meant every word. “Jack will find me. He’ll save me.”
She’d done it this time. Gone too far. If she hadn’t said the last, he might have left her and walked away to hunt her again someday. But she’d retaliated the only way she could, used her words to hurt him and piss him off.
Right in her face, their gazes still locked, he shoved her. She stumbled back several steps, momentum sending her down onto her bottom and back with a thump on the hard-packed dirt. Straddling her, his nose pressed into her cheek, he grabbed the bandana around her throat, twisted it tight and choked her. She gagged and tried to buck him off. Too heavy, too strong, she lost this fight. Again. Her eyes rolled back in her head and the blackness closed in. Unexpectedly, he released the bandana and fisted his hand in her hair. She gasped for breath, but he ignored her difficulty.
“I told you, I don’t ever want to hear you say another man’s name.” He pounded her head backward into the ground and the rocks beneath her. Pain shot through her skull, bright lights exploded in her eyes, and blessed darkness took over and blanked out all the fear and pain.
JACK TRIED JENNA again that evening when they arrived at Rick’s ranch and delivered the colt. Past dinnertime, he thought she should be in from the garden by now. No answer. No answer on her cell phone either. Beyond worried, even Caleb grew concerned now that Jack had told him he couldn’t get her on the phone.
Jack had enough. He dialed the head guard’s cell number.
“Where’s Jenna?”
“She was gardening until this afternoon. That’s the last we saw her outside. There’s a light on in the kitchen and upstairs. She’s in the house.”
“Why isn’t she answering the phone?”
“She’s probably in the shower. She and Lily were full of dirt last time I saw them outside.”
“Is everything quiet there?”
“Yeah. No problems. Nothing to report.”
Maybe she was in the shower, or working in the office and ignoring the phone. Sometimes she did that, thinking it was just another rancher calling him about business. Still, he’d left her several messages and she hadn’t called him back. She hated when he was too overprotective, but her circumstances called for it and she understood.
“Go in, check on her,” he ordered.
“She told us to remain in the background.”
“I don’t care what she said. I’m telling you to go in and see if she’s okay.”
Something nagged at him. They hadn’t been apart in the last three months. She’d answer the phone wanting to talk to him. Wouldn’t she? Couldn’t she? That question haunted him through the next ten minutes while he waited for a call back to let him know Jenna was safe. Or not.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
* * *
JOSTLED, DRAGGED UP to her feet, Jenna woke, David’s hands fisted in her shirt to support her weight. Oh, God. She shivered from the cold. While the temperature was a nice high seventy-something during the day, it dropped to the low forties at night. She didn’t know how long she blacked out. Minutes? Longer? Instinct kicked in and she yanked herself free of David’s hold and took several steps back. Unsteady on her feet, she shook her pounding head, making even more stars flash on her closed eyelids. Her stomach pitched, bile rose up her throat. About to throw up, this time it wasn’t because of the pregnancy.
“Time to go. Quit stalling.”
Stalling? He’d knocked her out cold and he excused his behavior, put the blame on her by saying she’d been stalling.
Something sticky ran down the back of her neck and in her hair. Blood. He’d cracked open her skull. Her brain pulsed to the beat of her heart and her vision blurred in and out of focus.
No wonder my head hurts. Jack, please, come help me. Oh, God, please.
“That’s a nice ring you’ve got on. You think I’d let you marry someone else. I’ll see you dead first, you bitch.”
“Seems to me,” she rasped out, “you almost got your wish.”
He’d worked himself into a rage. “You made me hit you. It’s your own damn fault you can’t follow the rules and insist on provoking me by whoring around with other men.”
I am going to marry Jack. He loves me, and I love him.
Her silence pissed him off. He slapped her across the mouth and split her lip.
Something in her face must have given away her thoughts.
He grabbed her around the throat. “You’ll never marry anyone