by Joanne Rock
“Okay.”
“—ever kiss me like that and—” He couldn’t have heard what he thought she’d said. “What?”
“Okay. We’ll do the date. I was upset the other night, but I know there’s nothing going on between you and Greta.”
Jesse felt a burden sliding right off his shoulders. “Damn straight there’s not.” He reached for Kyra, his hand curving around the delicate face that hid such a strong, proud woman. “I was upset, too, in the wake of the whole kiss thing and I was distracted when you asked me if I could handle just seeing you.” He stroked a strand of hair behind her ear, then followed the silky lock all the way to the end as it curved about the top of her shoulder. “But I can handle it. And I want it more than anything.”
Her lips parted in surprise. Beckoned him to assure her of his words with the persuasive power of his mouth.
But he wouldn’t. Not until he’d sewed up the matter of the date in the most businesslike fashion for Kyra’s benefit. He couldn’t afford to leave any loopholes this time.
Somehow, one freaking date had become more important to him than a whole baseball season had been. More important than anything he could think of.
She licked her lips as if she missed tasting their kisses almost as much as he did. “Maybe we should set a few ground rules before we—”
“Not a chance. I’m not going to let you ground rule yourself into some sort of safe zone where I can’t touch you. This time, I want to handle things my way.”
He braced himself for an argument.
But maybe Kyra read his commitment to his own plan in his eyes because she huffed out a breath and nodded. “Name the place, Jesse. I’ll try it your way. At least for one night.”
One night.
The words were music to his ears. She had given him one night and he planned to make sure one night would never be enough for her.
14
GRETA PADDED her way into the kitchenette area of Clint’s hotel suite, bleary-eyed and in desperate need of caffeine. For the last two mornings, Clint had served her coffee in bed, but he’d needed to run an errand this morning, forcing her to fend for herself.
Funny that in the course of a mere three days she already craved Clint more than her morning java.
She was addicted to the man.
Mindlessly, she tore open the single-serving packet of grounds wrapped in a filter and jammed the bag into the coffeepot. After spending eight years on the road with her modeling career, she had the art of hotel coffeemakers down to a science.
As she went through the motions, she thought about how much Clint Bowman had come to mean to her in just a few days’ time. And even though she knew Clint was an amazing man worthy of total feminine adoration, it scared her just a little to think she had gone from sighing over Jesse Chandler to swooning over Clint in such a short amount of time.
What if she was wrong about Clint, too?
Her relationship with Jesse had started off with a bang—she snorted at that choice of images—as well. And she’d ended up being dead wrong about his affection for her. What if she had no better judgment now when it came to Clint?
Dumping the water into the machine, Greta closed the lid and flicked on the switch to wait for her brew.
Of course, with Clint this time, everything had felt more real. They’d talked in a way she and Jesse had never bothered to. She’d learned that Clint ran a horse-breeding farm in Alabama and that he took extended trips related to his business. She knew he had two hell-raising brothers whose goal in life was to never settle down.
But mostly, Clint had asked about her. Not her life in front of the spotlight, but her life behind it. If she was lonely on the road. What she did in strange cities to entertain herself. What her favorite airport snacks were.
Things no one ever thought to ask her before.
But she hadn’t managed to share any stories about her family—her father who’d always used his strength and his temper to intimidate her. She was totally over her old man.
She just didn’t happen to like to talk about him.
Other than that, she and Clint had shared just about everything. Surely all those conversations they’d had proved they were connecting on more levels than just the physical plane. And as an added bonus, she hadn’t smoked a single cigarette in the three days they’d been together.
A wicked smile curled her lips as she thought about all the ways she’d traded one oral fixation for another infinitely more fulfilling one.
While Greta assured herself she couldn’t be wrong about what she felt for Clint, she slid into the chair at the tiny kitchenette table while the coffeepot steamed and burbled.
The peach-and-blue silk flower arrangement had been cleared off to one side of the table to make way for a massive tome with tiny print open to a page about narcissism. Curious, Greta kept her finger on the open page and flipped the book closed to check out the title. Advanced Studies in Clinical Psychology.
A warning bell went off in her head in time with the beeping coffeepot letting her know her coffee was ready. Too engrossed in her new find, Greta ignored it and flipped the book back to the passage on narcissism.
A passage circled with a hand-scrawled note in the margin that read—check her for signs of this.
Her?
Greta’s eyes cruised over the page to glean that the neurosis was a manifestation of self-obsession. A sickness that placed too much emphasis on outward appearances. And which often resulted from deep-seated loneliness.
Does it get lonely out on the road?
Okay, Clint had asked her that, but that didn’t mean he thought she was narcissistic. Then again, why the hell did a horse breeder from Alabama need to lug around advanced psych texts?
Unless he thought he was dating a woman who was totally crazy.
Greta fumed, unwilling to wait around for Clint’s explanation. No doubt he would only think she was narcissistic for thinking the damn book related to her.
Fine. Let him tack on paranoid, too. She wasn’t sticking around to hear about it. Slamming the book closed on the table, Greta started hunting for her clothes.
She was so busy muttering to herself, she didn’t even hear the door to the suite open. But all of a sudden, Clint was standing there in his T-shirt and running shoes looking utterly mouthwatering.
And like a total dead man.
He grinned. Stalked closer as if he would drag her into bed again only to psychoanalyze her while she was sleeping. “Hey, honey. I’m home.”
* * *
A TEN-pound missile sailed past Clint’s head, narrowly missing his temple and landing with a thud in the open closet behind him. Before he could turn to see what Greta had just thrown at him, his Stetson was winging his way like a Frisbee turned deadly boomerang.
She couldn’t mess with his hat, damn it.
“Now wait just a minute.” He caught the Stetson in midair and slammed it on his head for safekeeping. Storming across the room, he caught her in a bear hug from behind just as she was picking up a vase of silk flowers. “That’s stainless steel, woman. Are you out of your mind?”
Prying the vase from her fingers, he set it back down on the kitchen table, the peach-and-blue flowers dangling sadly from one side.
“Obviously you think so, Mr. Junior Psychologist.” She glared back at him over one shoulder. “Or are you going to try and pretend that you were thinking another woman in your life was narcissistic and not the internationally known model you’re dating? Or rather the model you were dating.”
As she spoke, Clint realized what the ten-pound missile had been that she’d sent winging past his ear. Evidently, she hadn’t enjoyed the notes he’d been making in his psych book.
“Greta, you’re so damn far off base you’re going to laugh when I explain this to you.” He had wrestled cranky horses that were less determined to get away from him than Greta. She was all elbows and knees.
“Ha! You’re so damn screwed you’d probably make up anything to ex
plain this away.” Unable to break her way free, she settled for pinching him in the forearm.
Clint stifled a curse and vise-locked her hands with his own. If she flipped out over his psych background, how would he ever get her to agree to throw away her sophisticated lifestyle for an Alabama ranch? “I probably would make up just about anything if I had been truly trying to psychoanalyze you and I got caught in the act. But no matter how far-fetched of a story I might come up with under pressure, do you think I could ever dream up something as crazy as that I read the book to psychoanalyze horses?”
She stilled in his arms.
Obviously, he’d caught her attention.
But since he had no idea how long he’d be able to retain it, he forced out his story in a condensed version. “I should have told you earlier that I treat troubled horses on the side. Sort of a special interest job that I fell into after I worked with some abused animals confiscated from a foreclosed farm near where I grew up.”
Greta hadn’t moved as he spoke, so he released her. When she didn’t reach for the steel vase again, he figured it was safe to continue.
“I had so much success with those horses that I developed a local reputation and a couple of ranchers came to me with questions about different behavioral problems they were seeing among their stock. Soon, word of my sideline spread all over the country and now I find myself getting all sorts of bizarre calls about troubled animals.” He paused, tried to gauge Greta’s expression. He knew he should have told her about this before, but he’d been afraid of her reaction. Being a shrink of any kind—even to horses—had a way of scaring people off.
“So you’re the Dr. Doolittle of the equine world. Great. What does that have to do with narcissism and the note in your textbook to check somebody—a female somebody—for signs of it? Don’t tell me you’re dealing with vain four-legged creatures.” She folded her arms across her chest, wrinkling the shirt she’d worn to sleep in last night.
His shirt.
God, he wanted to work things out with this woman. Wanted to find more than just amazing sex with her.
She was so smart. So full of contradictions with her high-profile strut and her down-home love of cheeseburgers. Greta Ingram would keep him on his toes forever.
If only he could convince her she wasn’t a guinea pig for his psychoanalytic work.
“Actually, I keep the book around to jog my memory about different symptoms. You’d be surprised how many parallels there are between how horses behave and how we behave. They have as much potential to succumb to fears as we do.”
She lifted a speculative brow as if trying to decide whether or not to believe him.
He forged ahead. “I make a lot of notes in the book while I work. That particular comment is over a decade old from my college days. We did a practicum each month to try our diagnosing skills on students who would fake a disorder. Must be I thought somebody was playing narcissist.”
Greta sniffed. “You didn’t think I was?”
Sensing a chink in the armor, he smiled. “Narcissists are totally self-absorbed. And look at you. You’re wolfing down more cheeseburgers in a month than the Hamburgler because you’re so happy to break out of an industry that required you to be just a little self-absorbed.”
Called by the scent of brewed coffee, Clint gave Greta some breathing room and a moment to think about that while he poured two steaming mugs. Spending the last few nights with her—and consequently, a few mornings—he’d learned she was infinitely happier postjava in the a.m.
He made a mental note to purchase himself a coffeemaker with a timer feature. She’d be able to go straight from horizontal to sipping position.
Greta accepted the cup and drank gratefully. “But now that I launched into a tirade over the narcissism thing, doesn’t that just prove I think the world revolves around me in a sort of ‘the lady doth protest too much’ logic?”
Clint shrugged. “Doesn’t prove a damn thing to me. Besides, I’m the one running around playing Dr. Doolittle to horses with my college psych book in hand. I’m the last person to cast stones in the mental health department.”
She tipped her head back and laughed. The warm, rich sound flowed over him, soothed and excited him at the same time. He could get lost for days in that throaty laughter of hers.
But he was running out of time to linger with her. He’d already extended his trip to Florida, first because Sam’s Pride had made for such an intriguing case, and second because of Greta. He didn’t regret a moment of their time together, but he knew it couldn’t last.
At least, not here.
“Come to Alabama with me, Greta.” He found himself saying the words before he’d given himself a chance to think about them.
And judging by Greta’s semihorrified expression, he knew the moment he said them he damn well should have thought about them.
A lot.
“Go where?” She twisted a finger through her breezy blond hair, a gesture smacking of nervousness that he’d never seen in her before.
Damn.
“Alabama. Home of the Crimson Tide. Home of—” Bear Bryant, football coach with the most Division I victories in history. Like she’d give a rat’s ass about that. “Home of some great state parks.”
She didn’t look swayed.
“Rich Southern history?” he prodded.
In fact, she looked downright ill.
“Come on, Greta. Take a week and at least check it out. We’ve got the best damn barbecue sandwiches in the U.S. of A. You’ll never go back to hamburgers. Besides, you international women like to travel, right?”
“Preferably to places with more than one cosmetic counter in town. And preferably to cities with international flight connections so that we can haul our butts out of there if necessary.”
“Birmingham International is just a hop, skip and a jump away. Atlanta’s only a few hours. But if you need to come back here, I’ll loan you my pickup.” Hell, he’d buy her a damn pickup of her own. “And I’ll teach you how to drive it, to boot.”
“Clint, I’m sorry.” She was shaking her head, that silky blond hair of hers sweeping the tops of her shoulders. “But I don’t think—”
“Don’t say it.” God, he didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t stand to think he’d found the only woman who would ever be right for him only to lose her over something as superficial as where they were in the world. “Not yet.”
“It’s not just Alabama.”
His heart damn near dropped to his ankles. “It’s not?”
“It’s the horses, too. And all the animals in general. And just the whole—farm thing.” She wrinkled her nose as if to underscore her words, but it was obvious there was more to her reluctance than that. Shadows of insecurity clouded her eyes, and Clint didn’t have a clue how to interpret them.
Something was holding her back. Something bigger than her desire for a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. But if she wasn’t ready to share it with him, there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
Yet.
Until he could figure out what worries she hid from him, he would give her some space, respect her boundaries. In his work with troubled animals, he’d learned the value of patience.
“I think we could work around your issues with rural life, Greta. If you’re not ready, I understand. But I’ve got to go back this week.” His brothers were good about taking over for a few days. A week, maybe. By now he was really stretching it. “I don’t have a choice.”
She fluffed her hair. Shrugged her shoulders as if him leaving wasn’t a big deal. But her hands trembled just a little.
“I want you to go with me. Stay with me. Move right in and never leave.” He stared into her eyes until he was certain she knew he meant it. “If you’re not ready for Alabama—or for me—I can come back here next weekend. And the one after that. However long it takes to convince you to come with me, or until you tell me not to bother anymore. But it’s my home, Greta. Eventually, I’ll always have to go back.”
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“Home is where your heart is, cowboy.” She set her coffee mug on the table and stared up at him, eyes flashing a challenge. “Maybe you’re just not enticed enough to try living somewhere different.”
She didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand if she’d never been close to her family.
“It’s not that. You could entice me to do just about anything, woman. And you have.” After the experience near the airport runway, there’d been the time on his hotel balcony. Then the hotel elevator. “I just can’t walk away from what’s so much a part of who I am.”
The tiny frown that crossed her face was almost imperceptible, but Clint had studied every nuance of her expression for the past three days and he saw it. Knew the idea of being apart hurt her almost as much as it hurt him.
But she wasn’t ready, didn’t have the advantage of knowing with every fiber of her being that they were right together the way he did.
“I don’t know if I can do a relationship of half-measures, Clint. I wasted too much time and emotional energy on Jesse when that didn’t have a chance in hell of working out. I can’t commit myself to a man who won’t even live in the same state with me now.”
There was more to it than that. And Clint intended to figure out exactly what was holding her back.
“Give me at least next weekend. Let me think about how to change your mind this week, and if you want to, you can go ahead and think about how to change mine, too. But at least give it until next weekend before you make that decision.”
She stared into the bottom of her empty coffee cup for a long moment while Clint held his breath.
Finally, she met his gaze. “One more weekend. But I have to be honest with you, Clint. I can’t picture me ever wanting to spend any time with one horse, let alone a whole ranch full of them.” She blinked fast, as if to keep her emotions at bay. As if to make sure Clint didn’t realize she was scared of a whole lot more than the horses. “And you’ll have to show me a hell of a lot more than great state parks to get me to set foot in Alabama.”