by Kristi Gold
Tori shifted her weight and tried to relax her frame, a futile attempt at a nonchalant façade. “So what brings you here this morning?”
“You know why I’m here.”
She was still too afraid to hope. “Breakfast? I have a whole-grain bar in my overnight bag.”
“Are you determined to change my mind about this whole thing?”
“That depends on which way it would change. Are we going to do it?”
He grinned then, revealing dazzling white teeth accentuating his dazzling smile. “Sure. Stella’s car or my truck?”
“I meant the interview.”
“Too bad.”
“So?”
“What do you think?”
She thought she would die on the spot from the suspense. “I don’t know what to think.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
Tori kept her feet firmly fixed to keep from flinging herself into his arms. “Great. You won’t regret it.”
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
She’d settle for him holding her. “Okay. We’re agreed.”
“First, I have a few ground rules I expect you to follow.”
She suspected as much. “Okay.”
“I don’t want to answer a lot of really personal questions.”
She certainly didn’t intend to reveal that their first up close and personal encounter happened in the back of a truck. “Fine. I’ll avoid the boxers or briefs query.” She already knew the answer to that one anyway—briefs.
“And I don’t want to talk about my father.”
That could put a severe kink in her plans. “Mitch, we’re going to have to talk about him in terms of your insistence you’re not going to assume his role in politics.”
“You can mention that briefly, but I don’t want to talk about why we haven’t spoken more than three times in fourteen years.”
“Only three times?” Tori couldn’t suppress the shock in her tone.
“Yeah, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.”
The media had speculated that father and son didn’t get along, but Tori had no idea the rift in their relationship was this acute. She made a mental note to handle that situation with fine-crystal care. “Anything else?”
He leaned forward and positioned one hand on the truck near her hip, the other in his back pocket. “Yeah. We reconsider the hands-off clause.”
With him so close, Tori considered taking him up on the offer. That wasn’t at all advisable. “It’s necessary that we maintain a professional relationship while I’m interviewing you. Otherwise, I might lose my objectivity.”
“You might gain a little more insight on my likes and dislikes, at least between the sheets.”
“I don’t plan to go between your sheets.”
“You’d like my sheets.”
“Behave yourself or I’m going to reconsider.”
With a push of his palm, he took away his body, but not the heat that had worked its way beneath Tori’s skin, as he had from the first time she’d seen him saunter into the bar like a cowboy king. “If I have to behave, I will.”
She didn’t believe that for a minute. “Good. Now if you’ll give me an hour or so, I’ll settle into the motel and then I’ll have Stella give me a ride to the ranch.”
“That’s not going to work.”
“Okay, less than an hour. I just want to change into some jeans.”
His gaze raked down her, slowly, and back up again. “You look fine to me, but I meant you staying at the Quail Creek Inn. That won’t work. It’s a seedy place.”
“Unfortunately, it’s all that’s available.”
“You could stay in the main house.” He hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “It’s big enough.”
Not big enough to avoid him, Tori decided. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
Tori hadn’t noticed Stella’s reappearance until she said, “You could stay with me and Bobby.”
Tori regarded her friend standing by the car’s fender. “I couldn’t do that, Stella. You and Bobby are practically on your honeymoon.”
Stella engaged in a little eye-rolling. “Bobby and I have been on our honeymoon for months, and if I recall, you were in the house last night.”
Yes, attempting to sleep to the sounds of Stella and Bobby doing the horizontal cha-cha. “Do you have a spare room?”
“Three bedrooms but only one bath,” Mitch said. “It’s the original house.”
“We’ll manage fine,” Stella said. “In fact, I’d love to have you for a little longer, Victoria. Since I’ve quit work, I could use the company.”
Mitch sent a less-than-friendly look at Stella. “My place would be much more comfortable.”
Not for Tori. Mitch Warner was the definition of temptation. Even if he slept in a galvanized steel chastity belt instead of pajamas, she could probably pick the lock with her teeth to get to him in a fit of adrenaline brought about by uncontrolled desire. She didn’t trust him to keep his distance. More important, she didn’t trust herself around him, especially at night.
“So what’s it going to be, Tori?” he asked. “My place or Stella’s?”
“Yeah, Tori,” Stella said. “Which one?”
Tori felt as if she’d been thrust into an accommodation war. However, she did see certain advantages to being on Mitch’s property. Rental cars were non-existent in town and she’d have to rely on Stella to cart her back and forth to the ranch every day if she stayed in the motel. That would definitely get old very quickly.
“I’ll stay with Stella and Bobby.”
“Then it’s settled,” Stella said and opened the driver’s door. “Let’s go. I want to be there when Bobby comes in for lunch. You can help me do a little unpacking.”
Great. Tori wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she was left holding a box while Bobby and Stella grabbed a nooner, just liked they’d grabbed a dawner while she’d been slaving over the floors.
When Tori rounded the car, Mitch followed her to the door. But before she could open it, he stopped her progress with a palm on the window. “If you get tired of listening to the Stella and Bobby show, come on up to my house and stay with me. I won’t bother you. Much.”
An hour later, she emerged from Stella’s faded green sedan wearing second-skin jeans and a tight-fitting sweater—a brown-eyed angel with a she-devil body that could drive a man to his knees in worship. Mitch just might have to do that in the next few days.
Maybe Tori wasn’t open to taking up where they’d left off, but that wouldn’t stop Mitch from trying. Of course, she would have to be willing, otherwise it might seem that he was trading sex for a story, and he wasn’t that low. But he wasn’t above trying a little subtle persuasion to change her mind.
Standing on the old home place porch, Stella passed by him and said, “I’ll be inside. When she gets off the phone, come on in and make yourself at home.”
He turned his attention to Tori who was now conversing on a cell phone. When she laughed and tossed her hair back from one shoulder, Mitch couldn’t quell the sudden jealousy. Maybe she did have a boyfriend back in Dallas. After all, she’d lied to him about her job. Okay, she hadn’t exactly lied, but she had withheld the truth, at least until last night.
But if he looked at it logically, she could’ve led him on a merry chase, gathering information under the pretense of an extended visit, only to hightail it out of Quail Run to write a story and he wouldn’t have been the wiser until it came out in print. Instead, she’d opted to be up front and honest about her plans, and he had to respect that. He wasn’t quite ready to trust her, though. Not until he knew for certain she wasn’t bent on making a buck on a bunch of falsehoods.
After Tori finished her conversation and opened the trunk, Mitch approached and took the suitcase from her. “Calling for backup?” he asked.
Even her frown was damn pretty in the daylight. “Calling my boss. I had to let her know I’d be stayi
ng for a week.”
“She didn’t have a problem with that?”
“Not when she considers what I have to gain.”
Tori had no idea what she could gain if she would only say yes to him. And sure as the sun set she would say it before she left.
He set the case on the porch. “I’ll leave this here for now. I want you to come up and meet my granddad.”
“I’ve met him. I used to live here, remember?”
“Then I’m sure he’d like to see you again.”
“Is that the only reason you want me in your house?”
He grinned when he noticed her blush. “What other reason would I have?”
She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I could think of a few. I guess I’m having a little trouble trusting you.”
“Guess that makes two of us.”
“Good point.”
He held out his hand to her, which she failed to take. He could live with that reluctance, for now. “Come on up. I’ll only occupy you for a few minutes.” Or longer, if she was willing.
“Okay. For a while.”
At least she walked fairly close to him as they traveled up the path while he explained they owned almost three thousand acres, land that had been in his mother’s family for over five generations, purchased when Oklahoma was still a territory. The conversation was so dry that by the time Mitch reached the front porch, he realized he’d missed his calling as a history professor.
“Nice house,” Tori commented when he pushed open the pine door. “And very large.”
“I had the Austin stone shipped from Texas, but basically it’s pretty simple.”
When they entered the great room, Tori looked around, her eyes wide as she honed in on the massive rock fireplace. “This is simple? The ceilings are what, twenty feet?”
“Twenty-four, and that makes the room look bigger.”
She ran her hand over the brushed suede sofa. “This feels really nice.”
“Kind of like the velvet last night, huh?” Mitch just couldn’t help himself when he thought about her running her hand over him in the same way. He imagined taking her to that sofa and getting inside her again. He hadn’t initiated that couch yet, but he just might real soon.
Or maybe not, he decided when he noticed the acid look Tori sent him over one shoulder. She turned and faced him with a strained smile. “Where’s your grandfather?”
Truth be known, Mitch had no clue where Buck had gone. His ‘56 Chevy truck was nowhere in sight. “Guess he stepped out for a minute. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Not many places for a seventy-six-year-old widower to go in town.”
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Did you know he had left before you brought me up here?”
“I didn’t notice his truck was gone until we got on the porch.”
She sent him a skeptical look. “Are you sure?”
Man, this mutual mistrust thing wasn’t going to bode well for the interview, or Mitch’s plans to make love to her again. “Look, let’s just get this out on the table right now. I won’t question your motives, if you won’t question mine.”
He offered his hand again and this time she actually accepted it for a shake. “Deal.”
But in that moment, neither one of them made a move to part. Mitch couldn’t resist running his thumb along the smooth skin on her palm, couldn’t resist hanging on a little bit longer. Obviously Tori could. She tugged away and slipped both hands into the back pockets of her jeans. He’d give a month’s wages to be her hands about now.
“Anything else you want to show me?” she asked.
His grin made an appearance in spite of his effort to stop it. “You know, you might want to quit asking those kinds of questions. That would make it a lot easier for me to behave.”
Her sultry smile nearly knocked the wind out of him. “My questions are innocent. I can’t help it if your thoughts aren’t.”
“Your questions contain a lot of double entendre.”
“Entendre? Now there’s a word you rarely hear coming out of a cowboy’s mouth.”
If she only knew what other words were running around in his brain, she’d be out the door in a matter of seconds. “I know a few more. Want to hear them?”
“Would that be ranch lingo or the articulation of a Harvard grad?”
“Just simple words for a simple man.” He saw more than mild curiosity in her eyes. He also saw his chance and moved a little closer. “Take sexy, for instance. That would describe you in that sweater.”
A trace of self-consciousness flickered in her brown eyes. “It’s blue, basic, just like me.”
“How about beautiful? There’s nothing basic about your beauty, Tori. It’s real. Appealing. Do you want more words?”
“Why not? You’re obviously on a roll.”
Another kind of roll came to mind. He reached out and snagged her belt loop to pull her against him. “Tempting. That’s another I don’t toss around that often, but that also describes you.”
“Mitch—”
He stopped her protests with a fingertip against her lips. “Dangerous. You’re dangerous, Tori, in the worst kind of way, because you don’t realize your power. You’re deadly to a man’s control.”
She pulled his hand from her mouth and held it against his chest. “I could say the same thing about you and your power over women.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not that strong, at least not around you. And you know something? I don’t even begin to understand it.” With his left palm, he reached down and nudged her hip until not even a scrap of air separated them. “No woman has ever done this to me so easily.”
Her breath caught and her pupils flared. “Mitch, we said we wouldn’t.”
He ran his hand over her bottom before traveling up to the small of her back. “You said it, not me.”
She wet her lips, a subtle sign of encouragement in Mitch’s opinion. “What do you really want from me, Mitch Warner?”
“I want to kiss you, but only if you say yes.”
He saw the hesitation in her eyes, the questions, immedi ately before he saw her give in and heard her whisper, “Yes.”
He bent his head and brushed a kiss over one cheek, then the other, savoring the moment before he reached his ultimate goal….
“Why, looky what my grandson brung me for my birthday.”
Mitch dropped his hands and hissed out an angry breath.
He’d be damned if Buck Littleton didn’t have timing as bad as Bobby Lehman.
Five
Mitch’s grandfather had good timing, or at least Tori assumed the pencil-thin man with the shaggy silver hair, handlebar moustache and battered straw hat was his grandfather. A long time had passed since she’d seen him and even back then, she hadn’t seen him too often. He had definitely aged, but then so had they all.
Mitch stepped to her side and said, “Buck, this is Tori Barnett. She used to live in Quail Run.”
Buck snatched his hat from his head and nodded. “Your mama was Cindy Barnett, Calvin Barnett’s daughter, right?”
Tori managed a smile in light of her discomfort. “That’s right. My granddad used to run the gas station.” She wondered if Mitch had caught the fact that she had the same name as her maternal grandfather, a sure indication that her mother had never married her father.
Buck rubbed his stubbled chin. “Your mama used to do some sewing now and then for my Sally.” He winked at Mitch. “Your grandma was like a race car driver on a sewing machine. She couldn’t get the seams straight.”
Tori was propelled back into her past by an old man’s recollections. A past that had included hand-to-mouth and hard times. But her only parent had done the best that she could under the circumstances. “My mother was a very good seamstress. The best in the county.”
“Last I heard, you were off to college,” Buck said. “Are you back for good?”
“No. I live and work in Dallas now.”
“And your mama?” he asked. “How is s
he faring these days?”
“She had a stroke and passed away a little over a year ago.”
Buck crimped his hat in his fists. “I’m mighty sorry to hear that. She was a real good woman, as I recall.”
“Yes, she was.”
Mitch cleared his throat as if uncomfortable over the course of the conversation. “Tori’s here to do a story on me for a magazine, Buck.”
Buck’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. “Well, I’ll be damned. I don’t know how you convinced him to do that, Tori, but it’s not for me to question.”
“Good.” Mitch turned to Tori. “Come with me and we can get started.”
Tori didn’t dare ask what he wanted to start, or possibly finish. She would just follow Mitch, remind him of the rules and then silently scold herself for being proverbial putty in his presence. If she didn’t grow a solid backbone soon, she’d be on her back in record time.
“Well, it was nice talking to you again, Mr. Littleton. Maybe we can have a conversation about yours and Mitch’s relationship. Readers would love to know about your influence on his life.”
Buck chuckled. “That’s easy. I taught him how to drink beer and rope a calf and romance a woman. And if he gets out of hand, you let me know. I’ll put him in his place.”
Mitch took her by the elbow. “Let’s go, Tori, before he starts telling more wild tales.”
“Oh, and happy birthday, Buck,” she tossed over one shoulder as Mitch guided her toward the adjacent hallway.
“His birthday is four months away,” Mitch said as the sound of Buck’s laughter followed them all the way down the corridor.
Tori counted the number of rooms, three to be exact, on the way to an unknown destination. Two were sparsely furnished, one was a bath, and all were oversized. At the end of the hall, they entered a comfortable room containing a small fireplace, battered plaid furniture, a cluttered desk complete with a computer and rows of bookshelves.
“I hang out here in the evenings,” Mitch said as he closed the door behind them. “Most everything in here I’ve had for a lot of years.”