“Some of us, anyway,” she said, getting up off the floor, appreciative of his teasing because she was in no condition to trust herself with this man. “The rest are around-the-clock therapy machines.”
He took her mug from her hand, put it with his on the hearth and then stood. “If I need counseling at 3:00 a.m., I’ll know not to give you a call.”
At 3:00 a.m., she’d be much more inclined to provide him another service, but she managed to keep that thought to herself and take the arm he offered, walking beside him as he escorted her to the stairs.
Once there, he let her go and followed for the second time as she made the climb. If he was watching the sway of her hips, it would only take his mind off the things she’d said that she would like to take back. She added a little extra wiggle just in case.
Tomorrow.
She’d wake up tomorrow, this night behind her, and get back to the business she was here to do. She wouldn’t be starting off the day watching a cowboy on horseback move as if he and the animal were one.
They reached the door to her bedroom. She stopped there, but delayed walking through. Though it had to come to an end, she wasn’t ready for the night to be over.
She backed a step into the room, her hand on the jamb, the open door behind her, and said, “Goodnight. I’ll guess I’ll see you at breakfast?”
“You will if you’re up at four-thirty.”
“Four-thirty?”
He nodded, his eyes dark, stormy, aroused, and his lashes so very long. “I usually come in for coffee around eight, but if I miss you, just make yourself at home in the kitchen. Eggs, bread, cereal, juice. Whatever you want. It’s all there.”
“Thanks,” she said, wondering what he’d do if she told him exactly what she wanted. “Eight I can do. And after cleaning my plate more than once tonight, coffee and juice will be about all I’ll want.”
“Okay then,” he said, but did so without making a move down the hallway toward his own room, or even back the way they had come. “Coffee at eight.”
She nodded, waited, nodded once more, and then smiled. He looked away, his pulse throbbing at his temple, then looked back and, muttering under his breath, stepped into her bedroom and backed her into the door.
7
HE’D TOLD himself hands off, so he planted them against the door above her head and held her in place with his body. He waited for her reaction because if she told him to skedaddle, he’d be on his way.
He was hoping she wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to take her to bed, not yet, not until this heat between them became exquisitely unbearable, but he wasn’t ready to crawl between his own sheets alone.
And so he waited, watching her breathe, her chest rising and falling more rapidly as the seconds passed.
When she caught at her lip with her teeth, wetting the spot with her tongue, when she moved her hands from where she’d curled them at her hips to his waist, he knew it was time to do what he’d been waiting to do all day. He lowered his head as she lifted hers, and he kissed her.
He meant to be gentle, to keep it soft and sweet, to promise her that what they’d shared today was only the beginning and that there was so much more to come. But gentle wasn’t going to happen. She dug her fingers into his sides and told him she wanted more right now.
He was enjoying flirting with her mouth, teasing one corner with tiny kisses, catching her bottom lip between both of his, breathing her in, that fresh green scent of springtime. But he didn’t mind giving her what she wanted, so when she parted her lips, Wyatt opened his over them and slipped his tongue between.
The noise that rattled in her throat was half whimper and half groan. He couldn’t help it, he pushed his hips into the cradle of hers. When she squirmed against him, he had no doubt that she’d felt the change in his body. He was hard, and growing harder. He wanted her and saw no reason not to let her know how much.
Her mouth was wet and giving, and she wasn’t the least bit shy. She kissed him fiercely, using her hands to bring him close, her tongue to sample his, telling him with lips that pulled and sucked that he wasn’t giving her enough, that she wanted to taste him in other ways…
Or so went his fantasy of her dropping to her knees, opening his fly and taking him into her mouth.
It had been so long, and he could have easily stripped the both of them bare and spent the rest of the night buried deep inside her body, his cock filling her, her sex hot and tight and sucking him deep. But he wasn’t on the circuit anymore, and she wasn’t there for one night to have a good time.
The kiss he could blame on the fire and the rum and still wake up tomorrow with his conscience intact. And as much pleasure as they were sharing here, both fully dressed, he wanted to be sober and sure when they got naked.
So he eased back slowly, first his body then his mouth, finally lifting his hands from the door where he’d kept them like the Boy Scout he was. He was breathing just as hard as she was, his frustration pounding in his ears and behind the fly of his jeans, but he was doing the right thing. He saw in her eyes that she knew it, that she appreciated him pulling this runaway beast to a stop.
“Get some sleep,” he told her.
“I will,” she whispered to him, her voice so soft, so torn, aroused and at the same time relieved. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He nodded, backed his way out of the room, wanting to tell her this wasn’t over, but her expression had already told him the very same thing.
FOUR-THIRTY came way too early. In fact, Wyatt didn’t make it out of bed until after five. He ran late with everything for the rest of the morning, and he missed having coffee with Tess. When he did finally catch up with her, lunch had come and gone.
She was sitting on the rocking bench in front of the bunkhouse talking to Buck. Or Buck was doing the talking and she the listening—so intently she didn’t look up from Buck’s story until he paused in the telling of it at Wyatt’s approach.
“Afternoon, boss. Good to see you could make time in your busy schedule for your company here,” Buck said, getting in the dig before Wyatt had a chance to explain to Tess what had held him up.
He pushed his hat off his forehead, crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against one of the porch beams. “It’s called ranching. You know, the work we do? Work being something I’m certain Dr. Autrey understands, though I’m thinking the rest of you aren’t going to get much of anything done today with her being around.”
Buck looked at Tess and spoke to her in an aside, pointing at Wyatt as he did. “The man brings a pretty thing like you out here and then blames us for not having a head for horses. Hurtful, I tell ya. Just plain ol’ hurtful.”
Wyatt finally glanced away from drama queen Buck Donald to Tess. She was smiling at the ranch manager, but the smile wasn’t the one he’d seen last night. This one was nervous, as if she wasn’t yet ready to face him, or wasn’t sure what all had happened when they’d last been together.
He started to order Buck back to work—something he didn’t think he’d ever done in their years together—but was saved from that folly by the sound of a diesel engine as a truck and trailer stopped at the gate.
Buck pushed up to his feet, still shaking his head in faux misery. “Dr. Autrey, it’s been a pleasure, but since the boss is watching, I’d best go take care of business before Wyatt here has to show his face in public.”
“If you have some time later, I’d love to talk more,” Tess said, standing as Buck stepped off the porch. “You need to finish telling me about that night in Las Vegas.”
“It’s a date,” he said, giving her a quick wave before turning away, buttoning up his denim jacket, then crossing the ranch’s main yard.
Wyatt stayed where he was, waiting for Tess to acknowledge him instead of looking down at the porch boards and tugging on the hem of her pale-yellow sweatshirt the way she was doing, before finally stuffing her fists into her jeans pockets and hunching her shoulders against the cold.
“I—” was al
l she got out before he took the cue.
He vaulted onto the porch and hustled her into the big kitchen where they’d eaten dinner last night. Once out of the cool air and into the interior warmth, she seemed to find her footing. “About last night—”
He cut her off with a shake of his head. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”
Her head came up, her chin high, her eyes bright with as much worry as pique. “I’m not sorry, but I didn’t want you to think—”
Again, he didn’t let her finish. “I didn’t think anything that you need to worry about.”
She screwed her mouth to one side and frowned. “Oh, thanks. Now I’m going to wonder for the rest of the day what you were thinking.”
“Then we’re in the same boat,” he admitted, because he’d wondered what she’d had on her mind when he’d left her at her door. “You getting what you need from the men?”
She nodded. “I’ve only talked to Max and Buck, but they’ve been very forthcoming.”
“They’re under orders to be,” he told her, exaggerating the truth. The men, when presented with the proposition, had been more than willing to talk.
Her arms around her middle, she swayed from side to side, looking up at him coyly. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Do you really not show your face in public? Like Buck said.”
Damn the man. “I’m showing it to you.”
“I’m one person. And we’re on your ranch.”
He shrugged off the topic, expecting her to press.
She didn’t disappoint. “You’re not the one who goes to town for milk and perishables, are you?”
“No need,” he told her truthfully. “Woodson does the shopping.”
“And Buck deals with the stock deliveries?”
He wasn’t particularly enjoying this line of questioning. “He and Max.”
“Tell me something, Wyatt.”
Nope. He wasn’t enjoying it at all. This time he was the one who crossed his arms.
She looked up at him with too much know-it-all in her expression. “When was the last time you left the ranch?”
“Do you know how big the Triple RC is?” he said instead of giving her an answer.
She wasn’t so easily mollified. “It’s still all the ranch. The same buildings. The same people. The same scenery. The same work to be done every day.”
Ah, but that’s where she was wrong. “The work may be the same, but it’s always different depending on the time of year, how many animals we’re raising, selling, taking delivery of. And the scenery can change from one day to the next with the weather. Things don’t look the same under gray clouds as they do under bright sun.
“And if you’re on horseback, you’ll see things differently than you would from behind the wheel of a truck or on foot. Some days we work twelve hours, some days twenty-four. Yeah, it’s still all the ranch, but the day-in and day-out is never the same.”
He barely got the whole speech delivered before she dismissed it. “That’s no reason not to show your face in public.”
Psychologists. Lord love a cowboy and his horse, but they were a nosy species, digging into a man’s head, looking for things he kept buried there for good reason.
He’d told her that he wanted to separate the success and the reputation of the ranch from that of the Lawman. Told her, too, that the Triple RC kept him busy enough that he never had reason to leave, though he hadn’t filled her in on the fact that he did hit the livestock sales and auctions with Buck.
He figured that was plenty, that she didn’t need to know how he’d brought a woman here once, one he’d thought he’d love till they died in each other’s arms, sap that he was. Telling Tess that his injuries—the broken leg, pelvis, hip, ribs and nearly broken spirit—had also been the end of that relationship didn’t sit so well.
Neither was he liking how easily she fitted in here with him, with his men, loving the house and the land without a complaint about the hours or the dirt or the smells that could turn a stomach as well as a nose. Yeah, she’d only been here a matter of hours, but he knew that when she left, he was going to feel it in a mighty big way.
He gave her the only answer he figured he owed her. “I can’t think of any reason I should.”
“I can think of several.”
Of course she could. He glared down. “Would that have to do with you being a psychologist?”
And then she blew him right out of his socks. “Not as much as it has to do with me being female and wondering why no woman has snatched you up.”
8
TESS watched him struggle to find a response he could live with. Then again, he could have been struggling to get out of answering at all, not wanting to share something that personal. But somehow she didn’t think so.
Something made her think that he’d kept himself bottled up in solitude for so long that he wasn’t comfortable letting anything of himself out. And that couldn’t do anything but put off a woman’s interest.
What she hadn’t expected was for him to turn the question around on her. “What about you? You’re degreed, successful, an amazing kisser and that car you drive speaks clearly about the money you come from—”
She held up a hand, cutting him off. “That car is all about the money I make, cowboy. Remember the degreed and successful part?”
Again with the tactical evasion. “Mostly I remember the kissing part.”
Well, if he insisted on bringing it up…
She didn’t think she’d dreamed or imagined how good he’d tasted, the wonderful movements of his mouth over hers, his tongue doing all the things a tongue should do. But knowing that what they’d shared stuck in his mind as well thrilled her beyond reason.
She looked down, stared at spots worn through the speckled flooring. “The kissing part was not the smartest thing in the world we could’ve done. If I want to present an unbiased look at the cowboy’s side of the story, I need to maintain a certain detachment.”
His boots scuffed against the vinyl as he shifted his stance. “You’re not allowed to feel passionate about your subject?”
“Subject matter, sure. Not the subject himself.” Though how easy had it been to do just that? And, oh, how much more passion did she have to give.
“Ah, but you’re not interviewing me, remember?” he reminded her with no small hint of how he enjoyed his upper hand. “The deal was that you only talk to my men.”
An agreement she regretted making, but how could she have known he’d be the one to rouse her curiosity the most?
Sidestepping the topic of the kiss, she queried him about more of last night’s conversation. “Then since you’re not a part of my column, there’s no reason for you not to tell me what turned a high-profile guy into a loner.”
She wanted to know. She really wanted to know. She didn’t believe for a minute it was only about the women who wanted to mount him as a trophy…so to speak.
He walked across the room to the coffeemaker and sniffed at the liquid in the stainless-steel carafe. She knew Buck had put the pot on to brew before they’d talked, so when Wyatt offered to pour her a cup, she accepted.
Tess didn’t need the caffeine; her stomach was already in knots, her energy wired high. But fixing the cup the way she liked it kept her from pressing him for a response. She had to give him time. Time and patience would get her what she wanted.
Once they’d both added cream and sugar and were sitting across from one another at the end of the table, he began. “I haven’t made a conscious choice to be a loner. I don’t even think of myself as one, though I can see why you might.”
She didn’t say anything to that, just wrapped both hands around her mug and lifted it, blowing across the surface as she waited for him to go on.
“We deal with stock contractors, event coordinators, others with a vested interest in rodeo. For the most part, they’re good people, but like with anything, a few bad apples spoil the barrel for the rest.” He
spun his cup back and forth on the table, from one hand to the other. “They want favors and perks, and they’ll use any connections they have to get things to go their way.”
“And you don’t want them coming to do business with the Lawman. Or looking to be given any advantage for old times’ sake,” she said, beginning to understand more of what he probably faced on a regular basis—or would have faced had he not taken steps to remove himself from the picture.
He nodded, still toying with his mug. “I want them to come here to do business with the ranch, not with me. Our reputation needs to be based on the quality of the work we do here, and that of the stock we provide.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate—” because it was what she did often in her line of work “—wouldn’t your old reputation bring you legitimate customers and inquiries as well? From people who would trust your judgment and prefer to do business with someone who has an inside track?”
He drank, then returned his mug to the table, shaking his head. “It would, but this way has worked well for us. I don’t need the ego stroke of having my name attached to the ranch. Running things the way we’ve been doing seems to be the best solution all the way around.”
“Plus, it does keep the hard-core bunnies from stalking you,” she said, digging a bit deeper, a bit more pointedly, hoping he didn’t shut down since she’d agreed not to include him in her interview.
He clamped his mouth shut as if there were a story in there wanting to get out. So, of course, she pried further. “Did it make you feel like a rock star? Knowing they’d be waiting for you after every performance?”
Even though he had to know exactly what she was doing, he answered her seriously, surprising her by not dodging her questions. “For a while, sure. But there’s a point where it gets…eerie, I guess.”
Eerie? “How so?”
“It feels like you’ve picked up a stalker instead of an admirer. Most of the women know the score. They don’t want anything but to have a good time. Others don’t understand the way the game is played.”
Tex Appeal Page 11