Page 65 of Love Me Back
“This position isn’t exactly comfortable anymore.”
She smiled, and I kissed her gently before letting her stand. She helped me pull my pants back up, and I helped her get dressed. I watched as she walked out of my office, saying she needed to talk to her uncle and father.
Her light dimmed a little when she mentioned them, and I knew then they were the reason she’d kept me at arm’s length. Well, I knew who she was now and I didn’t give a damn.
Jessica Montoya was mine.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jessie
I stepped into the kitchen and froze.
I’d just left Grayson in his office, where he had promised to help relieve the tension from my harrowing horseback ride. And that man kept his word. He delivered on his promise and more.
But now, as I stared at my uncle, who sat at the old wooden table while Addie flitted around the kitchen working on dinner, all the tension Grayson had uncoiled was back in place, tighter than a rattlesnake ready to strike.
Not that I had ever seen a rattlesnake. Oh God, there could have been rattlesnakes in the brush. I was alone with a horse in a dense forest that could have had—Who am I kidding?—that likely had rattlesnakes.
My body jerked as a shiver ran all the way through me from top to bottom. If I’d been bitten, no one would have been there to help. Ellie was going to kill me when she found out.
“Yessica.”
The sharp sound of my uncle’s voice brought me back from the ramblings inside my head. I glanced at Addie, who tried hard to appear as if she wasn’t paying us any attention, but I’d gotten to know her pretty well in the time I had been here.
With a heavy sigh I moved to the table. “Uncle.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my uncle, the opposite actually. I loved him very much. I just didn’t want to be a part of what he did. Hell, I didn’t want him to be a part of what he did.
I constantly worried about him and my parents and the rest of my family. Every day, I dreaded getting a phone call that would tell me one or several of them were gone.
At Christmas, Alejandro Vasquez, the previous head of the cartel was taken out. Along with his wife and his children.
His children!
Being a drug lord was not honorable work. It was dangerous and selfish, and I hated that my family was now at the center of it. My uncle might not be as bad as Vasquez was, but he wasn’t a saint.
I had seen him correct his men. I had seen him correct my father. I loved my uncle, but he was a very dangerous man, and now he was sitting in Grayson’s kitchen. The one thing I had tried to avoid by holding Grayson at arm’s length all this time was now staring me in the face.
“I do not wish to bring you harm.”
“I know.” I sat beside my uncle, my face down as I stared at my hands resting in my lap.
“I do not wish to bring your man harm.”
“He is not mine.” I shook my head, hoping that would convince him.
“By the way he makes you scream, he had better be, or I will do him harm.”
My head snapped up, and I gaped at my uncle. My mouth hung open as his words penetrated my brain.
“Close your mouth,Yessica.”
My lips crammed together, creating a thin line. “Y-you heard us?”
“I heard you.” My uncle grinned. “It is not something an uncle wishes to hear from hissobrina. But it is good to know he can take care of you. Especially given his predicament.” He took a sip of his coffee before adding, “I assume everything still works?”
“Uncle Mando, no!” My head shook violently as my uncle laughed at my humiliation. “Where is Father?”
“Dario is withJaime. They are getting a tour of the ranch.”
