by Kay Maree
My weekend chef? The bastard. “Did he now?”
Slowly, she inclined her head, pink flushing her cheeks.
“What did ye tell him?”
“I didn’t. I got this policy handed to me and I came in here. Tear it up, and I’ll have an answer for him.”
Fuck. That.
I stepped around my desk and into her space, no sense in my head. Then I did the stupidest thing of all. “Don’t date Georges,” I ordered. “I don’t want to have to fire him.”
“Why would you do a thing like that?” Autumn’s blue eyes narrowed.
I didn’t answer. She didn’t move.
“Let’s try this another way. What other options have I got?” she demanded.
I kept my damn mouth shut.
Ah, fuck. My blood heated. Her face was inches from mine, and that scent of hers, the floral, fruity whateverthefuck was driving me mad.
We glared at one another.
I breathed through my nose, filling my lungs with her. In all my thirty-two years on the planet, I’d never wanted to kiss a lass as much as I did now.
As if she knew my thoughts, Autumn’s gaze dropped to my lips.
Tension drew out, heavy and palpable.
“We’re going to need a supply run before tomorrow night’s party.” Denise bustled in. She snatched the cellar keys from the hook, her back to us. “I’ve written you a list for the bar. You’ll need to check the kitchen stores.”
She spun around, keys jangling.
Autumn and I had jumped apart. We couldn’t have looked more suspicious if we’d tried, despite the fact not a fucking thing had happened.
Denise swung a gaze between us. Then she barked a laugh, startling in the awkward silence.
“I’m… Work. I have to…” Autumn pointed at the door then made a swift exit.
I groaned and closed my eyes, gripping the desk behind me.
“Ooh hoo!”
I cracked an eyelid to find Denise almost vibrating with excitement.
“I knew that contract was about her. Did you kiss her?”
“Shut up,” I muttered and rounded my desk, throwing myself down in my chair. It groaned under my weight. “For the record, no, I didn’t. I’m glad ye came in. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Oh, Bull.” Denise’s voice overflowed with sympathy. “It’s about time you moved on.”
“There’s nothing to move on from.” I jiggled the mouse to wake the computer. The screen blinked into life, but I couldn’t focus on the figures I’d been updating. I heaved a sigh. “Besides, what do you know about her?”
“What do you need to know?”
I had no idea. “She’ll leave soon.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, not having a penis and all, but what’s wrong with having a casual fling? It’ll do you good. If she’s going soon, then there’s no issue.”
I wasn’t having this conversation. Not with my long-married meddling supervisor. Not at all. I couldn’t date a single mother, and I couldn’t screw around either. That was worse, if anything. But the draw I had toward that lass…
“Leave me the list,” I grumped. “Close the door on your way out.”
Her cackle sounded all the way down the hall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fall on Your Face
Autumn
I’d blown my nice job at the bar—the realisation hit me when I arrived for my shift the next morning. All of yesterday evening, after the non-kiss, Bull had worked at my side, perfectly civil but otherwise ignoring me. Not that the heat between us had diminished any. Every time I brushed past him, I shivered, and he held himself more rigid than the stone walls of the inn. But the bar had been packed, and our only conversion was when he checked if I’d eaten. By the time Hannah, one of the waiters, offered me a ride home, Bull had vanished.
Now, just after Lena dropped me off in the bar’s yard, Denise met me at the rear door.
“Not so fast.” She held up a hand.
A flurry of snow had me tucking my hands into my armpits. “Hey?”
“Give him a minute,” she added.
“Who, Bull?”
“Who else? He drove out to your place.”
Oh! I plucked at my jacket collar, suddenly a whole lot warmer. Yeah, I should’ve expected this. So what if there’d been attraction? He wasn’t about to mess around with me just because I wanted a distraction. Shit, I didn’t even know if he was single.
Despair rose in a wave. Was it too much to ask to have one nice thing? A pair of warm arms and a gruff smile just for me? Perhaps my sister was right and I didn’t deserve it.
The roar of a powerful engine had me scouring the street. Bull’s enormous black truck pulled up.
He clambered out, his sharp gaze finding me. “Get in,” he snapped.
“Why?” If he was taking me home again, that significantly dented the earnings I’d hoped to put away this month. And I wouldn’t see Bull again, except as a customer to the bar.
My little bloom of hope died.
“Autumn.” He gave a frustrated sigh and planted his hands on his hips.
“Fine. Please wouldn’t go astray, would it?” I stumbled to the car and opened the passenger side, misery gathering.
Bull appeared at my back. “Please and thank you,” he said, then he boosted me into the seat and closed me in.
Tingling from his strength—he’d lifted me like I weighed nothing—I settled in while he stalked to the other side.
“Supply run,” he said by way of explanation, landing in his seat.
I opened then shut my mouth. “You’re taking me to buy supplies? I thought you were going to fire me.”
His lips twitched. “Dinna be daft. I’m nae the one to hire and fire bar staff. That’s up to Denise.”
Bull swung the car onto the main street, and we trundled through the small town, raising our hands in greetings to the locals who passed. In no time at all, I had become familiar with many. It was a nice feeling.
A few minutes on, we were in the dense forest with silence so thick around us I could slice it up and serve it from the grill. But this was Bull’s show. He’d decided to take me out with him—presumably entirely unnecessarily as what would I do to help with the shopping?—so it was up to him to talk.
Eventually, he did. “How do you like working in the bar?”
I spluttered a laugh.
“What?” He shot me a look before returning his attention to the mountain road.
“All the things you could ask me, and that was what you came up with?” I shook my head and peered out of the windscreen, putting on his deep voice. “Fine consistency of snow today.”
Bull snorted, his rigid shoulders relaxing a degree. “There was intent behind the question.”
“Which was…?”
“I’m interested to know how long ye plan on sticking around.”
Oh! I pulled my bobble hat from my head and shook my hair out. “A while.”
“How long is a while?”
“To be decided.”
He threw me another glance.
It was wearying, not telling anyone my past. As far as the townsfolk knew, I was on an extended visit for the holidays. Lena hadn’t pushed me any further.
Bull was trustworthy, I could feel it instinctively. Not that I’d share the scariest part of my recent history, but I could maybe relent with one or two details.
“I need to stay away from home for a while.”
“Where’s home?”
“Scotland.”
He raised his chin. “With your husband?”
I stared at him. “Husband? I didn’t even have a boyfriend! I lived with my father.”
Bull slowed the car at a junction then steered us onto a wider, busier road. While he concentrated on the manoeuvre, he worked his jaw. Then, back on track, he asked the question that was clearly bothering him. “Where’s your boy’s da?”
Oh. Did it matter if I told him who I was to Benjamin? Probably not. “Benjamin has a father, but he’s not in his life. My sister told the guy responsible that she was pregnant, and he applied for a transfer to another unit then vanished.” Then I added, in case it wasn’t clear, “Benjamin’s my nephew.”
We cruised into a wide gravel car park. Bull raised a hand to a man outside the busy warehouse then parked at the end of the line of cars, next to a stand of trees.
“Can I ask a question now?” I unclipped my seatbelt and faced him. If I didn’t change the subject, he’d start pressing for more information, and there were too many facts I didn’t want to expose. Besides, there was a lot to this man I wanted to uncover.
“Maybe.”
“You asked me if I had a husband; do you have a wife? Or a girlfriend?” Warmth rose to my face.
Bull squinted at me. “No. Do ye think I’d be here with ye now if I did?”
That was the point—we weren’t just making a supply run. With his simple words, he acknowledged the fact and, all of a sudden, my limbs went tingly, heat rushing in my veins. It was eight in the morning, not prime kissing time. “It’s a step up from you avoiding me.”
“When did I do that?”
“You wrote a contract to dodge exactly this, didn’t you?”
Bull heaved a sigh and hauled on his handle and exited the car. He crunched through the snow around to my side then opened my door. With an unreadable expression, he held out his hand. I took it and slid from my seat.
For a moment, our bodies were aligned in direct, warm contact along our legs and from where my shoulder touched his chest.
Holy hell.
“You didn’t sign that contract, I remember,” he muttered.
“Do you still want me to?” I held his gaze. Bull had the darkest brown eyes I’d ever peered into, thick black lashes framing them, but that wasn’t what had me catching my breath. My head swam from the sheer strength of his focus, like he was trying to figure me out by willpower alone. But there was a gentleness, too. I liked it. It unnerved me.
Then he spoke and ruined it all. “What did ye run from, lass?”
I recoiled and stepped past him. “What makes you think I’m running?” I called over my shoulder.
Bull closed my door and strode after me, the stomp of his footsteps loud. “Autumn, stop.”
I carried on, down the line of cars until I reached the warehouse entrance. Then I marched inside, grabbing a trolley and shaking it until it came loose from its neighbours. “What do we need to get?”
“Just stop a wee minute, will ye?”
I did, pausing at the end of a canned goods aisle. Bull took my shoulder, turning me to face him.
“Ye realise ye just ran from a conversation about running?” There was a smile on his face, his beard unable to hide it.
“And that’s funny?” I demanded.
“Maybe it isn’t, but I know a damn sight more about ye now than I did an hour ago.”
“Why is that important to you?”
Bull shifted his weight on his feet, lifting his chin to an older couple who passed us with a cart loaded with animal feed.
“Come on,” he murmured, then guided me deeper into the store.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, coming to a halt at a vegetable section. Without showing any strain, he lifted two sacks of potatoes, placing them carefully on the trolley. Large bags of root vegetables followed, then, farther down the aisle, pulses, tubs of herbs, bags of rice and grains.
“I just have to,” he finished. “It’s important to me to ken that you’re safe.”
“Oh.” I stood there, my retorts fading. “Why did you bring me with you today? You want to know more about me, but also you don’t. You want me to stay away from you, but everything else you do contradicts that.”
“What’s your point?” He dropped an oil canister into the trolley.
“At the car, I thought you were going to kiss me.”
My words resounded in the air between us. No other people frequented our aisle, but Bull glanced around all the same.
“Aye, it was on my mind.”
“What stopped you?” My heart thundered, blood rushing in my ears.
“The wee bit I ken about ye isn’t anywhere near enough.”
Okay then. With no real sense of whether this was a good idea or bad, I moved into his space, breaking his hand away from where he clutched a metal shelving unit. Then I ran my fingers up his chest.
If he thought he had a better understanding of me, then so did I of him. I pushed him back a step, provoking him.
No way could a man like Bull not take control of this. He liked my boldness, I could tell, and this way beat back the vulnerability I had no desire to show.
“What if I tell you I don’t care?” I prodded him.
His gaze darkened.
“What if you stop trying to save me and take what you want instead?” I pushed again, but this time he caught my fingers.
I stared at our joined hands, a delicious frisson of fear and excitement driving me on.
“Come on then, big man. I’m waiting.”
Bull made a sound almost like a growl. He grasped my waist and spun us so my back hit a shelf, then his thick fingers took hold of my chin. He ducked and crashed his lips on mine.
I gasped at the ferocity of his kiss. This was no tender peck, but a branding. He angled his head and owned my mouth, moving with me until I opened my lips under his.
God, his taste. His wicked tongue. Bull licked into my mouth with a carnal slide, caressing me. His soft beard grazed my skin, and it only added to the heat I was burning up on his lips.
In a rapid seduction, Bull had me wanton and willing in the back aisle of a grocery warehouse.
I hooked my leg around his, aligning our bodies even more, and Bull gave a groan that had shivers running down my spine.
Then, just as sudden as the kiss started, it stopped.
Bull ripped his lips from mine and took two paces back.
“Fuck,” he swore.
Boneless, I giggled, leaning hard on the shelves. “That was one hell of a kiss.”
“Aye, it was.” He glanced around like he’d forgotten himself and wanted to make sure we hadn’t gained an audience. Down the aisle, someone pushed a creaking trolley.
“Come, Autumn,” Bull muttered, and he gestured for me to move.
We finished the shopping in record time. Who knew why we were hurrying, but both of us needed to get out of the warehouse.
In the car, Bull boosted me into my seat then loaded the shopping. When he got in and started the engine, he gave me a look that was a mix of lust and worry.
“That kiss was a mistake,” he said finally.
“Sure. A huge mistake. I might accidentally fall on your face a few more times if I’m not careful.”
His eyes flared, but he didn’t say another word, and in loaded silence, we drove away.
At Bhaltair’s, Bull parked up around the back. The second the engine was off, he twisted to face me, and I did the same with him.
“Did you sign your own fraternisation policy?” I quipped. I moistened my lips, ready for another kiss if he was willing.
A glance down showed me he was more than ready, despite where we were.
But then, at the end of the track where it joined the main street, Lena’s car pulled up.
“No, I didn’t sign it. Autumn—” Bull started, but I held up a hand.
“Lena’s here,” I said, peering out the windscreen.
My friend exited her car and hauled open the rear door. She collected a wailing Benjamin from his car seat and propped him over her shoulder.
Something was wrong.
My pulse raced for a whole different reason.
“Sorry,” I muttered and leapt out of Bull’s car and raced across the snow.
“Ma!” Benjamin wailed. “Ma!”
&
nbsp; Oh no. It had finally hit him. His mother wasn’t here. My poor baby boy.
CHAPTER NINE
Blazing-Hot Clinch
Autumn
At the busiest time for the bar, I had to take the rest of the day off. Benjamin had a temperature and clung to me, needing me close. By the evening, he had bounced back to his normal resilient self, but my worry levels remained at a peak.
“That was the first time he grieved for Tabby,” I told Lena. We’d settled into the lounge after the kids had gone to sleep. Lena’s husband, Mark, was at Bhaltair’s, attending a Christmas party with his company. A party they were running one bartender short.
“Would it help if he spoke to her?” Lena took the other end of the couch and pulled a blanket over her knees.
“Maybe, if I can organise it.” It meant driving some distance, placing the call to the jail, hoping she was free or making an appointment if not. Then trying to persuade a one-year-old to use the phone.
“Fact is, he’s going to spend years without her. And let’s face it, she was hardly the most maternal of people to start with. Has she tried to contact you?”
I shook my head. I needed to switch my phone back on, but that meant risk, and I doubted Tabby would’ve made a call.
“The new charges are being heard tomorrow,” Lena added quietly. “I figured you’d be following the case. I am.”
I goggled at her. “So soon? I thought it would be after Christmas.”
“It’s just the first hearing to open the case. Here.” She collected her tablet from the table, her browser displaying a news page. My dad’s photo sternly stared back at me. He was in his RAF uniform, his permanent scowl in place. Tabby’s name was in the text, but I could already understand the gist of it. I handed the tablet back and stifled a rising sense of panic.
Lena blew out a breath. “There’s so much money unaccounted for… I don’t think they are going to let her out for a long time. She’s not cooperated.”
“When they interviewed me for Dad’s trial, they alluded to all kinds of places he could’ve hidden money, testing me for reactions. Like I’d know. Dad never trusted me with anything. Or Tabby for that matter. Apart from Benjamin. When I left, she told me to take him away and never come back.”