Kent raised a shoulder and let it drop carelessly. “I’m not.”
“Then you’re one up on God,” Brianne said sweetly. With effort, she swung her legs off the bed. At least he was good for one thing, she thought. He made her so angry, she forgot to be exhausted. The soul of determination, she crossed to him, her hand out. “Now, if you don’t mind,” she began, tugging at the bottle, he wouldn’t release it, “I’d like to put this on in private.”
Kent had seen the way she’d hunched her shoulders on the way back. Seen the way she’d rotated them. Unless she was incredibly double-jointed, the liniment wasn’t going to do her any good. “You’re not going to be able to put it on where it hurts.”
She raised her eyes to his, the comment, ripe and pregnant, hanging between them. “Can you?” she asked significantly.
Atta girl, Quint thought, mentally applauding her. If his brother let this one slip by, he was going to disavow any relation to him, Quint promised silently.
Very quietly, he let himself out of the room, easing the door shut behind him.
Still holding on to the bottle, Kent gestured toward the bed. “Just turn around, sit on the bed and pull up your shirt.”
He caught her by surprise, but she managed to recover quickly. “Why Kent, we hardly know one another,” she teased, fluttering her lashes at him.
He wasn’t sure if she was laughing at him or not, but he wasn’t taking any chances. “What, you don’t think I know what the back of a bra looks like?” He’d gotten her in this condition, he might as well do something about getting her out of it. That attempting to do so was in direct contradiction of his plan was something he chose not to think about right now.
The smile she gave him was nothing short of wicked. “You might know what the back of one looks like, but I’m not wearing one.”
The bottle met the top of the bureau with a resounding whack as he all but dropped it. Kent wasn’t about to take on any more temptation than he felt he could safely handle.
“I’ll get my mother,” Kent said just before he disappeared.
He hated the fact that the laughter that followed him from Brianne’s room was at his expense. Hated even more that all he’d wanted to do was to remain in the room and apply the liniment himself.
But some things, he knew, were best left alone. This was definitely one of them.
It got easier.
After a couple of days, her body began to get accustomed to the hard pace she’d found herself maintaining. Or rather, that Kent had her maintaining. After the dust had settled from their initial sparring, she realized that the pace he kept up was his usual one. And that was, after all, what she’d asked for at the start. To observe what it was really like to run the Shady Lady, follow the itinerary of a real working cowboy. It was her intent to be part of the daily grind that went into running a ranch, and yet find the beauty in it.
To her credit, she thought she was accomplishing both rather well. It helped that she was enjoying herself. She began to understand the sense of satisfaction that went with a good day’s work out here. More than that, she was beginning to feel that satisfaction, too.
She had the feeling that even Kent couldn’t really find fault with her efforts. Oh, she was a long way off from making Rancher of the Year, but she was definitely not the liability he’d obviously been afraid she’d be.
The only thing that was missing was hearing him admit it.
But that, she knew, was something that was not about to happen any time soon. Kent Cutler wasn’t the type to admit he was wrong about something, especially a female. Well, he was going to admit it about this female. He just didn’t know it yet. Brianne smiled to herself. She was going to enjoy making him come around. It was a matter of pride…and maybe a little something more.
“So how is it going?” Jake prodded over dinner at the end of Brianne’s first week.
He accepted the bowl of potatoes his wife passed him and gave himself a generous helping before passing it along to his son. He waited for Kent, there by Zoe’s mandate, to answer.
But it was Brianne who responded first. She slanted a glance toward Kent as she said, “Great.”
It was in fact, Kent thought, going better than he had first anticipated. Everything he threw at her, she bore up to. Any other woman, with the possible exception of Morgan who had a wicked stubborn streak, would have given up by now. But Brianne just dug in. In addition, she seemed to be entirely without vanity, entirely without a threshold over which she would not venture.
Ranching was obviously not her way of life, yet she wouldn’t knuckle under. More than that, she was ready for every day with that damn smile on her face and that look of enthusiasm in her eyes.
She obviously had no common sense, he concluded.
“Could be worse,” Kent muttered. He drowned the mashed potatoes in gravy.
“Kent.”
There was a sharp warning note in Zoe’s voice. He might be a man in a great many ways, but there was still that headstrong little boy in him. The one who refused to cry uncle. He’d been the sickly one when he was little. And there’d been that winter oldtimers still talked about, the winter when Kent had been so sick and she’d been so afraid that she would lose him. But he had hung on, a tiny boy of three, too stubborn to do anything else. Then his stubbornness had saved his life. Now, Zoe feared, it threatened to ruin it.
Brianne didn’t want dinner disrupted because Kent couldn’t bring himself to say that she’d held up her end. “That’s all right, Zoe. Kent is obviously the type who’s slow in coming around.”
The look in his blue eyes when he raised them to her face stopped her breath for a long moment. “I’m not slow.”
Well, at least he was directing his conversation toward her for a change. This last day, everything he’d said that was intended for her had come through someone else. She had no idea what she’d done to offend him—except keep up.
“I didn’t say you were slow, I said you were slow in coming around. There is a difference.” As she spoke, she could feel her temper heating, getting the better of her even as she told herself to back away. “What you don’t seem to appreciate is that there’re many shades to things. Nothing is black or white. And people don’t fall into categories.”
She had some nerve, lecturing him in his parents’ house, the house that he’d grown up in. Even more of a nerve, considering what she was about.
He laid his fork down. “Isn’t that what you’re doing? Sticking me into a damn category for your readers’ amusement?” His mouth twisted in contempt. “’See the cowboy. See him ride. See him rope. Watch him do tricks.’”
“Watch him make a damn fool of himself because he can’t admit he’s wrong.” That had come out before Brianne could stop it. Embarrassed, annoyed at Kent for making her break one of her cardinal rules about decorum, Brianne rose. “I’m sorry,” she apologized to his parents. “My father always said my mouth would get me into trouble.”
Amen to that, Kent thought.
Had it been him in her place, Jake thought, he would have clipped Kent a long time ago. “Don’t be,” he told her. “Until this second, I wasn’t altogether sure you were Brian’s girl. He got hot under the collar a lot more than you with a lot less provocation.” He looked pointedly at his son.
She was grateful for Jake’s understanding, but that didn’t excuse her. “Still, this is your house and I shouldn’t be sitting here, insulting your son.”
“By all means, insult him,” Zoe urged her. “Maybe it’ll do him some good. You’re not saying anything he doesn’t deserve. Is she, Kent?” Zoe looked at her middle child.
“Whatever you say, Ma.” Kent retired his knife and fork, hardly having touched anything. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.” Leaving his napkin on the table, Kent walked out.
5
It took Jake a moment to realize that Kent was actually walking out. His son had a few rough edges, but Jake couldn’t remember Kent ever being do
wnright rude before. He wasn’t about to stand for it in his own home, especially not in front of the daughter of one of his oldest friends.
“Damn it, Kent, you come back here. Do you hear me?” Jake called after him.
The sound of the front door slamming was his only answer. Disgusted, Jake threw his own napkin on the table, ready to storm after Kent and drag him into the house. Anger colored his cheeks.
“I’ll bring him back,” he promised Brianne. “He’s not so old that he can’t show a little respect—”
Brianne placed a gently restraining hand on Jake’s arm, drawing his attention momentarily away from the center of his anger.
“This is my fault, Jake.” She felt terrible about the scene. “Please, let me go talk to him.”
Jake was torn for a moment. He didn’t think that anything Brianne had to say would make a dent in Kent’s thick hide. Still, he didn’t intend to stand in her way if she felt she had to go after Kent.
With a reluctant sigh, he gestured toward the door. “All right, but if he gets ugly, just give a yell.”
With a smile, Brianne paused only to brush her lips over the older man’s cheek. She appreciated the concern. Except for Kent, the Cutler men all seemed to be sweet. “Don’t worry, I’ve seen him at his worst. I can handle him.”
Maybe she could, at that. All the same, Jake shook his head as he watched his guest leave. What was the matter with Kent? Here was a beautiful, unattached woman practically gift-wrapped on his doorstep and instead of making the most of the situation, Kent was behaving as if he’d come face-to-face with a king-size diamondback.
Baffled, Jake sat down at the table again. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
Zoe waited until she heard the front door close and Brianne was gone. “I do.”
“Well then, please. Enlighten me.”
Zoe laughed softly as she covered the hand of the man she had shared her bed and her life with for the last thirty-some years. He could be so blind sometimes.
Jake would have resented the laughter at his expense if he didn’t love her so much.
“Oh darlin’, if I haven’t managed to open your eyes in the last thirty-four years, one little conversation now isn’t going to make a difference.” Leaning over, Zoe gently smoothed the frown forming on his lips in response to her words with her fingertips. “You never could see what was right there in front of you.”
He knew it was useless to argue. Zoe had an insight into things that be couldn’t even begin to understand. That was one of the reasons he loved her. To him, she was still the young, laughing-eyed girl he had fallen so hard for that first year in college. The year his life had begun.
Jake pressed her hand to his lips, kissing it softly. “I saw you, didn’t I?”
He still thought he was the one who had made the first move. It just went to prove her point Zoe stroked his hair, hair still as thick, as golden as his sons’. “Only after I practically bent your neck to make you take a look.”
A hint of the scowl that had so often graced Kent’s face this last week whispered along Jake’s face. This rang no bells. “How?”
Zoe’s eyes were bright with amusement as she looked at the man who still was, after all this time, the center of her universe. “You think it was coincidence that I was there every day at the café when you came by at three with your friends?”
He’d always believed it was his good fortune that fate had placed her there. “Wasn’t it?”
Zoe tried not to laugh. The expression on Jake’s face was nothing short of amazed as he contemplated the contrary.
“That’s what I love about you, Jake, you’re still so innocent when it comes to the ways of women.” After all this time, there was no harm in the truth coming out She would have told him sooner if the subject had come up. “I had my cousin Alice pump your brother for information.”
Jake digested the import of the words. He’d suspected as much, but never said anything for fear that it had merely been his manly pride prompting the notion. So, he’d been right all along. With an oath, he tugged Zoe from her chair onto his lap.
As she laughed, he nuzzled her neck. After all these years, she still smelled of lavender. He’d always had a weakness for lavender. Just as he’d always had a weakness for her.
“Do you mean to tell me that I married a devious woman?”
“You betcha.” The laughter faded from her lips as she brought her mouth down to his. She hoped Brianne wouldn’t be returning too soon.
Brianne had fully expected to have to go running after Kent, but she found him standing on the other side of the porch, staring at the sky. Maybe he wasn’t leaving, just wanted some time to cool off.
She came up behind him quietly, some of the fire within her breast dying down. His shoulders were so rigid, she debated whether she should approach him at all. But she had nothing to lose. He’d already bitten her head off several times over. And the thought of walking back in and facing the Cutlers without him was not an option for her.
“There was no reason for you to leave the table like that.”
Kent had been lost in thought, and he started, surprised that she’d followed him out. Didn’t the woman ever know when to back off?
Maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised, he silently amended, turning his head to give her a look calculated to make her keep her distance.
“Yes, there was.” His voice was cold, detached. “I lost my appetite.”
If he thought she was going to turn tail and retreat just because he wore an expression that could have turned some that she knew to stone, he was sadly mistaken. “Because of me.”
If she wasn’t bright enough to figure that out, he wasn’t going to hand her the answer. Instead, he turned away again, leaning back against the railing. He stared up at the stars again. Tranquility refused to come. He hadn’t felt at peace since she had arrived. Another reason to send her on her way.
“Maybe.”
Well, if he wasn’t going to look at her, she damn well was going to get in his face. Circling, Brianne confronted him. “Why do I irritate you so much?”
His eyes narrowed. Why was she asking the obvious? “Because you do.” He turned away again.
Refusing to be ignored, she planted herself in front of him a second time. Two could play at this damn game all night if that was what he wanted. “That’s not much of an answer.”
This time he didn’t bother looking away. “It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She felt like shaking him. Getting him to talk was like trying to get a block to roll. And getting him to admit to the obvious electricity that was buzzing between them was twice as difficult as that. Why couldn’t he just enjoy it for the short length of time she was going to be here instead of throwing up roadblocks?
Shifting her approach in mid-gear, she smiled knowingly. “But there is another one, right?”
The woman had a smile that went straight to his gut. Irritated as well as drawn, Kent moved away from her. It was time he left. God only knew why he hadn’t gotten on his horse already.
“There’s part of it right there.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant, only that there was something there that was stronger than the anger. Moving quickly, she darted in front of him. He was going to stay and finish this conversation even if she had to hog-tie him with one of those fancy knots the wranglers had taught her.
“What is?”
“You won’t let anything go at face value. You’ve got to dig at it, turn it around, take a picture of it from all angles until you’ve stripped it clean.” He realized he was shouting and lowered his voice. She set him off faster than the cherry bombs he and Morgan used to explode every Fourth of July as kids.
Was that how he saw it? Brianne wondered. That she stripped things, like some conscienceless scavenger? The thought bitterly disappointed her. “I don’t strip anything clean, I make it clear. I try to understand it so that other people can appreciate it for themselves. Like the beauty
in the solitude of what you do rather than the loneliness.”
He didn’t hold with exploring things. Thinking things too deep always got you into trouble. Thinking made him realize how golden her hair was, how soft her skin was. How alive he felt, kissing her. Trouble, that’s all thinking ever got you. Trouble with a capital T.
“The beauty in solitude is that it’s just that, solitude.” He glared at her, daring Brianne to shadow his movements. When she did, he knew he shouldn’t have expected anything else. Why didn’t she just take her damn camera and her damn scent and go home? She had already snapped enough photographs to fill a whole house full of magazines. “The beauty in Montana is that you can throw a rock without hitting seventeen people.” He went toe-to-toe with her. If he couldn’t walk away from her, he’d make her walk away from him. “You can throw it and not hit anyone at all.”
He should have known better.
Brianne stood her ground, hands on hips, trying desperately to understand the man fate, with its warped sense of humor, was drawing her to.
“What are you afraid of? The readers aren’t all going to hop the nearest plane and fly out here to settle down just because I write a section of an article on you and your precious little world.”
He felt like wrapping his hands around her neck and squeezing.
Or wrapping his arms around her slim body and holding her to him.
Both would prove to be fatal mistakes.
Unable to successfully argue with her, he snapped, “I don’t feel like sharing, all right?”
Her eyes searched his in the dim light coming from the house. “Montana, the ranch or your space?”
He paused for a moment, then answered honestly. “All three.”
They weren’t talking about anything so altruistic as the state or the ranch, she’d bet her soul on that. He was afraid, she realized. For some reason, he was afraid. Of her. “But mainly your space, right?”
“Right.”
He’d fairly growled the admission in her face. It took everything she had not to step back. “I’m not sharing your space, Kent. I’m leasing it, for just another week. And then I’ll be gone.”
Cowboys Are For Loving Page 6