Free Destined for Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens, Book 2) Contemporary Romance by Melissa Foster

what he needed, and what he needed came in a mouthy little package and lived a few miles down the road.

Chapter Eleven
    “IT’S BEEN TWO days and it feels like a year.” Jade took a bite out of her pepperoni pizza. She brushed the crumbs from her jean shorts and sighed. “No, you know what it feels like, Ri? It feels like when we were in high school and we had crushes on the Daniels twins, remember? Remember how we’d fantasize about phone calls that would never come? It’s exactly the same thing.”
    Jade and Riley sat outside beneath an umbrella in the middle of Weston Town Park, sharing four slices of pizza. It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon, and the park was Riley’s attempt at pulling Jade from what Riley had coined as her friend’s man depression . Jade had too many worries lately. Between Rex and her father’s decision about the ranch, she felt a bit weighed down. She pushed away the thoughts about her family’s ranch and turned her thoughts to Riley instead.
    Riley looked silly with her hair pulled up into two ponytails, which Jade knew she’d done just to make her laugh—and it had worked. Now Riley shook her finger at her. “How can you even compare the two? First of all, I don’t remember either of the twins ever saying you were delicious or that they’d waited years to taste you.”
    Jade groaned. “I need to stop telling you things.”
    “In your dreams. You’re about as good at keeping a secret as a push-up bra. And, by the way, next time we go out to get you laid, please tell me you don’t want the guy before I leave. I feel horrible for leaving.”
    “I told you to go. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just, when he touched me, I…” She shuddered and scrunched her face. “He reminded me of an overgrown boy, not a man, and then he’d turned into a whole different person altogether—mean and aggressive, and not in a good way.”
    “Oh, and we do prefer men, don’t we?” Riley finished her pizza and jumped off the chair, smoothing down her skirt.
    “Why don’t you ever wear the clothes you design?” Jade asked.
    “Around here? Right.” Riley laughed. “Where are you working this afternoon?”
    “I’ve got a client across town, then a massage for a gelding over off of State Street,” Jade answered. “More important, what should I do about my cowboy?”
    “Your orally fixated cowboy?” Riley said with a wink.
    “Shh,” Jade said as an elderly couple walked past. “I never said he was orally fixated.”
    “No, but given the…” She sucked her two fingers, causing Jade to cringe. “I’d say there’s a good chance you’ve got some good loving waiting for you.”
    “You’re such a pig.” She shoved Riley as they headed toward their cars. “I need to know what to do. It’s not like I can call him, or stop by.”
    “Not unless you want a dead man on your hands. Your father would whip out a shotgun to save his precious little girl from a wicked Braden boy.”
    “Thanks.”
    Riley put her arm around Jade. “What are friends for? Okay, so let’s see, you’re volunteering at the horse show. That’s one place you’ll see him.”
    “True, but we’ll both be busy.”
    Riley stopped walking. “Tell me what you want to happen. I mean, you knew what was gonna go down when you let yourself start fantasizing about his ginormous trouser snake. You knew about your dad’s hatred for them.”
    Jade shrugged. “I thought…I don’t know. I guess I never thought we’d even get together, so I never really took it that far.”
    They walked down the footpath toward the feed store.
    “Well, Ms. Vet, time to stir up some medicine for your achy-breaky heart or convince the big lug to run off and marry you and live happily ever after in some other town.”
    “You are absolutely no help at all,” Jade snapped. What was I thinking? There is no solution to this mess.
    “Oh, I think I am. Whose idea was it to come to the park?”
    “Yours?” Jade arched a