She thought she saw him nod, the brim of his hat seeming to dip…unless what she was seeing was shadows, tricks played by the moonlight as she tried to sneak peeks at his face.
“If it gets to be too much,” he told her, “I can rummage up the tea and the blanket. But for heat, it’s propane or the fireplace.”
She stopped. He stopped. Their eyes met, and after several heartbeats of seconds, she smiled. “If you’ve got tea and a fire, I wouldn’t even care about the blanket. Of course, I wouldn’t say no to toasted marshmallows.
“But most of all,” she said, taking a monstrously frightening leap of faith and hoping for a net at the bottom just in case she fell. “Most of all I’d like you to stay and enjoy it with me.”
It took him no time at all to grin. “I’d planned to all along.”
5
“I TAKE back what I said about you all retreating.”
Wyatt suppressed a smile. They might have been doing just that, but it had never been a conscious surrender. This was just the life they all loved. One lived in the present, the baggage of the past left unclaimed. “Yeah?”
“Well, at least hiding out from women,” Tess said, animated. “Your crew are incredible flirts.”
She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. “Think so?”
She nodded. “But I’m quite certain you’re hiding out from something. And that’s you specifically, not you in the plural meaning all of your men.”
While he stared at the flames licking their way through the kindling to the wedges of split oak, his smile twisted in irony. If he hadn’t wondered before, now he knew. He was in for a hell of a weekend.
Tess had brewed the tea while he’d laid the fire. He hadn’t run across any marshmallows, but had found a bottle of rum. Even if she didn’t want any, he didn’t see himself making it through the rest of the evening without it.
Watching her at the supper table had been as telling as it was excruciating. Telling because it was obvious how well she had chosen her field. She was a people person, empathetic, a good listener, giving her full attention to whoever had the floor. He’d never seen his men so engaged.
Sure, sitting down to eat with a gorgeous woman had a lot to do with the bunch of them, even Buck, having such a good time. But Wyatt had seen them all in the company of other women—many of them the women Tess was here to ask about—when none of them could find much to say.
Tess made the men feel safe, as though what they had to say mattered, as though they mattered—not as a team, the hands who managed the Triple RC, but as individuals. She had earned their trust and their respect over that one very long meal. And that was where the excruciating part came in.
She wasn’t the type of woman he could love and leave. Tonight’s dinner had proved that. He hadn’t learned much about her personally; she’d kept the conversation focused on the men. But what he had learned meant he’d just signed on for four very long days.
Oh, yeah. Rum was definitely called for, he mused, grateful he’d carried the bottle to the big empty house’s main room. He hadn’t built a fire since Christmas when his folks were out to the ranch. It hardly seemed worth the effort to do it for himself, but now he was glad he’d made the suggestion.
Tess sat on the floor in front of his big recliner as if she were better able to feel the heat from there than curled into the corner of the chair. He was quite sure if she had, the light wouldn’t have reached her halo of hair, threading like ribbons through the strands.
And why she had him stupid-dizzy and wanting to touch her hair was something he couldn’t afford to examine too closely. What he had to keep in mind was that this wasn’t a rodeo, he wasn’t a champion and she was not a bunny looking for a good time.
He sat on the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. It was closer to her than the sofa, but not as close as he’d be were he to sit on the floor and lean back against the trunk, his legs stretched out toward the hearth. When he twisted the top from the bottle and offered to pour, she nodded, and he added a splash of rum to her tea.
“So are you going to tell me what it is?” she asked after she’d sipped and sighed. “Why you’re out here keeping a low profile when I picked up more than a few hints over dinner that you’re a high-profile guy?”
He figured this was as good a time as any to remind her that she’d agreed not to name names, and in exchange for that consideration, he might even give her the answer to what she was asking.
“I was a high-profile guy.” The room his folks used to sleep in was where all Wyatt’s trophies and buckles were on display in glass cases. Right now he was really glad he’d moved them out of here. “I guess I still am. It’s just that out here it’s not such a big deal. For the most part, I work behind the scenes and let Buck do all the talking.”
Tess tucked her legs to the side, wrapping the blanket she’d found folded on top of the trunk more tightly around her shoulders. She brought her mug to her mouth, but before drinking, asked, “Who are you then?”
Elbows braced on his knees, he stared down into his mug, watching the reflection of the flames dance on the surface of the golden-brown liquid. He lifted and drank, gathering his thoughts as the pungent tang of the rum warmed his throat on the way down.
“I’ve won more professional bull-riding championships than any other rider ever has.” Though after the beating he’d taken from the seventeen-hundred-pound monster Brangus named Baby Shakes, his records were up for grabs. “They called me Lawman, something about letting the bulls know who was in charge.”
Tess held her mug in both hands, her eyes wide as she listened. “Or maybe something about the name Wyatt belonging to Wyatt Earp? One of the legendary lawmen of the West?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “That, too.”
She tilted her head toward the fire as she considered him. “Does that make you uncomfortable? Having a legendary status of your own?”
“Nah. There was a lot of pressure, sure. Could I do it one more time? When was I going to wash out or meet my match? But in the arena?” He shook his head. “All that goes away. It’s only you and close to a ton of pissed-off bull aiming to use you as a punching bag. You think of anything but the ride, and you won’t make it two seconds, much less eight.”
“Eight seconds.” She sighed, sipped her tea. The light from the fire washed her skin in gold, picked up bright sparks of color in her cheeks. “It sounds like little more than the blink of an eye.”
“Trust me. It can be a lifetime.” He added another splash of rum to both of their mugs, then another to his for good measure. He didn’t mind talking about rodeo at all. But talking about it to a woman with this one’s intuition wasn’t the easiest thing to do.
He didn’t dwell on those days or want them back. They were a part of who he was, sure, but he’d moved on. This was his life now, his home. The ranch was as important to him these days as the rides had been in the past. And he didn’t want what had gone before to be what he was judged on now.
That was why Buck acted as the mouthpiece for the Triple RC, and why Wyatt himself had grown to accept being a bit of a recluse. It was unintentional, not a lifestyle he’d ever planned for, but leaving his celebrity behind made it easier to trust that he wasn’t being used for his name.
“I’ll bet you were a hit with the bunnies,” she finally said as if reading his thoughts.
“For a few years there? You bet.” Why deny a truth that was so obvious? “The only nights I spent alone were those on the road when we drove straight through from one town to another. The rest of the time there wasn’t enough of me to go around. I don’t know if it was the bulls or the bunnies who wore me out in the end.”
She seemed to take that in, mulling it over and considering what she wanted to do with his admission. Whether to kiss his ass good-bye right here and now, or forgive him a past life that had branded him as less than a saint.
After a long minute spent studying his face, she said, “It won’t work, you know.�
�
He tried not to squirm under her scrutiny, or her insight. She knew what he wanted. And his insight told him she wanted the same thing—and had since that second phone call. They were headed to bed. How soon it would happen and how long it would last were the only things to settle.
“What won’t work?” he finally gave in and asked.
“You’re too smart a man to ever have jeopardized your career for sex. I understand groupies. All sports have them. But athletes who want to stay in the game know where to draw the line.”
She let the blanket fall to the floor and got to her feet, coming to sit beside him. “If you’re wanting to scare me off, you’ll have to do better than that.”
Wyatt could’ve shifted so that their thighs pressed together—there wasn’t more than an inch between—but he didn’t. He stayed where he was, enjoying the heat of having her near, the anticipation of having her nearer still.
Sooner. He was pretty damn certain it was going to happen sooner, though he wasn’t going anywhere if she had later in mind. “I hadn’t thought so much about scaring you off. It was more about letting you know who I was.”
“Isn’t was the operative word here? Because if that’s still who you are, you wouldn’t let Buck do all the talking. You’d keep your profile as high as it ever was and have the bunnies lining up at the gate.”
He set his cup aside, got up to tend the fire, knowing that no matter his good intentions, it was way too late to put any distance between them. Yeah, she’d agreed that he wouldn’t be profiled for her article or interviewed for his take on the rodeo life. Even so, she’d been here less than twelve hours, and she’d already figured out more about him than he’d told anyone in a very long time. It was going to make her four days on the ranch seem like four years.
That should have bothered him more than it did, but instead of figuring out why it didn’t, he decided to tell her as much of the truth as he could manage without choking on the words.
6
“I’M DONE with both the bulls and the bunnies,” Wyatt said as he came back to sit beside her, closer this time, his hip brushing hers, his arm pressed to hers. “My body can’t take the abuse of the first, and I’m not interested in the second since most of them are only interested in the Lawman, not in the Triple RC or in me.”
Tess didn’t say anything, but she understood. She’d lost count of the men she’d met who were more interested in her society connections than in the work she did, or her love of gritty action flicks, or the fact that a long walk on the beach was honestly her idea of a perfect date. Oh, yes. She definitely understood.
She lifted her drink, realized it was nearly gone, decided this conversation—or was it a confessional?—called for more rum and held out the mug, ignoring the arch of his brow as he poured her a refill.
She thought his eyes were dark blue. She’d been sitting too far away at dinner to tell, and now the only light was that of the fire which burnished everything in shades of copper and bronze. Then again, she could very well be looking at him through eyes hazy with the heat of lust.
Since seeing him on horseback and watching his body move—already knowing his voice and what the words he said did to her, how he so easily coaxed her to open up—she’d been counting the minutes until they could get through the pleasantries her arrival required so that she could feel his hands on her skin.
The wait shouldn’t have been this hard. She shouldn’t have been this anxious, this antsy. This ready to sleep with a man she’d only just met and didn’t really know…and how did that make her any different than the women who had followed him from rodeo to rodeo?
She silenced a rising groan and hoped he’d given her enough to drink. “I thought you said I wasn’t doing a very good job of scaring you off.”
“If you’re talking about me having a little tea with my rum, that’s not about you at all,” she replied, and it was only a tiny white lie.
He added more to his drink as well, before setting the bottle off to the side and moving from the trunk to the floor. When he held out a hand, she took it, and slid down to sit at his side, not minding at all when he rested their joined hands on his thigh.
“So tell me, Doctor. What’s driving you to drink?”
His leg was solid muscle beneath her hand, his fingers strong laced through hers. She was relaxed, liquid, just this side of intoxicated as she weighed how much of the truth was smart to reveal.
“Believe it or not, my mother. Or at least her quest to see me married into the right family. Not to the right man, mind you, or even to a man I might like, but to the right pedigree.”
“I did some checking on who you are,” he confessed, though he didn’t sound the least bit apologetic. “After you called. I didn’t want to be taken for a ride.”
She didn’t blame him. “You contacted the references I gave you?”
He nodded and ran his thumb over her knuckles. “I can see why your mother might worry about strays roaming the yard. You’ve got quite a pedigree of your own.”
Damn lot of good it did her.
“Does your mother know where you are?”
She gave him a sideways glance. “Isn’t that something you’d ask a teenager?”
He laughed, the sound throaty and earthy, and just a little bit drunk. It slipped beneath her skin, into her veins and melted her. Just melted.
“I meant,” he continued while she pulled herself together, “what would she think about you drinking rum in front of a fire with a mutt of a cowboy?”
Funny. She’d just thought of herself as a mutt earlier today. Her thoughts, however, had been about her likes and dislikes while he seemed to be comparing their “breeding”—the very thing her mother obsessed over, and that Tess wanted so badly to escape.
“Considering I ditched one of her fundraisers to work on this article, she’s already unhappy with me.” Big fat understatement. “If she knew I’d been lured into a compromising situation, I’m sure she’d call out the dogcatchers.”
He chuckled and squeezed her hand. “So, now I’m the one doing the luring here? Is that it?”
She found herself smiling, warming, whether from the rum, the fire or his touch she wasn’t sure. “Aren’t you the one who supplied the booze?”
“I didn’t have any marshmallows,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, I wasn’t the one who made a roomful of curmudgeons fall in love with me over supper.”
Oh, no. She wasn’t going to take all the blame for where they found themselves. “You want to talk about luring—what about you on the back of a horse all muscled and fluid, and staring like you wanted to chase me down?”
“I did,” he said, leaving it at that, leaving her to wonder if she should press or let things simmer, leaving her to wonder, too, if waiting was what she wanted, or if she was ready to turn the temperature higher right here and right now.
They sat quietly for several minutes, enjoying the fire, the company, the warmth of the alcohol and the way it lowered inhibitions. At least she was enjoying that last part, thinking how much larger his hand was than hers, and how much she’d love to have him do more than stroke his thumb the length of her index finger again and again.
But she didn’t want to break the spell, sure she’d say the wrong thing, make the wrong move. Scare him off and ruin the whole weekend. If she went home too soon, she’d be going without her story, and her mother would find some event for her to attend to replace the one she’d managed to dodge.
No, she needed to get her research done before she even thought about leaving. Her real research, interviewing the men. Not this sitting-beside-a-cowboy-in-front-of-a-fire research that wasn’t about her story at all but was about how ready she was for…did she even know what for? Or why he was the one who had stirred this need?
She took a deep breath, released it on a long slow sigh, and dropped her head back against the trunk, closing her eyes, her lips parted. She’d needed this, this doing nothing, this getting away. She hadn’t known how mu
ch until now.
Work kept her more than busy, and her career was not one to take it easy on the stress. She carried her clients’ problems home on a regular basis. And much as she wished her mother would stay out of her personal life, she admired the energy Georgina poured into her causes, and so she devoted as many hours as she could to the same.
And then there was all the keeping up with her best girlfriends and their busy, busy lives. True downtime was as much a part of her fantasies as was finding the right man, one enamored of her, who would have loved her just as much if he’d found her living in a box on the street with a dozen stray cats her only connection to any sort of society, instead of in her trendy condo.
Okay, that was going too far. Even she could see that. But there were times she wondered if her place in the world would actually doom her to a life alone, or to a marriage that was solely about convenience and companionship when she so wanted to be loved….
“Hey, sleepyhead. Let’s get you to bed before your snoring wakes up every animal in the barn.”
What was he saying? Snoring? Her eyes popped open. She felt heat rise to color her face, heat that had nothing to do with the dying fire or the haze of lust. How long had she been drifting? And did she really snore?
“What time is it?” Besides time for embarrassment.
“Time to go to bed.”
“Together?” Nice…
He was still holding her hand, and he brought it to his mouth, pressing his lips to her fingers. “Is that what you want?”
Had any question ever been more loaded?
If she told the truth, it would make it hard to pull off this assignment with any sort of professionalism. And if she lied, well, he’d see the truth anyway. Changing the subject seemed the smartest thing to do.
“I’m sorry. I think I should have stuck with the tea. I’m usually not this unprofessional.” Or this…easy. This…hungry.
He hadn’t yet released her hand, and the fire she saw in his eyes wasn’t dying as quickly as the one that had warmed her feet. “You’re not on call. I figure even psychologists are human.”
Tex Appeal Page 10