by Anna Sugden
Wes blew out a breath as he stepped out of the shower. It was either an illusion or temporary, Cara’s effect on him, but maybe for the first time in a few years he needed to push.
You know what happens when you push.
The pounding started the minute he grabbed his towel, thankfully killing off that line of thought. Toweling himself off hurriedly, he glanced out the little bathroom window that was high enough to keep people from looking in but allowed him to look out.
And see Cara standing on the porch, knocking on the door. More incessantly with every second.
As quickly as his not-quite-quick hip could manage, he shoved his legs into boxers and jeans and pulled them up. He worked to zipper and button his pants as he stepped into the hall between his bedroom and his kitchen. He needed to grab a shirt, but she started yelling.
“Wes, I swear, if you are trying to ignore me into hoping I quit, I’ll—”
He lunged into the kitchen and swung the door open because that was the last thing he wanted her thinking. Her mouth dropped, arm still up in the air.
“Sorry. I was in the shower,” he offered as Sweetness sniffed at his bare feet.
“Yeah, you were.” She cocked her head, her gaze not meeting his. Not at all. No, she was staring at his chest. Not even at his arm where the white line of scars snaked up to almost his shoulder.
Wait. Was she...like...interested staring at him? Should he be...flattered?
Finally, her blue-green gaze slid to his, her mouth curving, slyly. “Well, this is a happy Monday morning.” And then she muttered something that sounded suspiciously like happy trail.
“I...have to get a shirt.” Because he didn’t know what to do with...that kind of thing.
“Do you really have to?”
“Yes.” Yes, it was imperative. So, he turned away from her and disappeared into his room, trying to find some calming center to the hurricane in his kitchen.
He was the boss, she was the employee. He gave the orders, and she would listen, and if she didn’t, all he had to do was retreat to his kitchen and do his job.
And wasn’t it just hilarious he’d been thinking he was at ease with her. He pulled a T-shirt over his head, then buttoned up a flannel shirt over it. His morning work would all be in the kitchen, and the long sleeves would likely be too hot, but he had the strange sensation of needing to cover it all up. Hide from any...
He paused at his door. She’d looked at him as if, despite everything she knew about him, she found his body appealing. His nonexistent way with people and bad temper wasn’t obnoxious enough to keep her from flirting with him.
His mouth quirked. He couldn’t help it. He was flattered. She was beautiful and nice and easygoing, and she thought he was attractive?
Yeah, she doesn’t know the half of your weird, buddy.
Right. Had to remember that. He retraced his steps to the kitchen, but she wasn’t there, so he went to the office. She was standing at his desk, flipping her way through a pile of papers that was probably an eighth of the size it had been when she first started.
But, it was his turn to cock his head at her, because...she looked different. It took him a while to unwind it, but she was wearing a gray bulky sweatshirt and some worn-down jeans, plus actual athletic tennis shoes, not boots or the bright flimsy canvas shoes she so often showed up in. Her lips weren’t brightly painted, and there wasn’t a line of black around her eyes. The only color on her was the actual iris of her eyes and painted on her fingernails.
There was an odd pang in his gut, something he couldn’t quite name and definitely couldn’t trust. He wouldn’t ask her what was wrong or why she looked different, because as far as it concerned him, she didn’t. She was here. She was talking and working. Nothing else mattered in the ways that they had to interact.
So, why are you going to do this?
Because this thing was different. It was work, not...personal. “I have a project for you.”
She turned, all surprise and raised eyebrows. “A project?”
“Yes. I want you to name the dog treats. I printed out a list of what I make, and the ingredients, and you can do whatever you want.” He picked the printed sheet up off the desk and handed it to her.
She frowned at it, not making a move to take it. “But...you said it was ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous.” He shoved his left hand through his hair, trying not to let his frustration with how badly he expressed himself pour on to her. “I mean, it’s ridiculous to me, but I’m a grumpy hermit who hates everything. My customers are not.”
She gave him a considering look and took the paper. “You don’t hate everything.”
No, not everything. There were animals, and, as much as it irritated him, he was having a hard time hating her. “Okay, most things.”
Her lips curved, just a fraction. This oddly unpainted, gray version of the woman who usually blew in like a spring breeze, fresh and cool and colorful.
Something was wrong, and it reminded him a little too much of being a kid, of Mom trying to put on a brave face after another boyfriend turned out to be a piece of shit, another job got cut, another bill she couldn’t pay surfaced.
“So, you’ll do it,” he prompted, because as much as he’d been useless to his mother in those days, more often than not making things worse, she’d always perked up when he asked her for help with his homework or with some problem he made up.
He knew comparing Cara to his mother bordered on insane, but what in his life didn’t? And she smiled at him, so...
But then she shoved the paper back at him, her smile fading away as she shook her head. “Why don’t you do it? It’s your business. I’m just an assistant.”
He frowned down at the list of treats. Mostly vegetable names. Him do it? “If I did it, I’d call them all moron biscuits and be done with it.”
She let out a sigh and sank into the desk chair, taking the piece of paper with her. She studied it. “Can they be really cutesy ridiculous names?”
“If you think that’ll go over well. You’d know better than me about what normal people like.”
“Do you really think you’re that abnormal?”
He stared at her for a few beats, because, really, she hadn’t picked up on that? That his life was a series of abnormal from as far back as he could remember. He’d never fit in. He’d kept to himself, and his brief forays into trying to understand people led him into ridicule and teasing that perhaps someone normal might have been able to weather.
His brain didn’t function that way. It catalogued every comment and blow, every laugh at his expense, until that’s all that echoed in his ears. So here he was. Isolated and, yes, abnormal, and that was all well and good now. Long as everyone he had to interact with understood it.
“I am asking you to do this as part of your job,” he said, perhaps a little too brusquely, but it was easier that way. Easier to offer gruff orders than apply personal significance to any interactions with Cara.
It might be easier with Cara than it was with other people, especially women, but that didn’t mean anything except she’d be an asset of an employee.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good. Now I have work to do.” He turned and was almost completely safe and out of the doorway when her voice caught up with him.
“Can I watch?”
He had to take a careful breath to keep himself from choking a cough on his own surprise. Watch him work? “Uh.”
“It might give me some ideas for treat names—to see how they’re made.” She smiled, and he supposed in her world it was an easy, simple smile, but the gentle curve of her unpainted lips, and the gray of her sweatshirt and everything about her being off was not in the least bit simple.
She wasn’t simple. He wasn’t simple. The thing that seemed to light up the air between them sure as hell wasn’t simple, and if he’d learned anything in a lifetime of disappointment and failure, it would be that he needed to say no.
No, she couldn
’t watch. No, she couldn’t invade his space and smile at him and somehow work her way around to mattering to him.
But of course the word yes tumbled out, because why wouldn’t it?
* * *
IT WAS STRANGELY fascinating to watch Wes work. It was fun to try and provoke a smile out of him, sitting on the edge of the counter, which she knew he didn’t approve of.
Nevertheless, she’d say something goofy, and his mouth would quirk into a smile. All the hair and beard obscured most of that smile, but there was a way his dark eyes lost some of that gloomy serious weight, and she felt like a million bucks for making it happen.
Which was incredibly addictive, considering that for the past two days she’d mainly felt horrible. Mackenzie had come over yesterday afternoon, dragging along Boyfriend Guy, and asked her to apologize to Kevin.
For the sake of the group.
Well, screw the group. She was not apologizing or swallowing down her feelings. She was tired of... She frowned at her ugly running shoes, the frayed hem of her laundry-day jeans. She couldn’t put words to this new frustration.
Boys ruled. Girls followed them around doing whatever they could to gain their attention, including turn on each other. It had been her life, and she’d thrived in that lifetime, that group.
So why didn’t that work anymore? When she finally looked up to see where Wes was in the process of dog treat making, she found him staring at her.
He immediately looked back down at the molds full of mixed dog treat batter. Which gave her the strangest sensation of Wes seeing through her a lot better than her friends had Saturday night.
Or you just want someone to see through you.
Irritated with herself, she looked down at the list of treats and the little notes she’d made in an effort to think up names. “I could make colorful labels for each bucket. On the computer. You know, if you wanted. I don’t—”
“That’d be great.” He didn’t look at her, but he sounded enthusiastic. Maybe since she couldn’t throw herself into her social life without wanting to tear her hair out, she’d throw herself into this.
After all, what was the worst thing that would happen if she failed? She let down Wes? Wes? He’d either be gruff and mean, or he’d stumble around blushing. He wouldn’t be disappointed. He wouldn’t tell her to feel something she couldn’t.
He’d just...probably let her keep working.
“So, creek lunch?” he asked, fixing a piece of foil over the finished pans.
She hopped off the counter, easily moving into the little ritual they’d somehow created in only two weeks of working together.
Wes made the sandwiches. She collected the drinks. He whistled for the dogs, and they’d fall into line as they walked to the barn. Wes let Monster and Franco out, and Cara had gotten to the point where she filled water dishes while Wes refilled food for the sheep and the cats.
Silence had never been her favorite thing. Part of the reason she’d loved going to Grandma’s as a kid was the constant drone of AM radio, the way the static crackled when the weather changed. In the woods, the rare times she wanted to be alone, she could get lost in the sound of insects, the rustle of birds and squirrels, the gurgling water along the creek. It wasn’t silent, and she was alone.
Silence with another person? She didn’t believe in it. But, aside from a random dog bark, or a bleat of Shrimp the sheep, this place was a lot of silence, and this thing she’d always thought she’d hated wasn’t so bad here.
Or maybe, the things in her life were making silence seem not nearly as bad as they once had.
They hiked down to his bench of a big slab of rock, and they settled in with their lunches. Ever since that first day, she badgered him with one question. Something personal, that irritated him, but if she limited it to one, he gave in. He let a little piece of himself slip. She found herself collecting those little morsels of information, stitching them together so she could understand the man next to her.
He’d wanted to be a veterinarian. He’d joined the army because he couldn’t afford the college he wanted to attend. They were big things that told her a lot about his life, but for some reason it felt as if...it was all surface stuff. It explained bits and pieces of his life, but it didn’t explain him. Any more than her desire to make pies might tell him anything really about her, even though it was...a huge part of her.
That you’re ignoring.
She wanted nothing to do with that thought, or even with trying to figure Wes out. Today, she had no question, no real desire to ruffle him. He was being nice-ish, and she was too mired in self-pity to...
Oh, hell, there really was something wrong with her, wasn’t there? She hadn’t felt like getting dressed or putting on makeup or looking in any way presentable this morning. She didn’t want to mess with Wes. She’d told her best friend to leave her alone. This might actually be a...problem.
“So, what’s your deal?”
She turned her gaze to Wes, surprised he was breaking the silence with anything—let alone a question that pried into her business. “My deal?”
He shrugged, dropping his gaze from hers. “You’re weird today.”
She blinked at him, but he stared at his sandwich and ignored the fact she was staring at him. “I’m weird?”
“Today.” He looked up, most of his gaze hidden by unruly hair, but she could feel the weight of it. How did he...do that? She didn’t understand him, and that naturally curious part of her that had once stuck a utensil in an outlet as a child, that walked outside during tornado warnings and occasionally badgered the wrong person into an outburst, found him fascinating. Even when she didn’t want to.
“What is wrong with you today?” he repeated, that weighted gaze still on her, the curiosity in her chest winding around some other feeling that wasn’t quite so familiar. It reminded her of sexual tension, but there was something more to it than that. This wasn’t just a will-he-or-won’t-he-ever-make-a-move feeling.
It was a heavy, beating thing, a sense of being magnetized, drawn in, stuck, and the result was both frightening and exhilarating. Actually, a lot like being outside when the sky turned green and the trees bent to the ground and the air was charged with danger.
Electricity.
The powerful knowledge something was going to blow through and leave everything changed.
Okay, yeah, there was something wrong with her today. She didn’t have any idea how she’d ever express it to him.
She blew out a breath, trying to blow the tension—sexual and otherwise—out with it. This was just lunch with her boss, not tornadoes and lust.
Okay, mostly not lust. She wouldn’t soon forget the look of that chest or those abs or the absolute male perfection of Wes without a shirt. The way a few stray water droplets had clung to the ends of his beard and hair, and one had traveled the delicious path from collarbone to waistband. A much happier thought than you’re weird today.
She was, though. Her life didn’t...fit her anymore.
“Have you ever felt like—” she toed a dent in the rock with her shoe “—you’ve woken up in...a different place than you went to sleep in? Figuratively. Like...one day your life was fine and happy, and the next day everything’s all...wrong. Too small or too big or...something.”
He was quiet for a few humming moments. Humming moments where she felt like an idiot for voicing her stupid feelings. Hadn’t she learned a long time ago to keep the deep ones way, way undercover where they couldn’t make her worthy of anyone’s...disappointment?
“Well, I have been blown up by a bomb, so in a manner of speaking...”
A laugh was wrong, and yet she laughed. Because, of course. She was talking about...stupidity, and he’d had real problems. Real blown-up-by-an-actual-bomb problems. “I was being metaphorical. But your literal wins. Congrats.”
“I’m not trying to win.” He cleared his throat, collecting her trash with what she was sure was an unplanned brushing of hands. Unplanned because he jerked his hand a
way as if she burned him. Oddly, she felt the heat, too.
She’d never much believed in...this kind of potency of attraction before. Usually she could find enough about a guy to like to find him attractive. It didn’t have to be physical, it didn’t have to be feelings, they just had to have something that made her feel good, and voilà, Cara would drop her pants for something else that felt good.
But this...energy between her and Wes was not like that. It was something beyond her control. Unless this was all part of her life no longer fitting the way it once had. “But it did mean I woke up, and things were different and it’s a hard row to hoe to get back to where it felt like...life. Same as adjusting from military to civilian life. And starting a business and—”
“Okay, you can stop with how much harder your life is. I get it. I always get it. I had nice if crazy parents who stayed married. We struggled without being poor. My life is pleasant and easy, and my failures are all on my shoulders, and I should just...” She snapped her mouth shut because she realized she was saying a lot more than she meant to.
Way more than anything that Wes, of all people, would want her vomiting at his feet. “Wait. Did you just badger me into sharing something about myself?”
He stood to his full height. “I don’t badger.”
“You do. Just in a different way. It’s sneaky. Hidden underneath beard and hair. But it’s badgering, nonetheless. You just got me to spill my beans. I demand a reward.” Because when she was off-kilter and spewing her guts—not that that ever happened—she would regain even ground and the upper hand by throwing in what she did know how to control.
Sex appeal.
“A...reward,” he repeated, because, no, she certainly hadn’t hidden her intent in the way the word had rolled off her tongue.
Cara wasn’t known for her subtlety. Easy, Cara. Maybe she was sick of being easy. Maybe she wanted to be difficult. Her parents had thought she was, but they’d long since given up on changing that.
Everyone had given up on her being more than a flaky party girl. So. She was going to do what she wanted.