The Inheritance

by Marie Ferrarella

  But not this. Certainly not this.

  He felt himself felled as surely as that tree that the lightning bolt had brought down in his boss’s front yard during a storm two years ago.

  Not entirely certain just what was going on with him, Rafe finally stepped back, more than a little dazed. He looked at Greer, really looked at her for the first time, though it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. It felt as if his eyes saw everything in a haze.

  Her face was soft, delicate. Because of the glasses she wore, he hadn’t realized that she had high cheekbones. On closer scrutiny, he could see them. It gave her a slightly sexy, vulnerable look. Intrigued, stirred, he wondered if she could be convinced to switch to contact lenses. He had a feeling she was almost hiding behind those glasses.

  All in all, she did herself a huge disservice by retreating into an image of someone far older than she actually was. As he studied Greer’s face, he saw the untried young girl who still remained inside. The one he’d tasted on his lips. And it made Rafe wonder. A great deal.

  He glanced toward the front door just beyond them. Desire nudged forward, reminding him just how long it had been since he’d been with a female who didn’t need her diaper changed periodically.

  “Would you like to come in?”

  Rafe’s voice was coming at her from a great distance, and it took her a moment to understand what he was saying to her.

  “Yes. No.” The second word came quickly, emphatically on the heels of the first as she realized what she’d just said and the implications of that reply. Greer felt herself growing even more flustered than she already was. Greer swallowed, wishing she was more articulate. “I mean, it’s been a very long day for both of us and I should be getting back. I…”

  Her cheeks were turning pink again. Rafe touched her hair, amused by her reaction. Curious. The women he knew were light-years away from this one. He didn’t think half a blush could be mustered between all of them.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  The question whispered along her skin. Everything, she thought, wishing it was otherwise. Wishing she was stronger than she was. Vainly she squared her shoulders, trying to appear unfazed.

  “Nothing. I’m not afraid.” Her answer was hurried, breathless, as if she were trying to outrun something she didn’t know how to handle. “It’s just that I have a full day tomorrow and there are the others to try to locate and the party to plan and there’s a fund-raiser at the end of the month…” She ran out of steam.

  His eyes told her he saw through her. That he knew exactly what she was thinking, exactly what she was feeling. His smile was warm, gentle, rather than condescending, and she took heart in it.

  “It’s all right,” he said softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night.”

  He was already slipping through the doorway with Bethany.

  “Good night,” she murmured to the closed door before finally turning away.

  It’s all right.

  His words, his voice echoed in her head.

  No, she thought as she made her way back to the car that she’d left in front of the main house, it wasn’t all right. She was behaving like some frightened little rabbit in a pet shop, fearful of every hand that reached out to pet her. She certainly wasn’t behaving like the consummate businesswoman she had, with great pains, managed to turn herself into.

  Angry with herself, Greer yanked open the door on the driver’s side. All right, so the man was drop-dead gorgeous, so what? He was her boss’s nephew and five years younger than she was to boot. Greer dropped into her seat and tugged on the seat belt. Was she so desperate that she was thinking about robbing the cradle for a few stolen moments of excitement? Of pleasure? The kind of pleasure she’d never had the chance to experience?

  She wasn’t robbing anything, she declared silently, slamming the door. If anything, the cradle was robbing her. Robbing her of her poise, of her assurance. Of everything she’d worked so hard these last eight years to achieve…

  All she had was the facade she’d crafted so carefully, and she’d thank him to take his lips back and leave her that.

  With an uncustomary sharp turn of the wheel, Greer peeled out of the driveway—also uncustomary for the careful driver she always tried to be.

  She didn’t sleep much that night. And when she did manage to drop off, her dreams were all of him. Of a heated mouth that melted all her bones and fricasseed her brain until she was reduced to nothing more than pulsating needs and desires.

  By the time she woke up with a jolt the second time, she decided that maybe it was safer just to remain awake for the rest of the night.

  The darkness in her room wrapped itself around her like a stifling cloak, reminding her just how alone she really was.

  Greer allowed the myriad details that were part of her job to engulf her for the next few days. All told, the work took her mind off her private life. Especially her feelings. If she didn’t think about them, didn’t think about the way Megan Maitland’s tall, dark and sexy nephew undid her composure, everything she’d experienced when he’d kissed her in front of the guesthouse would eventually fade away.

  And she wanted it to fade away. In the worst way. Because there was absolutely no reason for the memory, the sensation, to exist other than to tantalize her, to tease her and make her yearn for the impossible. There was obviously no future in any of this. The man would be gone out of her life as soon as the charade and the reunion were tucked safely away in the past.

  And if she allowed herself to daydream, allowed herself to think that there was more than a snowball’s chance in hell that perhaps he’d have some kind of feelings for her, the disappointment that she knew would be waiting for her might be too much for her to handle.

  Fear of the yawning, steely jaws of disappointment had kept her from letting her heart be tempted before, at least by a man. It was enough that she’d allowed the dream of a family to raise her hopes over and over again when she was younger. Look where that had gotten her. Nowhere. She’d had her hopes dashed again and again, only to ultimately find herself still alone, still without a family to call her own.

  She didn’t want to go through that kind of roller-coaster ride on the romantic front. Something told her that at her age, the result would be that much more devastating.

  It was best not to begin something that would never have a happy ending.

  Greer smiled to herself, typing a memo on her computer as she sat within the spacious office that came with being Megan Maitland’s right hand. Romantic front, right. She and romance didn’t even have so much as a nodding acquaintance, and it was best for everyone if it remained that way. There was no point in giving in to any wild flights of fantasy.

  Despite all her logical arguments to the contrary, the taste of his lips insisted on remaining with her.

  A sigh escaped. He’d kissed her.

  Of course he’d kissed her, Greer mocked herself. His aunt was standing there, watching, and he was pretending to be her fiancé. He couldn’t very well have kicked her in the shins, now could he?

  And if the kiss had gotten a little more intense than she’d anticipated, there was an explanation for that, too. Several explanations, actually. One was that she had no idea what it felt like to be kissed by a man. She’d shied away from every would-be encounter. Maybe men kissed like that when it meant nothing, how was she to know the difference?

  The other explanation was that Rafe was just taking advantage of the moment. She’d heard that men did that and, in her own defense, kissing her had to be better than kissing a post, she thought.

  Didn’t it?

  “D’you know that your brow furrows when you concentrate?”

  Her fingers slipped on the keyboard and words appeared on the computer screen that couldn’t be found in any dictionary in the known universe.

  Startled, Greer looked up to see that Rafe was standing in her doorway, his arms folded in front of his chest. A chest that looked wider than it had the last time she’d seen
him.

  Or was that just her imagination?

  How long had he been standing there like that? From the way Rafe was leaning against the door-jamb, he appeared to have been watching her for at least a couple of minutes, if not longer.

  Embarrassed, she tried to speak. Her throat felt as if she’d just swallowed an entire peanut butter sandwich without the benefit of any liquid lubricant. Words stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  “What?” she finally squeaked out miraculously.

  Rafe crossed to her, mildly entertained by the way she was transformed from a woman lost in deep thought to one who appeared completely flustered. It was like night and day. Did he do that to her, or was she like that with every man? Though he knew exactly what he looked like, he’d never flattered himself that he had any undue effect on a woman.

  “When you concentrate, your brow furrows.” Rafe nodded toward the computer monitor. “What are you working on?”

  As he came around to stand behind her and look at the screen, she turned off the monitor, feeling extremely foolish at being caught this way. She lifted a shoulder in a dismissive half shrug.

  “Just some reports.”

  “Top secret?” he asked innocently, hooking his thumbs in the loops of his jeans.

  Because her brain was suddenly doing an imitation of laundry in the spin cycle, she was having trouble following him. “Excuse me?”

  Rafe gestured toward the screen. “Well, you turned the monitor off. I was just wondering if those reports you’re working on are supposed to be on some kind of a need-to-know basis.” Though why that would apply to a nonprofit clinic was beyond him.

  She’d turned the monitor off because she’d been lost in thought about him and there was nothing on her screen to have captured her attention so completely. Nothing but the gibberish she’d just accidentally typed when he’d startled her. If he saw that, he’d continue questioning her and she had no answers to give him that wouldn’t make her look foolish.

  “No, I just don’t like people looking over my shoulder.”

  She was aware that Rafe was now touching that same shoulder, resting his fingers easily on her silk blouse. She could feel the heat penetrating from his hand, slipping through the material and seeping into her skin. You’d think the material would have acted as some sort of insulator, instead of feeling as if it was being entirely burned away just by the passing of his hand.

  Greer took a deep breath, hoping she sounded nonchalant. “So what are you doing here?”

  Because she was addressing the question to her now-darkened monitor, Rafe turned her swivel chair around until she was facing him. With his hands on the armrests on either side of her, he leaned into her slightly before answering.

  “Looking for you.”

  Greer could feel her heart vibrating as it made an unexpected trip to her throat and lodged itself there. Perhaps forever. She fervently hoped that it wasn’t apparent to him.

  “Oh?” Her voice sounded reedy to her own ear. “Why?”

  A hint of amusement crept into his magnetic eyes. “Because people who are supposed to be wildly in love usually tend to want to see each other more than once every few days.”

  “Wildly in love?” she repeated, feeling her kneecaps seceding from the rest of her.

  Could one walk with no kneecaps? she wondered desperately. If she stood up now, would she just wind up collapsing bonelessly back into her chair and embarrass herself?

  She was afraid to test out the theory. Besides, he wasn’t backing away, and he blocked her avenue of escape even if she could get her legs to work.

  Rafe nodded in response. “Wildly in love,” he repeated. “Otherwise, why would we have gotten engaged so quickly?”

  She had no answer for that, nor for anything else he might think to ask right now. Her mind had turned into a complete blank. All she could think of was how it felt to have him standing so close to her. So close that if she made more than the slightest movement, parts of her body would be brushing suggestively against parts of his.

  Her breath was going the way of her kneecaps, making a speedy exit. Greer tried to pull it back.

  “Um, why else indeed,” she muttered, stalling for time and searching for a grain of composure.

  Damn it, why was he doing this to her? Why was he unraveling her as if she was a dropped spool of thread that was rolling haphazardly down an incline? Did it amuse him, give him some sort of superior pleasure?

  Maybe she could divert him, send him off until she got her bearings. Anything was worth a try. She said the first thing that came to her. “Have you seen your aunt?”

  He knew what she was trying to do and managed to keep the smile from his lips. He was beginning to think that “flustered” looked kind of cute on her. “She’s the one who told me where to find you.”

  After expressing her pleasure at seeing him, Megan had taken Rafe to the day-care center where she’d had him leave Bethany. She said it was so that the little girl could get the benefit of being around other children her age. He’d been forced to agree. It had also freed him to visit as long as he liked without worrying about Bethany.

  As they talked briefly before she left for her meeting, Megan had offered to introduce him to a number of ranchers in the area with the suggestion that perhaps he’d find something here to his liking.

  “I’ll be glad to stake you or arrange for a loan if something catches your interest,” she’d told him. There’d been no mention of collateral, no coy wordplay about interest as he might have expected. Only a sincere offer of help.

  Even now, after he’d left Megan at the day-care center, Rafe was still trying to figure out if the woman was on the level, or just exceedingly clever.

  But if she was being clever, to what end? It shouldn’t have made any difference to her whether he remained in Austin or returned to Nevada.

  In any event, instead of a ranch, the only thing that had caught his interest in Austin so far was the woman he was bracketing with his arms right now. Rafe was accustomed to judging horseflesh, and he judged it both quickly, and then slowly, to evaluate the hidden assets. He decided that it was only fair to apply the same rule of thumb to Greer.

  The more he looked at her, the more he saw.

  The features that had initially struck him as plain weren’t quite plain, he realized now. There were facets there, layers. And she had beautiful eyes that intrigued him.

  Not to mention that he had a sneaking suspicion that beneath those loose clothes she favored so much was a figure that could stand some looking into.

  His thoughts surprised him, just as they had done the other night. Thinking about women, especially wondering about them, didn’t usually enter into his day-to-day dealings. Women were something on the periphery of his world, like newspapers and airplanes. He was aware of them, but he didn’t ordinarily avail himself of anything they had to offer.

  Somehow, Greer was different. The puzzle was how.

  He’d think about that later, when he was alone, he decided. For now, he’d settle on filling a stomach that was about to run on empty. Though Megan had invited him to go into the kitchen in the main house any time he wished and either help himself or ask the cook to prepare something for him, he’d settled on relying on himself. He didn’t care for being waited on. Breakfast had been scrambled eggs, burned around the edges because he still hadn’t gotten the hang of the stove, and toast, burned because he liked it that way.

  Still, breakfast had been hours ago and he was hungry. Very hungry, he thought, looking at her intently.

  Rafe straightened up. “How about joining me for some lunch?”

  Not about to let the answer to his question turn out to be negative, Rafe was already taking her hand and coaxing her from her seat.

  Mercifully, he’d finally backed away and left her breathing space. But not before he’d filled every inch of that space with the cologne he wore. Something tantalizing that turned every bone in her body to mush.

  It was a condi
tion she was becoming familiar with with a fair amount of regularity.

  Greer struggled to pull her dissolving thoughts together. “Is it lunchtime already?”

  Wonderful repartee, Greer. He’s going to think he’s in the presence of the clinic’s resident wit.

  “Already and past,” he assured her, indicating his watch. Looking down at it, Greer saw that it was just a little after one. “C’mon,” he was saying, “if we’re going to get anyone to believe we’re engaged, we have to spend a little time together.”

  To her surprise, her knees were still in working order as he drew her to her feet.

  Still, in a last-ditch effort to save herself, she nodded at the dormant computer screen. “I do have a lot of work…”

  He wasn’t about to let her talk her way out of it. Especially since he could feel that her resistance would cave in quickly if a little pressure was applied. His aunt had commented on how nice they seemed together and he was all for promoting that. A lot was riding on promoting that image.

  Besides, he did like the idea of sharing Greer’s company for the space of a meal. In an odd way, he found her appealing. That didn’t happen very often.

  “People work better when they take a break or two during the day,” he told her. “It refreshes their thinking.”

  She was surprised at his philosophy. Or that he even had a philosophy at all. Maybe he wasn’t just a pretty cowboy, all looks and muscle and very little brain.

  The thought made her hesitate. She knew she was ultimately much safer behind her desk. The last thing she needed was to add more fuel to these feelings that threatened to storm over her like revolutionaries storming the Bastille.

  Still, she had made a bargain with him and to refuse now would be going back on her word, something she refused to do. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I usually am,” he told her, winding his fingers more tightly around hers. He looked around. “You have a purse or something you need to take with you?”

  Her purse was more of a business tool than something she felt she needed with her when she went out socially. But it did have her wallet in it. Was she assuming too much?