Romantic - Enemies to Lovers - Forbidden Love
•✦───✧✦✧───✦•
In the peacetime following World War II, Jean Ward loses everything and is sent to live with her best friend, Clyde Mayberry, and his brood of brothers on his family's cattle ranch.
For a...
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•✦─Autumn, 1955─✦• Jean, age 17
Over the summer leading up to her senior year, Jean had continued to mature. She finally looked like a woman and decided to highlight that fact by changing her clothes.
Gone were the frilly, modest dresses of her youth, form-fitting, sleek blouses and skirts taking their place. She modeled her outfits by what she saw some of her favorite celebrities wearing—after Marylin Monroe and Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor.
Her outfits frequently caught stares and glares, but she didn't care. She felt comfortable and confident, and that was all that mattered.
On the day of Mrs. Mayberry's Thanksgiving feast for the ranch hands, Jean caught an awful lot of stares.
Jean was used to being eyed by the ranch hands. She rather liked it, in fact. Made her feel powerful. She knew they liked her, and could use that to her advantage if she wanted to.
"Oh, my glass is empty," she could say. Someone would fill her glass with cider in seconds.
Sometimes, it was very powerful being a woman.
The cherry on top was that among the eyes that adorned her was Jory fresh from college. He was leaning up against a fence post with jeans and a leather jacket on, looking like he had assimilated back into ranch life quite well with his Stetson hat and a beer bottle in hand.
She'd been waiting for him to notice her since the second he strolled in from his long drive from university. When he finally spotted her, his eyes were all over her, climbing up her body at a slow, steady pace. Like ivy on a tree—the kind that slowly choked the tree by cutting off its oxygen.
Jean's red lips quirked into a smile as she excused herself from the group of men surrounding her and strutted up to him.
"Hi, Jory," she greeted, placing herself in front of him. "It's been a while."
Jory nodded. "A very long while, it seems." His eyes drifted back down her body before snapping up to her face once more. "Little Sally Jean grew up," he noted, tipping his bottle towards her.
"She did. And she still goes by 'Jean.'"
"I'm not calling you that," he said bluntly, taking a swig of beer. "You'll always be Sally Jean to me."
His words prickled at her, making her inwardly frown. He made it sound like she'd always be a kid in his eyes.
"Go ahead, call me Sally Jean," she told him, "but don't expect me to respond."
He chuckled to himself. "Still as fiery as ever, I see. You've been givin' my brothers hell?"
