Time to make his move. The one he’d dreamed of making the whole week he’d been gone, only he hadn’t expected to be able to make it so soon.
“Ouch,” he muttered, adding a groan for good measure. If it’d worked for her last week, it could work for him, though he’d make sure she didn’t know he was faking it.
She took the bait. “What’s wrong?”
“I think my leg’s rubbed raw.” Well, that was true.
“Why don’t you sit down?”
She helped to guide him to a nice comfy spot beneath an oak tree whose limbs were full of foliage. Grass sprouted up around them like a giant outdoor rug; dead winter leaves provided a cushion, too. Perfect. He clung to her, drawing her nearer. He could feel her right breast pressed against the crook of his arm. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Even more perfect.
Yeah, and what are you going to do with bra-less breasts?
He didn’t know yet, but he was sure going to find out.
So he contorted his face in pain and lay back. Above him a crescent moon glowed in the late morning sky, bright, as if it were still night. Birds called to one another. The horses had run off together, though they’d stopped to graze atop the embankment.
“Do you want me to rub your legs for you?”
He wanted her to rub something, all right. One step at a time.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
And she did—rub them, that is.
And, dang, the feel of her touching him was as much a pain as it was a pleasure. It was as if his skin was ultrasensitized from the cold. As if her fingers were a heating pad that warmed him from the inside out.
“You’re killing me.”
She must have thought he meant her rubbing, because her strong fingers softened, became even more of a torture. He closed his eyes, moaned. She stopped. His eyes sprang open.
She stared at his manhood.
Uh-oh.
She jerked back.
Double uh-oh.
“What’s wrong?” he asked innocently.
“What do you mean what’s wrong?” she asked right back, staring there again. “You know what’s wrong, you’re…you’re—”
“Hard?”
She looked away.
He sat up, trying not to groan as he did so. But when he reached to turn her head toward him, all thoughts of pain disappeared as he said tenderly, “I can’t help it, Amanda. It’s what you do to me. I’ve been gone a week and still all I can think about is how amazing you are and how much I want to kiss you.”
Chapter Nine
Amanda felt the breath leave her.
How much I want to kiss you.
And the truth of the matter was, she wanted him to kiss her, too. Had thought about him doing exactly that the whole week he’d been gone. No sense in denying it. Now that she’d admitted he wasn’t a jerk her interest in him had turned decidedly personal.
But…”I can’t,” she said, feeling disappointment and frustration.
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t get involved with you.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t. We’re too different.”
“I thought we were pretty good together.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
You disappear for a week.
But she refused to let him know how much that had bothered her.
“We should be getting back,” she said instead. “You must be freezing cold.”
“You like me,” he persisted.
And she did. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid to get involved with a man like him—so different from her. Heck, from a different world, one of computers and corporations while hers was animals and land. Not to mention he flew off to parts unknown at a moments notice. Once before she’d gotten involved with a man who’d thought of home as a place he changed his clothes. To say it hadn’t worked out would be an understatement. That relationship had nearly destroyed her life. She’d become someone she didn’t like, and a good friend had suffered the consequences. “I—Scott, please, don’t press me. There’s more to this than you know.”
“Amanda, look, I may be a computer geek, but I’m also a man and I know you feel the same thing I do. Heck, it was all I could do not to come back sooner.”
So he had thought of her.
So? What difference does that make?
A lot of difference.
She swallowed, her eyes following a concentric wave that rippled out from where a fish’s tail had disturbed the surface near the shore.
“It won’t work.”
Scott moved, assuming the same position she did. He didn’t touch her, and for that Amanda was grateful, and yet…she almost wished he would touch her. That he’d somehow make her forget that he was Scott Beringer, computer genius and multi-kazzillionaire.
“Are you worried about the press? About living life in the public eye? Because if you are, there’s no need. One thing I’ve noticed about fame, you’re only as hot as that day’s story. I’ve been a guest on TV shows where no one knows who I am until I introduce myself, and even then they don’t care. I’m not a movie star or a professional ball player. I’m a computer geek who happens to have made a lot of money. Not very interesting.”
She looked at him then, surprised to see that he actually believed that hooey. “Is that how you see yourself? As a computer geek?”
He shrugged. “Once a geek, always a geek.”
“Why do you think you’re a geek?” He stared at her while waves gently lapped the shore, his eyes intense as he obviously debated with himself over something. “Justin Powell,” he finally said.
“Who’s Justin Powell?”
“Class bully. Seventh grade. Made my life hell. He said I probably ‘did it’ with my computers instead of girls. I was new to the school. Had just moved in with new foster parents. So I buried myself in binary code.” He looked out over the water, too. “I was one of the few that used the computer lab and the other kids thought that was…strange.”
Gosh, if only he knew how much she identified with him. It’d been no secret that the Johnsons were poor. Part of the reason why she’d thrown herself into getting a scholarship was so she could escape, maybe better herself. Maybe she still could.
“I tried to avoid Justin but he always seemed to know where I was.”
“Did you tell your foster parents?”
He shrugged. And something about the look on his face, something about the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes made her say, “You didn’t have the best foster care, did you?”
He shrugged. “Some were good, some were bad, most were pretty indifferent.”
She reached out and touched him. She couldn’t stop herself from doing it. Compassion filled her. “How indifferent?” she probed.
He shrugged again, only this time he looked into her eyes. This time she saw a flash of pain and sorrow that made her own eyes instantly well with tears—she, the original cowgirl, a woman who prided herself on her toughness, had been reduced to tears twice since she’d met him.
“It was bad,” she said, answering for him.
“Some were,” he agreed, and it was funny because a moment ago she’d been all set to push him away. To tell him to back off. A moment ago she’d been close to laughter when she’d seen him fall off his horse. A moment ago she’d wanted him to kiss her. Now she wanted to kiss him.
“But you survived.”
“I survived,” he echoed.
“In spite of it all.”
He looked at her then, and at that moment something changed, something that made her still. He stared down at her and then his head dropped, moving closer…closer still.
Move! her mind screamed.
But she didn’t. Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable how perfectly their lips fit together. It was as if they were born to kiss each other. As if they’d been put on Earth just for that purpose. And then her body jump-started like an old motor. It didn’t m
atter that he was wet, and that as she lay back, she drew Scott with her. That her own legs soaked up that wetness. That the grass felt equally damp and that old leaves pricked her scalp. All that mattered was the way Scott’s tongue felt as it brushed against hers, the way he moaned, they way he felt against her hands. Sculpted. Hard. Man.
How, she distantly wondered, how did he do it? How did he look like such a desk jockey yet have the muscles of a marathon runner? Hard, sinewy cords ran down his arms, harder up near the shoulders, yet just as firm across his chest. She pulled her lips away, pressed her palms against the ridges of that chest, stared into smoky eyes as he drew back to look at her, too. Their gazes held as she undid a button on his buff-colored denim shirt, and then another and another until she’d exposed not the pale flesh of an office worker, but the tanned, taut muscles of a man. A sexy, hard body of a man.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
“Funny,” he answered, his eyes never leaving her own. “You’re what I’ve always wanted.”
Her breath caught.
And then he was kissing her again, and that was good, because she suddenly couldn’t breathe, suddenly felt tears come to her eyes again, because the tenderness in his eyes as he’d said those words was as unmistakable as the look of desire that followed the words. And then his hand slipped to the waist of her jeans, his fingers tugging at her own shirt until his hand could explore her own flesh, flesh that jumped at his touch, only to do more than jump when his lips replaced his hand. She arched her back because her whole body seemed to tighten and then pulse at the feel of his teeth suddenly nipping at the juncture of her legs.
Dying. She was dying. She dug her hands into the grass.
“Scott,” she moaned.
It had to be the fact that she hadn’t had sex in months. Years. How else to explain this wild and wicked urge to part her legs? To give this man, this virtual stranger, access to her most private parts?
Then he moved and slipped a hand between her legs, and she almost came off the ground.
Too fast. Too hot. Too heavy and, yes, darn it, she wanted him. She couldn’t explain why. At this point, she didn’t care. She let him stroke her. Let him part her further. And when he moved again, she let him kiss her. Let him kiss her in a way that made her feel more like a woman than she’d ever felt before. Sexy. Desired. Wanted.
Jake had made her feel tolerated. Never, ever had Jake made her feel like a woman.
Scott went right on kissing her. Right on tormenting her with a rhythm between her legs and in her mouth that lifted her closer and closer to a climax.
He pulled his lips away again, turned his head so that they were cheek to cheek. “That’s it,” she heard him moan. “That’s it. Let it happen. Let it go.”
That he knew enough about her already to tell when she neared her peak amazed her. That he didn’t strip down himself and take what she would have given him impressed her. That he whispered naughty words to her that she’d only ever heard in her fantasies was her undoing.
She arched her back, felt the pulse begin to build, felt her body tighten and then release with a sweetness that brought tears to her eyes.
And all he did was hold her. He didn’t do anything else but that. As she drifted back to reality, a part of Amanda waited for him to move, to get undressed so he could enjoy his own release. When he didn’t, she opened her eyes, drew back to look at him.
What she saw took her breath away. Tenderness. And pride. And amusement. The pride was obviously for himself and his ability to bring her to climax.
She understood the amusement a second later when he said, “Our horses have run away.”
AND THAT WAS IT. That was all he said, just helped her up, even though she could see the bulge in his jeans. She almost asked him about that bulge. Almost asked him if there was something she could do to help alleviate his, er, pain.
He must have read her mind because he met her eyes and said, “Don’t worry. I’m more concerned that you enjoyed yourself.”
More concerned about her? Had she heard him right?
Apparently so because he turned away from her then and said, “I guess we’re walking.”
“I guess we are,” she said absently because, darn it, she didn’t know what else to say. She couldn’t believe she’d let him do…do, well, that.
“There you are.”
They both looked up, both froze. Her father and his horse stood silhouetted by the late morning light, a dark shadow against a blue backdrop.
“I found these two a few hills over,” he said, motioning with his head toward the two horses he led—one on either side—his voice running downhill with ease. “You two okay?”
“Hi, Dad,” she said, her cheeks heating like a forge when she realized her shirt still hung out of her jeans, and that Scott was in the process of buttoning up his shirt.
Dang. Dang, dang, dang. She’d never hear the end of this.
She heard a cluck, saw her dad’s big palomino horse take a step toward them. Gingerly, the quarter horse made his way down the slope, and as her father rode toward them, the sun blocked by the hill he rode down, she saw his eyes going between the two of them, back and forth, back and forth. Amanda felt like a kid who’d been caught sneaking in late from the prom.
“Honey,” he said with a look she remembered from her youth. “Take your horse. I want to talk to Mr. Billionaire alone.”
“Daddy.”
“Go,” he said without ever, ever looking her way.
She went.
THIS MUST BE WHAT A cattle rustler felt like when he stared into the eyes of a local sheriff, Scott thought as Amanda’s father stared down at him. He looked the part of local law, too, right down to his beige cowboy hat and thick denim jacket. The horse he rode pinned his ears, almost as if he felt his master’s disapproval. Scott reminded himself that he’d recently been chewed out by the president of the United States for “lack of party support” as he called it. Scott could handle Amanda’s father.
Right?
Right?
But as her father leaned over the side of his horse, tipped his hat back with a gloved hand, then put his face about a foot from Scott’s, the boy wonder of the computer industry suddenly felt about four years old.
“Is she gone?” he asked.
Scott looked past Mr. Johnson’s horse’s white mane to Amanda, who was leading their own mounts away. “Yeah.”
Mr. Johnson straightened again, and it was the weirdest thing because the expression on his face changed right then. It went from mean as a snake’s to, to…well, to wily as a coyote’s.
What the—
“Can she see us?” he asked next.
Scott looked over at Amanda again. “No.”
“Good,” he said. “Look, you’re doing okay, but you need to move fast. Amanda’s likely to balk if she thinks too much about something. Like her mother in that way. Used to drive me nuts. ’Course, it’s one of the things I miss most about my wife, but you don’t need to hear about that. Just hurry things up a bit. Sweep her off her feet. Take her for a ride in that fancy whirlybird of yours. Just do it quickly. And no more disappearing for a week.”
Scott blinked. Not sure he’d heard right.
“What?”
“And don’t let on that I approve,” he added. “If Amanda thinks I like you she’ll balk like an unbroken filly. It’d be just like her to take it into her head not to get involved with you just because I want the two of you to get involved.”
“You want me to date her?”
“’Course I do.”
“But—What about the ranch?”
He waved a hand, then rested it on the rubber-wrapped saddle horn. “It was me who didn’t pay the taxes. I knew what was coming down. Amanda got her knickers in a twist because I didn’t tell her, but my problems are my own, and fact is, I didn’t realize until too late how much the place meant to her. And that’s twice now I’ve done something like that to her. Figure she’s probably had
it about up to here with me.” He brought his gloved hand up to his forehead. “But the fact is I’m sick. Amanda knows it and I know it. I’m worried about her. This place is too much for her to manage on her own. But now that you own the place…” He let his words dribble off.
“You’re matchmaking,” Scott said.
Roy emitted a snort that sounded like one of his bulls. “Playing the odds,” he corrected. “Look, it may not work out between you, but at least she’s showing some interest. I haven’t seen her so worked up over a man in, well, a long time. You should’a seen her the week you were gone. ’Bout tore my head off. But you better hurry. Amanda hasn’t had the best of luck with men. If she thinks too much on this, you’ll spook her. I’ll keep doing my part to get you two together, but you need to do your part, too.”
Scott stiffened, having to suddenly realign his whole way of thinking about Roy Johnson. “Why do I have the feeling that sending me off on Rocket this morning was no accident?”
“It wasn’t. Knew she’d go after you, even if it meant I had to call her on that fancy cell-u-lar phone of hers to come home and help me find you.”
Unbelievable. He’d been manipulated.
The old cowboy straightened on his horse again, and his expression went back to mean as a snake as he pulled his hat low on his age-spotted forehead, bits of gray hair sticking out. But then he leaned toward him again. “That said, if you break her heart, I’ll break your neck.” They stared into each other’s eyes. “Understood?”
“Understood.” Scott swallowed, adding a “sir” at the end.
To which Amanda’s father nodded, his lips pressing together again as he leaned back and said, “Hop to it, son. You don’t have much time.”
And with that the man clucked to his horse, pulled on the reins and pointed the palomino toward Amanda. Scott could only blink.
Cowboy Lessons (Harlequin American Romance) Page 8