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Isabel let out a growl, but it wasn’t menacing because her cheeks were so pink. She flapped a hand toward the farm sprawling outside the windshield. “Where are we?”
“My brother Christian’s farm. Come on.” He opened his door and got out of the Wrangler.
She met him at the front of the jeep. “What are we doing here?”
“Attending a birthday party.”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows bobbed up. “Whose birthday are you celebrating?”
Jackson walked toward his brother’s farmhouse. “Mine.”
****
For the second time today, Isabel nearly fell. “We’re walking into a birthday party?”
“Yup.” Jackson turned to face her, a gorgeous white farmhouse behind him.
“Your birthday party?” She pointed at him.
“Uh-huh.” He turned and climbed the steps on a beautiful front porch that had a series of rocking chairs with terra cotta pots of flowers in every color imaginable set up all over the place. The air smelled wonderful as a gentle July breeze brought the scent of the different flowers to Isabel’s nose.
“But today isn’t your birthday.”
Jackson turned to face her again, a slight smile on his lips that had danger written all over it.
Look away. Look away, dammit!
She’d already humiliated herself by bringing up Jackson’s muscles. Now she’d revealed the man’s birthday was still a fact she held in her brain. She looked down at herself. No, she wasn’t wearing a World’s Biggest Loser T-shirt, but it sure as hell felt as if she was.
“My brothers were busy working on my actual birthday,” he said. “Saturday—today—was a better day for us all to get together. Although I’m late and they are probably pissed at me.”
He reached for the doorknob.
“Wait! Don’t open that!” Isabel squealed.
“What? Why?” His dark brows furrowed. “It’s Christian’s house. I don’t have to knock at my own brothers’ houses.” He made a move to turn the knob again, but Isabel flew up the steps and grabbed his wrist.
“You have to take me back to the cottages first.” Because there was no way she was attending a birthday party. For Jackson. Uninvited.
“I can’t do that,” he said. “I told you. I’m late. Donovan called to alert me to that fact right before I literally ran into you. If I take you all the way back to Pine River Cottages, I’ll be super late, which will get me into super trouble.”
“It’s your birthday party.” Isabel waved a hand. “No one can be mad at the Birthday Boy.” She tugged him though she should have let go of him the moment her fingers closed around his wrist. “C’mon.”
“Isabel.” Jackson’s warm, solid, rough hand slid over her knuckles and the scrape of his palm along the back of her hand made her breath catch in her throat. “It’s my brothers. You know them all.”
“I do, but I’m not prepared for a birthday party.” Or for the massive trip down memory lane.
He released her hand. “Prepared? What’s to prepare?”
“I don’t know.” She flapped her arms out to her sides. “I’m not dressed properly.”
Jackson’s deep brown gaze did a slow roll from her head down her body to her toes then back up to her eyes. Could a woman orgasm simply from the way a man looked at her?
“You look stunning, Isabel. As I’m sure you always do.”
Stunning? She was only wearing a simple sundress. It wasn’t even her best one. It was one of her more comfortable, carefree ones. Certainly not the one you wore to see your high school ex-boyfriend’s family for the first time in eons.
“I didn’t bring any food,” she said. Social Etiquette 101 clearly stated baked goods were a requirement for attendance to any birthday celebration.
