Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series)

by Raffin, Barbara

  Whatever had possessed him to invite Tess Abbot back into his home?

  Long legs, perfect palm-sized breasts, and a full bottom lip with the slightest cleft dead center. The answer wandered through his over-taxed brain.

  No. No. No. He'd relented because she'd injured herself, she needed to wash her clothes, and it all came to the fire her was responsible for. He owed her.

  More like he'd been suckered in.

  Roman took the turn into his driveway a tad tight and hit the pothole he'd affectionately named Goodyear after it had blown one of Raymond's truck tires. The jostling that hole gave Roman, though, didn't evoke any humor today. It only rattled his already throbbing brain against his skull.

  "For your sake, Tess Abbot, that phone had better be out of order."

  He stormed into the house, barely glancing at her as she descended the steps. He went to the wall phone, lifted the receiver, listened, hung up, and turned to her. "It's not out of order."

  She blinked. "Did you expect it to be?"

  "From what my clients who've been calling me all day on my cell phone tell me, I expected it to be. That would be my clients and potential clients who've been trying to call and leave messages on my answering machine the past two days. Who the hell do you know around here well enough to spend all day on the phone talking to them?"

  "I--"

  "No. Don't tell me who. I don't care who you talk to. All I care about is that half the town of Pine Mountain now has my cell phone number and is using it to reach me."

  She planted her hands on her hips and raised perfectly arched eyebrows at him. "And as a man who owns his own contracting business this is bad how?"

  "With my cell phone ringing all day long, I don't get a lot of work done."

  "Have you ever considered hiring office staff to answer your phone?"

  "The answering machine was working just fine until you came along. Besides, even if I had an office staff, how were they going to answer a phone you were yapping on?"

  "You know what your problem is, St. John?"

  "I have a pampered princess tying up my phone?"

  Through tight lips, Tess countered, "I am not a princess. I am not pampered. And I did not use your phone to entertain myself. I was making business calls."

  "You have your cell phone back."

  "Which took time to charge."

  "That couldn't have taken all day."

  "But Internet out here in the boonies--"

  "You used my computer?"

  "Hello, mine is waterlogged with a serious dent in its lid because there was a fire in my house that dropped a ceiling on it. And whose fault--"

  The veins popped out in Roman's neck.

  Tess swallowed hard. "I do a lot of business via the Internet."

  He threw up his hands and stalked off down the hall, muttering, "I'm going to go and soak in the tub."

  Mention of the bathroom reminded Tess of her laundering job, specifically his shorts and towels. She turned after him. "Roman--"

  "I don't want to hear anything else from you tonight," he called over his shoulder.

  "But I washed your shorts and bath towels."

  "Bully for you."

  "You don't understand. The towels are burgundy and the shorts white."

  He stopped on the bathroom threshold and looked at her through narrowed eyes. "What? You want a medal for doing my wash, or a chest to pin it on?"

  Tess folded her arms across her less than abundant chest. He had some nerve making a comment like that after the way he'd pawed her breasts and played torturous games with her nipples.

  She advanced on him in the narrow hall between the stairs and the bathroom, chin held high. "I just--"

  "--Wanted me to know you did something else besides talk on the phone today? Fine. Now I know."

  "But--"

  "Peace and quiet. That's all I want."

  "But--"

  He pressed the side of his finger against her lips. "Not another sound. Not a peep."

  He stepped into the bathroom and let out a god-awful groan. She moved into the doorway behind him and found him tearing her panties and bras off the shower rod, towel racks, and from over the open closet doors.

  "Some of those aren't dry yet," she protested as he dumped them into her arms.

  Holding up one shushing finger, he shut the door in her face.

  To hell with Roman St. John. If he didn't want to hear her out, then let him find out on his own about his shorts. Infer that she needed a chest, would he? The next time he tried to cop a feel, he might just pull back a bloody stump.

  #

  The sunlight piercing the bedroom window hit Tess in the face. She blinked and bolted from the bed. She was halfway to the door before she remembered she didn't have to rely on Roman for a ride today. She had her own car.

  She regarded the lumpy bed beckoning her. But decided her time would be better spent at The Castle itemizing what needed to be done to put the house back in order. She could start tossing out a few things that were beyond repair.

  No. Wait. She couldn't go into The Castle. She'd arranged to have the place ionized and that meant she couldn't go inside until Monday morning.

  The bed was looking more inviting by the minute. Except, when she slept she dreamt of Roman and those dreams weren't sweet. More like triple X-rated.

  She groaned and set about her morning ritual, selecting one of her skin lotions from the dresser top…the good skin lotion, not the one she'd picked up at The Bargain Mart. That stuff was gunk…just like Roman had said.

  She grunted. Couldn't she even apply skin lotion without thinking of him? Maybe it was time she found a bed that wasn't upstairs of Roman's bedroom. Though, if she moved out, she wouldn't have Roman's computer at her disposal. And God knows how long it would take for the local computer company, the one and only computer repair shop in Pine Mountain, to repair her damaged laptop.

  She scowled and spread a dollop of lotion up her arm. Whatever had she done in life to deserve this rural hell besides walk out on her father? A father who consigned his daughters to domesticity. A father who valued them only for the quality of sons-in-law they could attract into the family.

  A father who'd betrayed her when he should have lauded her. She was a good architect. Why couldn't he accept that? Why did he have to treat every woman as if she had no more sense than a child?

  Like Roman St. John who'd gone ballistic over his phone. She scrubbed lubricating lotion into her elbow. Here she'd washed his underwear and all he could do was rant about her tying up his phone.

  She wasn't a child to be dressed down. That's what she should have shouted back at him instead of trying to explain about his shorts.

  A burning sensation radiated from her elbow. She stopped rubbing the perfumed skin cream into it, snapped the cap back on the tube of lotion, and examined her elbow in the dresser mirror. It was red…irritated from over stimulation…like her. That's what St. John did to her.

  No wonder, by the time she'd found new places to spread out her drying undies and he was done with his bath, she no more wanted to talk to him than drive through a bad Chicago neighborhood at three a.m. with an empty gas tank. Lucky for him, he'd had the sense to not comment on the hamburgers she'd cooked…not even when they crunched.

  Oh, no way was she moving out. She was nowhere near done punishing him.

  She flung aside the tube of lotion and jerked opened the narrow top drawer where she'd put her underwear after it had dried. The box of condoms slid across the bottom of the drawer and butted up against her panties, and an unexpected pang of desire surged through her. How easily she could end this aching frustration for both of them.

  She fingered the condom box in her lingerie drawer…the open condom box. Some of the foil wrapped packets were missing. She'd checked. Where had Roman gone two nights ago to get that box of condoms? Not to a drug store. Drug stores didn't sell unsealed boxes of condoms with product missing. He'd have to have gone to a friend.

&nbs
p; A friend.

  So, Roman St. John had himself a friend he was close enough to that he could go to him in the middle of the night for a package of protection…when he was in dire need…when he had a woman ready and waiting. Not that she was all that surprised. He had a casual work relationship with his employees, judging by their overheard plans for "a beer after work" or the on-the-job teasing they exchanged. He was more than cordial with her neighbors, even flirting with the elderly Mrs. Antonetti.

  So he was well-liked enough to sometimes head home at the end of the day with a plate of Mrs. Antonetti's ravioli or a cannoli or two. Mrs. Antonetti also gave her ravioli and cannoli. Then again, her sweet, old neighbor had called her and Roman the perfect couple when Roman had reinforced the lintel above her back door after Tess had diagnosed why it was sagging and causing her door to stick in wet weather.

  The perfect couple. Tess shuddered. That's exactly why she had to ignore Roman's current frustrated state and her own. As long as she didn't want to be coupled with any man least of all one looking for a wife, abstaining was in both their best interests,

  Though, clearly, Roman wasn't thinking about how their abstaining affected her. Wasn't that just like a man? Leave him a little frustrated and he acts like you castrated him. Like he's the only one suffering. The only one with urges. Needs.

  Desires.

  Dreams of love.

  Tess groaned and shoved the box of condoms aside. She didn't have time for love. Not with her father breathing down her neck, waiting for her to fail. She had no time for Roman St. John, real or fantasized. She would dress in her hand-washed silk panties and go for a run, which should clear her head of all this sexual temptation and enable her to think out a timeline for getting The Castle back up for sale. If she was lucky and worked fast, she might even get it back on the market and sold before the bank repossessed it.

  Yep. A cup of coffee and a long run. That would get Roman out of her head.

  #

  The sweet tang of almonds wafted past Roman's nose. Tess had invaded his kitchen. The woman didn't even cook, yet she wore…flavors. Vanilla, strawberry, almond. He must have worked for her two weeks before he'd figured out those scents had nothing to do with baking. That in itself should have warned him away from her. The future Mrs. Roman St. John should be a woman who smelled of flavors because she knew her way around a kitchen, right?

  He dug his knuckles into the bread dough on the counter in front of him, kneading the dough and, hopefully, the tension from his shoulders. The fact that those enticing scents came from the bottles, jars, and tubes lined up on the dresser in his guest-bedroom should be a warning as pungent as a skunk that pretty little packages shouldn't always be invited into your home.

  The Harridan Princess was in for a surprise if she thought the local populace had surrendered itself to her subjugation. If she thought for a moment he'd relent to this latest invasion of his space and let her stay, she was in for a big surprise.

  She moved to the counter beside him. For all his determination, the assault of her nearness worked on him like yeast stirred into warm water. He punched the bread dough.

  "That coffee still hot?" she asked, her little chin bobbing at the coffee maker on the back of the counter beside where he worked, her tone suspiciously congenial.

  "Yeah."

  She inclined her head toward the cupboard above him. "Think I could have a mug?"

  "Help yourself."

  "Gee, St. John, don't sprain a wrist getting a cup for me."

  Finally, a tone he was familiar with.

  She reached past him into the cupboard for the mug, her breast brushing his elbow. He should have gotten the mug out for her. He should have moved aside and given her room. But she had a knack for making him dig his heels in, for making him resist giving her so much as an inch of leeway.

  It was a tactical error, pitting stubbornness against stubbornness. She was the Princess of Pig-headedness.

  And he was the court fool, standing there suffering the contact of her curves as she reached around him for a coffee mug. He'd mapped those curves with his eyes, his hands…his mouth. He'd climbed their enticing slopes and free-fallen into their valleys. He'd been on the brink of the Promised Land only to be barred entrance.

  He punched the bread dough again.

  As she lifted the pot from its heating tray, he gave her a sidelong glance. Skin tight running shorts. Over-sized t-shirt knotted up at her waist. Sleep tousled hair and naked lips. Damn she looked sexy.

  He took a travel mug from the cupboard and banged it down on the counter in front of her. "Here."

  "A travel mug?" she asked, coffeepot poised over the stoneware mug she'd chosen. "Am I going somewhere?"

  "To The Castle?" he said hopefully.

  "Can't," she said, filling the stoneware mug. "It's being ionized today."

  "Lucky me," he muttered and punched the bread dough yet again.

  She jammed the coffeepot back onto its hotplate. "Look, St. John, I'm trying to be nice here."

  "Haven't had much practice at it, have you?"

  Her mouth popped open.

  He flipped the dough over with such force it raised a cloud of flour.

  She fanned the flour dust away from her mug. "Just because I rejected you the other night--"

  "Rejected me?" He rounded on her. "Somebody here has an inflated ego and it's not me."

  She snorted. "Get real, St. John."

  He shook the lump of dough in her face. "I'll tell you what's real. Real was you stripping off my pajama bottoms. Real was you sliding your hand into my crotch. Real was you begging me to stay."

  Something glinted in her eyes, something that made him think of…yearning. Or was it passion he saw in those dark depths? Or fight? Fight would make sense. More sense than the suggestion of fright he thought he glimpsed before she blinked away everything but her usual princess-like glare.

  With the backs of two fingers, she pushed the lump of dough away from her face and raised the coffee mug toward her lips. "Must you rant on before I've even had my first cup of coffee?"

  God, but she was maddening. And damned if he didn't want her more than ever because of it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sweat plastered the t-shirt to Tess' spine and dripped down her brow into her eyes. Her calves burned from running and her hands ached from clenching them into tight fists. She'd been running for an hour and hadn't had a single thought about The Castle. Too bad she couldn't say the same about Roman St. John. So much for clearing her head of that man.

  If only he hadn't thrown the details of their aborted affair in her face, especially the detail about her stripping off his pajama bottoms. Oh those happy face pjs and the wonder of Roman St. John rising beneath them. How naturally her hand had--

  "Don't go there," she panted, her feet pounding the blacktop road that wound through woods, over creeks, and past dirt driveways.

  If only he wasn't such a blasted Boy Scout. Then she could have slept with the man, rid herself of this insane itch, and moved on with her life. But no, he had to be the one man she was attracted to, a blasted knight come to rescue the damsel in distress and, worse, marry her.

  Why had she admitted her fear of the dark to him? Why had she told him about that damned stormy night when she'd almost drowned? She hated the damsel in distress thing. It made a woman seem weak and turned men into chest-pounding rescuers. And no man had ever helped her that didn't have an agenda of his own.

  So, what was Roman's?

  To get her out from under his roof. She couldn't very well blame him for wanting that. She'd insulted him, wounded him, and goaded him. And he didn't seem to have a motive beyond that…except to finish what they'd started two nights ago, something that tempted her to distraction as well. She really should move out.

  But who would hold her through the next storm?

  Tess scowled as the corner before Roman's place loomed closer. She didn't need a man to hold her hand through stormy weather. She'd deal
t with wind and lightning on her own before, though she'd usually done so by closing her drapes, cranking the volume up on her CD player, and crawling under the covers in her Chicago condo.

  Make this work for you, girl. Make leaving more attractive than staying. Yeah. I could go back to the city.

  The city where she could be anonymous.

  "Provided I don't run into my father, my jerk of an ex-fiancé, or anyone connected with either of them."

  Where there were no neighbors like Mrs. Antonetti who brought her homemade apple pie and told her stories about Aunt Honey. Or Kitt Delaney, the young mother across the street, whom she'd hired to help her clean The Castle. Okay, so there were some good points to Pine Mountain.

  But the city is convenient.

  Except for parking shortages, traffic jams, and endless lines.

  The city has plays, and art, and real people playing real music to real audiences, she silently lamented into the fresh country air, feeling a little nostalgic for bus exhaust.

  Just then, a truck lurched around the corner, its rust-patched chrome bumper catching the sunlight and reflecting it back into her face. Its over-sized tires spit gravel as it veered momentarily off the blacktop. Tess was halfway into the ditch by the time the truck righted itself and sped off down the road, the cab full of teenagers laughing.

  Muttering a curse, she climbed back onto the gravel shoulder of the road. The ball of her foot hurt when she took a step. She must have bruised it stepping on a rock on her way into the ditch. At least in the city there were no ditches to fall into…just curbs, which a person could rely on to be gravel free. Though there was the occasional wino.

  Still, in the city, a person knew what to look out for. A person was safe there…at least from a well-muscled, protective Norse God of a man.

  Tess limped around the bend towards Roman's house. She was done running. She was done debating. The bottom line, she was too attracted to the man to stay under the same roof with him. If she stayed, sooner or later, she'd lean on him for support again. Let him support her in any way, shape, or form and her father would consider her first solo project a success only because of Roman's input, not to mention she'd most assuredly end up in his bed.