Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 43870 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43870 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 219(@200wpm)___ 175(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 5
TANNER
“Not even Halloween yet, and peppermint is suddenly everywhere. Peppermint hot cocoa, peppermint bark, peppermint ice cream, and get this…peppermint cream donuts. That’s just filthy.”
I eyed the pink box on my kitchen island warily. “But you bought some anyway.”
Jax shrugged. “I had to. You can’t call yourself a donut connoisseur if you’re not willing to take one for the team once a season.”
“Ri-i-ght,” I drawled, bringing my mug to my lips. “But I don’t eat sugar like you do, so the real question is…why’d you bring them here?”
“You seemed tense yesterday. Stressed. That’s not your usual modus operandi, and people notice. Well…Gem noticed.” My brother peered inside the box, broke a maple bar in two, passed one half to me, and shoved the other half into his mouth. Speaking around the donut, he added, “A little sugar is good for you. Eat up, buttercup.”
Gem, by the way, was Jax’s secretary and a childhood friend of our mom’s. She was a bleached-blond five-foot-nothing ball of energy and a bit of a busybody. An observant busybody—’cause yes, I’d been stressed as hell. The thought of bumping into Axel after that kiss had my stomach in knots.
Unsurprisingly, Axel had been the only thing on my mind for almost forty-eight hours.
No, longer. But this wasn’t a simple matter of inappropriate infatuation with an employee anymore. That had all changed when he’d kissed me.
Axel Vogel, loner cowboy and vet, had kissed me.
No, he’d ravaged me, and I’d given as good as I’d gotten. Every twist of his talented tongue, every lick, every sigh, every spine-tingling growl of need had stoked a fire into an inferno.
I’d had my share of sexy barn escapades over the years—with men and women—but not in a while. And even in my horniest state, I’d been aware of my surroundings. Making out with the hired help in the afternoon of a regular ol’ weekday was just…reckless.
For fuck’s sake, we had cameras in the stable for security purposes. I’d remembered them yesterday morning and had raced to the office to review the feed like a private investigator on a new case. And since I’d had no idea how to pull up that exact area in the system, I’d made up an excuse with security…something about wanting to see how Buttermilk had responded to medication. So ridiculous.
Yet not a fruitless endeavor. The camera was set up to monitor the horse, not the stall door. However, you could see Axel, his hat tilted and one hand on the gate. That was it. The angle had cut me off. Thank God. I hadn’t had to delete any footage, which might have been worse ’cause the sight of Axel’s back, his ass, his hat was just enough to evoke a lustful response. Not ideal at seven a.m. while in the freaking office.
So Axel was bi and seemingly interested in me, but that didn’t change anything. Or did it? I wasn’t sure. And bumbling through yesterday with an eye out for Axel while simultaneously trying to avoid him had been exhausting. No wonder Gem had noticed.
I bit into the maple bar, unthinking, and wrinkled my nose. “Yuck. Too sweet.”
“That’s what makes it amazing.” Jax licked his thumb, then let my two greedy Labs, Gordy and Lila, lick his fingers. He petted them on their adorable heads and wordlessly instructed them to lie at his feet.
“Man’s best friends,” I grumbled.
Jax laughed as he reached for his mug, snapping his head to the side to shake his longish hair from his eyes.
My brother was eighteen months younger than me—I was thirty-six, he was thirty-five—but we might as well have been twins. We even looked alike—light brown hair, green eyes, and lanky frames. Jax was thicker around the middle, though, thanks to his love for sweets.
He was a curious combination of fastidious meets sloppy that was difficult to explain but obvious once you’d met Jax. Today, for example, he wore a pressed long-sleeved tee with the Oak Ridge logo emblazoned on the front, dark jeans, and scuffed sneakers. The fact that he’d ironed a T-shirt but forgotten to shave wasn’t really a mystery. It was just Jax.
“Your dogs love me.”
“They do. The fact you always have treats or sticky fingers doesn’t hurt either.”
He snickered. “Probably true.”
“Well, thanks for sharing, but you should take the rest to Gem and the crew,” I said. “I’m gonna get to work and—”
“It’s early, Tan.” He kicked the barstool toward me and sipped his coffee. “Sit.”
I sat. Two seconds later, I was on my feet, topping off my cup, though the last thing I needed was more caffeine. “Want some?”
“You’re acting suspicious. Are you nervous or something?”
“What? No.”
Jax narrowed his eyes, but let it go. “We have to talk about the third annual Christmas Light Show. Nothing much to it. We’ll let Mills deal with food and drinks, someone will have to handle games…if we’re doing that again, and we’ll need to make sure the vacant bungalows get decorated. That may come down to me and you.”