by Lucy Gilmore
“Of course I like it,” he said, the words so violent they were almost a curse. “That’s not the point.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him what the point was, but he answered her before she had a chance to utter so much as a syllable. The answer came not in words and not in gestures, but in a kiss so sudden that even Uncle let out a yelp of surprise.
Adam hadn’t let go of her wrist, opting instead to give it a tug and pull her body flush with his. His mouth found hers with unerring accuracy, the crash of lips and shock of intimacy sending her head reeling. Although this had been her goal—to drive him out of his mind with desire, to force him to admit that he wanted her just as much as she wanted him—she wasn’t quite ready for so explosive a kiss. In the ordinary way of things, Adam was a highly thorough lover. He rarely left any part of her untasted, took his time making sure that she was panting with desire and dripping with need before he thought of his own pleasures. Dawn had never been much of one for long, leisurely make-out sessions, but Adam refused to be hurried.
This kiss wasn’t like that. It was almost as though he’d forgotten everything the two of them had ever shared, had wiped the slate clean and decided to approach this whole arrangement of theirs with renewed vigor.
This kiss was hungry.
He didn’t wait for her to part her lips and let him in, didn’t nibble gently at the edges of her mouth. The press of his mouth was hot and greedy, and there was no chance to hesitate as his tongue swept a victory path over hers.
His free hand came up to grip her around the back of her neck, his fingers spreading wide as if making a claim. He wasn’t tugging her hair, but there was a threat of it in the curl of his fingertips, as if he was prepared to go to any lengths to ensure that this kiss didn’t end before he was damn well good and ready.
There was at least a full minute of this assault, of his hands and his tongue, of his determination to set every nerve Dawn possessed on fire. On fire was exactly how she felt, too, and in ways that sparked feelings she’d long since thought she didn’t possess.
In fact, if she didn’t know any better, she’d say Adam was kissing her—that she was being kissed—for the first time in her entire life.
“Oh my,” she said as soon as his mouth lifted from hers. Her head whirled and her body throbbed, but she still managed to blink up at him until the world stopped spinning. “You do like it, too, don’t you?”
His laugh was short and gruff, but it was a laugh nonetheless. “You know I do. I always have. But I’ll be damned if we’re going to go sneak to the back of the barn like a couple of animals in heat.”
An animal in heat was exactly what she felt like, so that didn’t sound like such a terrible plan. When his arms were around her like this, his body rock hard in all the places it touched hers, she’d do just about anything to keep going—straw itch mites and rats be damned.
“Zeke and Phoebe are in the house, so we can’t go there,” she mused. “My car’s windows are tinted, but it’s not very roomy inside. And I suppose we could always sneak to the root cellar, but Zeke once told me that the latch catches and traps people down there sometimes. So that’s probably out.”
“Yes, Dawn. The root cellar is out.”
She scanned her memory for likely trysting places, but it was difficult to come up with a good option while the two puppies sat at their feet. They could hardly take them into a hayfield with them.
Adam heaved a sigh and pulled away, the air between them like a bucket of cold water. “You can stop trying to come up with alternate options, because I’m not having sex with you this morning. There’s too much work to do.”
“Fine.” She gave up fighting. She had to. Adam was right when he said that this thing between them worked because it was temporary, fun. Meaningless.
Just like me.
“But I still think it’d do you a world of good to release some of that pent-up…energy.” She bit her lower lip and considered the man standing opposite her. He was like a statue made of lightning. One touch, and he’d break off into a thousand bolts. “In fact, if you’d like to take care of it right now, I’ll keep an eye on the puppies. No one would care if you popped into the shower for a few minutes.”
He gave a short laugh and ran a hand through his hair. “You think I haven’t done that already this morning?”
Every part of her body gave a sudden, lust-filled pulse. Even the parts of her that shouldn’t tingle at such a thought—her nose and her toes and, from what she could tell, her appendix—seemed suddenly alive with possibility.
“You didn’t,” she said, her mouth dry.
He laughed again, the sound coming much more naturally now. “Oh, I did. Twice.”
“Well, shit.” It was all too easy to picture Adam in the shower, all the hard, lean lines of him swirled with steam as he did his valiant best to work her out of his system. He was so strong, his hands so rough, that she imagined he could manage it in a few seconds flat. Or, she thought, barely biting back an unladylike moan, maybe he took his time with it. “I guess I’m the one who’s going to need a few minutes alone.”
“Too bad,” he said and grinned. It was his lopsided grin, the natural one that only seemed to appear when he managed to get the better of her—in bed, in puppy ownership, in anything, really. “You’re on the clock now. We’ve got two hours to whip these puppies into shape, and I don’t intend to waste a moment. Don’t you agree?”
“The only thing I think is that you shouldn’t say words like ‘whip’ around me right now,” Dawn warned.
The grin deepened. “Whatever you say, Ms. Vasquez. If it helps, we can stroke them into shape instead.”
Chapter 7
“Lila, I know it’s a huge imposition, but would you mind doing the evening feeding and exercise run for the puppies tonight?”
Adam halted midstep, careful not to make a sound as he rounded the cow barn. He’d been on his way to tell Dawn that she could come meet the newborn calf now, but she was obviously on the phone. It was equally obvious that she hadn’t expected the birth to go that quickly. First timers rarely did. The movies liked to make it seem like every calf had to be pulled out by force, with heifer Lamaze and an anxious bull waiting in the wings, but nature usually handled everything just fine. Ninety percent of the time, all he did was catch.
“If I said I’m still at the ranch because I’m helping to birth calves, would you believe me?” Dawn asked. The steady rustle of her footsteps over straw made him think she might be pacing the length of the holding room. “Fine. How about if I said I have a hot date with a ranch hand and it’s half-price whiskey night at the local saloon?”
Adam had to fight to keep a laugh from escaping and giving his position away. Their local saloon had recently been updated as a martini bar, and they wouldn’t offer fifty-percent discounts even if it was the last day of life on earth. He’d once had something called a Sazerac there that had cost him twenty-five bucks.
“Um, he’s tall and wiry and walks with a limp, but his Clint Eastwood impression is spot on. The old, decrepit Clint Eastwood, in case you were wondering. Not the young, hot one. Life is rough on men out here.”
Adam had to muffle his laugh again, but this time he did it with a twinge of conscience. The right thing to do in this situation was either to make enough noise to announce his presence or to slip quietly back the way he’d come. Eavesdropping on other people’s phone conversations wasn’t something he did in the general way of things.
But Dawn spoke again, this time with a touch of impatience. “Of course I’m not dating an aged cowboy. I really am helping with the calving. Well, not helping so much as witnessing, but it amounts to the same thing.” She paused. “Yes, Zeke is here. Where else would he be? This is his ranch.”
The mention of his brother gave Adam a start, but not enough to force him out of his hiding place.
“I
’m fine, Lil. I promise. Don’t listen to anything Sophie tells you. Ever since she met Harrison, she’s got romance where her common sense should be.” An exasperated grunt escaped her. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. I am not in love with Zeke. He would be the worst boyfriend in the world. The only things he cares about are triathlons and his own mirror image. And not even in that order.”
Adam held back a snort. Whatever else could be said about this woman, Dawn wasn’t afraid to call things as she saw them. Her next words proved it.
“If you must know, I’m sleeping with his older brother, Adam—the one I’m training Uncle for. I have been for months.” Any idea of retreat was now banished forever, especially when Dawn ended the call with “And before you ask, Adam really is like Clint Eastwood. The young, hot one.”
He didn’t have a chance to do anything but register that remark before Dawn stalked around the corner. She was obviously roiling with emotion—no woman walked with that kind of tread unless there was something going on beneath the surface—but he had no idea how much of it he was supposed to ask about. He wanted to know more, but that wasn’t the kind of relationship they had. She’d made that clear from the start.
As she usually did, Dawn took the guesswork out of it. She came to a halt a few steps in front of him, her presence registering on a purely visceral level. “You sneak,” she said, half-laughing, half-outraged. “How much of my call did you overhear?”
“Uh. Most of it?” Adam drove a hand deep in one pocket. It felt good to give one of his hands a purpose, but he wasn’t sure what to do with the other one. He ran it over the back of his neck. “I came to tell you that the calf has been born. You can see her now, if you want.”
“I missed it?” she asked. Her disappointment sounded genuine. “Damn. I always love watching mama dogs give birth.”
“You do?”
“Of course. I mean, it’s a little gross the first time, but that goes away pretty quickly. It’s amazing how animals are born knowing what to do, isn’t it? When to push, when to relax, how to take care of that baby the moment it’s here. Humans too, really.”
Adam wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He and Dawn had spent plenty of time in the act of propagation, but the biological outcome wasn’t something they discussed very often.
Dawn sighed. “No one trusts their instincts anymore. We spend so much time thinking and overthinking that we forget how simple some things are. Birth and death. How to do the right thing. The fact that baby animals are the best.” She nudged his toe with her own. “Well, Eavesdrop McEavesdropson, are you going to take me to this calf or what?”
“You don’t have to stick around,” he said by way of answer. “If you have to go take care of the puppies back at your house, I mean. I don’t think I realized how much of a burden it was for you to be spending this much time out here.”
“That’s the part of the phone call you want to discuss?”
A wave of heat moved over him. “It’s the part I’m going to discuss.”
She laughed and took his hand in hers. It was more of a friendly hand squeeze than an overtly sexual maneuver, but there was no denying the way his body flared to life at her touch. “Clint Eastwood was one hell of a dish in his day,” she said. “I meant to be nothing but complimentary.”
He tried somewhat feebly to take his hand back, but the lacing of her fingers through his felt too good for him to put in much of an effort.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been listening.”
The tug of her arm indicated that she’d shrugged. “I don’t mind. I never say anything I don’t mean, so it’s not like it matters if anyone overhears. I’m not in love with Zeke. I am sleeping with you. And to be perfectly honest, whiskey with a Clint Eastwood type sounds like heaven right about now.”
Adam could have easily filled in the gap with a comment of his own, but he had the feeling there was more she wanted to say.
Dawn hesitated. He wasn’t wrong.
“Whiskey with a Clint Eastwood type would also make my sister feel a lot better. She honestly doesn’t mind taking care of the puppies for the night if she thinks I’m getting mindless sex out of the bargain.”
“But she does mind doing it if you’re helping me with the cows?”
The shrug-tug was gentler this time but still evident. Dawn also began using her free finger to trace the veins along the back of his hand. The light whisper of her fingertips awakened something sharp inside him.
“She doesn’t mind so much as worry. A Dawn who shirks her duty in pursuit of the flesh is what she’s used to. A Dawn who’s spending time at a bovine maternity wing because she genuinely wants to is grounds for a family intervention. We are not a rustic people.”
“Okay,” he said.
She dropped his hand but the sharp feeling lingered. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, let’s have drinks and mindless sex.” The offer was out before he could stop it. If he’d been thinking rationally, he could have phrased it a little better, but between her touch and that bit about her genuinely wanting to be with the cows, he was barely holding on over here. People so rarely wanted to stick around. Zeke had been grumbling about being late for swim practice for the past twenty minutes, and Phoebe had slipped out as soon as the afterbirth had been cleared away. And they owned this place.
“Really?” Dawn asked. “You want to go out?”
“Well, no,” he was forced to admit. “I don’t want to leave the puppies home alone, and I doubt Methuselah is ready for a night on the town just yet, so it’ll have to be a bottle of butterscotch schnapps and the local country radio station.”
“Gross. That’s your drink of choice?”
“I can’t help if it’s delicious.” He hesitated. “I know it’s hardly the height of entertainment, but I can at least promise to pour with a heavy hand. You in?”
He held his breath, trying not to wince as he waited for Dawn’s response. The date, if it could be called as much, was no more and no less than anything else he’d given her before. It was also no more and no less than what their banter had been leading up to.
Still. It felt different somehow. Probably because he felt different somehow. He’d never spent this much time with Dawn before while their clothes were on, and he wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing. For the first time, she was seeing him in his real element—how tied he was to this ranch, how routine were his days. For the first time, he wasn’t just a convenient and fun way to spend a few hours.
“To be honest, I’m a little wary,” she said.
Adam’s heart gave an odd thump. This was it. The end of the road, the day of reckoning. Dawn had taken a good, hard look at the real Adam Dearborn and realized she had better things to do with her life.
“I can’t help thinking about all that time you spent in the shower this morning.” Her voice dropped, her hand coming to rest lightly against his chest. “All that rubbing and cleaning. All that intense self-care. Are you sure you’re…up for an evening with me?”
Adam’s heart stopped altogether. It was accompanied by a stop to all his other bodily functions—breathing and blinking and moving his lips to form human words. As Dawn’s fingers trailed down his chest to the waistband of his jeans, the only thing he seemed to be capable of was excessive and healthy blood flow.
“Never mind. I see that everything seems to be working just fine. But I still want to meet that baby cow first, so don’t think you can get off that easy.” She lifted her hand away and laughed. It was a delicious, tormenting sound. “Well, you’re going to get off incredibly easy, if I have anything to say about it. But you know what I mean.”
He did. He also knew that as much as he’d have loved to forget everything but this woman and the promise of a few hours alone with her, there was work to do first.
In a life like his, there was always work to do first. And whether h
e liked it or not, Dawn was finally starting to see that for herself.
* * *
“Oh, don’t worry about me.” Dawn waved Zeke away at the front door. His swim bag was slung over one shoulder, a bright-blue towel peeking out over the side. In his haste to get out the door after the calf had been born, it was a wonder he’d remembered to grab the bag at all. “I’m going to get Uncle and Gigi settled for the night and then I’m heading home. It’s been quite a day.”
“It always is around here,” Zeke replied as he began heading toward his car. “Welcome to life on the wild side.”
Although there was no way No-Pants Shotgun would associate Zeke’s beat-up Volvo covered in bumper stickers with her Jetta, Dawn felt a twinge of conscience at letting him head off into the great unknown without a warning.
“Uh, just so you know, I had bit of a run-in with our pants-less friend last week.”
Zeke stopped to turn and stare, the car door hanging open to reveal piles of sporting equipment inside. “Are you kidding me?”
“It’s fine. I handled it. But there’s an eensy-weensy chance he’s lying in wait somewhere along that stretch of highway looking for us, so tread warily.”
Zeke slammed the car door shut and stalked back up to the house. Dawn cast a nervous glance behind her, fearful that Adam would overhear, but neither he nor the puppies had come in from the barn yet. “Dawn, you idiot. What happened?”
“Nothing, I swear!” She held up her hands as if proving her innocence. “He flashed his lights at me and gunned his engine a few times, but he was easy enough to outrun. I doubt he’ll recognize you in your own car.”
“You’ve been outrunning criminals on your own?”