Molly O'Keefe - Mr. Predictable

“My inner self?” J.T. snorted derisively at that. “My rigid routine?”

“Yes, let’s start with that,” Moriah suggested as she hung a sharp right turn and zoomed down a gravel road, taking J.T. farther into the outback of Oklahoma’s wooded hill country. “You’ve become a creature of habit and you’ve forgotten how to sit back and enjoy life.”

“I most certainly have not,” he snapped in fierce denial. “I know how to relax as well as the next person.”

“Really?” she challenged, flashing him another of those annoyingly captivating smiles. “Then let me ask you a few questions.”

“Hell, I didn’t know there would be a test. Do I get time to study?”

Moriah chuckled in amusement, though he was striving for snide and sarcastic. But apparently nothing irritated Miss Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. It made him want to try harder to tick her off.

“What time do you get up every morning?” she asked.

“Six o’clock. Is that a problem?” he said defiantly.

“Only if you do it every single morning. Do you work on your business projects before you leave for your office?”

“Yes,” he muttered grudgingly.

“Do you wake up at night, and also notice at various times of the day—like now—that you’re gritting your teeth and have to force yourself to unclamp your jaw? Do you find yourself tensely knotting your fists—like you are now—and have to tell yourself to unclench?”

J.T. glowered at her as he uncurled his knotted fists and slackened his jaw, but he refused to reply. Okay, so he was a little tense. Who wasn’t?

“Do you eat breakfast?”

“Yes, at 7:42 a.m. I use the drive-through window at the doughnut shop to pick up coffee and a cinnamon twist. So you see, I do take time for breakfast,” he assured her flippantly.

“Cinnamon twist and coffee every morning of the week? No deviation from routine? No variation of food whatsoever? You sound pretty predictable, Jake,” she said as she tossed him a knowing smile.

Uh-oh, J.T. could see where this line of questioning was headed. Moriah was trying to point out that he was a stickler for a strict schedule. Well, so what if he was? When a man ran a business that was as successful as J.T.’s had been the past ten years, he had to organize his time wisely and follow a structured routine. Otherwise, he’d never get anything done—and he had a helluva lot to do, too.

“So…you arrive at your office and go right to work, I presume. What time is your lunch break, Jake?”

He shifted uneasily in the bucket seat. He didn’t bother with a lunch break. Hadn’t bothered in years, he suddenly recalled. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that!

“I have a gourmet meal catered around high noon,” he lied without compunction.

She shot him a glance that indicated she didn’t believe him. So, what did he care? He didn’t care, he assured himself. And furthermore, she wasn’t going to get another straight answer from him. He wasn’t going to give her the ammunition to analyze him to death.

“You exit your shop at six p.m. and drive home—except for today when your sisters purposely let the air out of your tires and asked me to personally escort you to the resort,” she continued.

J.T. gnashed his teeth. His kid sisters were definitely going to pay for having him shanghaied. Damn it, he’d made one personal sacrifice after another for them for years on end. He’d cared for them, provided for them and consoled them after their parents died unexpectedly in a boating accident during a vacation. The tragedy had changed the entire course of his family’s life, not to mention the excessive pressure put on him to assume full responsibility for Kim and Lisa.

“So, Jake, what do you do every day when you get home from work?” she prompted when he lingered too long in thought.

J.T. was really getting PO’d at the rapid-fire questions, with the entire turn of events that left him Miss Vivacious’s prisoner in this speeding vehicle. Although he did follow a monotonous diet of TV dinners and canned food, he did jog, pump iron and then work on his business accounts in the evening. But he wasn’t going to confide that he ate frozen chicken teriyaki on Monday and canned spaghetti and meatballs on Tuesday—and so on—to Moriah. In fact, he wasn’t going to tell her the truth about himself or his daily habits because it was none of her business.

“I enjoy fabulous meals prepared by my housekeeper and cook. Her name is Stella,” he said, improvising as he went along.

“Mmm,” was all she said in response. He couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought Moriah had swallowed a snicker.

“Then I shower and change before I pick up one of my dates,” he said, weaving a fairy tale of lies that would throw Moriah off track.

“You date a lot then?” she asked, eyes twinkling, lips twitching.

“Continuously,” he said with a nonchalant flick of his wrist. “Different woman every night of the week. Variety is the spice of life, I always say.”

“And what do you and your dates do for entertainment?” she inquired as she veered down another gravel road that circled around the steep hillsides, taking him deeper into the middle of nowhere.

“We have sex,” J.T. told her outrageously. “Lots and lots of sex. Isn’t that the best form of relaxation for stressed-out businessmen like me?”

He really knocked her for a loop, he thought triumphantly. Her bewitching smile faltered and she cleared her throat. J.T. was so enormously pleased that he’d managed to rattle his abductor that he pushed the tall tale to the limit. “Really kinky sex. Erotic sex. I love sex. The more the better. It recharges my battery, so to speak.”

She made a strangled sound and kept her eyes on the road. “Interesting,” she tweeted.

“Exceptionally interesting. After all that heavy breathing and wild, mind-numbing sex I usually soak in my hot tub for a half hour.” He’d never taken time to soak in a hot tub in his life, truth be told. And the truth wouldn’t be told to Moriah.

“And what do you think about when you allow your mind to wander, Jake?”

He thought about his accounts every spare minute of the day, but he’d rather fire a couple of bullet holes into his foot than tell her because, sure as shootin’, she’d make something of it. “I think of unique places and inventive ways to have sex. I try not to use the same position twice.”

J.T. mentally patted himself on the back when Moriah’s face turned a fascinating shade of pink. This, by damn, should teach her not to pry into his personal life. He did not need stress management. He did not need to relax and he damn sure did not need a two-week vacation out here in nowhereville! His sisters should have their heads examined for scheming against him, damn it!

“Ah, here we are,” Moriah commented a few minutes later.

J.T. glanced out the window to survey ten, carbon-copy log cabins that were tucked beneath the canopy of shady cottonwood, elm and cedar trees. The resort was nestled beside a meandering river in a spacious valley between the rolling hills. A large stone-and-timber lodge sat in the middle of the well-manicured compound. A bunkhouse-style apartment complex sat off to the north side. A monstrous stable was butted up against a nearby hill.

The ranch was a cross between an isolated mountain retreat and the palatial plantations he’d visited as a kid during family vacations in Louisiana and Mississippi.

J.T. did admit the area was panoramic and serene, but it definitely wasn’t the kind of place J. T. Prescott wanted to waste time. And this was unquestionably a waste of his valuable time. He had things to do and he had no intention of doing them here—especially under the supervision of Miss Cheery and Chipper! The way he had it figured, if he smarted off often enough and put up plenty of belligerent resistance, Moriah would write him off as a lost cause and take him back to town so he could get back to doing what he did best—working relentlessly.