but burned to experience.

No, she couldn’t claim to be entirely sure of what she was getting herself into, but determination and the longing for these men and all they could teach her gave her enough confidence to hope Jacob would believe her.

“Spell it out for me, Angel.” The new challenge in Jacob’s gaze as he turned from the sink to face her had her breath catching in her throat. “Tell me why you went looking for Mitch, why you came looking for me.”

She could do this. She could admit to him everything she already confessed to herself. She swallowed, sipped the last of her coffee, and wished desperately for something stronger, all the while holding his gaze and masking her nervousness behind a shield of conviction.

“I want you.” She shrugged and gently set down her coffee mug. “That should be simple enough. I want you, and I want Mitch. Both of you…together.”

“Fucking hell.”

Angel whirled around in her seat at the whispered oath, her gaze slamming into the electrified chocolate of Mitch Dallas’s eyes, and her heart stopped. He stood in the kitchen doorway wearing worn jeans and a Western-style shirt with the top three buttons undone. His straight black hair was longer than she remembered, the back flirting with his collar and the front falling in a curtain around his chiseled face. His expression was one she wouldn’t likely forget in the next millennium. Surprise swirled with what she could only define as a deep-set resignation and something suspiciously akin to fear. But it was the scowl dipping at the corners of his lips that proved damned near enough to send her scurrying for the hills.

“Well, now, apparently one of you isn’t at all happy to see me.” Somehow she managed to keep the hurt from her tone, to sound unfazed by his less-than-chipper greeting. “How are you, Mitch? It’s been a while.”

Not nearly long enough
.

Mitch raked a hand through his hair and sighed, knowing he was bullshitting himself even as the thought crossed his mind. Facing her now, he knew it had been far too damned long since he had seen her. Oh, she appeared nightly in his dreams. Hell, her sultry image paid him a freaking visit every time he closed his eyes for more than half a second. Neither could hold a candle to seeing the woman in the flesh.

“You’re wrong.” She blinked at him. Confusion danced in her amazing eyes with a hint of humiliation that he knew his reaction to finding her here created. How could she honestly think any man would be less than happy to see her? Everything inside him kicked into the Tennessee Waltz the instant he stepped into the Shelton house and followed the sound of her satiny voice to the kitchen.

“Oh?” She lifted a brow, the move drawing his attention to the sprinkle of freckles on her forehead. More freckles added color to the milky complexion of her cheeks and painted a trail over the bridge of her nose. Her head tilted ever so slightly when he didn’t answer, causing her mane of red hair to fall like a seductive curtain over one shoulder.

Mitch swore again, this time under his breath, knowing if he attempted to speak to her now he wouldn’t be able to do anything more than stutter. Instead, he shifted his attention to Jacob.

“I got your text.” Three letters, SOS. He hadn’t thought twice about deserting the beer he just twisted the cap off of—number five in his quest to reach a six pack before heading home—and hightailing it to the Shelton ranch. He had expected to walk into a cattle problem or a fight among some of the ranch hands. The idea that he would walk into a kitchen where Angel Dalton sat at a table announcing she wanted him and Jacob never crossed his mind. “You want to fill me in on what’s going on?”

“Angel’s car broke down on Old Santee Road,” Jacob began but stopped when Mitch held up a hand.

Mitch narrowed a look at Angel. “What were you doing on Old Santee Road?”

“Driving.” When Mitch continued to stare at her, she puffed out a breath and added, “I was trying to find this place, trying to find Jacob.” She shrugged. “He found me first.”

“I can’t say for certain without getting further beneath the hood, but my best guess is she threw a rod through the engine block.” Jacob knew his way around a car as well as he did a woman. Mitch didn’t doubt his buddy’s best guess was right on target. “I sent a couple of hands to tow it back here. We’ll put it up in the garage and take a look at it come daylight.”

“And Angel…?” Did Jacob plan to put her in the garage for the night, too? It was damned sure the safest option for all of them, short of putting her up in a room at the Sunset Motel.

“She’ll be staying here at the ranch tonight.”

Mitch knew that tone, recognized the hard-edged determination in his friend’s glare. Jacob wasn’t leaving the options open for discussion. He made up his mind and, in doing so, appeared prepared to send them all straight to hell before sunrise.

Angel cleared her throat. The feminine sound cut through the tension in the kitchen like a serrated blade. “I have a small overnight case in the trunk of my car.”

Mitch looked at her, fully expecting to see her squirm or blush or show some freaking sign of the damaged, frightened innocence he remembered in her after that revelation. In a single sentence, she confessed her full intentions from the start. She came looking for the Shelton ranch, for Jacob and probably him as well, and brought extra clothes with her. Clearly she had meant to stick around, at least for the night, even if her car hadn’t broken down on the side of the road.

Her gaze on him held strong, no fear, no embarrassment. What he saw instead was carefully orchestrated bravery and the allure of a vixen ready to play.