by Imani King
Her deep brown eyes meet mine for an instant and she stands there, just looking at me, waiting at the top of the last step—for what I don’t know. After a long pause, she opens her mouth and then stops. “I’m really sorry. I don’t remember your name.” Her voice is deep and husky, sexy like she’s almost out of breath. The muscles in her arms are visible under the gauze of her shirt, and I wonder if she’s that cut from painting murals and putting up sculptures. And damn, her curves don’t quite match the muscles in her arms, but they make for a perfectly beautiful sight. She smiles, and for a second, it’s like the whole wide porch lights up in front of me.
“Rowan,” I say. There’s a warmth that expands in my chest for an instant, even as the cold wind whips down from the mountains and across the grassy flatlands of the ranch.
“Cadence. I’m Cadence.” She doesn’t extend her hand, but she smiles again, and it lights up her whole face—all the exquisite details of it—her rich, dark skin, full red lips, and the long curling lashes accenting her deep golden-brown eyes. She purses her full lips for a moment, and I find myself staring at her as she stands there. Her pixie-cut hair is slightly messy, presumably from the plane ride and the long-ass commute from the airport, but there’s a sparkle deep in her eyes, like some part of her is ready for mischief, or fun, or art. I can see the curves of her breasts beneath the shirt she’s wearing and the matching roundness of her hips in her jeans, paired with a completely perfect set of long legs, shown off in those damn tight jeans. It’s probably lewd for me to stare at her like I am, but I can’t help studying the supple expanse of her body.
A long moment passes, and I’m still looking at her, my brain drawing a complete blank on what to say next. “So, is there a place for me to stay? My PA told me that you had a guest house on the ranch,” she says. She looks around like she’s confused and drops the handle of her fraying green suitcase. It clatters down one step, and she keeps giving me that quizzical look, and I’m not quite sure what to say to her.
There’s nowhere for her to stay, except right here. The guest house is out of electricity and the plumbing is shit, and the hotel is twenty miles away in the wrong direction, and she’s standing there, wind whipping over her, looking beautiful and lonely. She looks distant, like her heart is somewhere else, her hands clenched into tight fists. She knits her eyebrows together like she doesn’t quite understand why someone isn’t taking her to the guest house.
A coyote howls in the distance, and I open my mouth to reassure her, but the words stick in my throat for a moment before I can. I’m struck, wondering what her shivering body might look like if she got warm by the fire and let that gauzy tunic drop away from her shoulders. Would the skin of her body be as soft as I think it might be? Would that spark of mischief bloom into lust if took those full breasts into my hands… my mouth to her—
Goddamn, I bet that lust would bloom like a goddamn desert flower in the rain. And that mouth—
Inappropriately, ridiculously, my cock stirs and threatens to rise at the thought. I shake the thought away. I need to remain professional if I’m going to have this woman in my house.
But I know full well the damage is done.
That woman is as full and rich as a fine whiskey. And when I get thirsty, I’m bound to take a drink.
CHAPTER THREE
My brain is a muddle when I step out of the limo. I’ve never been in a limo besides that one night at prom, and I’d had several shots of vodka, so the memory of the limo is pretty damn fuzzy. This one was nice, with smooth leather seats and a tinted window so I could close my eyes and speak neither to the driver nor to the confused porter who couldn’t manage to carry my suitcase properly.
This must be some kind of mistake. My brain keeps repeating it, and the words get stuck on a loop inside my head. None of this is what I pictured. None if it fits with my sense of what the world should look like, or what this adventure should be.
None of this is right. The house is too beautiful, too well-crafted. It’s not an aging farm house or one of those stucco ranch things I’ve seen in California. It looks like something out of Architectural Digest, with a polished exterior of stone and dark, smooth wood. I was told their would be horses, but this doesn’t look like the home of a rancher or anyone who’s ever dealt with livestock. It’s big, but there’s something deeply inviting about it too, something warm. Far warmer than I ever would have expected. Warmer than my brain knows what to do with.
And the air, it’s cold. Too cold for New Mexico.
The fields, the mountain peaks... everything is empty around us. I was hoping to convince the man that I could stay in a hotel in town, but there’s no town. And the stars, they’re far to bright to be real. There’s no smog blocking them out, no light pouring into the sky from skyscrapers and apartment buildings, no noise to detract from their presence and light.
But I come to from my haze and I take the heavy suitcase away from the porter again, dragging it up the deep gray marble steps. Cold sweat starts to form on my body, and I shiver before looking up at the stars. It looks like there’s a swath of white gauze in the sky, pulsing and twinkling and shifting all at once.
I wonder if this is the Milky Way.
The thought sticks with me for a moment and then I look at the door, and I spot him. Regan? Ronan? Something like that. In my haste to get out of town, I didn’t check him out, and I slept on the plane the whole way here. I didn’t even bother to see what he wanted for his mural. When it comes to my life, everything is fucked up. When it comes to art, I can always think of something to paint. So that part isn’t important. But the man standing in front of me is a giant red flag, one I should figure out how to avoid. He’s rugged and beautiful, in a gray flannel shirt and jeans. His jawline is firm and long, accented by a shadow of dark stubble. On another man, it might look dingy, but on him, it just looks delicious.
Like something I want to lick.
I don’t know his name, but here I am standing on his porch, the cold, dry wind whipping around me. He’s tall, six feet or more, and through the contours of his gray shirt, it looks like his muscles are made of steel. My mouth goes dry and I swallow. If I’m not mistaken, my heart is beating fast too, and oh God, his eyes are deep, dark blue like sapphires. His hair is in need of a cut, the shaggy dark pieces of it falling over his ears and over his forehead. When he smiles at me, and he does, broad and full of fire, I nearly melt and topple down the steps.
Even before he tells me his name, I know I’m screwed. I can’t be in a house with this man, not over the holidays, not while I’m recovering from all the shit that’s gone wrong in my life.
He says his name, and it takes me a minute to process it, because I’m still staring at his eyes, studying the long contour of his nose, the regal strength of his jawline.
“Cadence,” I say. “Is there a place for me to stay?” After that, nothing much makes sense because I’m still in a daze. The porter grabs my bag again and lugs it into the house before I can think about taking it in, and I watch as the man—the billionaire—walks down the steps and takes my bags of clothes and my laptop from the trunk of the limousine. I stay standing, looking off into the night, down the long stone driveway that leads out into the wooded wilderness of New Mexico. In the distance there’s a coyote howling—or at least I think that’s a coyote—and I suppress a deep shiver.
“That’s just an old coyote. No need to worry,” Rowan says, carrying my bags up the stairs like they weigh nothing. It’s not like I brought a ton of stuff with me, but there’s plenty there that weighs more than he’s letting on, and oh God, I think there’s the swell of a bicep under his shirt. He brushes past me and I shiver again. I bury the impulse to reach out and grab his arm, to touch him and make sure he’s real. “Come on in the house, Cadence. I don’t want you to catch your death out here in the cold. Didn’t think New Mexico would be that cold, huh?”
I shake my head dumbly and do the only thing I can do—follow him into the house. He dumps th
e bags on the confused porter, and the poor little man heads upstairs, conveniently leaving the suitcase of paints downstairs.
“I can just keep this down here, if that’s okay. It’s all my paints and stuff,” I say, still openly staring at Rowan. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything. He’s probably too classy for that. And what’s wrong with looking at something I can’t have?
Maybe this is good. Maybe it’s okay to stare, to look at not have. After all, I am a woman, even if I’m an infertile one. I can look at this man if I want to, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
“That’s just fine. I’ve got the nonprofit office just down the road in town.”
“In town? I didn’t think we passed a town.” He laughs out loud, and his dark eyebrows knit together in amusement.
“Touché, Miss Cadence. There’s not much of one, but there’s a big wall inside. And it’s a beautiful building. It’ll be just lovely once it’s all done. And I might even get you back out here in the spring to paint the inside—”
“Oh no. No. I’m only here for one month, then I’m going back to New York.”
“Well you might just find that this place has a way of getting under your skin. But I tip my hat to you, Miss Cadence. You know exactly what you want. I can tell that about you already.” He tips an imaginary hat to me, and I can’t help but imagine what he might look like in a real cowboy hat. The thought sends a tiny pinprick of heat to my belly, a place I haven’t felt it in a long time.
“I don’t think—well, I haven’t felt that way in a long time. Like I know what I want.” I’m on the edge of bursting and telling him my whole story, I realize.
Don’t overshare, Cadence. Not everyone wants to hear about all of your depressing bullshit.
“Oh?” Rowan’s deep, rumbling voice seems to reverberate from in the foyer, bouncing off the dark wooden floors and the surrounding walls. “I guess you just have that look about you. I’ve been wrong before, and I’ll be wrong again.”
I hear the porter walking around upstairs, throwing bags around in a way that suggests this is his first time handling bags. I cringe a bit and put my hand to the railing. If this man hasn’t got a hotel or a guesthouse for me, I need to get upstairs before I go and lick the side of his face. He looks like he might taste like vanilla and cinnamon, like a wintery treat in his wintery gray shirt and his dark jeans and his...
Is he wearing Uggs? I put my hand to my mouth and stifle a laugh, and he follows my eyes down to his feet.
“Yep, these slippers are exactly what you think,” he says. A big grin moves across his face. “Laugh if you want to, but you already know it’s colder in New Mexico than you thought. And I’ll have you know that these are chocolate suede. I think they’re very manly. You know what’s not manly?”
“What?” I smile just as wide as he does. It might be the first time a man has made me smile like this in a long time. Eli was serious, but there’s a twinkle in this man’s eyes, and it’s infectious, even as I’m standing here in the foyer of his estate, glancing at the obviously expensive artwork adorning his walls and the deep blue oriental rugs lining the long, dark hallway.
“Cold feet. I can’t work that way. A man’s gotta have warm feet to be productive. Or a woman. Tell me, Cadence, do you have slippers? Really warm ones?” He raises an eyebrow, his face suddenly serious. This time, I laugh out loud, shaking hard against the bannister. My exhaustion is making me giddy, and I sit down on the wide bottom stair, still laughing. “It’s no laughing matter,” he says, but there’s amusement in his voice.
“No I don’t. I—” The porter interrupts us and barrels down the stairs and out the door.
“Have a good night, Mr. Corbett,” says the porter, barely looking back.
Rowan sighs and shakes his head. “Good help is so hard to find. But I’m about as blessed as a man can be, in the way of money, I mean. I’ll take what I can get.” I wipe tears away from my eyes from laughing so hard, and there’s a thudding and thumping directly up the stairs.
“Is there someone else here? What the—” Before I can finish my thought, a black and white flash starts down the stairs. My heart starts beating fast, but before I can leap to my feet, there’s a cold nose against my arm, followed by a few tentative licks of a warm tongue.
“Damn that porter. He must have gotten that dog stirred up when he was up there. Normally she just lies around and sleeps all day.” Rowan steps up to us and takes the dog’s collar, but she pulls against him, sniffing my arm and pressing her nose against my jeans. It looks like she’s a pit bull, her body adorned with black and white spots, her head and muscular body absolutely enormous. I freeze for a second and let her sniff me. “Eliza—you go on now—don’t bother Cadence.”
“Eliza?” The dog pulls against Rowan again, the stump of her tail wagging wildly back and forth. She presses her nose against my face and licks me once and then again.
“Yes, this is Eliza Doolittle—”
“Like My Fair Lady?” I laugh, and the black and white dog licks my face in glee, maybe from hearing her name. “Nice to meet you, I guess.” I look to Rowan.
Rowan pulls her away, and the dog looks up at him like he’s completely betrayed her. “She’s a rescue. She needed a little book-learnin’ before she could be in polite company. She’s not making a good show of it right now. But she was scared of her own shadow. She was abused, and now she’s just crazy about people.” Eliza keeps wiggling and whines like she’s about to lose her mind.
“It’s okay. I like dogs. I’m just not real used to big ones like this—”
“She won’t hurt a flea. And once we get the guest house running again, you won’t have to worry about her.”
“Seriously, it’s fine. You can let her greet me. She seems pretty well-behaved. Besides the licking.” Rowan gives me a doubtful look, but he guides Eliza Doolittle over to me again and lets her go. Her rump wiggles uncontrollably, and she puts her big white head in my lap, her deep brown eyes looking up at mine. She whines once, and I put a tentative hand to her ear and rub it. Her short hair is silky and soft under my fingers. She leans hard into my hand, and I laugh.
“You got a friend for life, there. That’s the thing about dogs, especially rescues. They’re so grateful when you give them attention, and they’re loyal as hell.” I might be imagining it, but Rowan’s voice cracks a little when he says the last part of that sentence. I look at him, but I keep my mouth closed. I’m not one to pry in someone’s personal life, but it seems like Eliza Doolittle is the only other creature who lives in this house. She snorts and presses into my hand again, wagging her stump as hard as she can.
“You’re just a big sweetheart, aren’t you?” I look down at Eliza and stroke the black spot on top of her head. Her nose is spotted pink and brown. Even if she’s big as hell, she might be the sweetest-looking dog I’ve seen in a long time.
“Oh she is. She’ll sleep next to your bed all night if you let her.” He pauses, and the silence makes me remember how tired I am. “Speaking of which, I think we’d better get you upstairs. If I were organized at all, I’d have my secretary here getting you situated in your room, but I’ll just have to trust that everything is as clean as it’s supposed to be.”
“I’m not too hard to please.” The heat rises in my cheeks when I say the words because it makes me think of Rowan’s long, muscular body. No, it wouldn’t be too hard for him to please me. The heat rises even higher at that thought, and Rowan catches my gaze. It looks like there’s a spark there too, but I know I must be imagining it. This shit doesn’t happen. The whole boy meets girl thing, the meet cute with me nearly falling down the stairs.
This isn’t real life, is it?
“Then you might like the blue guest suite. It’s my favorite one. It’s at the end of the hall, opposite end from where I sleep. So... nothing improper about that, right?” I laugh nervously, and he offers his hand, helping me up from the step. When his strong, weathered hand touches mine, a jolt of sweet, deli
cious heat travels through my body, pooling between my legs. Scared of what it means, I pull my hand away nonchalantly and follow him up the stairs. Eliza walks between us, her tail stump wagging the whole time. Rowan leads me down the hall, over more soft, thick oriental rugs, all in blues and reds. It’s dark, so I can’t really tell what the paintings on the walls look like, but I can feel how expensive they are. For the first time, I wonder how he picked me, and why in the hell he did. Walking behind him makes me feel hyperaware of my body, every brush of my skin against my clothing.