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The point was, she took legal advice from one Wilde and financial advice from the other.
It might make sense to take ranching advice from the other.
Which was why she was here, tonight.
Travis had greeted her; he’d taken her on the obligatory rounds, introduced her to his three sisters.
Apparently, no one had told them that her relationship with their brothers was strictly professional.
Not that they hadn’t been pleasant, even gracious, but a woman could always tell when other women were sizing her up.
Listen, she’d almost said, you can stop worrying. I do not, repeat, do not intend to sleep with either of your brothers. They’re hunks, all right, and I like them, but I have no interest in getting involved with any man, no matter how handsome or sexy or rich or charming, not even if hell should freeze over.
She wasn’t interested in waiting another minute for the Hero to show up, either. The Wounded Hero, she reminded herself, but the wound could not have been much.
Jacob Wilde was a famous man’s son. He would have grown up rich and spoiled—girls from trailer parks knew the type. So, why on earth was she still standing around, waiting for a man she would undoubtedly dislike on—
“Jake?”
“Oh, my God, Jake!”
Someone had opened the front door ten or fifteen minutes ago. Now the entire Wilde crew was trying to fit through it at once.
The sisters were shrieking and bouncing like yo-yo’s. Caleb and Travis were laughing. The bunch of them exploded onto the porch, and the crowd moved in behind them for the show.
Addison sighed with resignation. Too late. She was stuck here, at least until she shook the hero’s hand, or maybe he’d be so engulfed by the crowd that she’d be able to slip out without anybody noticing….
And then Jacob Wilde stepped into the room.
The breath caught in her throat.
She had expected him to be good-looking.
He wasn’t.
He was—there was no other word for it—beautiful.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. A long, tautly muscled body, strong and straight in a uniform that bristled with ribbons. His hair was the color of midnight.
Corny, all of it, but true.
He had a face a sculptor might have chiseled.
A sculptor with a cruel sense of irony.
Because Jacob Wilde’s face was perfect….
Except for the black patch over one eye, and the angry, ridged flesh that stretched across the arch of his cheek beneath it.
CHAPTER THREE
JAKE STOOD frozen in the open doorway.
The momentary rush of euphoria at seeing his sisters and brothers drained away as fast as the water from Coyote Creek in a dry Texas summer.
No party, he’d said. No crowd. And, yes, he’d figured there’d be people there anyway….
His belly knotted.
