“She grew up in Missoula but likes spending her summers in the country. She usually just spends the summer messing around with me, but when she found out Mrs. Walker needed a hand this season, she practically jumped at the opportunity.”
I slumped a little farther into my seat. “I bet she did.”
The window whooshed open again. “Hey. My dick is about to fall off from underuse back here. Think we could speed it up and arrive sometime this year?”
“Good-bye, Garth and Garth’s dick. Rest in peace.” I didn’t bother to make sure his face was out of the way before sliding the glass closed. “Josie, you’re telling me every morning, Jolene gets up and drives close to twenty miles to slave away in a kitchen because she couldn’t think of a better way to spend her summer?” Not. Buying. It.
“She isn’t staying at my place, Moody.” Josie looked between me and Jesse like we were clueless.
“Then where the hell’s she staying? In a tent?” Maybe that was the Peace Corps way. To cut down on carbon emissions or something like that.
“She’s staying at the Walkers. Where did you think she’d be staying? You ought to know. You were the one working there last year.”
“But I stayed there because my home was two states away, Josie. They had to go out of their way to make a room for me . . .” And then something I really didn’t want to click into place did. I twisted in my seat all the way so I could look at Jesse full on who was humming along to Johnny Cash, trying to stay out of the conversation. “Oh, hell no. Tell me—please tell me—she is not sleeping in your room.”
“It’s not really my room anymore,” Jesse replied, looking like he was putting his answer together carefully. “I haven’t slept in it since last spring before you came. The only person that’s been sleeping in it is—”
“Me!” I didn’t mean to snap, but I still did. “Where am I supposed to sleep now? Or am I being kicked out? Maybe I can set up a cot in the barn or something. Next to the horses.”
Both Josie and Jesse looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Even in my impassioned state, I knew I was close to it. The room was just . . . special. It felt like mine, like ours, and knowing that someone else was living in it made me feel a bunch of things I didn’t like: anger, jealousy, sadness, and even a little bit hopeless. The last one scared me the most.
“What? Rowen, no, of course not. Calm down.” Jesse’s hand dropped to my leg. “You’re taking my room and I’m sleeping in the bunkhouse with the rest of the guys. I should have told you that last night, but we didn’t exactly make it to bed . . .”
Josie looked out the window and shifted.
I huffed, “Trust me, we were doing nothing last night to make you shift in your seat. And we won’t be doing anything tonight thanks to a certain bet that still stands.”
“What bet?” Josie piped in.
“Bet or no bet, we couldn’t do anything this afternoon either thanks to the company of best friends, pity friends”—I grabbed the window right before Garth got it open—“and arch nemeses. Lucky us.”
“What bet?” Josie repeated.
“Forget about it. To your knowledge, and I wish to my knowledge, there is no bet.” I really, really wished I didn’t know about that asinine bet. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around how you and Montana Barbie are cousins and, in one fell swoop, she displaced me. Of my bedroom,” I added when Jesse let out a long sigh.
“Listen, I know she’s a bit of an acquired taste, but give Jolene a chance, Rowen. You and I didn’t exactly get off on the right foot and look where we are now.” Draping her arm around me, Josie gave me a nasty noogie.
“Yeah, yeah. What would I do without friends like you?” I patted my hair back into place once she was done disheveling it. “And what are you talking about right and wrong foots with us? We got along swimmingly from the very start.”
“Whatever, Rowen. You might not have come right out and said what you were thinking, but the look in your eyes did. You hated me hardcore because you thought Jesse and I were still together. Face it—you were a bitch.”
My eyes widened. “What? I was not. I was completely civil.”
Josie snorted. “Yeah, civil by Henry Tudor’s standards.”
“Henry Tudor? Really, Josie? If you’re going to enter an argument with me, you better bring your A game.”
Jesse was smiling. I could feel it rolling off of him.
“Rowen. You’re a bitch. Not all the time and not with everyone, but we all know you do bitch well when you have to.”
I wanted to pull her braided pigtails until that smirk came off of her face. “Jesse . . .”
“No, no. Don’t you bring him into this.” Josie waved her finger in my face. “This is between you and me.”
I stayed silent for a minute, not because I was trying to build my argument against her, but because I knew she was partly right. Okay, mostly right. I was a bitch to her at first. I’d covered it up with a smile—a whole lot of no good that did me—and I knew Josie hadn’t been the first to form the B opinion about me. I’d developed that part of me as a defense mechanism. I’d let people into my life for temporary periods, but I’d never let them get to know the real Rowen. Not until last summer. Then I’d dropped the walls I’d hidden behind for so long. Even though every day was a struggle to keep them lowered, I knew I’d never regret fighting that battle. I’d shed so many of my dark layers that I might as well shake loose another one.
So yes, Rowen Sterling had been a bona fide bitch. Rowen Sterling didn’t need to stay one. At least not to the nth degree. I’d still reserve a little bit to keep things interesting.
“Fine. I was a bitch. What can I ever do to earn your forgiveness?” My overdone apology was interrupted when Josie threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly.
“You just earned it,” she said with a sniffle.
I patted her back and did my best not to squirm. Random acts of physical affection still threw me. There was only one exception to that: Jesse. No matter how many times he sneaked up behind me to throw me over his shoulder or leaned in unexpectedly to kiss the corner of my mouth, I didn’t squirm under his touch. Josie’s, along with everyone else’s, I was still getting used to.
“Just let your bitch relax and get to know Jolene. She’s really not that bad, I promise,” Josie said. I made an uncertain face, earning a pinch from her. “Behave.”
“So, Jesse . . .” I started. He braced himself. “What do you think of Jolene?”
He was nearing a wince when he answered, “I have a feeling no matter what answer I give you, I’m going to be in trouble.”
“You’re probably right. So why don’t you just go with the honest one?” I arched my eyebrows and waited.
He shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “She’s okay, seems nice enough. She hasn’t spilt coffee on my lap yet, so that’s a point in her corner, but she did detain me from picking you up last night, so that’s, like, negative a hundred in the other.”
I knew that wouldn’t be romantic to plenty of women, but to me? It was the ultimate aphrodisiac. “Pull over.”
“Why?” he asked, already doing it.
“Just do it.”
Before Jesse came to a complete stop, I had my seat belt off and was crawling over his lap. His eyes went wide right before my mouth covered his, then they closed and his lips moved against mine in eager, long pulls. When I felt three pairs of eyes on us, and when Jesse’s and my bodies were starting to run away from us, I pulled back and slid back into my seat.
“What was that for?” he asked, breathless.
I snapped my belt back into place. “For being so goddamned, amazingly you.”
Jesse shook his head a few times, and a loud thud sounded above us. Like something pounding the top of the cab. Or someone.