Executive - The Complete Series Box Set (A Single Dad Romance)

by Claire Adams

  “Um, no, they passed away.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Okay, enough about my sad life. Let’s talk about these hot dogs I’m cooking right now. Don’t they look like the most amazing hot dogs in the world?”

  At first I wanted to protest his change in subject, but then I realized it wasn’t useful to me at all. Garrett didn’t trust me — that was clear. Whatever it was that was going on in his past, he wasn’t interested in sharing it with me. The longer I thought about it, the more I realized he couldn’t be hiding anything that was all that horrible — he just couldn’t. Garrett was a decent man who worked hard, was polite, and seemed very genuine most of the time. Whatever he was hiding, had to come out sooner or later.

  “They look pretty normal to me,” I teased.

  “Just wait until you taste them. These are the number-one, best-in-the-world hot dogs. Plus, they were cooked by this five-star camping chef.”

  Garrett made me laugh; he almost always made me laugh at least a little bit. It was fun being around him and I was sad that he would most likely be moving on soon. The more time I spent with him the more I was sure he would want to move on soon. Being a ranch hand certainly didn’t seem to fit him very well, but he did do a good job of it.

  Maybe he was running away from a past job, or girlfriend. Perhaps he had even committed some sort of crime; I just wasn’t sure. But I felt safe with him and I didn’t feel like he lied or was deceitful in our day-to-day conversations; only about his past. So, for the time being, I tried to forget about my gut and what it was saying to me, instead I decided to just enjoy the moment with a friend. That was all Garrett was and that was all he had to be, a nice friend who worked on my parents’ ranch.

  “Mmmm, you’re right, these are the best hot dogs I’ve ever tasted,” I joked.

  “I know. I know. Can Buckjoy have one?”

  “Well, he’s not supposed to, but I’m sure he’ll love it. Go ahead and give him one.”

  Garrett was so gentle with Buckjoy, it was exciting to see their bond growing. I had seen many men try to tame wild horses, but most didn’t have the patience to continue working with them. Even my own father struggled with training wild horses; that was why I always did it for him. Garrett stood next to the tall, black animal; he was barefoot and only wearing his boxer shorts, yet he looked so comfortable I had to snap a quick photo without him knowing.

  Wild horses were plentiful in our area of the world. Much of the land in Montana wasn’t occupied at all, except by wild animals. We certainly couldn’t tame them all, but it was a fun project to work with them if they happened to hang around our land a lot. My father had gone to great lengths to work directly with the state conservation board to get approval to keep Buckjoy. Once the wild horses started hanging around our ranch, they had a hard time returning to their heard. It was an easy life at the ranch, water brought to them, food delivered every morning; wild horses liked that part of living with us. It was the saddling them up and taking them for rides that was the hard part.

  Garrett’s hand gently stroked the animal and I saw how Buckjoy looked at him. The horse was totally and utterly Garrett’s; I’d have to break it to my father sooner or later, but that horse loved Garrett and it was clear. Buckjoy was calm and relaxed as Garrett pet him.

  “I can’t believe he is a wild horse,” Garrett said as he gently pet the animal. “He seems to be perfectly comfortable and at home with us. It is like he was meant to be here with us at this very moment.”

  “I think he just likes you,” I added. “He certainly doesn’t look that calm when he’s with me.”

  “Maybe.”

  We finished some more of the food that my mother had packed for us and then gathered the remainder of the meat and cooked it up and fed it to the horses. We still had plenty of snacks to tide us over to the next morning and it was likely that any raw meat would go bad with the small amount of ice that was left in the cooler.

  “So you’re still set on this idea of us each sleeping in our own tent?” Garrett asked.

  “I think I’ll survive alone.”

  His raging hard on had subsided but I still couldn’t help but glance in that direction as he stood near his tent. If Garrett hadn’t been blatantly lying to me or keeping secrets about his past, I might have considered having a fun, naked night with him. But it was clear that he wasn’t being honest about his past and I was smart enough to stay away from men who weren’t honest.

  I hadn’t always been smart enough to avoid dishonest men; it was something I learned in my time in New York City. It was also something I wanted to talk about in my book, if I ever actually got around to writing it. I pulled the pen out and wrote some notes quickly on the paper I still had from Garrett.

  “Inspiration has struck again,” Garrett said as he walked toward me to see what I was writing.

  “It’s no big deal. Just another idea for a chapter,” I said as I quickly folded the piece of paper and put it into my pocket.

  I certainly didn’t need Garrett looking at my notes about liars. If he was lying to me, I wasn’t going to find it out by confronting him. If he wasn’t lying, he was at the very least keeping an aspect of his past a secret and to me that was just as bad as actually lying to someone. We were growing close and I had been honest with him about my life, way too honest; so, I expected the same from him.

  Quite frankly, I was over all men who lied and kept secrets. I didn’t have time for that in my life and I certainly wasn’t going to sleep with a man who was like that. It didn’t matter how attracted to him I was.

  Back in New York, I had girlfriends that would have slept with just about any man they thought was attractive. To them, sex was just all fun and games. They figured if they had protection then it didn’t matter who they were sleeping with. But for me it was so different. I became emotionally invested in any man I slept with, even the ones I knew would be a short-lived situation. I tried not to get emotionally involved, but inevitable I always did and I always ended up dealing with some sort of broken heart in the end.

  Garrett stood close to me and I felt his hand as it gently touched my arm. The electricity that shot between our two bodies wasn’t anything I could ignore. To be honest, I hadn’t remember having such pure excitement between a man and me in a very long time. Call it sexual attraction or whatever else you’d like but there was certainly an energy between the two of us that neither of us could deny.

  “You’re cold,” he said. “Did you bring a sweatshirt or jacket?”

  “Oh, man! No, I left it on my bed.”

  I had purposely pulled out a sweatshirt because I knew I would get cold, but after my mom had come in to talk to me, I was distracted and forgot it. It was going to be a cold night in the lightweight sleeping bag I had with me and I knew it.

  I hated that I had actually planned appropriately for the trip but then I stood there practically shivering because I had forgotten my warm sweatshirt. Up until that very moment, I hadn’t even realized I was cold, but once Garrett pointed it out to me, I couldn’t stop shivering as my mind fixated on the feeling of cold air as it brushed over my body.

  It was odd to me that Garrett, who was standing in his boxers, wasn’t cold at all. He was barely dressed and had been soaked in the river, yet he seemed to be perfectly fine standing out in the cool night air.

  “We could share a tent,” Garrett offered with a broad smile.

  “We aren’t sharing a tent,” I rebuffed him.

  My father would literally throw a fit if he found out I was sleeping in the same tent as Garrett. Not because he didn’t like the guy, but simply because I believed my father still didn’t fully understand that I slept with men. He still thought of me as his little girl and I knew that finding out I had slept in the same tent with Garrett would not have gone over well. Although, we were very far away from the ranch and it wasn’t likely anyone would ever know about it; unless Garrett or I told them.

  “Okay, but I get really warm a
t night. Like a little heater. I’ll probably be sweating over here in my tent because my body heat is so high. You just come on over if you get cold,” Garrett teased me as he walked away from me and then came back even closer.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said as I stood still.

  “Come sleep with me,” Garrett offered as his hands started to rub up and down my arms to keep me warm. “It doesn’t have to be anything more than a warm bed to sleep in.”

  I was grateful he had made the offer. His hands were already warming up my body just by rubbing on my skin, but I was also getting extremely turned on standing there next to him and having him touching me. I knew myself well enough to know that if I went into Garrett’s tent it was going to be really hard for me not to have sex with him.

  It wouldn’t be the biggest tragedy in the world if Garrett and I did the horizontal mamba, but it wasn’t a great idea either. I was about to officially refuse him when I noticed the gaze from his eyes switch to my lips and he started to move closer to me.

  His hands wrapped around my waist and pulled me close to him as they started moving up and down my back in an effort to keep me warm. It was working and I hated it. He was making it harder and harder to avoid saying yes to his offer.

  “See, I’m warming you up.”

  “I should sleep in my own tent,” I responded.

  Without hesitation, his lips moved to mine and he delivered a delicious sweet and gentle kiss. My arms were pressed up against my body as he held me to him and I couldn’t help but move my mouth with his as we explored each other. He didn’t open his mouth and I didn’t open mine either, instead we just gently enjoyed each other’s touch as the cool night breeze surrounded us.

  I wanted to push him away, but I couldn’t bring myself to deny my own pleasure. Having Garrett’s arms wrapped around me and his body keeping me warm made me feel good. Garrett made me feel wanted and I wasn’t ready to give that up just yet. Just a couple more minutes of kissing and cuddling and then I promised myself that I would go back to my tent.

  “Is that a yes?” Garrett asked as he pulled his lips away from mine.

  “I should say no.”

  “But, you want to say yes,” he smiled at me.

  “Get going to your tent, I’ll go to mine. I won’t be coming over there. Just go to sleep, you goofball,” I said as I finally pressed myself away from his warm embrace.

  Chapter Nine

  Garrett

  I didn’t expect Sarah to come climbing into my tent at all when I was joking with her about staying warm. She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who would go back on her word either, or the kind who would do anything behind her father’s back.

  So, when I awoke to the sound of my tent zipper, it took all the will power I had to hold back the smile that came across my face and the excitement I felt inside. In fact, I continued to pretend as if I were sleeping just to give Sarah the leeway to sneak into my tent without feeling like she needed to explain herself. I honestly didn’t want her to be cold all night long and I was fine with her sharing my tent; it was the gentlemanly thing to do. Although it was going to be pretty damn hard to avoid going after her if she was right there for the taking.

  It wasn’t freezing out that night, but it was certainly cold. I estimated it was in the lower fifties and although I was a very warm-blooded sleeper, I did feel the cold seeping in through my sleeping bag. It didn’t bother me and I likely would have slept all through the night if Sarah hadn’t climbed into my tent to keep warm.

  I heard her throw her sleeping bag and pillow into the tent and then she climbed in and zipped it back up. I didn’t move as I tried my best to pretend to be asleep. Luckily I was facing away from the tent opening and I didn’t have to do much but lay still.

  “I’m just in here for the warmth. That’s it, nothing else,” Sarah said to appease herself as she finished zipping the tent back up.

  Because I was pretending to sleep, I didn’t answer her, which made it easier for her to take her time and get her sleeping bag situated. It would have been warmer if we combined our two sleeping bags into one and used each other’s body heat to keep warm, but I wasn’t going to push my luck. I had her in my tent and that was much more than I thought I was going to get from her.

  Sarah took a few minutes to get situated and then I felt her snuggle up against my back and pressed her body close to me. We were both in our sleeping bags, so there wasn’t anything inappropriate that her father wouldn’t be all right with; except that we were in a tent together. I also happened to only have my boxer shorts on, which I could only assume wouldn’t have made Sid very happy either. But I was going to behave myself. Even if it took every last bit of will power I could muster, I wasn’t going to let myself go after Sarah on that night. Maybe on another night I’d justify that it was all right, but I felt like Sid trusted me to keep Sarah safe on that evening and I couldn’t go against his trust.

  As soon as she stopped moving, I quickly fell back to sleep. Since arriving on the ranch, I had become accustomed to getting a good night sleep and my body was constantly tired at the end of the day. Sarah was comfortably warm and in my tent and I hoped she would sleep better with me near. After months on the ranch, I thought I would have gotten used to the amount of work by then, but my body was always tired and on that night, it was also extremely sore from all the horseback riding that we had done.

  I don’t remember even turning around or moving at all throughout the night, but when raindrops started to hit the tent I opened my eyes and realized I was cuddled up behind Sarah with my arms around her. She felt good in my arms and I hesitated to move them. They were probably even helping to keep her warm.

  “Sorry,” I said and finally pulled them away.

  “Get those back here, I’m freezing,” she demanded and pulled my arms around her again.

  I breathed in a deep large breath of air and could smell that delicious, sweet scent coming from Sarah. I immediately wrapped my arms around her again and snuggled up close. There could have been so much more happening that night between us, but I was very content laying there with her in my arms. I didn’t need to push her for more. I didn’t want to. The feeling of her next to me was plenty to satisfy my desire, at least for that moment.

  “It’s raining,” I whispered. “Do we need to do anything with the horses?”

  Sarah laughed and then pressed her body back against mind. She thought I was joking, but I actually had been wondering if we needed to do anything with them. When she closed her eyes and went back to sleep I assumed the answer was that we should leave them be. They were horses, I figured they were probably used to dealing with the elements. Well, at least Buckjoy was.

  Her ass was completely distracting me. I had been perfectly fine with cuddling and going back to sleep until she pressed that damn, round, delicious piece of her body up against me. I tried to pull my hips away from her and she moved close to me again. She might have been doing it unconsciously, but I felt like she was purposely teasing me.

  The rain continued throughout the early morning and by the time Sarah’s alarm went off so she could get the sunrise the rain had stopped almost like it was on a schedule. The mist that was on the ground from the change in temperature and humidity made for one amazing photo when the sun started to come up.

  This time Sarah didn’t stand in the water and instead opted to lie in the wet grass just next to the creek. She sure was determined to get some good photos for her father. She looked at a couple different views before she decided on the one that worked best. Once she got down to the ground, she ended up moving around a little to get a few more photos, and by the time she stood up, she was wet and muddy.

  “You’re wet,” I teased. “You should take those clothes off.”

  She just laughed and continued on with her photos. I felt a little out of place as she worked, but it didn’t take her long before she took a break to talk to me.

  “I just really want to get some good pictures,”
Sarah said as she looked through the ones she had taken so far.

  “Tell me again why your father wants to sell this land?” I asked.

  “He’s not making enough money to keep it all, basically. But he was going to sell it to a friend of his for much less than it is worth. I’m going to help him list it with a realtor and see if I can get an offer for what it’s really worth.”

  “What do you think it’s really worth?”

  “I’d like to get ten million for it, but I don’t know if there are any buyers who will see the true potential of the land like I do. I’d settle for five million. If we could get that kind of offer, it would set my parents up to finally relax and maybe even do a little semi-retirement.”

  “What do you see as the potential for the land? I mean besides its beauty of course.”

  Sarah turned toward me and jumped up from the ground where she had squatted down to take another couple photos. I saw a spark of excitement in her eyes like I had seen when she was talking about writing a book for women. This land made her happy, I could see it, I could feel it; it was sad that her father was going to have to sell it in order to make ends meet.

  “This part of the ranch would make a fabulous executive retreat. I mean, think about it. We have mountains in the winter, hiking in the summer. I’d put a big lodge at the base of the mountain and build a hiking trail with a bridge over the river. It would take some fundamental land upgrades to get it going. There’s no electricity or water out this way, but once that was all done, this could be one of those amazing, high-price resorts that companies bring their executives to for team building. I haven’t crunched all the numbers, but my best estimate is it could be profitable in two years if there was good marketing at the opening of the ranch.”

  Her excitement was contagious. As Sarah talked about the idea of an executive retreat on that location, I couldn’t help but see her vision, too. It sounded amazing; like a perfect way to spend time and enjoy this beautiful land.