Harlequin Desire January 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Maisey Yates (free biff chip and kipper ebooks .txt) 📕

“But…”

“It sucks,” Emerson said, “but anything that matters is tough sometimes. The only person who ever has it easy in a relationship is someone like Dad. Someone who doesn’t care enough to be hurt. Who doesn’t care enough about someone else’s feelings.”

Those words resonated inside of Cricket and sank down deep. She had always wanted to be protected, but being part of her family, in the way that she had wanted to be…it had been a bigger risk than she was willing to take. It hadn’t mattered enough. It hadn’t mattered enough because she hadn’t aspired to the kind of life her mother and father had anyway. So contorting herself to become part of it had seemed the opposite of a good idea. But Jackson… He was different. The life they could have—she could see it. She ached for it. A life together, one with their child. And that hadn’t been her fantasy. She had thought about Jackson, about having him. Not about domestic bliss or anything of that kind. But she wanted it. It was a future that burned bright and hot in her mind. A future that mattered.

Because she loved him.

And where in the world did pride fit in with love? She couldn’t protect herself.

That was what he was doing. Whether he would admit it or not, that was what he was doing. And she wasn’t going to do that. She wasn’t going to sacrifice love on the altar of her own pride. Because this was deeper than that. It was in her bones, in her blood. Like the land. Like ranching.

Some things simply were.

And for her, loving Jackson was one of those things. And she was going to fight for it. Fight for him.

Because her life mattered too much to let someone like James Maxfield twist her sense of who she was enough to prevent her from being happy even when he wasn’t around. And it was the same for Jackson, whether he knew it or not. His parents’ mistakes didn’t get to decide what he was.

She burrowed out from the large poof she’d been sitting on. “All right,” she said. “I’m going to tell him that I love him.”

“A good idea. Maybe not at nine o’clock at night, though,” Emerson said.

“Why not?”

“Formulate a plan. You got this. But it wouldn’t hurt to take some time with it.”

Cricket nodded. “Okay. Time.”

And that was when she did start to form a plan.

“I’m going to need to borrow your dress again,” she said to Emerson.

“Whatever you need.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jackson was no stranger to grief. But what surprised him this time was that the situation with Cricket felt more like death than he’d anticipated anything like this could feel. He had reached the end of his rope and he knew he had two options. Reach for the bottle of whiskey, or reach for his car keys. He opted for the car keys, and found himself driving down from the ranch and heading to where his father was, at the tasting room, and that was how Jackson ended up pounding on the door. He knew he’d woken up the old man, but he didn’t really care.

“Jackson? Is everything all right?” Cash asked, tying his robe hastily as he pulled open the door.

“Cricket is pregnant,” Jackson said.

“Well hell,” Cash said. “You really did need to know who her father was.”

“I told you I did.”

“You didn’t waste any time.”

“It was inevitable. But it doesn’t matter. I need to know something else from you, and I need to know it now. Why did you marry Mom if you couldn’t love her? Why did you do it for me? Because you know what, it doesn’t feel very good to be the reason your parents are miserable. To be the reason that they’re together. To know that you’re why they are not happy.”

“You were never why we weren’t happy,” Cash said. Then he sighed wearily. “Come in.”

Jackson stepped inside, enveloped by the sense of strangeness he always felt when he entered his childhood home. He had sat at the dining table countless times with his mother. He had opened Christmas presents in the corner, right there by the fireplace where the tree always was. He had read to his mother while she lay on the couch, while she wasn’t well. While he was losing her, watching as she slipped away.

He couldn’t be in here and not…feel.

“You need to understand that we weren’t unhappy,” Cash said. “Not always. Just like we weren’t happy always. And look, the pain that your mother felt, that was my fault. We had a bad fight. Must’ve been…fifteen, sixteen years in, and she told me how much she hated the winery, and at that point, it had made us so much money, it felt like the best thing I’d ever done. But she said it just reminded her that my whole life was built on the foundation of trying to win back another woman.”

Cash shook his head. “And I… I let that sit inside me. I let that fester. And I figured… It would’ve been a lot easier to be married to Lucinda Maxfield. But I know better than that. I mean, I know better than to believe that being with Lucinda would’ve fixed all my problems. Because you can’t compare a childish infatuation to a marriage that spans decades. You just can’t do it. Every what-if supposition your mother and I ever had about if we hadn’t been together… We were never with anyone else for all those years. I didn’t have children with anyone else. The stresses and pressures that time in a family put on you can’t be compared to anything else. We grew up with each other, for better or worse. We changed together, in sickness and health. We were part of each other.”

“You were together because you felt obligated,” Jackson said.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Yes. You should be with someone because…hell, because you love them.”

“Where the hell did you get the idea that love didn’t come with