Southern Comfort: Compass Brothers, Book 2 (3 page)

She nodded, too furious to reply.

“Took the news of our engagement well, did he?”

She closed her eyes and mentally counted to ten. Seth Compton had some nerve attempting to lecture her about anything. Anything! He’d brushed her affections aside for over a decade and the minute she’d moved on and managed to say fuck him, he decided to act like he gave a shit. “He took it like the clueless caveman he is.”

“Tried to talk you out of marrying me?”

“As if he has the right to tell me what I can and can’t do. I offered him the position of boyfriend loads of times, and he rejected me. Now he can just take a giant leap and eat his fucking heart out.”

Paul laughed. “I love your locker room language. So colorful.” He took several steps toward her, stopping when he reached her. His hand drifted up to her cheek, and he brushed a stray hair away from her face. “I thought you said you were over him.”

“I am.”

Paul gave her a grin that said he wasn’t fooled by her too-quick reply. “Jody, you can’t kid a kidder.”

She sighed. “I
want
to be over him.”

“You realize that’s not the same thing, right?”

She shrugged and turned away. “It’s enough for me, for now.”

“We don’t have to go through with this. I can find someone else to—”

“No,” she interjected. “I’m doing it. I want to marry you. Honest.”

“But if Seth—”

She raised her hands, trying to halt his words. “He’s a typical male. He wants what he can’t have. If I’d shown up here available, acting the fool as always, following him around with my stupid heart on my sleeve, he’d still be dismissing me, offering up all those reasons why we can’t be together. I’m sick of the game, Paul. I’m not playing it anymore.”

“Fine. I get that. But that still doesn’t mean you have to marry me. I’m not happy about you sacrificing your immediate future just to help me inherit my trust fund.”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re my best friend, and you need me. I’m marrying you.”

“Well, isn’t this sweet?” Seth’s insulting tone set her teeth on edge again. She scowled as he opened the screen door and entered the house. “Been awhile, Paul.”

Paul smiled and offered his hand. “Good to see you again, Seth. How are you doing?”

Jody resisted the urge to kick her best friend in the ass as he shook Seth’s hand.

“Can’t complain,” Seth replied. “Besides sweating my ass off in this hellish heat, things are pretty much par for the course.”

Paul laughed easily, the sound almost flirty, and Jody gritted her teeth as she watched her fiancé checking out Seth in his tight denim. Jesus. She took Paul’s hand in hers in an attempt to distract him.

“Come on. I’ll show you around the place. There’ve been a few changes since the last time you were here. Plus we need to pick somewhere for the ceremony. Still not sure if I want to set it up in the back or front yard.” She started to yank Paul outside, but Seth stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to ignore the fact his touch made her so hot.

“Hold on a minute. Let me wash up and I’ll join you.”

She shrugged in an attempt to dislodge his hand. “Why?”

He grinned and she closed her eyes, unwilling to let his handsome face dazzle her. Fucking dimples got her every time. A quick glance at Paul nearly had her groaning aloud. Apparently, her fiancé was a sucker for dimples too.

“I thought it might be nice to get to know the guy you’re marrying a little better, Jody. I mean he is going to be a part of the family very soon, and we’ve never had more than a couple chances to chat.”

He stressed the word
family
throwing her father’s words in the stable back in her face.

“We’d love to have you join us,” Paul invited, his smile charming. She pinched his arm covertly and his grin faded quickly.

“Fine. We’ll wait here. Don’t take too long.” She tried not to wince at her imperious tone. She hated sounding like such a bitch, but she couldn’t seem to temper her bitterness around Seth. She was nursing a broken heart and doing a shitty job of it.

Seth headed down the hall to the bathroom. When she heard the door close, she turned to Paul. “Jesus Christ. What the hell are you doing?”

Paul tried to look sorry, but failed. “I forgot how good-looking Seth is.”

She closed her eyes. “You cannot be serious. You’re attracted to Seth? My Seth?”

“Technically, he’s not
your
Seth. You don’t want him anymore, remember?”

She frowned. “You can’t have him.”

“Jody.”

“Don’t you
Jody
me. We’re here to fool my family into thinking we’re in love and we can’t wait another minute to spend our lives together. That’s the only way they’ll allow me to go through with this. I explained that to you. That’s hardly going to work if you start coming on to Seth.”

Paul nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll behave.”

Jody sighed. “This is still a good plan, Paul. The stipulation in your father’s will was outright cruelty, and we won’t let him win.”

Paul kissed her on her cheek. “I love it when you’re on a mission, but this isn’t your wrong to right, Jody. There are lots of people in the world who think homosexuals are freaks of nature, and my father simply happened to fall into that lot. You have to be very sure you’re willing to sacrifice a year of your life. That’s a lot to give up to help me meet some silly stipulation in a will. Especially if you’re doing it to spite Seth.”

“I’m only twenty-one, Paul, and a year isn’t that long. Besides, you don’t have time to find anyone else. The will says you have to be married by the end of July to claim your trust fund. Are you forgetting about your plans for it? Think of all the good that cancer research facility could do.”

Paul shrugged sadly. His mother had passed away from the disease when he was only ten. Sometimes Jody wondered how different his life would have been if she’d survived. His father, a cold bastard on good days, had treated him like a leper after discovering his only heir and namesake was gay. “I guess you’re right.”

“There’s no doubt about it. You’re going to earn your master’s in architecture at Cornell and then you’ll build the best damn cancer research facility in the world.”

Paul laughed. “I do appreciate your confidence in me, sweetheart, but trust fund aside, all I’m saying is Seth isn’t the only man out there. There are other fish in the sea. What if you run into your fish while you’re stuck with me?”

Jody shook her head. “There aren’t any other fish for me.”

Paul reached for her hand. “Oh, Jody. That’s not true.”

Coming home and seeing Seth again was every bit as hard as she’d known it would be. She’d put off the return as long as she could simply because she kept waiting for some miracle to occur. Unfortunately, her feelings for Seth were stronger now than ever. She pushed the thought aside, tried to bring the remaining tattered shreds of her pride to the forefront. “I’ve been such an idiot, Paul. I can’t keep playing this
Follow the Stud
game.”

Paul laughed. “Is this some twisted version of
Follow the Leader
? Have you been holding out on me, Jody? Sounds exciting.”

Jody chuckled and shrugged, appreciating her friend’s attempts at alleviating her pain. “It’s only fun when you catch the stud. Which every woman within a ten-mile radius of this ranch has done with the exception of me.”

Paul glanced back down the hall where Seth had disappeared. “Seth doesn’t strike me as the type to kiss and tell.”

“Oh,
he
isn’t, but some of the women have let details slip here and there. His reputation is actually sort of the stuff of legends.”

Her friend’s eyes widened. “Do tell.”

She looked away, clearing her throat. “Apparently, Seth has a bit of a rough edge in the bedroom.”

Paul groaned. “Sweetheart, as much as I’d love to hear the gory details, I’m sporting a hard-on just thinking about it. Since
your
Seth is off-limits to me, maybe you shouldn’t tell me too much. The temptation would be terrible.”

Jody sighed. “That’s just it. I’ve known about his preferences in the bedroom for years and I can’t stop thinking about them. My body aches wishing he would—”

“Hogtie you to his bed and have his wicked way with you?”

A burst of laughter escaped her at Paul’s attempt at a southern accent. “Ooo, nice use of the word
hogtie
. I’ll make a cowboy out of you yet, city slicker. And to answer your question, yes. But Seth still looks at me like I’m some little girl he has to rescue.”

Paul shook his head. “I always find that assessment of your relationship with him shocking. Clearly you should have invited him to visit you at the university. I’ve never met a fiercer woman. He should have been with us the night you pulverized Mark Robyns.”

“He called you a fag.”

Paul bent forward and kissed her on the end of the nose. “I
am
a fag, Jody.”

“It was the
way
he said it. Like he had a mouth full of fuckin’ manure.”

Taking her hand and lifting it over her head, Paul spun her like they were dancing. It was a familiar move and one the two of them did often whenever something she said struck Paul as funny. Apparently he found her southern drawl and her penchant for bad words hilarious. “I love southern girls,” he teased as they laughed.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Jody stopped pirouetting as Seth came back into the room. The lighthearted feeling Paul never failed to evoke in her disappeared as fast as pigs at slaughter time.

Paul turned and smiled. “Nope. Just dancing with my girl.”

Seth studied her, his face a mixture of confusion and—she paused—jealousy? He’d never been possessive before, though God knew she’d tried to provoke that feeling in him. She propped her hands on her hips, defensively. “Do you have a problem with us dancing? It’s not like we’re fucking on the living room floor.”

If she could have bitten her tongue off, she would have. His eyes darkened. If she still gave a shit what he thought, she would have banked her attitude, but for some reason, tweaking his temper made her smile. She’d spent a decade trying to stir some emotion in him. If anger was all she could rouse, so be it. Some petty, small part of her wanted him to hurt as much as she did. She wasn’t proud of that fact, but it was there and she couldn’t seem to stop it.

Paul put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. His soft tone soothed her rankled feathers. “Be nice, Jody. He doesn’t strike me as a man you want to piss off.”

She flushed when it was clear Seth had heard her fiancé’s warning. “You should listen to Paul. I’m not real fond of this sassy tone you’ve acquired since you’ve been away.”

She rolled her eyes and untangled herself from Paul’s grip. “Oh my. Seth’s unhappy. I’ll probably cry myself to sleep worrying about that. Come on, Paul. Tour time.”

She hoped her snarkiness would deter Seth from coming, but as she crossed the yard toward the stable, she looked over her shoulder and discovered him right on their heels.

As she took Paul around the property, showing him all the buildings, introducing him to the new hands and letting him catch up with the guys he’d met on previous visits, Seth was there. He answered all of Paul’s questions regarding the ranch in a cool, though friendly manner. Paul toned down the flirting with Seth, but when they ran into Chase, she knew they were in trouble.

Chase Webster was sex in cowboy boots, and she had it on good authority he didn’t have a preference about who he slept with either. Male, female, one, two or even three lovers at a time, Chase could be counted on to be in the middle of the fun, stirring up the local gossips for days and making hearts race with just a wicked smile and quick nod. Unfortunately, Paul was far from immune to the handsome man’s charm and the two of them engaged in a conversation that skirted the line between friendly conversation and foreplay. She looked around, trying to avoid catching Seth’s eye. She didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

Glancing back at Chase, she was reminded of last summer and a flush heated her face before she could stop it. She figured there must be a
Don’t Do
list somewhere on the ranch with her name written across the top because Chase had never once offered her a night of raunchy fun, though she’d fought like the devil to get his attention in hopes of making Seth jealous.

Toward the end of last August, she’d decided to go for broke. She’d donned a too-tight tank top and her Daisy Duke’s and headed to the stable in search of Chase. There was very little the man did that wasn’t discussed at length by every person on the ranch and she’d felt certain if she could tempt the man to make out with her, Seth would hear of it. She hadn’t made it two steps into the stable when she’d heard laughter coming from the tack room. Sneaking to the doorway, she’d listened to Chase and Seth laughing at her antics.

“She’s relentless when she wants something,” Chase had said.

“Jody’s always been stubborn.” She struggled to figure out if Seth sounded entertained or annoyed, but she couldn’t tell. “Guess the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

They laughed.

“She leaves in a few days,” Chase said.

Seth sighed loudly. “I know. Not much longer.”

Was he sad she was leaving or glad? Jody inched closer, wishing she could see Seth’s face.

“Bunch of us are goin’ into Preston tonight. Hitting the strip club. You wanna come?”

Seth chuckled. “Yeah. I think I do. Lap dance might do just the trick.”

Envy flowed through her, and Jody swallowed back tears of anger. Even a woman he had to pay for was preferable to Seth. He’d never choose her.

She’d run out of the stable, packed her things and returned to college three days early. She simply couldn’t stand to wait in the wings while Seth found his pleasure with every woman in the county. She’d left without saying goodbye, a fact he’d taken her to task for the following week when she’d finally caved and answered one of his calls to her cell phone. Hearing his voice, listening to him tell her about home, had thawed the ice around her heart.