At His Command

Seated in his leather recliner with his feet elevated and a stack of folders on the lamp table beside him, Jake silently acknowledged that he was a low-down skunk. No woman deserved to be treated the way he’d been treating Maddie.

His totally inappropriate attraction was his problem, not hers. She was just trying to be friendly and helpful. That was the way she was, the way she had always been. That was why she’d gazed respectfully at his mama’s awful paintings and petted his nuisance of a cat. And that was why she hadn’t told him off and stormed out of his apartment after she’d made that innocent joke about falling in love and he’d made her feel like a fool.

He wished he could take it all back and tell her…

Tell her what, exactly?

“She’s not for you, Hopkins,” he muttered under his breath.

Tripod leaped onto the chair and settled across Jake’s right thigh, as always avoiding his weak leg by some strange instinct. When Jake absently laid his hand on the cat’s long back and stroked a couple of times, Tripod began to purr.

“Glad one of us is happy,” Jake groused, tossing aside the contract he’d been pretending to read. He wasn’t going to get any work done with Maddie in his kitchen sautéeing onions—he could smell them—and singing along with one of his favorite CDs.

She had as pure and perfect an alto as he had ever heard, and she was going to be the death of him. Jake cocked his head and listened more closely, impressed that she knew all of the words to “I Cross My Heart,” a song George Strait had ridden to the top of the country charts a few years ago. As she sang about true love and lifelong devotion, Jake stared hopelessly at the whirling paddles of the ceiling fan above him.

If Madeline Bright had been put on earth with strict instructions to torture him, she couldn’t possibly be doing a better job than she was doing right now.

He wished she would just hurry up and go away. He wished it so hard that he was almost tempted to pray for it.

Which just went to show how desperate he was becoming.

She’d called him twice, but he hadn’t answered. Had he gone downstairs to his office? Maddie wandered out to Jake’s living area in search of him.

She spotted him beside one of the long windows, sprawled in a recliner, one hand resting on the back of the ugly three-legged cat draped across his right thigh. Head back, mouth open, Jake was snoring softly.

During her deployment, Maddie had heard plenty of snoring. It wasn’t just the patients she’d heard, but the male doctors and nurses she’d worked with in a place where accommodations had often been primitive and privacy a joke. But while none of those whuffles and snorts had ever aroused even a smidgen of tender feeling in her, Jake’s snoring caused a painful tightening in her chest.

Maddie crept closer. Admiring the way the dark crescents of Jake’s lashes rested on his bronzed cheeks, she marveled that such a strong, confident man could look so sweetly vulnerable in sleep. Her fingers itched to smooth back the dark hair that swooped across his forehead. She wished she had the right to brush her thumb over the faint lines bracketing his mouth, perhaps provoking him to smile in his sleep.

Tripod raised his head and regarded her with impersonal curiosity, reminding her that she didn’t belong here.

Jake hadn’t wanted her to come. He couldn’t have made that plainer. He didn’t want to talk about Noah and he wasn’t remotely interested in getting to know Maddie again.

With a heavy heart she returned to the kitchen and removed the second place setting from the table. She finished tidying up and then took a notepad out of her purse and wrote a message for Jake, telling him there was a tossed salad in the refrigerator, ziti with sausage and a loaf of garlic bread keeping warm in the oven, and some black-cherry ice cream in the freezer.

She put the note beside his plate and laid the change from his grocery money next to it. Then she slipped quietly down the stairs, leaving Jake alone, just as he’d wanted.

Chapter Three

So much for last night’s resolution to leave him alone, Maddie thought wryly as she made a loose fist and rapped on the half-open door of Jake’s office.

He lifted his gaze from the screen of his laptop computer. “Madeline. Come in.” His chair squeaked as he pushed it back and stood.

She advanced a step into the office, furnished in the same elegantly threadbare style as the reception area, then glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Your secretary told me to—”

“It’s fine. Come in.” Jake nodded to indicate the large envelope she held like a shield in front of her. “What can I do for you?”

The envelope was a flimsy excuse for being here, Maddie realized belatedly. She should have left it with his secretary. Now there was nothing to do but plunge ahead. “I’ve been helping Anna review some medical files for Children of the Day. As I was leaving, she asked me to deliver this.”

“Thanks.” Jake accepted the envelope and dropped it unceremoniously on his desk, which held so many papers, folders, and books that Maddie couldn’t see an inch of bare wood anywhere. She found something oddly endearing about the fact that after all his years in the military, where order and efficiency had been relentlessly drilled into him, Jake could work at such a messy desk.

“I planned to call you today,” he said. “Can you spare a minute?” He gestured toward a leather wing chair and waited for Maddie to sit down before resuming his own seat.

He cleared his throat. “I would have called this morning, but I had to be in court early. I—” He broke off to scowl at Tripod, who had hopped onto the arm of Maddie’s chair and was looking at her expectantly. “Sorry. He thinks he owns that chair. Just give him a shove.”

“There’s room for both of us.” Maddie drew the cat onto her lap and felt oddly pleased when he settled against her.

Jake leaned forward and folded his arms on a stack of papers. “About last night, I—”

“Jake, Judge Newcastle has moved up the hearing for—” The stunning, dark-haired, blue-eyed man who had just barged into the office stopped speaking as Jake glanced pointedly in Maddie’s direction.

“Oh. Sorry.” The man flashed Maddie a bright smile accompanied by a killer set of dimples. “I thought he was alone.”

Jake leaned back in his chair. “Madeline Bright, allow me to introduce the second-best lawyer on Veterans Boulevard. My partner, Travis Wylie.”

“No, don’t get up,” Travis said when Maddie tried to shift Tripod so she could rise from the chair and shake hands. “Jake’s ugly cat looks comfortable.”

Maddie wanted to protest that Tripod wasn’t ugly, but that was an indefensible position. “He’s a very nice cat,” she temporized, cuddling him closer.

Travis smiled again, and Maddie marveled. With that chiseled jaw and those vibrant blue eyes, the man was even better-looking than Jake. But in his western shirt, Wranglers, and boots, he looked more like a cowboy than a lawyer.

“Madeline’s an army nurse,” Jake said. “Hails from Dallas.”

Travis’s eyes widened suddenly. He looked at Jake, raised his eyebrows as though in a question and mouthed a word that looked like “allergy.”

Jake glowered at him.

Travis barked out a laugh, then turned a look of frank admiration on Maddie.

“She’s come to Fort Bonnell for additional medical training,” Jake said calmly, as though the conversation hadn’t just taken that weird little detour. “She wants to switch from emergency nursing to maternity.”

Travis perched on the arm of a chair. “How do you like Prairie Springs?” he asked, swinging one long, denim-clad leg.

Maddie’s smile came easily. “It’s a wonderful town. And I’ve found a great bunch of Christians here. Do you know Prairie Springs Christian Church? The big stone building next to the town green?”

Travis shot a glance at Jake. “Gloria, our office manager, goes there.”

“Are you talking about Gloria Ridge?” Maddie asked eagerly. “She’s one of my new friends. I love her sense of humor.”

“Oh, she’s a character,” Travis agreed.

“Travis.” Lexi McNally, the pencil-thin, Hollywood-blond secretary stood in the doorway. “Sorry to interrupt, but the court reporter just arrived and they’re ready to start the Henley deposition.”

“On my way.” Travis hopped off the chair and turned another devastating smile on Maddie. “It’s been a pleasure.”

She murmured something equally polite and watched him go.

“Madeline.” Jake unbuttoned the collar of his white dress shirt and tugged on his tie until it hung limply from a mangled knot. “About last night, I’m sorry I—”