The Virgin's Revenge: Rancho del Cielo, Book 4 Read online

  Dedication

  Huge thanks to my lovely editor, who thinks I’m funny and has put up with my crazy for quite some time now. Thanks for being patient and helping me find my way, Jennifer.

  For Limecello…I have no idea why you haven’t hit me in the head with sharp objects by now. Thank you for all the proofing and reading and cray-cray patting.

  For Nicki…for constantly asking me where the hell the story was. Someday I’ll tell you how much of a difference that makes.

  For Sharon…I know you’re not big on the comedies, but I’d have given up without you. Here’s to late nights, evil plans, hotel rooms with hot air and Xanax…

  And a last but very important thank you to Fatin and Lillie—you ladies are indispensible friends and I would never have survived the last year without you. I cannot thank you enough.

  Chapter One

  “We want you to marry Mandy.”

  Cole Engstrom never knew you could reverse-snort up a French fry, but there you have it. Someone call Guinness.

  A few solid thwacks on the back later from one of the notorious six Jackman brothers, and he was breathing marginally well again. That didn’t mean, of course, his hearing was any better.

  “What?”

  “We—” Locke Jackman leaned forward in his diner seat, bracing more of his weight on his oversized hunks of arm and nailing Cole in place with a vivid blue glare, “—want you to marry Mandy.”

  When Locke said we, he spoke for all six of the brothers. Probably their deceased parents, grandparents and all the generations that traveled over the Atlantic more than two centuries ago. He was more than big enough to pull something like that off.

  Cole risked a glance at the elder twins—as Daniel and Dean were typically called—who sat on his left, their bulk swallowing most of the curving diner bench in the darkest corner of Shaky Jake’s bar. He should have known they were out to get him when they’d invited him here for lunch and dragged him to this spot. Not only were they cheap, they were scared of the dark. Yet both of them nodded and grinned at him like they’d done him a favor. He smelled a set-up. He also had the suspicion they were stealing his fries.

  “Why?”

  Locke smiled. Sort of. When you have a face that big and that closely resembling a brick wall, it’s probably harder to be convincing about joy. “We like you.”

  Wasn’t that reassuring?

  “Does Amanda?”

  Locke shrugged. “She will.”

  “So, she doesn’t know anything about this?” Adding two and two while surrounded by two trios of human mountains with zero common sense was slow going.

  “Why tell Mandy? She’d just argue with us. But she needs to get married. It’s time. Mom and Dad would have had her married off years ago, and since they aren’t here, it’s up to us.”

  Cole didn’t want to remind Locke that the main reason Amanda wasn’t married off was because their parents had died, and no man who wanted to retain his moving parts was going to attempt to so much as look Amanda’s way with the mini-hulks blocking his path.

  “And you picked me because…”

  “The elder twins said you were nice to her.” Locke nodded to the two boys who’d been Cole’s friends since junior year in high school. He’d been a skinny, chain-smoking computer nerd in their weight-training class. They’d openly seen him as a project.

  By the end of the year, he’d quit smoking, at least, but he was still slim and never destined to bench much more than his own weight. They kept him anyway—he had a car. There were times he wondered if that was why they’d adopted him in the first place. Times like now, he wondered why he’d adopted them back.

  The elder twins grinned at him, still nodding, both chewing. Bastards.

  “Didn’t they tell you I’ve planned to never get married?” Because Daniel and Dean knew damn well he was never getting married. Ever. They even knew why. Hell, Locke knew why. It wasn’t a secret.

  “Plans can change.” Locke’s unfaltering gaze bored into Cole, placidly threatening. Threatening what, Cole wasn’t sure, but it didn’t take a lot of imagination to guess it would be painful.

  Still. Some things Locke couldn’t force, no matter how he tried.

  “Not these ones.”

  He felt the tension suddenly ratchet up in the shoulders on either side of him. And though Locke didn’t move even a muscle, Cole swore he grew impossibly more hulking.

  “Look, Amanda’s a nice girl.” She was too. Very nice. Nice to talk to, nice to spend time with, nice to look at. All right, more than nice to look at. More like stunning, with that silky white-blonde hair and blue-gray eyes, curves he’d give his right nut to stop thinking about, and good God, legs for miles. Tall, like her brothers, but delicate and quiet in comparison. Sweet too.

  But if she believed for one second that he’d gone along with this ridiculous plan, he had no doubt whatsoever she’d rip his throat out. No self-respecting girl wouldn’t, and Cole made it a special rule never to piss off the quiet ones. Usually, they’d already had lots of time to think about body disposal.

  “But?” Locke was no idiot. Not like the others, who followed his orders like good pets.

  “But she and I aren’t…involved.” And he’d taken great pains to make sure that they would never be involved. He enjoyed her company way too much to risk ever dating her. That was a surefire way to make her think him an asshole.

  “Of course you aren’t. Yet.” There it was, Locke’s scary smile again. The one that was a cross between a pit bull growl and a hungry tiger attack. Either one would eat you alive, so Cole was sure to stay perfectly still and not tempt either. “You’ll ask her out. Date for a while. But not too long—I won’t have Mandy embarrassed because her boyfriend won’t settle down.”

  Sure, Cole could see how that might be embarrassing.

  “Then, in about six months, you ask her to marry you. She says yes, you get hitched and it’s all done with.”

  Done with? His life, maybe. Hers, definitely. “What if Amanda says no?”

  “Why would she say no?” Locke’s subtext was easy to read; she’d better not say no. “Be nice to her, make her feel pretty, tell her she’s a good cook and you’re set.”

  “Mandy really is a good cook,” Dean added.

  “You guys think all it takes to get married is to tell a girl she’s pretty and that she can feed you from now on and she’ll fall over from the romantic sentiment?”

  Dean actually thought about it.

  “Good point. Women are picky about stuff like that. You’re just going to have to make her fall in love with you or something,” Locke concluded.

  Or something. Cole thought longingly to the fry that had mercifully tried to kill him minutes ago. Why had he fought it?

  “I know this sounds completely unlikely, but…let’s say she doesn’t fall in love with me and the prospect of feeding me every day for the rest of her life isn’t enough of an enticement to get her to marry me?”

  Locke shrugged. “At least you tried.”

  Cole took his first breath of the meal…

  “We’ll just find someone else and try again.”

  …and choked on it.

  “Try again? You mean you guys are going to shop Amanda around until someone bites?”

  Locke didn’t smile this time. He didn’t do anything. He just stared, his blue gaze as implacably serious as the resolute will he’d used to raise the family currently surrounding him.

  Asking Cole to marry Amanda was one thing. The Jackmans were his friends, despite Locke’s unnerving ability to…well, unnerve him. He wasn’t going to go telling anyone that the brothers were off th
eir rockers and just short of pitching their sister on the auction block, and they knew it. Even the youngest ones. But should he turn them down, Amanda would quickly become a laughingstock in their quaint little southern California town of Rancho del Cielo. And no one in RDC ever forgot a good laugh.

  Put like that, turning them down wasn’t an option.

  Locke pulled something out of his shirt pocket and clacked it onto the center of the table. “See you at dinner, Cole. Seven o’clock. And wear a tie. You’re courting.”

  He slid out from behind the table with a little more grace than someone his size should have been allowed. Within seconds, Cole found himself alone at the massive booth with an empty plate, a raw set of nerves and an open jeweler’s box complete with a glittering engagement ring.

  For the first time since high school, Cole Engstrom was dying for a cigarette.

  He was there again.

  His heat imprinted itself on her body from nape to calf, the feel of his breath bristling the small hairs on her neck. Warm hands cupped her bare shoulders, smoothing down her biceps to her elbows, dipping into the hot dishwater where her own hands clutched at a plate she’d been washing.

  The steam from the water had frosted the window and put a sheen on her skin, flushing her face and making her thick hair curl in tendrils near her face. Now, as his fingertips toyed with hers, the steam seemed to start rising again, thicker and faster than before. He loosened her grip on the innocent dish, guiding her into putting her hands somewhere she would probably need them: the counter edge.

  Then he went back to work…

  His mouth on the back of her neck, the bristles of his ever-present stubble tickling her skin, the sound of his coat impatiently being shucked off his shoulders so he could be rid of some of his pesky clothes.

  It was always like this. One moment, she’d be doing something menial, something so ordinary she wouldn’t have imagined it could turn sensual, and in a heartbeat he would arrive, touching her, promising her so many things with just a whisk of his fingertips.

  He pressed close to her, his hands on her hips, those rough thumbs grazing the ribbon of flesh between her damp gray tank top and the black denim. Inch by inch, his hands rose, tracing the muscles of her belly, the arches of her ribs, finally, oh, God, finally cupping her breasts. A low groan of satisfaction escaped him as she leaned her head back and let him stroke her over-sensitized nipples into desperate points.

  “Cole,” she whispered, imagining his knowing grin. Her hips began to move without her consent, searching, seeking his warmth and his hardness.

  Finding…nothing.

  Amanda Jackman opened her eyes, startled to find her own wet, soapy hands bunching the fabric of her old gray T-shirt at her throat. Her whimper of need turned into a pout of frustration.

  Just once, couldn’t it really be Cole instead of her overeager, overused and over-the-top imagination?

  Knowing Cole as well as she did… Nope, it couldn’t.

  But a girl could dream, and Amanda wiped at her hot cheeks knowing she’d take full advantage of that fact for as long as she could. Not like she had anything else to do.

  “Mandy!” Locke’s usual announcement that he’d arrived made her drop her hands and hope none of her fantasy still had her eyes glazed. Why on earth had she given Locke a spare house key? He still didn’t quite understand that her place was not an extension of his home. The doorbell was anathema to him. At this point, she’d take a knock that sounded like an eight-point-six earthquake over his habit of just walking in. Then again, both of them knew he was unlikely to interrupt anything.

  “In the kitchen!” she called out, turning on the faucet and running the dish she’d been accidentally romancing under the cold water flow she desperately needed.

  “Got plans tonight?” Locke asked as soon as he entered the kitchen’s wide archway. He always asked lately, which was pretty annoying since they both knew she didn’t. Amanda hadn’t had any important plans since third grade when Dean and Daniel beat up the little boy they’d caught looking up her skirt. And with her adorable but insistently broken little house making more and more demands on her time, she didn’t see that changing anytime soon.

  “Just me, a book and a cup of hot noodles. Why?”

  “Wondered if you’d mind a family dinner.”

  Amanda knew that old ploy. “No, you’re wondering if I want to make a family dinner, and I don’t. I want my book.” She didn’t actually, but a plumbing primer, while not one of her favorite erotic novels, was still better than cooking dinner for those bottomless pits she called brothers.

  “You don’t get out enough.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she grumbled, which she didn’t like because it was starting to make her feel bitter. The last time she’d gone out, four of her brothers had happened to be going to the same place. It wasn’t even a real date, just drinks with her girlfriend. Of course, Susie Packard, in their opinion, was “wild”. Most likely because Susie was divorced and a few years older than Amanda’s twenty-six. She also owned Rancho del Cielo’s first lingerie store, where Amanda worked, but she didn’t like to think about how many strikes that put against her friend when it came to her brothers. Even sexy, affable Susie couldn’t get a man’s attention that night because of the four slabs of meat practically guarding their table.

  Okay, maybe she could be just a little bitter.

  That night was what had cemented Amanda’s plan to move to her own place and finally begin a life without her brothers’ constant guardianship. Susie brought party supplies when they moved her into this little house on the corner.

  “Books won’t keep you warm at night, Mandy,” Locke admonished, bringing her back to the present. He’d been telling her that for years, usually whenever he found out she was taking yet another class he didn’t think she could do much with.

  Amanda winked at him, hopefully distracting him from starting that familiar argument. “You don’t know what kind of book I’ll be reading.”

  Hey a book about pipe is a book about pipe, right?

  “Cole’s coming,” he added casually, opening her fridge as if looking for something to eat. She wished him luck. Her diet of yogurt, salad, toast and orange juice wasn’t going to do much for a calorie furnace like him.

  “Oh?” She had an instant’s flash of her imaginary Cole running rough fingers over her stomach. But since she didn’t have the abdominal muscles and fabulous hair she’d fantasized over either, she shook it off. “That’s good for Cole. He has a healthy appetite. I hope you guys have enough food.”

  Locke closed the fridge and frowned at her. “Come, Mandy. It’ll be like old times.”

  Old times being three months ago, before she moved out on her own. Oh, all her brothers had complained, connived and cajoled to keep her there where she could play mother to them instead of having a life she could vaguely call her own. All of them but Locke. He’d just watched her, like he was taking her measure or something. Like he was…plotting. She hadn’t lost that thought in all this time, and nothing he had done lately had calmed the nagging belief that he was up to something to drag her back home.

  “Cole asked for you.”

  She sputtered. “You mean he asked for my fried chicken.”

  “Nope. He said you were a nice girl and asked if you were coming to dinner.”

  “You burn in hell for lies like that, Havlocke,” she chided, trying to bring some humor into the situation.

  Sadly, her older brother had given up on humor when their parents died thirteen years ago. “Dinner?”

  Locke Jackman was impossible to sway.

  “Fine.” She sighed. “But I’m not cooking. You feed me for once.”

  He nodded. “Seven o’clock. Wear a dress.”

  She blinked. “A what?”

  “Dress. Seven o’clock. Don’t forget to brush your hair.”

  “What am I? Five?”

  Locke raised an eyebrow.

  “I promise to brus
h my hair, okay? I don’t know what the big deal is—you guys don’t even bother with clean utensils.”

  “I told you, Cole wants to see you.” He said it just cryptically enough to make her antennae pick up again.

  “What are you up to?”

  He turned on his heel and went back through her living room. Amanda hurried to follow.

  “Locke? Locke Jackman, you come back here!”

  “See you at seven.” He disappeared out her front door, and she let him go. He wasn’t going to say anything. Locke was as good as his name when it came to keeping his mouth shut.

  Oh, yeah. Her big brother was definitely up to something. Amanda didn’t even want to think about what it could be.

  “Can’t we eat?” It was Andrew’s turn to ask. Cole stifled a sigh. The other brothers had all taken at least one turn asking in the forty minutes since Cole had arrived. “She’s not coming, and the chicken is starting to congeal.”

  “No. She’ll be here,” Locke said from the head of the table in the massive Jackman residence. He looked stoically ahead, not even glancing at a single starving Jackman brother or Cole. He simply stared forward and willed it to happen. Willed Amanda to walk into the house full of apologies and curtseys, notice Cole at the dinner table and fall magically in love with him.

  It was probably the first time Locke’s will had failed.

  Cole glanced from brother to brother, each one of them glumly eyeing the feast growing frigid before them, unable to touch it until their sister arrived.

  The loud exploding sound outside suddenly interrupted the stomach rumbling and faint whimpers of the starving men. Cole was first on his feet— followed quickly by Locke—out to the living room where he was unsurprised to find Amanda straggling into the house, grumbling to herself.

  “Are you all right?” Cole asked, taking in the streaks of hair that fell from her braid into her face. She closed the door, shutting out the orange rays of sunset and stepping into the direct overhead light, smiling brilliantly despite the smudges of black across her cheek and forehead.

  “What happened? Why didn’t you call us?” Locke immediately took hold of his sister’s chin, tipping it up as he inspected her for any damage, revealing more smudges on her neck. She swatted his hand away, a scowl forming on her face. Locke was determined to make sure she was all right, though, so the swatting took a few attempts before he was satisfied she would live.