Nick of Time [Davis Hollow, Davis Ranch 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  Davis Hollow, Davis Ranch 4

  Nick of Time

  Manuela Mendez, the reclusive cook at Davis Ranch, is ready to restart her career as a chef. Manny goes to Houston to have a much-needed weekend alone to think. She meets and is instantly attracted to David Smythe Davis. David is in town from London as he ends an engagement to a woman he does not love. This business trip's an opportunity to put distance between his would be fiancée and pushing parents. He is unprepared for the mystery woman he meets at the hotel.

  They spend a weekend of passionate, non-safe sex. Manny goes home determined to open a restaurant and David returns to London to end his bogus engagement. Manny’s plans have to adjust when she finds out she’s pregnant. As she begins to plan her life as a single mom, David arrives at the ranch to visit. Manny and David face the responsibility being parents with a stranger and the opportunity to make it so much more.

  Genre: Contemporary, Romantic Comedy

  Length: 48,235 words

  NICK OF TIME

  Davis Hollow, Davis Ranch 4

  JQ Jones

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  NICK OF TIME

  Copyright © 2014 by JQ Jones

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63258-240-9

  First E-book Publication: September 2014

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Nick of Time by JQ Jones from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

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  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  About the Author

  NICK OF TIME

  Davis Hollow, Davis Ranch 4

  JQ JONES

  Copyright © 2014

  Chapter One:

  Choices

  A dust eddy skipped across the open space between the pool and the barn. It swirled and bumped in between spaces. There was a lot of space on a 17,000-acre Oklahoma ranch. She stared as the whirling mass disappeared around the edge of the house. Her mind was blank, no internal conversation clouded her thoughts, no place for remembrances. After five minutes, she shook her entire body. Some days just to break up the routine she watched the dogs as they chased rabbits and squirrels for their amusement. She shuddered as she finally admitted to herself that that little moment of swirling dirt was the highlight of her day.

  As early May temperatures hit the low nineties, this summer on the ranch promised to blast into long hot days and nights where even the three industrial ACs and ceiling fans in every room could only make the house less hot than outside. Today she had dinner cooked and ready since lunch. She was the only person eating at the ranch house. The only other people left on the ranch were her Menendez cousins and five ranch hands.

  Everybody else was somewhere in the world doing things. Moises was in Argentina, CJ and Iona in the South Pacific, Clint in London, Willie in West Virginia, the twins, Mano and Mortez, were in Mexico with Marco, while Miguel was wherever Miguel disappeared to from time to time. It was best not to question him on his whereabouts. He would tell you, then all chances of plausible deniability would be gone.

  Heat radiated out from the triple-paned glass patio door into the air-conditioned kitchen. Manny sighed trying to decide when she’d become a reclusive spinster. She’d come to the ranch to spend some time and help out at CJ’s house almost ten years ago. She specifically remembered the day in November when she arrived, toured the kitchen and decided to work for CJ for a year, two at the outside. Two years had stretched out to ten years all gently rolled into each other, years that she’d forgotten as they wrapped around her in a soft comfortable blanket of complacency. Yet for all that, this was the first time she remembered feeling restless, anxious, bored and tentative. It didn’t help that she was also very, very sexually excited.

  Manuela Menendez flipped her thick curly hair over her shoulder where it gathered into a loose flow of curls that ran to the middle of her back. She was trying to find a position where it wouldn’t make her sweat but that didn’t work. The triple-digit heat beat the triple-pane glass that filled the windows and doors. It was going to be a hell of a summer. The sweltering temperatures would keep her indoors until the sun went down, then the mosquitoes would harry her until she escaped back into the house. That would happen every day from the time the heat started in May until it ended after Thanksgiving. By summer’s end she would be just a little stir crazy.

  She sighed and the sound filled the room, almost echoing around the high ceilings. She read the card again for the seventh or eighth time. The card, printed with colorful borders and hip type, arrived in the mail yesterday in a cream envelope and golden seal. It was an invitation to a baby showe
r for Chris Mattes and his wife.

  Chris was a great guy. He and Manny began their cooking careers at the same time fourteen years ago in Las Vegas. She smiled at the memory of two scared-shitless hicks from no-name schools trying so hard not to make mistakes while working for one of the best chefs and biggest assholes in the city. Egos were huge in the larger casino kitchens in Sin City so for their chef to be the king of the asshole chefs had been a testament to his arrogant pomposity but he was innovative and inspiring.

  Manny traveled for the next four years while Chris got married and began to establish himself as one of America’s new young chefs with talent. Right now he was so over the moon about the birth of his first child that he recommended her for a job in London that he was unable to take. She adored Chris and Naomi but the idea of a reunion of the people they worked with had little to do with whether or not she was in command of her own kitchen and everything to do with her being childless. Manny had two weeks to either come up with a nonpitiful sounding lie or go alone, again.

  Staring out at the long expanse of country landscape, Manny could say without hesitation the answer was no. No, she did not want to share in the joy and happiness of her friends. No, she didn’t want to hear about the second location for someone’s restaurant, the place that they opened while their partner or spouse completed their doctoral thesis at twenty-six while they were able to have a baby without even trying. No, she didn’t want to look at them and their husband, wife, partner with longing as they exchanged looks of love. And yes, she did want all of that for herself.

  Manny squirmed at the stereotypical want that made her blush every time she thought of it. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. Okay, she could be the wife thing too, but mostly she wanted to be a mom. She was already forty-two, the clock was ticking and the alarm rang every day. And still there were no candidates around for the job of father-slash-sperm donor whichever they (she and the guy) decided this mythical person would be.

  Before taking the over as housekeeper here at the ranch, Manny had lived in the most populous areas of the country, Houston, Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, DC, and lots of stops in between without any clear intentions of marriage and family until she “made it.” She smiled, remembering every review she’d ever gotten. The good ones she could quote in her sleep while the bad ones kept her awake. On the same night one critic had said, “The unique and exciting flavors deserve to be experienced firsthand.” Another had decided that, “The new chef threw flavor combinations on the plate. Unfortunately, it only made me want to throw up.” Neither one of them made her question her cooking skills. She had the palate, the imagination and the sense of flavor that made her an excellent chef. But none of that mattered to her. None of the criticism mattered. She craved a “continuation” of her, her Mini-Me, someone to produce someone to remember her as their great-great-grandmother.

  She also wanted a man to make love to her. Know her as he did it. Acknowledge it after they fucked. For the past ten years the only thing she made was bread and, for almost three years, CJ and Iona’s sex-tangled bed.

  A loud clap reverberated through the room as she slapped her hands down on the granite counter. The sound echoed in the quiet room. First step was to get out of the house. Braid already unraveled, she flipped her mahogany hair out of her face with an impatient hand. One of the good things about being the only female in an extended family of twenty-seven male first and second cousins was each of them did what she said, when she said it. She needed some fun before she dried up faster than the ranch lake did in the summer heat. First she’d find a man, any presentable male without outward sides of homicidal tendencies, and have a weekend stand. Get the edge off so that she could concentrate on finding a likely father for her future child. Right now she was leaning heavily toward donor clinic. But if she took the sexual edge off first before she could logically search for a worthy man.

  She made two calls, the first to her first cousin, Ernesto’s wife Adriana. It was a quick, no-questions-asked conversation. “Could Adriana handle meals for the ranch house for a week?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can Ernesto look after animals for the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  End of first call. The second call was to the private number of the concierge at the Davis family hotel in Houston, Davis International.

  The DI in Dallas was available but going to Dallas was like the suburbs of Oklahoma City. Everybody from Oklahoma did most of their dirt in Dallas, which meant that by the next day everybody in Oklahoma knew what everybody had done in Dallas. Manny wanted to have a free, nobody-looking-over-her-shoulders weekend.

  “Hey, Simone, this is Manuela Menendez. How are you?” she said.

  “Ahh, Manuela, comment allez-vous?” Simone’s rich sexy voice purred. It didn’t matter if you were male or female, straight or gay, Simone made you want to see if the promise of sex that her voice inferred was true. Manuela knew that the other woman was sixty-seven, married for forty-seven years with five children and eleven grandchildren. Her husband, Henri, was a wrinkled otter-like man who gave and received unconditional love.

  “I’m fine. Do you have a suite for Saturday through Saturday? I need some down time.”

  “I was all booked until just a minute ago a reservation for the Timbuktu was cancelled. It’s one of our best,” Simone said.

  “I’ll take it. Put it on CJ’s tab,” Manuela said. CJ Davis was a second cousin through familial connections. Clint was CJ’s first cousin on his father’s side, he was also Manny’s first cousin on his mother’s side. That made CJ and Manny cousins by right of growing up together and sharing a connection.

  “Of course. You will need reservations for the spa and salon, yes?”

  “Without a doubt. I need some new clothes, too. Something that doesn’t scream forty-two-year-old housekeeper. Can you set that up with the boutique?” Manuela said.

  Simone laughed. “I’ll pick out a wardrobe of basics plus a few things that let people know that you are still a woman. I have your sizes on file. Have they changed?”

  “If they have I’ll filet some skin off to fit into whatever you pick out,” Manny said. She and Simone shared a laugh before they got down to the serious business of finding the right clothes for the week.

  As she and Simone began to get deeper into what was necessary for the weekend to be a success, Simone insisted on all new clothes, a collection of chic and Parisian-styled casual wear, sexy underwear and negligees. Manny had stopped the older woman before she added a formal gown for the opera. It was all perfectly tailored just for Manny.

  While Simone went into details about what would be ready when, Manny stretched to her full five five, enjoying the pop of her tensed-up muscles. She mentally calculated what food she had that needed immediate attention to pack up to drop it off at Adriana’s on her way to the airstrip.

  Taking the phone into her suite of rooms, she pulled a small carry-on from the top of the closet, dusted it off and began loading in a few pairs of panties even though Simone’s shopper would be instructed to buy new silk lace replacements, Manny didn’t feel right traveling without some panties to change into in case something happened. She had been raised by her abuela and one thing that the old virago stressed was how the universe revolved on making sure that you always wore clean matching bras and panties. She shook off her abuela’s voice as she threw in a set of summer PJs and a pair of strappy gold sandals she’d bought online and never worn into her bag.

  “It’s not your birthday, mon cher, what’s the big occasion?” Simone purred.

  “Nothing special just the beginning of my new life,” Manuela said.

  * * * *

  David Smythe Davis looked past the man sitting to his left at the plane window. The man paid absolutely no attention to the changing typography of the ground as the plane circled closer to the international airport in Houston. David could only see the bright blue sky and bits of green spotting the otherwise brown Texas landsca
pe as the sprawl of Houston came into view. The rest was lost on the unappreciative man at the window who sat slumped over with mouth agape snoring. It had only been a six-hour trip from Gatwick but the man took a pill as soon as they were airborne and had slept the entire flight.

  Barbara, the almost ex-fiancée, decided that thirty-five was too young for him to indulge in an early midlife crisis. But then anything he did or wanted to do was an indulgence to her. He didn’t like Barbara. That had happened over the years. As young children, he knew she was mean, a little cruel, but some children were like that.

  By sixteen, Barbara had acquired a just reputation for being a bit of a bitch. She never softened, never backed down and used the cruelest words available to hurt you if you crossed her. David never crossed her, he had learned to avoid her altogether. Unfortunately, his and Barbara’s parents had decided that it would fit the families if they married.

  Barbara was all for it. She got his name, his money and his reputation. He got a woman who had yet to realize that she preferred women in her bed. He shuddered as he thought about her reaction when she found out he was flying to the States to clear his head. It was time that they end the farce of their engagement and get on with their separate lives. That’s the way he put it in his text message to her.

  On his last trip to this part of the world, he’d flown in to see CJ graduate from University of Oklahoma. David spent a year at OU but it was enough time for him and CJ to form a lifelong friendship. Because of his business, CJ spent a lot of time in London and before this past week from Hell, David hadn’t had a reason to return to this part of the world.