by Maisey Yates
She knew him better than she knew almost anyone. Knew the shape of his face, knew his scent, knew his voice. But his scent surrounding her like this, the feel of his face beneath her hands, the sound of that voice—transformed into a feral, passionate growl as he continued to ravish her—was an unknown. Was something else entirely.
Then, suddenly—just as suddenly as he had initiated it—the kiss was over. He released his hold on her, pushing her back. There was nothing but air between them now. Air and a whole lot of feelings. He was standing there, his hands planted on his lean hips, his chest rising and falling with each labored breath. “Six point five?” he asked, his tone challenging. “That sure as hell was no six point five, Anna Brown, and if you’re honest with yourself, you have to admit that.”
She sucked in a harsh, unsteady breath, trying to keep the shock from showing on her face. “I don’t have to admit any such thing.”
“You’re a little liar.”
“What does it matter?” she asked, scowling.
“How would you like it if I told you that you were only average compared to other women I’ve kissed?”
“I’d shut your head in the truck door.”
“Exactly.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “So don’t think I’m going to let the same insults stand, honey.”
“Don’t babe me,” she spat. “Don’t honey me.”
Triumph glittered in his dark eyes. The smugness so certain it was visible even in the moonlight. “Then don’t kiss me again.”
“You were the one who kissed me!” she shouted, throwing her arms wide.
“This time. But you started it. Don’t do it again.” He turned around, heading back toward his truck. All she could do was stand there and stare as he drove away.
Something had changed tonight. Something inside of her. She didn’t think she liked it at all.
Five
“Now, I don’t want to be insensitive or hurt your feelings, princess, but why are you being such an asshole today?”
Chase looked over at Sam, who was staring at him from his position by the forge. The fire was going hot and they were pounding out iron, doing some repairs on equipment. By hand. Just the way both of them liked to work.
“I’m not,” Chase said.
“Right. Look, there’s only room for one of us to be a grumpy cuss, and I pretty much have that position filled. So I would appreciate it if you can get your act together.”
“Sorry, Sam, are you unable to take what you dish out every day?”
“What’s going on with you and Anna?”
Chase bristled at the mention of the woman he’d kissed last night. Then he winced when he remembered the kiss. Well, remembered was the wrong word. He’d never forgotten it. But right now he was mentally replaying it, moment by moment. “What did you hear?”
Sam laughed. An honest-to-God laugh. “Do I look like I’m on the gossip chain? I haven’t talked to anybody. It’s just that I saw her leaving your house last night wearing a red dress and sneakers, and then saw her this morning when she went into the shop. She was pissier than you are.”
“Anna is always pissy.” Sam treated his statement to a prolonged stare. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just that her brothers bet her that she couldn’t get a date. I figured I would help her out with that.”
“How?”
“Well...” he said, hesitating about telling his brother the whole story. Sam wasn’t looking to change the business on the ranch. He didn’t care about their family legacy. Not like Chase did. But Chase had made promises to tombstones and he wasn’t about to break them.
It was one of their main sources of contention. So he wasn’t exactly looking forward to having this conversation with his older brother.
But it wasn’t like he could hide it forever. He’d just sort of been hoping he could hide it until he’d shown up with investment money.
“That’s an awfully long pause,” Sam said. “I’m willing to bet that whatever you’re about to say, I’m not going to like it.”
“You know me well. Anna got invited to go to the big community charity event that the West family hosts every year. Now I want to make sure that we can extend our contract with them. Plus...doing horseshoes and gates isn’t cutting it. We can move into doing details on custom homes. To doing art pieces and selling our work across the country, not just locally. To do that we need investors. And the West fund-raiser’s a great place to find them. Plus, if I only have to wear a suit once and can speak to everyone in town that might be interested in a single shot? Well, I can’t beat that.”
“Dammit, Chase, you know I don’t want to commit to something like that.”
“Right. You want to continue on the way we always have. You want to shoe horses when we can, pound metal when the opportunity presents itself, build gates, or whatever else might need doing, then go off and work on sculptures and things in your spare time. But that’s not going to be enough. Less and less is done by hand, and people aren’t willing to pay for handcrafted materials. Machines can build cheaper stuff than we can.
“But the thing is, you can make it look special. You can turn it into something amazing. Like you did with my house. It’s the details that make a house expensive. We can have the sort of clients who don’t want work off an assembly line. The kind who will pay for one of a kind pieces. From art on down to the handles on their kitchen cabinets. We could get into some serious custom work. Vacation homes are starting to spring up around here, plus people are renovating to make rentals thanks to the tourism increase. But we need some investors if we’re really going to get into this.”
“You know I hate this. I don’t like the idea of charging a ton of money for a...for a gate with an elk on it.”
“You’re an artist, Sam,” he said, watching his brother wince as he said the words. “I know you hate that. But it’s true.”
“I hate that, too.”
“You’re talented.”
“I hit metal with a hammer. Sometimes I shape it into something that looks nice. It’s not really all that special.”
“You do more than that and you know it. It’s what people would be willing to pay for. If you would stop being such a nut job about it.”
Sam rubbed the back of his neck, his expression shuttered. “You’ve gotten off topic,” he said finally. “I asked you about Anna, not your schemes for exploiting my talents.”
“Not really. The two are connected. I want to go to this thing to talk to the Wests. I want to talk about investment opportunities and expanding contracts with other people deemed worthy of an invite. In case you haven’t noticed, we weren’t on that list.”
“Yeah, I get that. But why would the lately not-so-great McCormacks be invited?”
“That’s the problem. This place hasn’t been what it was for a couple of generations, and when we lost Mom and Dad...well, we were teenagers trying to keep up a whole industry, and now we work for these people, not with them. I aim to change that.”
“You didn’t think about talking to me?” Sam asked.
“Oh, I did. And I decided I didn’t want to have to deal with you.”
Sam shot him an evil glare. “So you’re going as Anna’s date. And helping her win her bet.”
“Exactly.”
“And you took her out last night, and she went back to your place, and now she’s mad at you.”
Chase held his hands up. “I don’t know what you’re getting at—”
“Yes, you do.” Sam crossed his arms. “Did you bang her?”
Chase recoiled, trying to look horrified at the thought. He didn’t feel horrified at the thought. Which actually made him feel kind of horrified. “I did not.”
“Is that why you’re mad? Because you didn’t?”
His brother was way too p
erceptive for a guy who pounded heavy things with other heavy things for a living.
“No,” he said. “Anna is my friend. She’s just a friend. We had a slight...altercation last night. But it’s not that big a deal.”
“Big enough that I’m worried with all your stomping around you’re eventually going to fling the wrong thing and hit me with molten metal.”
“Safety first,” Chase said, “always.”
“I bet you say that to your dates, too.”
“You would, too, if you had any.”
Sam flipped Chase the bird in response.
“Just forget about it,” Chase said. “Forget about the stuff with the Wests, and let me deal with it. And forget about Anna.”
When it came to that last directive, he was going to try to do the same.
* * *
Anna was dreading coming face-to-face with Chase again after last night. But she didn’t really have a choice. They were still in this thing. Unless she called it off. But that would be tantamount to admitting that what had happened last night bothered her. And she didn’t want to do that. More, she was almost incapable of doing it. She was pretty sure her pride would wither up and die if she did.
But Chase was coming by her shop again tonight, with some other kind of lesson in mind. Something he’d written down on that stupid legal pad of his. It was ridiculous. All of it was ridiculous.
Herself most of all.
She looked at the clock, gritting her teeth. Chase would be by any moment, and she was no closer to dealing with the feelings, needs and general restlessness that had hit her with the blunt force of a flying wrench than she had been last night.
Then, right on time, the door opened, and in walked Chase. He was still dirty from work today, his face smudged with ash and soot, his shirt sticking to his muscular frame, showing off all those fine muscles underneath. Yeah, that didn’t help.
“How was work?” he asked.
“Fine. Just dealing with putting a new cylinder head on a John Deere. You?”
“Working on a gate.”
“Sounds...fun,” she said, though she didn’t really think it sounded like fun at all.
She liked solving the puzzle when it came to working on engines. Liked that she had the ability to get in there and figure things out. To diagnose the situation.
Standing in front of a hot fire forging metal didn’t really sound like her kind of thing.
Though she couldn’t deny it did pretty fantastic things for Chase’s physique.
“Well, you know it would be fine if Sam wasn’t such a pain in the ass.”
“Sure,” she said, feeling slightly cautious. After last night, she felt like dealing with Chase was like approaching a dog who’d bitten you once. Only, in this case he had kissed her, not bitten her, and he wasn’t a dog. That was the problem. He was just much too much for his own good. Much too much for her own good.
“So,” she said, “what’s on the lesson plan for tonight?”
“I sort of thought we should talk about...well, talking.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are ways that women talk to men they want to date. I thought I might walk you through flirting.”
“You’re going to show me how to flirt?”
“Somebody has to.”
“I can probably figure it out,” she said.
“You think?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels.
His clear skepticism stoked the flames of her temper, which was lurking very close to the surface after last night. That was kind of her default. Don’t know how to handle something? Don’t know what you feel? Get angry at it.
“Come on. Men and women have engaged in horizontal naked kickboxing for millennia. I’m pretty sure flirting is a natural instinct.”
“You’re a poet, Anna,” he said, his tone deadpan.
“No, I’m a tractor mechanic,” she said.
“Yeah, and you talk like one, too. If you want to get an actual date, and not just a quick tumble in the back of a guy’s truck, you might want to refine your art of conversation a little.”
“Who says I’m opposed to a quick rough tumble in the back of some guy’s truck?”
“You’re not?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting upward.
“Well, in all honesty I would probably prefer my truck, since it’s clean. I know where it’s been. But why the hell not? I have needs.”
He scowled. “Right. Well, keep that kind of talk to yourself.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable to hear about my needs, Chase?” she asked, not quite sure why she was poking at him. Maybe because she felt so unsettled. She was kind of enjoying the fact that he seemed to be, as well. Really, it wouldn’t be fair if after last night he felt nothing at all. If he had been able to one-up her and then walk away as though nothing had happened.
“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable. It’s just unnecessary information. Now, talking about your needs is probably something you shouldn’t do with a guy, either.”
“Unless I want him to fulfill those needs.”
“You said you wanted to date. You want the kind of date who can go to these functions with you, right?”
“It’s moot. You’re going with me.”
“This time. But be honest, don’t you want to be able to go out with guys who belong in places like that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling uncomfortable.
Truth be told, she wasn’t all that comfortable thinking about her needs. Emotional, physical. Frankly, if it went beyond her need for a cheeseburger, she didn’t really know how to deal with it. She hadn’t dated in years. And she had been fine with that. But the truth of the matter was the only reason Mark and Daniel had managed to get to her when they had made this bet was that she was beginning to feel dissatisfied with her life.
She was starting a new business. She was assuming a new position in the community. She didn’t just want to be Anna Brown, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She didn’t just want to be the tomboy mechanic for the rest of her life. She wanted...more. It had been fine, avoiding relationships all this time, but she was thirty now. She didn’t really want to be by herself. She didn’t want to be alone forever.
Dear Lord, she was having an existential crisis.
“Fine,” she said, “it might be nice to have somebody to date.”
Marriage, family—she had no idea how she felt when it came to those things. But a casual relationship... That might be nice. Yes. That might be nice.
Last night, she had gone home and gotten under a blanket and watched an old movie. Sometimes, Chase watched old movies with her, but he did not get under the blankets with her. It would be nice to have a guy to be under the blanket with. Somebody to go home to. Or at least someone to call to come over when she couldn’t sleep. Someone she could talk to, make out with. Have sex with.
“Fine,” she said. “I will submit to your flirting lessons.”
“All the girls submit to me eventually,” he said, winking.
Something about that made her stomach twist into a knot. “Talking about too much information...”
“There,” he said, “that was almost flirting.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Was it?”
“Yes. We had a little bit of back and forth. There was some innuendo.”
“I didn’t make innuendo on purpose,” she said.
“No. That’s the best kind. The kind you sort of walk into. It makes you feel a little dangerous. Like you might say the wrong thing. And if you go too far, they might walk away. But if you don’t go far enough, they might not know that you want them.”
She let out a long, frustrated growl. “Dating is complicated. I hate it. Is it too late for me to bec
ome a nun?”
“You would have to convert,” he pointed out.
“That sounds like a lot of work, too.”
“You can be pleasant, Anna. You’re fun to talk to. So that’s all you have to do.”
“Natural to me is walking up to a hot guy and saying, ‘Do you want to bone or what?’” As if she’d ever done that. As if she ever would. It was just...she didn’t really know how to go about getting a guy to hook up with her any other way. She was a direct kind of girl. And nothing between men and women seemed direct.
“Fine. Let’s try this,” he said, grabbing a chair and pulling it up to her workbench before taking a seat.
She took hold of the back of the other folding chair in the space and moved it across from his, positioning herself so that she was across from him.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
She laughed. “A mai tai.” She had never had one of those. She didn’t even know what it was.
“Excellent. I’m having whiskey, straight up.”
“That sounds like you.”
“You don’t know what sounds like me. You don’t know me.”
Suddenly, she got the game. “Right. Stranger,” she said, then winced internally, because that sounded a little bit more Mae West in her head, and just kind of silly when it was out of her mouth.
“You here with anyone?”
“I could be?” she said, placing her elbow on the workbench and tilting her head to the side.
“You should try to toss your hair a little bit. I dated this girl Elizabeth who used to do that. It was cute.”
“How does touching my hair accomplish anything?” she asked, feeling irritated that he had brought another woman up. Which was silly, because the only reason he was qualified to give her these lessons was that he had dated a metric ton of women.
So getting mad about the thing that was helping her right now was a little ridiculous. But she was pretty sure they had passed ridiculous a couple of days ago.
“I don’t know. It’s cute. It looks like you’re trying to draw my attention to it. Like you want me to notice.”
“Which...lets you know that I want you in my pants?”