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He smiled at her. “I was happy to do it.” He glanced at both their empty plates. “Are you ready for our talk now?”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m ready.”
Not wanting Nadia too far away from him, Jaxon gathered her into his arms, carried her over to the sofa and sat down with her in his lap. “Now tell me what we need to talk about, sweetheart.”
It took her a minute to speak, and he figured she was collecting her thoughts. That had to be the reason she was looking down while fidgeting with the buttons on her robe. Finally, she said, “His name was Benson Cummings. I met him at the University of Wyoming the second week of class. I immediately liked him since he seemed like a nice guy. It only took me five months to find out what a total ass he was when it was discovered he was keeping a journal of all the freshmen girls he’d slept with or planned to sleep with. I was on his to-do list. Not only that, he had the date by my name and his friends were going to video us doing it.” She paused. “I was hurt since I honestly thought he liked me as much as I’d liked him. I had fallen hard for him, Jaxon.”
“So what did you do about it?” he asked her when she got silent, looking back down at the buttons on her robe. He was fighting back the anger he felt for what the guy had done and had planned to do.
She lifted her head to gaze into his eyes. “What do you mean what did I do about it?”
Jaxon fought back a smile. Those innocent-looking eyes staring into his weren’t fooling him any. She was a renegade, a rebel and a hellion. She would not have let that Cummings guy get away with anything. “Just what I asked, Nadia. What did you do about it?”
She went back to fidgeting with the buttons again. Clearing her throat she said, “Well, there was that time we emptied twenty-five bottles of chocolate syrup into his car and then dumped several bags of live ants in there as well.”
Jaxon’s eyes widened. “Who were ‘we’ and where did you get bags of live ants?”
She looked back up at him and smiled. “We, meaning me, Rissa and Lilli. And as for the live ants, it just so happens that one of the agricultural labs on campus was working on several ant farms. We got them from there.” Nadia paused and said, “Then there was that other incident.”
“What other incident?”
“The one that got him expelled from school.”
Jaxon was almost too afraid to ask what Nadia had done to make that happen. “Tell me about it.”
“We found out he was sneaking girls from another campus into his dorm room for pot parties. The kind that ended up being orgies. The security guy on campus got an anonymous tip about it and Benson, his roommates and several others were caught red-handed. All naked as the day they were born.”
“I guess you were the one who provided the anonymous tip.”
“Of course.” She laughed and he couldn’t help but laugh as well.
“Cummings never traced his misfortunes back to you?”
“Nope. I played the innocent. Besides, he had over twenty girls’ names on that list. It could have been any of us out for revenge.”
But it was you, he thought. Good for her. “And because of him you were cautious about getting serious about any guy again?”
“Yes. But years passed and when I moved back to Gamble, I decided to have an open mind. Especially with so many good-looking cowboys around here. The first one I met was Hoyle Adams. Like Benson, he seemed nice enough. He asked me out to the movies, and I enjoyed myself. He seemed to be a perfect gentleman. So I invited him to dinner one evening.”
“And?”
She frowned. “And he thought the dinner invitation was really a sleepover. Imagine my shock when he went out to his truck for his overnight bag while I was in the kitchen getting dessert. He honestly thought he was spending the night. I tossed him and his overnight bag out the door.”
He fought back a grin. “No wonder you went off on me that night I asked about inviting a cowboy to dinner.”
“Yes, that was the reason.” She got quiet and then said, “Just so you know, Jaxon, I was attracted to you from the first. But I thought it was one sided since you weren’t paying me any attention. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself so I deliberately avoided you.”
“Like I told you, I was trying to play it safe by not showing my interest in you immediately. The last thing I wanted was one of my Outlaw cousins or the Westmorelands to challenge me to a fistfight for getting out of line with you.”
She chuckled. “They would not have done that. If anything, they would have warned you away from me. They know how I can be at times.”
“I take it you never told them about Cummings.”
“There was no need. I handled it.”
She most certainly had. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
She turned around to face him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Nothing other than I meant what I said in bed. I love you. I fought it. I kept telling myself I couldn’t love you because we didn’t know each other. I even convinced myself it was just lust, but I was wrong.”
