“I have plenty to do,” he said, then rose to his feet and followed her back over to the cabinet where she picked up the stack of seismographic charts. “But there is something I wanted to discuss with you before I go back to my office.”
In an effort to still the trembling in her hands, she gripped the graphed papers with their squiggly lines. She didn’t know why it had shaken her to speak to Adam about her past. After all, lots of people had lost their parents when they were young. Lots of people had grown up in foster homes. It wasn’t anything unusual or something to be ashamed of. But for some reason there was a lump as big as a fist in her throat.
“What did you want to speak to me about?” She forced her gaze to lift to his, then inwardly sighed with relief when she didn’t find pity or distaste in his eyes. More than anything, she wanted Adam Sanders to see her as a strong, successful woman. A woman who’d made it on her own and was proud of her accomplishments.
“Where are you staying? Here in town?”
She nodded and named the motel. “Why do you ask?”
Adam’s eyes drifted to her mouth. It was full and moist, the color of a strawberry when it turned juicy and ready to eat. The thought had him inwardly groaning with self-disgust. “I, uh, I just wanted to say there’s no need for you to stay in a motel. We have plenty of room out at the ranch.”
She drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Is this invitation from you or your parents?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to admit he’d first objected to the idea, but he quickly squashed it. Maybe Maureen York wasn’t the cool, self-assured woman he’d originally thought. Maybe he’d let her success as a scientist cloud the picture he’d envisioned of her. She might actually need another human being from time to time. And he wouldn’t be adverse to helping her if she would truly appreciate it. And him.
“Actually, the invitation is from all of us, and I told my parents I’d speak to you about it today.”
Without making any sort of reply, she turned and moved away from him. The gold-framed glasses dangled from her fingers as she mulled over his suggestion.
Adam jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and tried not to stare at the tall, shapely line of her figure from behind. He didn’t understand his reaction to this woman. He’d had plenty of girlfriends in the past, and if someone asked him what his taste in women ran to, he’d have to say petite and delicate. The sort who looked as if the slightest squeeze from a man’s hand would crush their bones. He normally loved blond hair and had always had a penchant for blue eyes. Soft and delicate and needy. Those were the things he’d always looked for in a woman. Those were the things his Susan had been made of.
But Maureen York was none of those things. She was tall with a full, ripe figure that was a far cry from delicate. She wasn’t even close to being thin. She was downright curvy. Her hair and eyes were both dark. And she was at least three or four years older than him. An older woman had never turned his head before. But God help him, she was the sexiest female he’d ever encountered.
“Look, Maureen, it’s not that difficult a question. You either want to stay in a boring motel room or you want to come out to the ranch. Which will it be?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. A scowl wrinkled her brow. “I don’t want to be a problem for any of you.”
He shrugged as though her presence around the place would be insignificant. “The Bar M has hundreds of cattle and two barns full of horses. One more mouth to feed won’t put us out.”
“You really know how to...make a woman feel wanted.”
A smug smile dimpled one of his cheeks. “I’ve been told that before.”
“Oh, I’m sure you have,” she replied dryly, then walked back to where he stood. “Tell your parents I really appreciate their thoughtfulness, but I—”
“What about my thoughtfulness?”
She cast him a doubtful frown. “Somehow I really don’t believe you want me in your home.”
“It’s my parents’ home,” he reminded her. “I just happen to be staying there, too, for the time being. Besides, I invited you, didn’t I?”
She shrugged. “Yes. But you also accused me of trying to kill you.”
“I can forget about that if you can.”
By nature, Maureen was a forgiving person. She’d never been one to harbor grudges, and even though Adam had said plenty of things to anger her, she wouldn’t continue to hold it against him. No, forgetting their past quarrel would be easy. It was the other things the man did to her that had Maureen worried. Spending more time around him than was necessary would be deliberately asking for trouble.
“As far as I’m concerned, our first meeting is over and forgotten. I’m sorry you were hurt and I can understand and forgive your anger toward me.”
Her head was tilted downward, her eyes veiled by thick, dark lashes. He took advantage of the unguarded moment to feast his eyes on her smooth skin. Beneath the golden tan, a faint dusting of freckles sprinkled the bridge of her nose and the ridge of her cheekbones.
Adam had the strongest urge to lean forward and press his lips to her cheeks and nose, to taste each little brown Beck. “I’m not angry anymore.”
The huskiness of his voice lifted her eyes to his, and in that moment Maureen knew he was seeing her not as a co-worker, but as a woman. The idea was both terrifying and thrilling.
She nervously moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’m glad. But I’m still not sure....”
“How are you moving your things up from Houston? Or have you already?”
She shook her head. “I sold some of my furniture. What’s left I’m going to have shipped with my clothes, household goods and other items in a moving van. As soon as the paperwork on the house is finalized,” she added.
His expression turned incredulous. “The house! You mean you’ve already bought a house?”
Maureen refused to be chagrined. “Yes. I found one yesterday. Of course, it’ll be at least a couple of weeks before the abstract can be read by a lawyer and everything can be signed.”
“All I can say is, you don’t waste time, lady.”
She’d wasted...no, she swiftly corrected herself, she’d lost the past ten years of her life. She hadn’t wasted them. But things were going to be different now. Last night, she’d vowed to put her ex-husband and their dead baby behind her once and for all. She was going to move into her new house, focus on building herself a different life and forgetting everything that she’d lost.
“I can’t afford to waste time.”
One brow arched curiously at her remark. “You have a date to keep?”
Her face grew stiff and devoid of emotion. “I don’t have dates.”
His slow perusal of her brought a tinge of color to her cheeks. Adam didn’t let her discomfiture stop him. “You’ll probably think I’m impertinent,” he said. “But I’m going to ask why anyway.”
She turned her head away, but not before Adam spotted the faintest tremble at the corner of her lips. “You are being impertinent, and my personal life—or lack of one—is none of your business.”
Yesterday, her clipped words would have put a smug smile on his face. He would have found enjoyment in the knowledge that she could be wounded. But today, all he could feel was an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch her.
“You’re right,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat and jammed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It is none of my business. So let’s get back to the initial question. Would you like to come stay at the ranch?”
She glanced at him, and for a split second he saw a flash of raw hunger in her eyes. The brief sight of it stabbed him right in the breastbone.
“It is tempting. I hate motel rooms.”
Latching onto the uncertainty in her voice, he said, “The Bar M is beautiful. We have a swimming pool, there’s always plenty of good food to eat, and you’d have a room off to yourself. You wouldn’t have to see me or anyone else, un
less you wanted to.”
She did want to see him. That was the whole problem. But it wasn’t as if she was going to throw herself into Adam Sanders’s arms. Since David had walked out on her, she’d developed a willpower as strong as steel. She could resist any man.
“You make it sound very appealing.” She looked at him with sudden resolution. “I think I’ll accept your invitation, Adam.”
He didn’t know which pleased him more—her calling him by his first name or the fact that he’d won her over and she was going to be staying on the ranch.
Resisting the urge to grab her hand and smother the back of it with kisses, he said, “Good. After work this evening, I’ll help you get your things from the motel and then you can follow me home.”
Follow me home.
As Maureen watched him leave the lab, she tried her best not to take his words literally. This brief stay on the Bar M with Adam and his family would only be a glimpse of what she would never have.
The more she reminded herself of that fact, the safer her heart would be.
Chapter Three
Adam glanced in his rearview mirror. She was back there. Just as she’d been when he’d checked five minutes ago.
He’d really done it this time! What the hell had he been thinking? It would have made much more sense to simply reimburse Maureen for her motel expenses instead of inviting her to the ranch.
But that was the whole problem, he argued with himself. The Bar M was only his temporary home. He had to consider his parents’ feelings in the matter. And he knew how pleased they would be that he’d been able to persuade Maureen to stay the next few weeks with them.
Chloe and Wyatt had always been generous people. Not just with their money or the things it could afford them to give, but generous of themselves. Adam had long wished he possessed at least a fraction of their generosity.
But now as Maureen followed him closely up the pine-lined lane to the ranch, he wished when he’d looked into Maureen’s warm brown eyes this morning, he’d been a bit stingier with his hospitality. In spite of the physical attraction he felt for her, he didn’t want to get involved with her. Or any woman. And he was going to make damn sure he didn’t.
Circling behind the house, Maureen parked beside Adam’s truck, then joined him at the back of the vehicles. Shading her eyes from the late-evening glare, she took in the massive barns and cattle lots, the long white stables and the blue-green mountains rising up behind it all.
“When you said ranch, I didn’t realize you meant a place of this magnitude,” she told him, her voice filled with awe.
His wry grin was full of pride as he pulled down the tailgate on Maureen’s pickup. “I told you it was beautiful.”
“That’s an understatement. But I didn’t expect it to be a...” She paused to wave a hand at the corrals where wranglers were spreading feed into long metal troughs for a herd of steers. “A working ranch.”
“Is there any other kind?”
She reached for two of her smaller cases. Adam jammed a duffel bag under one arm, then picked up two larger cases.
“Some people buy a house on an acre of land in the country and call it a ranch.”
He chuckled. “We measure the Bar M in sections rather than acres.”
“You sound like a genuine Texan now.”
“Well, the states do touch,” he said, excusing his comment.
She laughed, and Adam realized it was the first time he’d heard the warm, rich sound or even seen her truly smile, for that matter. He thought he’d noticed everything about this woman. He’d thought her cool aloofness was because of her dislike of him. But he was beginning to think that wasn’t the case at all. It wasn’t him she was unhappy with. It was something inside her. Something she’d carried with her from Houston.
A man? he wondered, then groaned mockingly to himself. With a woman who looked like Maureen? Of course it was a man. And Adam hated him already.
Tossing the book onto the nightstand, Adam flopped back against the headboard and sighed. He didn’t want to read. Watching TV was no option at all. Neither was lying on the bed staring at the ceiling.
Absently, he rubbed a hand over his naked chest as his gaze drifted toward the door of his bedroom. Of all the rooms in this house, his mother had insisted on putting Maureen directly across the hall from him.
Whether she’d done it on purpose or not made little difference to Adam. He’d reasoned the whole thing out with himself. He was going to be polite and hospitable to Maureen. But he was also going to be very careful about keeping his distance. Why put himself through any more temptation than he had to?
Restlessly, he rose from the bed and walked over to a pair of sliding glass doors leading out to the courtyard. A few yards away, the water in the pool glistened beneath the moonlight. He’d forgone his swim tonight. The idea of parading around in a pair of swim trunks in front of Maureen wasn’t all that appealing to him. Besides, if he’d gotten into the pool earlier, his parents would surely have insisted on Maureen joining him.
Coward. Are you a man or a mouse?
The self-directed question brought a grim twist to Adam’s lips. Whenever Maureen was near him, he was all too aware of which creature he was.
So what was the matter with him? It wasn’t like him to run from a female. He loved women. Loved everything about them. Their softness and sweetness. Their scents and sighs and smiles.
He knew he had the reputation of a philanderer. But not one of his friends or his family really understood that deep down he was a one-woman man. And because he’d lost his one woman at the tender age of twenty-two, he refused to consider he might actually be able to find another.
Losing Susan had taught him that serious love could only lead to pain and loss. From then on, he’d closed his heart and decided that women were to be taken often and lightly.
In the last two years of college, he’d studied the female anatomy as much as he’d studied engineering, and he’d enjoyed every minute of it. But the older Adam had gotten, the stickier each relationship had become. He wanted no strings—whereas women wanted to tie him down with a damn lariat. And when they couldn’t, there was always a flood of tears, the you-don’t-love-me thrown in his face.
Hell! Of course he hadn’t loved any of them. Where did they get the idea a little shared time and a few kisses meant a man was in love? As far as he was concerned, real love, the kind his parents shared, was very rare and even more difficult to keep. He’d lost his chance at real love when Susan’s car had skidded off a rain-slick mountain highway. At this point in his life, he simply wanted to concentrate on his career.
But if he was so sure of all of that, why was he hiding in his room? he asked himself. Why didn’t he simply be the Adam Murdock Sanders he’d always been, the one who wasn’t afraid to enjoy and appreciate a woman’s company and to hell with their tears?
Slowly, a sly smile spread across his face, then he turned away from the glass doors and went in search of his swimming trunks.
Maureen was flipping through the channels on a small television in her bedroom when a soft knock sounded on the door. She quickly pushed the Off button on the remote and reached for her dressing gown.
“Just a moment,” she called.
Before opening the door, she tightened the sash at her waist and adjusted the overlap of material between her breast. A second later, she was glad she’d taken the time to cover herself. Adam was standing on the threshold with nothing on but a pair of swimming trunks and a devilish smile.
“How about a swim?”
Incredulous, she stared at him. “A swim?”
He put a shushing finger to his lips. “Yes. A swim. You know, me and you in the water. Staying afloat, cooling off.”
Maureen had to stifle the mocking burst of laughter rising up her throat. Cool off with Adam? She didn’t think so.
“It’s nearly time for bed,” she reasoned.
He glanced at the moon just then bursting over the ridge of mountain
s to the east. “This is the best time of the day. Not too hot. Not too cool. And don’t worry, the moonlight isn’t bright enough to show off your cellulite.”
Her narrowed eyes warned him he was treading on dangerous ground. “What makes you think I have cellulite?”
A grin kept trying to tug at the corners of his mouth. It would have infuriated her on any other man. On Adam, she wanted to lean forward and taste it.
“Nothing. I just know how you women worry about such trivial things.”
Her brows arched at the word trivial. “So you don’t mind if a woman has a few flaws?”
The grin appeared in full force as he shook his head. “No. I turn a blind eye to them. After all, a perfect woman would be...boring. If you ask me,” he added.
Maureen wished she hadn’t asked. She also wished he wasn’t looking at her as though he’d like to slip the blue cotton robe off her shoulders, then eat her for dessert.
“I guess we women are lucky there’s no perfect men around to...bore us.”
Adam chuckled. “So are you coming with me or not?”
She spared him one last look before glancing over her shoulder at the bed. She wasn’t ready for sleep. Certainly not now after he’d stirred her hormones to a heady boil. But was she ready for a moonlight swim with Adam?
“It’s dangerous to swim alone,” he persisted.
“How do you know I can even swim?” she countered.
His gaze traveled lazily down the length of her. “You don’t look like you’d have any problem with the sport.”
The only problem she had was with him. Maybe it was time she showed him she was not a woman to be flirted with. Not by him or any man.
Millionaire on Her Doorstep Page 4