Page 15 of Reckless Skye

Janey pursed her lips. ‘I wish I could say it was something definite. But it was more a feeling, I guess – a certainty that he’d always do everything he could to love and protect me. And then, over time, with every kind word and loving gesture and laugh and fight, that feeling was realized.’ At Skye’s long look, Janey clarified, ‘A couple has to fight. My mom used to say it was so that women could get the things they carried off their chests and so that men could be reminded of their many flaws.’

Skye nodded cautiously. Her parents had never actually fought. Fighting implied a mutual attack. Instead, her father had laid down the law, and if her mother had ever questioned it, irrespective of how quietly, she had been punished. And not always physically – that had come later when Skye had started to stand up to him and her father had started hurting her mother in retaliation. Holden had a way of tormenting Caroline psychologically that was far more brutal than any slap. And every cruel word, cold shoulder and sigh of disappointment was delivered with a sort of remorse – as if, in his own mind, he was merely a loving husband, trying to survive an incompetent spouse.

‘You seeing anyone special?’ Janey asked.

Skye shook her head. ‘I don’t like men very much.’

Oh, she’d learned to listen patiently whenever a man spoke to her, to act normal, but the moment he moved physically into her space, she started to feel uncomfortable. Her confident façade wavered. Panic hovered. It made her so anxious that, whenever she went out with Stevie and Andrea, while her friends flirted and teased, Skye told any man who showed more than a passing interest that she had a boyfriend.

‘Maybe you just haven’t met the right man yet?’ Janey suggested.

‘Maybe,’ Skye ceded.

‘Or woman?’

Skye mirrored Janey’s grin. ‘I wish. My life would be a hell of a lot easier if I was attracted to women.’ Realizing she’d told this particular woman far too much already, Skye pushed to her feet. ‘I’ll be down as soon as I’ve had a quick shower.’

‘Take a long one. There’s no rush.’ Janey stood and raised one hand to Skye’s cheek. ‘You’re gonna be fine.’

Lost for words, Skye just nodded.

TJ was halfway up the stairs, Skye’s wine in his hand, when his mom came down. She took one look at him and shook her head. ‘Not this time, TJ.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said innocently. ‘I’m just bringing our guest the wine you requested I get for her.’

She took the wine from his hand and disappeared upstairs with it.

TJ didn’t dare take another step, but he waited for his mom to come back down because more had to be said.

When Janey reappeared, she took one look at him and sighed.

‘I would never hurt anyone,’ he said. ‘Least of all someone with all that pent-up anxiety.’

‘I know. And you’ve obviously sensed that in her. But I don’t think many men can understand what it is for a woman to be reduced to a prey animal, and so I am telling you: give her space.’

‘I was just trying to get a smile out of her.’ TJ raised a hand dramatically to his heart, asked, ‘You seen her smile yet?’

His mother loved him enough to laugh. ‘Not yet. But I imagine a smile on an already beautiful woman only makes her more so.’

Sensing that the worst of the danger was over, TJ walked down the rest of the stairs with her. ‘It’s bad?’

‘She wouldn’t give me the specifics. But any woman who’s travelling alone, following rodeos to stay safe, must be running from something far more terrifying.’

TJ tried to imagine the type of man who could hurt a woman, let alone one like Skye, who was so small, almost fragile. But he couldn’t. It said something about the community he was raised in that such men might have been the stuff of fairy tales and poorly scripted movies.

‘I’ll give her space,’ he promised. And not because his mother had told him to, but because he really wasn’t sure how to be anyone other than himself. And he was Jesse James Jones.

A man had to have a wild side and a perverted sense of humour if his chosen profession was sitting atop an animal that weighed several thousand pounds and wanted to kill him. TJ’s wild side was a mile long, and his sense of humour was wicked, inappropriate, and almost always flirtatious. But maybe, that wasn’t what this particular woman needed. Or wanted. And for all his faults, he was man enough to know that was important.

So, he’d give her space.

And if he stole a few glances at that heart-shaped ass while nobody was looking – well, he was only a man. And, by his own admission, a flawed one at that.

Chapter 5

Something was different.

Skye couldn’t say why. All she knew was that instead of those laughing eyes and hugely aggressive sense of humour, TJ seemed to have been replaced by a man with all the manners she’d have originally expected from a stranger.