Not Christmas Without You
Page 21
She ignored the mockery in his dark, deep voice. His voice always surprised her, in part because it was so deep and husky that it vibrated in his chest, making her think of strong, potent drink and shadowy attics and moonlit bedrooms, but also because until now, he’d never said more than a couple of sentences to her.
He wasn’t a big talker. But then, he wasn’t in the house much. Brock spent most of his time outdoors working, and when he was inside, he sat at his desk, poring over accounting books and papers, or by the fire in the family room reading.
Maybe that’s what made her so comfortable here. The silence.
The dearth of conversation. The lack of argument. The absence of tension.
She needed the solitude of the Copper Mountain Ranch. She needed the quiet. The quiet was a balm to her soul. It sounded dreadful put like that. Corny as well as pathetic, but the loss of everything she knew, and everything she was, had changed her. Broken her. All she could do now was continue to mend. Eventually she’d be able to cope with noise and chaos and families again, but not yet. Not for a long, long time.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the buddy system,” she said flatly. “It’s practiced by virtually everyone… including the Boy Scouts.”
He gave her another long look, his dark gaze resting on her as if she were a bit peculiar.
Right now, she felt a bit peculiar.
It would help if he stopped staring at her so hard. His intense scrutiny was making her overly warm, and a little bit dizzy.
“I was never a Boy Scout,” he rasped.
Looking at his long shaggy black hair and shadowed jaw, she could believe it. “You’re missing the point.”
“I get your point.” He stalked toward her, his dark gaze holding hers, his jaw hard.
Panicked, she stepped back, and again, as he stepped close, his big body brushing hers as he reached into the cabinet for a mug. “But I’m not a little boy,” he added, glancing at her from beneath his thick black lashes, a warning in his dark eyes, “and don’t need coddling.”
Energy surged through Harley, a hot sharp electric current that made her heart race and her stomach fall. Legs weak, she took another step sideways, increasing the distance between them. “Obviously you’re not a child.”
He grabbed the pot of coffee, interrupting the brewing cycle to fill his cup. “Then don’t treat me like one.”
Her heart continued to pound. She wasn’t scared but she definitely was… bothered.
Harley bit down on the inside of her cheek, holding back her first angry retort, aware that the kitchen, peaceful until just minutes ago, now crackled with tension.
“You don’t think I should worry about you?” she asked, arms folding across her chest so he couldn’t see that her hands were trembling.
“It’s not your job to worry about me.”
“No, I’m just to worry about your boxers and your stomach,” she retorted.
He arched an eyebrow. “Is that appropriate, Miss Diekerhoff?”
His scathing tone made her flush and look away. She bit down on her cheek again, appalled that she was losing her cool now, and counted to ten. She rarely lost her temper but she was mad. Somehow he’d struck a nerve in her… had gotten under her skin.
When she was sure she could speak calmly she managed a terse apology. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t appropriate.” Then she set the thermos down on the counter—hard, harder than she intended, and the crack of metal against granite sent a loud echo through the kitchen “And you are right. What you do is none of my concern, so go out in the storm, in the dark, all by yourself. As long as I’m getting paid, I won’t give it a second thought.”
Heart still racing, she fled the kitchen for the adjoining mudroom to move the laundry forward. Tears burned the back of her eyes and she was breathing hard and she didn’t even know why she was so upset, only that she was.
She was furious.
Stupid meathead of a man, thinking he was immortal, invincible, that nothing bad could happen…
Swallowing the curses she wouldn’t let herself utter aloud, Harley shoved the tangle of heavy, wet jeans and cords from the washer into the dryer.
But testosterone didn’t make a man immortal.
Just daring. Risky.
Foolish.
Her chest ached, the pressure on her heart horrendous. If David hadn’t been so confident. If David hadn’t been such a proud man. If David….
“What’s the matter with you?” Brock demanded, filling the laundry room doorway as if it were a sliver of space instead of forty inches wide by eight feet tall. “You’re acting like a crazy lady.”
Harley jammed the wet clothes into the dryer so hard she slammed her wrist bone on the round barrel opening, sending pain shooting up her arm.
Tears started to her eyes. Worry and regret flooded her. Worry for Brock, and regret that she’d said too much. She wasn’t here to talk. She was here to work. She knew that. “I’m not crazy,” she retorted huskily, rubbing the tender spot on her wrist. “Don’t call me crazy.”
“You’re behaving in a completely irrational—”
“It’s a blizzard outside, Mr. Sheenan. And I was merely asking you to take precautions when you headed back out, and if that makes me crazy, then so be it. I am crazy. Make that a lunatic.”
His black eyebrows flattened and he looked at her so long it crossed her mind that she’d said far too much, pushed too hard, perhaps even lost her job.
And then his dark eyes glimmered and the corner of his mouth lifted faintly. “A lunatic?”
There was something in the way he repeated his words that made her want to smile.
Or maybe it was the shadow in his eyes that looked almost like amusement.
Or that very slight lift of his firm lips.
He seemed to be fighting a smile. Could it be?
If so, it was the closest she’d ever come to seeing him smile. Brock was a serious man. The agency said the death of his wife had changed him.
She understood. It’d been three years since the accident, and she still grieved for David and her children.
Her desire to smile faded. Her heart burned. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out.
But then, there were no words.
The pain had been unspeakable.
She closed her eyes, held her breath, holding the agony in, and then she found her strength, and exhaled, and met her employer’s shuttered gaze.
“Let me fill your thermos,” she said unsteadily. “I’ve got some snacks for your saddlebag, too. Obviously you don’t have to take them. It’s entirely up to you.”
He leaned against the doorframe, blocking her exit. “You’re even more bossy than my last housekeeper, and yet you’re just half her age. I don’t want to know you in twenty years.”
And just like that he brought her back to reality. Who they were. Why she was here. His temporary housekeeper.
Harley managed a tight smile. “Good. You won’t have to know me in twenty years, because I’m only here until January thirteenth.” She looked up at him, expression blank. “And if you don’t return tonight, then I suppose I’m free tomorrow.” She motioned for him to move, with an impatient gesture of her finger. “Now if you’d please move, I have work to do.”
*
Brock didn’t know if he should throttle his bossy, imperious housekeeper or fire her.
He ought to fire her. Right here, right now. She wasn’t the right woman for the job. Wasn’t the right woman for him.
He swallowed hard, biting back the sharp retort as he stared down into his housekeeper’s startling green eyes.
What the hell was he doing with a beautiful woman for a housekeeper?
Harley Diekerhoff was not supposed to be attractive.
The name wasn’t attractive. The name conjured visions of a stout, strong woman with massive forearms and a sprinkling of dark hair above a thin pale lip.
Or so he’d imagined when the temp employment agency had given him h
er file as the best possible candidate for the six-week position as housekeeper and cook for his ranch.
He’d wanted a stout woman with massive forearms and a hairy upper lip. He’d been confident he’d hired one.
Instead Harley Diekerhoff was beautiful, and young, and probably the best housekeeper he’d ever had.
It pissed him off.
He didn’t want a stunning thirty-four-year-old with hauntingly high cheekbones and eyebrows that arched and turned into wings, making him want to look into her cool green eyes again and again.
He didn’t want a housekeeper with a wide full-lipped mouth, creamy skin, and thick hair the color of rich, decadent caramel.
And he most certainly didn’t want a housekeeper with curves, endless curves, curves that did nothing but tease his control and inflame his imagination.
His jaw tightened. He battled his temper. “Don’t get too carried away,” he said curtly. “I’ll be back tonight. You’ll still have a job to do in the morning.”
Her tawny eyebrows arched even higher. Her long ponytail slipped over her shoulder. “Good, because I like the job. It’s just—” she broke off, lips compressing, swallowing the words.
“What?” he demanded.
She shook her head, white teeth pinching her plump lower lip.
He tried not to focus on the way her teeth squeezed the soft lip. He didn’t want to focus on her at all. “What?” he repeated.
She sighed and glanced down at her hands. “Nothing,” she said quietly.
He said nothing.
She sighed again, twisted her hands. “I like it here,” she added. “And I like you. So just be careful. That’s all.”
He stared at her, perplexed.
She was nothing like Maxine, his housekeeper of the past nine years. Maxine didn’t laugh or smile or cry. She arrived every morning, did her work, and then left every night when her husband came to pick her up.
Maxine was silent and sober and moved through the house as if invisible.
Harley moved through the house as if a beacon shone on her. She practically glowed, bathed with light.
He didn’t understand how she did it, or what she did, only that from the moment she’d arrived seven days ago nothing in this house had been the same.
Suddenly aware that they were standing so close he could smell the scent of her shampoo—something sweet and floral, freesia or orange blossom and entirely foreign in his masculine house—he abruptly stepped back, letting her pass.
His gaze followed her as she crossed the kitchen, hating himself for noticing how the apron around her waist emphasized how small it was as well as the gentle swell of hips. “Just leave my dinner in the oven,” he said.
“If that’s what you want,” she said, reaching for the coffee pot to fill his thermos.
“That’s what I want,” he growled, looking away, unable to watch her a moment longer because just having her in his house made him feel things he didn’t want to feel.
Like desire.
And hunger.
Lust.
He didn’t lust. Not anymore. Maybe when he was a kid, young and randy with testosterone, he battled with control, but he didn’t battle for control, not at thirty-nine.
At least, he hadn’t battled for control in years.
But he was struggling now, inexplicably drawn to this temporary housekeeper who looked so fresh and wholesome in her olive green apron with its sprigs of holly berries that he wanted to touch her. Kiss her. Taste her.
And that was just plain wrong.
He ground his teeth together, held his breath, and cursed the employment agency for sending him a sexy housekeeper.
She walked toward him, held out the filled thermos and foil-wrapped packets of cheese sausage and coffee cake. “Be careful.”
He glanced down at her, seeing but not wanting to see how her apron outlined her shape. Hips, full breasts, and a tiny waist he could circle with two hands. Even with her hideous apron strings wrapped twice around her waist.
Aprons were supposed to hide the body. Her apron just emphasized her curves. And olive was such a drab color but somehow it made her eyes look mysterious and cool and green and her lips dark pink and her skin—
“I’m always careful,” he ground out, taking the thermos and foil packages from her, annoyed all over again.
He was a man about to turn forty and he’d spent the past eleven years raising two kids on his own, and he might not be a perfect father or a perfect man but he tried his best. He did. And while he appreciated his new housekeeper’s concern, he didn’t have time to be babied, and he certainly wasn’t about to explain himself. Not to his brothers, his dad, and especially not to a staggeringly pretty woman from California who was now living in his house, under his roof, bending and leaning and doing all sorts of things with her incredibly appealing body, all the while humming as she went about her work as if she were Snow White or Mary Poppins.
Most annoying to have a beautiful housekeeper. He would never have hired her if he’d realized she was so damn pretty. He didn’t want pretty in his house. He didn’t want to be tempted. He had a ranch to manage and two children who would be home from boarding school for their holidays in another week and he couldn’t afford to get distracted by a pretty face or a shapely body.
His gaze narrowed as it swept Harley Diekerhoff’s long, lean legs and gently rounded hips before skimming her small waist, then lifting to her face. “Always careful,” he repeated, and stalked out through the kitchen door to the back porch.
Harley Diekerhoff might be a perfect cook and housekeeper, but she was also a temptation, and that was a problem he didn’t need.
Find out what happens next…
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About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over fifty five romances and women’s fiction titles, Jane Porter has been a finalist for the prestigious RITA award five times and won in 2014 for Best Novella with her story, Take Me, Cowboy, from Tule Publishing. Today, Jane has over 12 million copies in print, including her wildly successful, Flirting With Forty, picked by Redbook as its Red Hot Summer Read, and reprinted six times in seven weeks before being made into a Lifetime movie starring Heather Locklear. A mother of three sons, Jane holds an MA in Writing from the University of San Francisco and makes her home in sunny San Clemente, CA with her surfer husband and two dogs.
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