by Gemma Snow
Christian frowned. He wasn’t unaccustomed to a heavy workload—that was life on a farm, up with the sun and no weekends off. But he didn’t like the way her voice sounded, and even though he didn’t need that much sleep to function, five and a half hours a night just wasn’t enough after a while.
“Do you need to work that hard?” he asked. “I mean, they’re what, parties and conferences? Not the end of the world.”
She laughed, but he didn’t like the sound, a little tired and a whole lot of self-effacing.
“You’re being awfully nice to me, Mr. Badass.” He scowled, which only made her laugh again. “But if you want the truth, no, I didn’t want to do corporate events. When I graduated UCLA and Daniels and Hark offered me the position, I couldn’t turn it down. It pays really well and the work is challenging and interesting, but…I don’t know. I feel like something might be missing.”
He stroked her hair, a little disturbed with how content he felt just lying here beside her in the early morning sun. He was being really nice to her, far nicer than was smart. And he couldn’t have stopped himself if the sky had started falling.
“Well, if you didn’t want to do corporate,” he asked, “what did you want to do?”
At that, her smile brightened, all remnants of that niggling frustration leaving her face.
“Weddings, actually,” she said. “They don’t pay as well and I’d have to start my own business if I wanted to make enough to continue living in San Francisco, since it’s just so freaking expensive, but I always saw myself doing weddings. I don’t know. I have time…” she trailed off. “Why agricultural engineering?”
Christian didn’t miss the change of subject, but he let it go. It was evident that she had to work through her own career issues before he got involved. Not that he had any plans to get involved.
“I guess I just had a head for numbers.” He shrugged. “Mason gave us jobs here when we were fourteen, and not long after, I started suggesting changes to him. He always gave me a chance—some were miserable failures, but others turned out really well. When he offered to send us to college, I realized that I really loved making the ranch function to the best of its ability, so I focused on how to do that.”
She stroked his face, sending a shiver down Christian’s back. “You are full of surprises, Christian Harlow,” she said. “All tough guy on the outside, but there’s so much more to you than that.”
The breath caught in Christian’s chest and he froze like a stone. How long had people seen him as the inked-up troublemaker, despite his degree and expertise? And here she was, not two days in his life, and she’d breached the dark surface to see him, even though him had been a real asshole to her from the start.
“I hear Ryder’s truck,” he said, all of a sudden needing space to breathe. “Want breakfast?”
She rose from the bed, giving him a bright smile while she dressed, as though unfazed by the abruptness of his departure.
“No one’s cooked me breakfast in a long time,” she said. “Can you make pancakes?”
Christian laughed. “I can make one hell of a pancake.”
Chapter Eight
Ryder walked into the kitchen, surprised to be greeted by so many delicious scents. He raised an eyebrow at Christian, who appeared to be…cooking? Hmm. This is confusing, if not just that little bit alarming.
“Hey, I can cook,” Christian said, shooting him a dark look. Either he’d spoken aloud, or Christian was just way too good at reading him. “I just let you think I can’t so you’ll feed me.”
Ryder was damn sure that Christian’s sudden desire to make—Jesus Christ, are those chocolate chip pancakes?—had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the slight, beautiful woman wearing one of Christian’s Harley tank tops and nothing else, sitting propped up on the kitchen counter. Damn, she really didn’t look like a city girl now, not with the softness in her lips and eyes, or the messy way her hair curled down her back and across her shoulders. If they managed to coax this out of her in just a day, he could only imagine what they could do with a week or more.
Guilt clenched in Ryder’s belly. He’d spent the last half an hour at the bank, going over Mason’s will and the requirements for a loan. All should have been good news. The law was on their side when it came to purchasing the land and their collateral for those last few thousand bucks checked out.
But if it was good news, then why did it make Ryder feel like he’d drunk too much moonshine? Maybe they should just tell her the truth about the whole thing. The formidable, intimidating woman who had stepped out of the white BMW in high heels just one day ago was nowhere in sight. Instead, sitting on his damn kitchen counter, the smiling, half-naked goddess who had fucked both their brains out the night before was at that moment sucking chocolate off Christian’s finger while he laughed.
And that sight made Ryder feel a little odd. Not guilty but…jealous? No, they’d shared plenty of lovers in the past, and never once had ego or envy gotten in the way of a good time. And that was all this was—a good time, a way to keep Maddy Hollis distracted while they cobbled together the money to buy her family ranch out from under her nose. Put that way, the decision to keep her in the dark made Ryder feel like shit at the bottom of his boots after a day in the barn. And he sure as hell couldn’t be thinking of her as Maddy, even if the fool nickname had stuck in his mind the very first time Christian had used it. Maddy was so much softer than Madison. It was this version of her, compared to the one from when she’d first arrived.
He didn’t deserve her softness. Her freckles and her laugh and her long, tempting legs made him ache, and not just physically. Part of him wished he were the one making her breakfast, feeding her chocolate chips and making her smile. But Ryder had long ago come to grips with the truth—some people weren’t destined for love and he was one of them. Dear old Dad had made damn sure he knew it, and still, some days, he wondered why Christian’s dad, Bill, and Mason had bothered to take him in, even after all they knew about where he’d grown up. It had been some fifteen years since he’d left his dad’s house—shack—and still the wounds simmered below the surface of his memories, disturbed by too much movement or thinking in the direction of the past.
He must have had quite the scowl on his face, because when Ryder glanced back over to Christian and Madison, they were both staring at him with confused expressions. Hers was sweeter, more innocent and questioning, but Christian’s look said six ways to Sunday he knew just what was going on in Ryder’s brain. About Madison, maybe, and more than maybe about his dad, too. And fuck all to that. Ever since he’d moved in with Christian, escaping his own tragic family history to finish high school, his best friend had been able to read him like a fucking open book. For once, in a damn long time, Ryder didn’t want Christian in his head.
“I’m going to the barn,” he said, his voice gruffer than he meant it to be, as shown by Christian raising his eyebrow and a shadow of sadness passing across Madison’s pretty dark eyes. His heart softened, just a little. She was just so pretty. A smattering of freckles danced across the bridge of her nose, ones that hadn’t been there yesterday. He liked half-naked, no-makeup Maddy a lot more than the city-girl version.
“I’m being grumpy,” he said, and placed a soft kiss on her cheek.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Duty calls.”
He nodded. “Everyone’s about to have a baby these days. I have to do my maternity rounds.” Then, because he couldn’t stop himself, Ryder leaned down and kissed Maddy’s swollen pink lips in a rough embrace. She tasted like chocolate and sunshine and something summery and free and completely addicting. “Thanks for the pancake.” He snatched one off the plate and took a big bite, winking at Maddy when Christian squawked. “You know where to find me,” Ryder tossed over his shoulder.
Usually, the barn offered him solace, an escape from the sometimes-oppressive memories of his childhood and, more recently, the grief that threatened to overwhelm him with Mason’s passi
ng. The place’s comforting earthy scents and animal chatter was his escape, a reminder that he had a shiny degree and a doctor in front of his name and achievements and successes, all the ones everyone had always said a Dean boy could never get. Well, he’d worked hard for them and now he lived his dream, spending the day with animals, caring and tending for them. Animals had always been less complicated than people.
But even the horses and goats didn’t offer their normal respite from his churning thoughts. When the barn door opened and shut a little while later, he almost jumped out of his skin at the sound.
“I didn’t mean to spook you,” Maddy said. She wore a pair of dark jeans that looked mighty expensive for where she stood in a barn full of pregnant horses, and a flowing white tank top that made him ache to taste her again, to touch her and explore her body they way they’d passed the night.
“Not spooked,” he said, though they both knew he was lying. Less than a full day after arriving, this woman made him nervous and excited in the schoolboy way that set him on edge, a way he hadn’t acted since asking Kitty Scranton to prom.
“You seemed upset this morning,” she said, not pointing out the obvious lie. Instead of continuing, however, she walked around the edge of the barn, communicating with each animal she passed and, despite the expensive clothes, despite his own first impression, she looked as though she belonged there, among the animals. In his barn. With him.
Back off, Ryder.
“I’m sorry I was an ass,” he said, wiping horseshoe grease off his hands before walking over to her. She looked up at him with hesitation in her face, as if she wasn’t certain where they stood. Ryder hated that she felt unsure around him, though he was no closer to naming this thing between them than she was.
“I was worried,” Maddy admitted, her low voice taking him by surprise. She raised her hand, cupping his cheek in a way both familiar and innocent. The simple touch just about undid him. He didn’t just want her—he ached for her with a fierceness that took his breath and made every thought in his mind go blank. “What’s in this head of yours, Ryder Dean?” she murmured. “Inquiring minds want to know.”
He shifted his face in her hand, just enough to kiss the soft flesh of her palm. All the air had gone out of the barn and Ryder was in free fall.
“Inquiring minds will be sorry they asked,” he said. “There’s a whole lot in there even I don’t want to think about.”
She shook her head. “I’m just starting to understand why we have to talk about those things most of all.” Glancing up at the horse before her, Dolly, Maddy continued, “Do you mind talking about Mason?”
Though his name made Ryder’s heart hurt a little, he shook his head. “It’d be my pleasure to talk about Mason. What do you want to know?”
Maddy sighed and grew visibly frustrated. “I don’t even know. I lost my parents when I was a kid. Grew up with my dad’s brother’s family. I don’t know much of anything about my mom’s family at all.”
There was so much grief and tragedy rolled into a few simple sentences that Ryder simply pulled Madison close and held her. She took a few shallow breaths against his chest and, when she looked up at him, her eyes were glassy.
“Mason was a good man,” he said, his voice a little gravelly and husky. “Anyone would have been lucky to call him family. I certainly felt that way and I know Christian did, too. Christian, his dad Bill, and Mason are the men I respect most in this world.”
He didn’t miss her questioning gaze and, while he might have ignored it for another person, something about this woman made Ryder open his mouth and give the answer to her unasked question.
“My daddy was a real sick son of a bitch,” he admitted, still hating to say it after all these years. “Took the bottle like a duck to water. My momma passed when I was still a kid, then he took to beating me the way he used to beat on her. I finally got strong enough to see past it when I got a little older and Bill took me in and I lived with them from when I was sixteen to when I left for college.” And though those memories had been with him for over a decade, it still felt raw and intimate to tell another person, hell, a stranger, even if she didn’t exactly feel like one. Desperate to get away from the past, he asked “What about you? Grow up with your cousins?”
Maddy nodded, her eyes sad. “One cousin, Lily. She’s my Christian.” She said the last sentence with the painful twist of a smile. “Best friend in the whole world. She runs a flower shop in San Francisco, down the street from my office.”
Her self-effacing tone made Ryder raise an eyebrow. “So close and worlds apart?” he asked, seeing something just below the surface.
She laughed, but there was no spark of humor in those rich brown eyes. “You could say that. I don’t know. I guess I get jealous of her or something. She works night and day to keep the place alive, but, damn, she’s so happy. Lils followed her dream, you know? She’s the boss of her own life. That all seems really nice sometimes.”
Ryder tipped Maddy’s chin up so he could look her in the eye. “Why not leave?” The second his words hit the air, something glowed in his chest, something he had no right to feel. To hope. “Why stay with your job if you feel that way?”
She knit her brows and pursed her lips in an approximation of a rueful grin. “Well, up until a week ago, I didn’t exactly have anything else doing. Though, I suppose with the ranch profits, I could do just about anything I wanted.” A different sensation clanged in his chest that time, the sound as heavy and echoing as a metal pipe falling down a well. He needed to tell her the truth, about their deal with Mason, about how they had kind of sort of used her, seduced her into distraction. Okay, so that hadn’t been a hardship. They’d have done it, anyway, since neither of them seemed able to keep their eyes or hands off her, but something was changing here and she damn well deserved the truth.
But he needed to talk to Christian first. They’d gone into this stupid-ass plan together, but it wasn’t just that. Deep down, they were brothers and Christian deserved as much a say in the matter as Ryder did, or at least a heads-up regarding what Ryder was going to do.
“What would you want to do?” he asked, “if you could do anything?”
She paused to think about that for a moment before slowly replying, “Well, I’ve always loved events, but I think I’d liked to be more in charge, run my own business or something, instead of having to answer to my bosses. I told Christian this morning, I’d always wanted to do weddings, no more of this corporate shit. It just gets so old and dull. When I’m planning a really great event, I get inspired, ya know? It’s been a long time since I’ve been inspired.”
If he were smart, and he considered himself smart, with the whole Dr. in front of his name thing, then he’d hightail it on the next train out of Montana. Because watching this strong, powerful woman struggle with a sense of self, confident despite her lack of direction, so brutally honest with him in the wake of their short-lived connection, it made him want things—and not just physical things either. Though the expression of deep concentration on her face had him wanting that too, as did the intimacy of the room.
“Ryder?” Her voice was husky and sweet as tea and at that moment he had a sharp craving for the taste of chocolate chip pancakes on her lips. With the slowest of deliberation, he raised one eyebrow and she let out a soft laugh. “Don’t look at me like that!”
Mmm, he liked her tone, laughing and aroused all at once. He loomed over her, stepping forward until he had her pressed against the barn wall.
“Like what, city girl?” he asked, his voice betraying the rising desire wreaking havoc on his control.
“Like you want to eat me,” she whispered. Wench. She knew exactly how those words affected him. The image of her bent over, hands against the wall and long legs spread wide, crossed Ryder’s mind and now it was the only thing he could see.
“Sugar, if you doubt how much I wanna eat you, I didn’t do a very good job last night.”
Her cheeks reddened, a contrast that
was surprising in its innocence to the heat pooling behind those dark eyes.
“I don’t quite remember,” she said, her voice more moan than whisper. “Maybe you should remind me.”
His own reply was nothing short of a growl. “It would be my pleasure.” He brought his mouth to hers in a desperate tangle, raked his hand through her soft hair and pulled her as close to his body as possible. But it wasn’t enough. With this demanding, passionate woman, he didn’t know if it would ever be enough.
As they kissed, he quickly unbuttoned her jeans then unzipped them and pushed them down her legs. He reached out and grabbed a handful of her plump ass, squeezing hard. Maddy squealed and arched up into his body, pressing supple flesh against his rigid cock, and Ryder groaned before sinking to his knees in the hay.
He pressed soft, heated kisses to her lace-covered pussy, each stroke drawing another long, hot moan from Maddy’s mouth, and it wasn’t long before he licked, sucked and pressed his own desperate mouth to her panties. Fuck, it made him a little unhinged to bring her pleasure. He slid her jeans down further, just enough to get her scrap of panties out of the way, revealing her swollen, glistening pussy.
Ryder moved to take off his Stetson, but Maddy stayed his movements with a hand around his wrist.
“Leave the hat on.”
Her demand sent fire straight to his cock and his balls tightened, hot and heavy, responding to the growl in her voice. If she wanted to fuck a cowboy, he was more than happy to volunteer for the position—any position.
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, then tongued her opening, probing her hole. Maddy was responsive and so fucking sexy, with her breathy moans and the way she clutched at the air, signaling she was nearing her release. But Ryder didn’t just want her to come—he wanted her to fucking explode all over his mouth, so he thumbed her clit, swirling it around in rough, jerky motions while he tongue-fucked her, until Maddy shook and moaned, breaking apart all over him, screaming his name like a prayer in a hurricane.