The Barons of Texas: Tess

by Fayrene Preston

  “If that’s where the heavenly smells are originating from, I’ll be right in.”

  She found the bathroom and shut the door after her. Outof-date fixtures greeted her, along with towels and washcloths that, though faded, looked freshly washed. The wallpaper was peeling in spots. The linoleum had holes worn into it, yet the smell of a recently used lemon-scented cleaner hung in the air.

  She shook her head in wonder. This place certainly wasn’t a restaurant, yet the smells coming out of the kitchen were making her salivate. She’d never once entertained the notion that there was anything simple about Nick. Now, she realized, she was about to learn just how complicated he was.

  And if in the end she discovered that he’d planned this evening as a way to convince her to stop her drilling, she wouldn’t be surprised. But she would be deeply, deeply disappointed.

  Damn the man, anyway. Why hadn’t he just taken Ron’s no for an answer when Ron had told him he couldn’t see her? Why did he have to crash her birthday party and bring more complications into her life at a time when she could barely handle the ones she already had?

  She sighed. Because he was Nick Trejo, that was why.

  Minutes later, she walked into a dimly lit kitchen. Small lamps were lit at either end of an aged sideboard. A square table graced the middle of the room. Covered by a blue tablecloth, set for two with blue and white plates and lit by a short, round blue candle whose base was surrounded by field daises, the table looked as if it had just come off the pages of Country Homes. In fact, the whole kitchen did.

  On the counter, a freshly baked loaf of bread rested on a cutting board with a bottle of wine beside it. Beef stew simmered in a large pot on the stove. Nick stood at the table, forking a crisp salad into two small bowls that matched the plates.

  She eyed him wryly. “This is a set, isn’t it? And everything here is a prop, right?” But even as she said it, she knew she was wrong. Whatever was happening, she hadn’t figured it out yet.

  “A set?” He took the salad bowl to the counter. “You mean like for a TV show?”

  She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “Take a seat and I’ll pour you some wine.”

  She settled into one of the chairs and watched him as he poured the wine into two glasses, then carried the glasses to the table. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and she was suddenly struck by how comfortable and at home he seemed.

  “Okay, Nick, I think now is a good time to tell me what exactly is going on. No one lives in this house, do they?”

  “In one way, yes, but in another way, no.”

  “I’m not interested in playing guessing games, Nick. Exactly whose house is this?”

  “My grandparents’. They live in town now.”

  “So no one lives here.”

  “They live here, too.”

  “But you just said…” She waved her hand in front of her as if she were erasing her words. “Forget it. Let me try another question. Where did the food come from?”

  “My sister, Kathie.” He brought the bread to the table and sliced off several pieces, then angled the knife he’d used across the cutting board. “She’s married to a pharmacist, and they live in town with their two daughters. But my grandmother taught her to cook, and everything we’re going to eat tonight is from my grandmother’s recipe file. Believe me, our dinner is guaranteed to be delicious.”

  She only had to inhale to know he was right. She sipped her wine as she tried to understand the rest of what he’d said. “So let me get this straight. Your sister came out here, cooked all this and then left right before we arrived?”

  Deftly he ladled stew into two bowls. “She knew our schedule, so it was fairly easy for her to have everything ready, and she didn’t mind at all.”

  “That’s very nice of her. She must have done this same sort of thing for you before.”

  He paused and looked at her. “No.”

  “You mean you’ve never brought other women out here to this same sort of setup?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Really.” Disbelief flattened her tone.

  He left his task and moved to her, his broad-shouldered, leanly muscled frame radiating a barely contained electric tension that seemed, with his next breath, to have the potential to turn to danger.

  How could she have forgotten that when she’d first seen him last night, her instincts had told her he was a man who should be treated with caution? With her next breath came the answer. Obviously his kiss the evening before had knocked all sense from her head. Then, this evening, he’d been a charming host, lulling her into a false sense of security. But still, she should have remembered.

  He braced his hands on the table and leaned toward her, his amber eyes bright against his dark skin. “This is the very first time I’ve ever asked Kathie to do something like this, and when I told her who my guest would be, she was more than willing to cook our dinner.”

  “You told her who I was.” The light dawned. “I see. So it all comes back to my drilling site, doesn’t it?”

  He lapsed into silence as he returned to the stove for the two bowls of stew. He took his time, making sure everything was on the table that needed to be. Was he trying to think of an answer she might find acceptable? Or was he simply going to ignore her question?

  “There was no need for this elaborate ruse, Nick.” Her tone held deliberate and cutting derision. “I could have told you no back home as well as I can tell you no here. As a matter of fact, I did.”

  He settled into the chair across from her and leveled a piercing gaze on her. “I won’t lie to you, Tess. Part of this trip does involve me trying to get you to change your mind and stop your drilling for three months.”

  “Then you haven’t been listening to me. I’ve already told you-”

  He held up his hand. “But at the same time, I meant it when I said that I hoped this evening would be a social one.” Without dropping his gaze from her, he ran his fingers up and down the stem of his wineglass. “The truth is, Tess, I want to get to know you better.”

  His amber eyes glittered like stars in a dark, stormy night sky. If there was some way to look at his face without having to see his eyes, she reflected wryly, she would be a lot better off.

  “You see,” he said quite casually, “I want you. I have since the first moment I laid eyes on you:”

  The breath caught in her throat. “You-”

  “I want you much more than I know how to tell you.” He paused, his gaze never leaving hers. “I didn’t count on that happening. Last night, when I went to your party, I went strictly for business reasons. But then I saw you, and felt you against me as we danced—” his gaze dropped to her lips “—and I kissed you. And I left wanting much more.”

  She tried to swallow but found her throat constricted. She took a gulp of wine, tried to swallow again and this time was successful. “You are either very direct or you’re lying for your own ends.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you, Tess. Not about this.”

  “And how am I supposed to know that?” She heard the hint of desperation in her voice, but there was nothing she could do about it. “I just met you last night. Then tonight, under the guise of having dinner, you flew me out here to this isolated house.”

  “We are about to have dinner, so that was no lie. And I’m not lying to you about wanting you. Deep down, you must know that.”

  She did know it, which was why she was feeling so desperate. He’d declared desire, not love, which was good. She wouldn’t have believed him if he’d said he loved her. But either way, he was bringing emotions into their relationship that she wasn’t prepared to deal with. In reality, she simply didn’t know how.

  “I hope you feel the same way I do.”

  Damn. That was one of the problems. She did. But she’d never been any good at this sort of thing. It was why she had friends instead of lovers. Give her a tough negotiation to handle, or a complicated drilling site to tackle, and she wa
s in her element. But Nick, with his commanding presence and his heated stare, threw her. She had no practice with womanly wiles.

  Her sister Jill would know exactly how to handle Nick. Jill was an expert at luring men into her sophisticated web, then, more often than not, she would walk away and leave them hanging. Even Kit would know. Kit would simply give a toss of her red hair and laugh, and within minutes she would have a man wrapped around her little finger. Then she, too, would walk away.

  But Tess didn’t know how to play games with men. All she knew how to do was to tell the truth, and in this case, she really, really didn’t want to do that. The truth would make her vulnerable, something she couldn’t afford to be with this man. The truth would also make it almost impossible for her to walk away, even though that was exactly what she would have to do.

  “Do you, Tess? Do you want me even a fraction as much as I want you?”

  She turned her face away and briefly closed her eyes. She could lie to him, but she was so terrible at it, he would know. There was really only one thing she could tell him. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  It was as if a two-ton elephant had just lumbered into the room and sat down at the table with them. They couldn’t ignore it. They couldn’t make it disappear. It was there, and now they were going to have to figure out what to do with it.

  “There’s one last thing you should know, Tess, because in some ways it takes us beyond the realm of the feelings that are between the two of us. There are things I hope you will learn while we’re here.”

  “Things?” Her wariness was back, and she didn’t even attempt to hide it.

  “Things about my family.”

  She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to snap her fingers and be back at the house in Corpus Christi. Alone. And with another snap of her fingers she wanted to make Nick disappear from her life. He came with too many demands, too many complications. But as hard as she’d studied in school, she’d never learned to snap her fingers and make things happen. “Isn’t learning about your family the same thing as learning about you?”

  “In some ways, I suppose so.”

  She didn’t understand why he would try to separate the two. She didn’t even want to understand. She rubbed her brow. “Whether we like it or not, our family dynamics play a huge part in shaping who we are.”

  His slow smile was warm. “I’m glad you understand that.”

  She understood it more than he knew. Her own family dynamics were worthy of the fictional Ewings of Dallas.

  She needed time to regain her balance, so she began to eat the stew, which turned out to be mouthwatering, and was extremely grateful when Nick did the same. For now she was more than happy to pretend she didn’t see the elephant.

  She knew she was awkward when it came to relationships with men. And when it came to Nick, her awkwardness was multiplied by a thousand. Given the same chance she had, any other woman on the planet would already have cleared the dishes with one sweep of her arm and started making love to Nick right atop his grandmother’s kitchen table.

  But she couldn’t—wouldn’t do such a thing. She wasn’t up to delving any deeper into their mutually declared desire. Not now, with him so close.

  At this point, all she wanted was to get home. In the solitude and safety of her bedroom, she hoped she could get a better perspective on everything that had happened and been said this evening. Because when she faced the desire they felt for each other, she would also have to face the fact that at least part of Nick’s desire for her involved what he wanted from her. And that would be extremely hard on her.

  Realistically, she knew there were different kinds of seduction, and two kinds were involved here. There was seduction for the purpose of getting someone to have sex with you. And there was seduction for the purpose of getting someone to agree with you.

  Nick wanted both, and she didn’t think she could handle letting him have either. She didn’t have enough experience to be able to tell one type of seduction from the other, so, knowing her, she would concentrate on the desire he made her feel, which from her side would be pure. And in the end, when he walked away from her because she couldn’t give him what he wanted, she would be hurt. Badly.

  So she deliberately led the conversation down the most innocuous paths she could think of. They talked about the food and she coaxed Nick into telling her anecdotes about his nieces.

  She badly needed the time their dinner gave her. The evening wasn’t close to being over, yet it had already turned out to be one stunning surprise after another. She needed to catch her breath so she could be ready for the next surprise. Because if there was one thing she was learning, it was that, with Nick, there would be a next surprise.

  And that elephant was still sitting there, waiting for them to resolve, one way or another, the issue of their desire for one another.

  * * *

  Nick cleared the dinner dishes from the table, while Tess lingered over her coffee and a bowl of peach cobbler. “Please remember to tell your sister how much I’ve enjoyed the dinner.”

  “I will. She’s accustomed to getting compliments on her cooking, but it still makes her day when she receives another.”

  She took her last bite of cobbler, then pushed the bowl away. In keeping with her plan of maintaining a stream of conversation until they could leave, she asked, “So, tell me about this house. If your grandparents live in town, why is it still fully furnished?”

  After he’d stacked the dishes in the sink and squirted them with soap, he turned on the water. “My grandfather has a severe heart problem that needs to be closely monitored. My grandmother’s health is better, though at her age, anything could happen. They needed to be in town so they could be closer to their doctor and the hospital. They knew it as well as Kathie and I did.”

  The water rose higher and higher in the sink until it covered the dishes, then he turned it off. “Still, when it came to the move, they dug in their heels. The only way they would agree was for Kathie and me to promise that this house would still be here for them, just as it always has been. We keep all the utilities on and have the place cleaned once a month. And every once in a while, they drive out here and have lunch and stay an hour or two. It makes them happy and, at the same time, they’re safe, which are the two things that count the most.” He turned and leaned against the counter.

  She smiled. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think they’re very lucky to have you and your sister as grandchildren.”

  “Kathie and I are the lucky ones. They raised us.”

  She blinked. “How did that come about?”

  “Our parents were killed in an airplane crash.”

  “How awful.”

  He nodded. “Yes. I was eight, and Kathie was seven. But our grandparents were there for us, so now it’s our turn to be there for them.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she said seriously.

  “What we’re doing for them is very little compared to what they did for us.”

  Damn the man. She couldn’t find a thing she didn’t like about him. Nevertheless, a single fact remained true. They had opposing interests. She couldn’t agree to the postponement of her drilling schedule, and as soon as he realized she couldn’t be swayed, she would never see him again.

  “You know what I find remarkable? The fact that your parents were killed in an airplane crash, yet here you are, a pilot.”

  He grinned, and she was momentarily stunned. It was the first time he’d grinned at her, and she was charmed by the hint of the boy behind the man.

  “I’m a pilot because my parents died in a crash. The crash gave me a strong fear of flying. The only way I could overcome it was to learn all I could about planes and flying.”

  “And that’s the reason you made a point of assuring me how safe our flight would be.”

  He shrugged. “I worked and studied until I felt that I was the very best pilot I could be. And I won’t fly a plane unless I c
an see its service record and then go over the plane myself. I believe in stacking the odds in my favor.”

  He believed in stacking the odds in his favor. From what she knew of him, his statement made perfect sense, and she wasn’t thinking about the way he’d overcome his fear of flying. She pushed herself up from the table and carried the cobbler bowl and her coffee cup to the counter.

  “Is that the reason you brought me out here? Do you think that bringing me to your grandparents’ house and feeding me your sister’s cooking will somehow stack the odds in your favor and I’ll just give in?”

  “It’s part of the reason, but I’ve already told you that.”

  For a while during dinner, as she’d listened to him talking about his nieces, she’d done her best to push from her mind his ultimate objective and had tentatively tested the waters of what it was like simply to be a woman on a date with a man to whom she was strongly attracted.

  But the harder she’d tried, the harder she’d hit that wall of knowledge that nothing serious could ever develop between them. And instinctively she knew that, emotionally, she would never be able to handle a casual affair, not with any man, but especially not with Nick.

  Nick wanted her and would probably be more than satisfied with a casual affair, but she would bet her last dime that, if given the choice, he would forget the affair and choose to have her halt her drilling.

  “I can’t stop the drilling, Nick. That answer will never change, no matter what you do or say. And I’d like to fly back to Corpus as soon as possible, so let me help you with these dishes. The sooner we get everything put away, the sooner we can leave. Switch places with me. Since you know where things go, I’ll wash and you dry.” She stepped around him to the sink and plunged her hands into the water.

  Watching her, he picked up a dishcloth. “Why are you so anxious to leave? Didn’t the dinner live up to my billing?”

  “Absolutely. The food was delicious, and the place was unique.” She flashed a quick smile at him. “Thank you for inviting me.”