by Jeannie Watt
“Hey,” he said as he caught sight of her. “Do you have manicure scissors?”
Skye grimaced at the cloth, which was soaking up blood, before meeting his gaze. “In the mood for a mani-pedi?”
He didn’t smile, but she had a feeling he wanted to. “I want to take the stitches out of my forehead when I get done with my chin. It’s time.”
“Yes, I have sharp scissors.”
“I’m also having a time finding my butterfly sutures. They might be in my truck.”
“Or you used them all up the last time you split your face open.” She gestured with her head toward her door. “Come on.”
Why are you doing this?
No good answer sprung to mind. Maybe because it was the decent thing to do. Maybe to prove to herself that she could be near Tyler and maintain composure. Trial by fire, and all of that. She was going to have to get used to being around the guy—right?
“You have adhesive sutures?” Tyler let himself in through the gate and followed her to the porch.
“Was I married to a bull rider?”
He snorted in reply and Skye assumed that he caught her meaning. Blood and stitches were a way of life.
Skye led Tyler through her house and made him sit in a kitchen chair while she got the scissors, tweezers, gauze, butterfly adhesives and antiseptic cream. If it had been Mason, she’d have sat him down on the commode, but Tyler didn’t need to see her newly washed lace bras hanging from the shower rod, or her makeup spread over the counter. Now that the bathroom was hers and hers alone, she left her stuff out where it was handy to get at. And she hung unmentionables wherever she so pleased.
Skye returned to the kitchen to put the supplies on the table along with a two-sided mirror on a stand.
Skye started peeling the covering off the adhesive suture, then handed it to Tyler after he’d wiped his chin clean with a paper towel. She had to admit to being impressed with the way that he quickly pulled the edges of the wound together and applied the butterfly.
“You need another.”
“Probably,” he agreed as he took the second suture from her. “I know this isn’t as much fun for you as sticking me with a needle.”
“I’m certain I’ll get my chance.”
“Looking forward to that?” he asked mildly.
She smiled a little. “You better believe it.”
He reached out and picked up the scissors and then leaned toward the mirror to slip the tiny blade under the first stitch and snip. “Tweezers?”
Skye handed them to him and he pulled the first stitch. Skye was no stranger to stitches. She’d been raised around animals and she’d married a bull rider. She retrieved the small trash can from under the kitchen sink without a word and held it out for Tyler to drop the suture into. He gathered up the butterfly wrappers and dropped them in before tackling the second stitch.
Skye watched him work, standing close enough that she could see her reflection in the mirror and was glad that her expression rivaled that of a surgical nurse. Cool and impassive, as if her nerves weren’t dancing, and as if she weren’t on high alert.
After removing the last suture, Tyler met her eyes in the mirror and Skye suddenly felt as if she were standing a little too close to him, even though she was a good eighteen inches away.
“So what do you think?”
“About...?” she asked coolly.
“Am I pretty again?”
Skye forced a frown, because yes, he did look prettier, and she didn’t want to notice those things about her ranch partner. “I’m sure the ladies of Gavin will think so.”
He held her gaze for another split second before gathering the items she’d supplied him into a neat pile and getting up from the chair. And that was when Skye’s theory that she might be standing too close to him became hard fact. She was too close now, but she wasn’t going to move. Tripping over herself to put distance between them wasn’t going to make her feel better.
“Thank you for the help.”
“I don’t think I did that much.”
“Never underestimate the value of moral support.”
She gave a small snort through her nose. “That’s me. Ms. Moral Support.”
Heaven knew that had been her role with Mason. One she missed...just as she missed being supported by her husband. They’d had a decent partnership and there were days when she was so tired of fighting the world alone that she felt like curling up and hiding. But that wasn’t possible. The world was there, whether she hid or not, so that meant that she needed to face things head-on. Things like this ridiculously attractive man standing way too close to her in her own kitchen, making her feel all jumpy and aware.
He raised his chin, looking down at her from his superior height and Skye fought the urge to tilt her chin up to meet his gaze...mainly because that would bring her lips all the closer to his and she had no business—absolutely no business—wondering how he kissed.
Such thoughts were crazy and dangerous and not allowed into her head. And if she couldn’t get the thoughts out of her head, she needed to get Tyler out of her house. She’d underestimated the impact of having him there.
Tyler cleared his throat. “I’ll let you be.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he turned and headed toward the door, leaving Skye staring after him. Had he read her thoughts or something?
Or had he felt that same thing she had?
* * *
THE GROUND WAS moist and the grass squishy the next morning when Tyler came out of his trailer, his very sore chin tucked deep into his jacket. A fat robin yanked a worm up out of the ground and flew away as he rounded the corner of the bunkhouse, his shoulders hunched against the nip in the morning air. Clouds hung low, but the sun broke through on the far side of the pasture where Skye’s cattle grazed. He shook the ladder that was leaning against the granary. Water splashed down on his hat. Slippery, no doubt, and since he hadn’t felt like sacrificing his chin again, he wore running shoes to work in today. Hopefully the soles would give him better traction. As it was, he was going to get soaked climbing around on the wet roof, but so be it. More afternoon showers were forecast for that day, and he wanted to get as much done as possible.
He heard the door to Skye’s house slam and the sound of her boots on the porch. The odds were that he would have help today, since it was Skye’s day off. The woman was bound and determined to maintain as much control of her place as possible, and he was good with that—as long as she didn’t put herself in jeopardy...like, say, by climbing a slippery ladder onto a slippery roof. She’d probably say he was being sexist, but it was more like being protective...of a woman who didn’t want to be protected.
Skye crossed the gravel driveway, hands pushed deep into her sweatshirt pockets. She had on faded blue jeans and a canvas vest over her hoodie. Her hair was spilling out from under the hood she had pulled up over her head. As she got closer, she raised her gaze from the gravel to meet his, her expression cool, almost serene, as if she knew exactly what lay ahead that day and how she was going to handle it.
He, on the other hand, didn’t have a clue. Would they talk? Not talk? Get into yet another argument about roofs and ladders? Would he notice her perfume and her hair and wish that things were different between them, just as he had in her kitchen last night? She probably wouldn’t be thrilled to know he thought things like that.
“Morning,” she said in a low voice. “How’s your chin?”
“Sore as hell.”
“As it should be.” She stopped a few feet away from him, and he sensed the huge chasm separating them. Because of Mason? Because he was who he was? Because she was used to seeing him as the enemy?
Last night he’d felt a shift between them, then Skye had done a mental one-eighty, as if she couldn’t handle the idea of being attracted to a guy l
ike him.
“Do you like the way things are between us, Skye?”
A startled look crossed her face. “I don’t—”
“I think you do,” he interrupted. “I’m not your enemy, Skye.”
“Of course you’re not my enemy.” She jammed her hands back into her pockets and pursed her lips in a way that told Tyler that there were a lot of things she wanted to say, but that she was afraid of revealing too much. So he shifted his weight and waited. Sometimes stubbornness was a good quality. “We are not enemies,” she said carefully. “But we aren’t actually friends either.”
“And why is that?”
“Friends feel easy around one another. I feel easy around Jess.”
“You don’t feel easy around me?” He knew she didn’t, had seen more than enough evidence last night in her kitchen to confirm the fact—but he asked the question anyway. Maybe it was a jerk thing to do, but he wanted to hear her answer. Wanted to know where he was lacking.
She lifted her chin and met his challenge with the truth. “I feel edgy around you, Tyler.”
“Yeah. I’ve kind of sensed that,” he said drily. “My question is why do you feel that way?”
If her hands went any deeper into the pockets, they would come out the other side. “You’re different from Jess.”
“I’m the bad twin, you mean?”
“If that’s the way you want to put it.” She casually backed up a step or two, then stopped and shifted her weight to one side, hands still in her pockets. “Jess was friendly and supportive and never once did anything to make me feel self-conscious.”
“Back to that, are we?”
“You’ve got to understand, Tyler... I spent a lot of years thinking of you as the...” Her mouth flattened. “I’m not going to say enemy.”
“What synonym will you choose?” he asked grimly.
“Nemesis. You threatened me with reptiles, for pity’s sake.”
He took a step closer. “But I think we both know that it isn’t the reptiles that we’re dealing with now.”
She let out a self-conscious sigh. “I made you out as the bad guy with Mason, and...well...I believed it. But I apologized.”
“Do you still believe that I was the bad guy?” He needed to know.
“I...don’t know. I no longer think you encouraged him to gamble.”
“But...”
“You’re two of a kind. I think you encouraged him to be wild.”
“I did. Although he didn’t need encouragement, Skye.”
She took another step back, even though she was already a good distance away from him, and pulled her hands out of her back pockets, folding them over her chest. “I’ve lost my husband, I almost lost my ranch. I’ve been through hell this past year. I don’t need to hear this.”
“It’s the truth, Skye. I liked Mason, but I accepted the truth about him.”
“Because it didn’t affect you.” She moistened her lips then abruptly announced, “I hate feeling uncomfortable on my own ranch.”
And there it was. He made her uncomfortable by just...being there.
“I guess you’ll have to go back to the bank.”
She swallowed. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Then I suppose you want me to move off the ranch?”
It was obvious she wanted to say yes, and he had no idea why she didn’t, for no other reason than to show him how she felt about him. But instead she said, “We need a...treaty...or something. Rules. That’s it. We need rules.”
“Okay. Make some rules.”
A pained expression crossed her face. “Why is everything so impossible with you?”
“Something to do with my winning personality, I guess.”
She didn’t answer immediately but instead studied his face closely, as if trying to find the answer to some mystery there. Even without the stitches, he wasn’t pretty at the moment. He knew that. Not unless she was a woman who liked yellowish-brown circles around eyes and remnant suture marks above the bridge of the nose. But her gaze did not linger on his injuries. It traveled down to his mouth and held, and he felt his body stir in response.
“Skye?” Her gaze jerked up to his as if he’d just startled her out of a daydream. “Make some damned rules so that we can go work on the roof.”
She gave her head a slow shake. “What good would it do? Bull riders are born to break rules.”
“Except for Jess?”
“I have a feeling he’s no angel either.”
Tyler couldn’t help it. He smiled. “I’d like to make a rule.”
She shot him a startled look. “Which is?”
“We talk about everyday stuff. The kind of stuff you would talk to Jess about. I look like him. It seems to me that you could pretend.”
“You don’t look like him,” she said as she knelt to open the toolbox and take out a hammer.
“You mean the black eyes?”
She stopped with her hand on top of the box. “No. I mean you don’t look like him.”
“We’re identical twins.”
She shook her head and started toward the building with the ladder leaning against it. Tyler stood frozen, then started after her. He really wanted more of an explanation, but he’d just made a rule, and it seemed important not to break it—especially when she expected him to do just that.
* * *
THE SUN PEEKED out from behind a cloud as Tyler went to get the tractor. After a brief consultation, they’d decided to use the bucket to lift the bundles of shingles to the roof, thereby avoiding numerous trips up and down the still-damp ladder, and also avoiding any future ladder accidents.
As she waited, Skye climbed up to the roof and looked out over the ranch that she loved...loved and sacrificed for. It was a sacrifice having Tyler here, especially when she was becoming so aware of him in ways she hadn’t expected, but she needed to stop taking it out on him. Therefore, she was going to do exactly as he’d suggested—talk about neutral stuff.
Pretend he was Jess. She didn’t know how successful she would be, because he wasn’t Jess. He was darker, more unpredictable. More attractive. But...she had to do something to create a more peaceful environment on her ranch. An environment that didn’t have her feeling jumpy and defensive.
The tractor fired to life, and after allowing it to warm up for a few minutes, Tyler brought it out of the shed and headed toward the granary. He stopped and set down the bucket, then climbed down from the driver’s seat and started pulling the bundles of shingles into the bucket before Skye reached the ground. She put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention, since the engine noise was loud, and his gaze jerked toward her, as if he was startled that she had touched him instead of the other way around.
“Let me,” she said. She took hold of the shingles and pulled, groaning a little as she realized just how heavy a whole bundle was. When Tyler leaned down to help, she waved him off. “I can do it.”
And she did. It took a little time, but at least Tyler wasn’t ripping his shoulder up. She let out a breath and stood, dusting her hands off on her pants. “If you rip your shoulder again, you’ll be here for six weeks instead of four.”
“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
“Just thinking about you and your career.”
“Bull.”
Skye straightened up and looked him square in the face. “I thought we were aiming for neutral. And, for the record, I was being truthful. I know how difficult it is for you guys to be off the circuit.”
There’d been a big learning curve after she’d married Mason, but she’d eventually come to understand that her guy needed to ride the way some people needed to climb mountains. It was something deeply ingrained in his psyche, and she’d come to a place where she could support his needs. Understand
them. And it worked. She went to events when they were close by, but mostly she stayed at home and kept the ranch running. Mason made it home more often than a lot of his buddies.
Tyler gave a curt nod and headed back to the tractor and revved the engine.
“Ready?” he asked over the noise.
“Yes,” she called back and then started climbing. He waited until she was safely on the roof before lifting the bucket with the shingles and the tools. Fifteen minutes later, the bundles were deposited on either side of the roof and Tyler had demonstrated the not very complex task of laying shingles and hammering them into place. And since Skye refused to relinquish the hammer, Tyler flopped the shingles into place and she nailed them down. They continued their assembly-line work until Tyler called for a break about an hour in. They sat a couple of feet apart on the small roof and looked out over the ranch, just as Skye had done earlier.
“Your chicken house is coming along nicely,” Tyler said as he gestured toward the single frame lying where she’d started working on it behind the barn.
“Funny,” she muttered, but she took no offense. This was a good neutral topic—the first they’d hit upon. Until the break, they’d worked in silence.
“It’s not very big. More like a chicken apartment.”
“I only want four or five hens. Enough to keep me in eggs and to eat the bugs. I had a few hens when I was a kid and they roosted in the barn, but the raccoons and owls played hell with them. I promised myself that if I got chickens, they would have a safe place to sleep.”
“Your goose sleeps in the barn unmolested.”
“Vanessa is a tough old girl.”
“I noticed.”
She was about to ask what he meant when he pointed into the distance. “Are those our pastures there?”
“Yes. But the ones beyond...those belong to Cliff.”
“Ah. We need to ride the boundary sometime soon. Check fences.”
“I’ll have to borrow a horse from my neighbor Lex.” Lex—Alexa—was married to one of Mason’s friends, and because of that had become her friend.