Avoiding him was getting harder and harder to contemplate, every second she was in his exalted presence. Her mind was in a quandary now, knowing she should avoid him to keep her suddenly quite fragile-feeling heart safe, yet damned if he didn't have one of those demeanors that just drew people to him and made them want to hang around him, even if just to stare dreamily at him.
Which she very nearly got caught doing as they were walking together.
They waited for his stuff in what was, for Taren, a very awkward silence, considering what had transpired upstairs, but he looked disgusting happy and was gracious and more than kind when people recognized him, despite the baseball cap and sunglasses he was wearing. That brogue of his was pretty distinctive – as soon as he opened his mouth, people knew exactly who he was.
When asked what he was doing in Albuquerque, he had motioned towards her – although she tried to cringe away from it – and she found herself surrounded by people who were flat out asking her if she was 'anybody,' and she assured them, quietly, that she was most certainly not.
Bruce did his best to discourage the development of a crowd around him, noting how uncomfortable the attention he had directed her way made Miss McCullough.
He had been absolutely truthful – as he always tried to be – when he'd told her she was beautiful, but she obviously couldn't hear it because of the damage to her face. He couldn't really even see it for losing himself in those huge eyes that sucked him right in, wondering what that hair would feel like spilled over his chest, how the weight of those luscious breasts would feel in his hands…
He brought himself up short, forcibly. This was neither the time nor the place to get lost in a sexual fantasy, especially not one about a woman who looked – and acted – pretty much as if she'd rather be boiled in oil than with him.
Fans had distracted him some, but he could sense how uneasy she was. Luckily, as the airport was rather empty at this time of day anyway, everyone got what they wanted from him and left before his bags arrived. He got them off the belt and corralled them together, and as she was turning to guide him to where he'd parked the car, she reached for the smaller case, but he literally tugged it out of her grip.
"No need for you to do that, miss. I'm used to being donkey labor. I've three sisters and, to this day, they're quite sure that's all I'm good for."
It sounded very much like how she felt about her brother and she had to smile, although she suppressed it as much a she could. "I'm Taren, please, and I'm fully capable of pulling my own weight."
"Aye, but lass, my mother would skin me alive if she thought I had let a lovely young woman carry something for me that I was perfectly capable of carrying myself."
Taren silently wondered what his mother would say about how audaciously he flirted with her and every other female he'd come in contact with in the – she glanced at her watch – fifteen minutes she'd known him.
But she kept her mouth shut.
And she had to give the man credit, he didn't bat an eyelash at the truck. He just hefted his bags into it and joined her on the front bench seat. "I'd be glad to drive if you'd rather relax."
That got her to give him an actual, genuine chuckle when she said, "You have no idea where we're going!"
"Aye, I do. I know your address, and I Google-mapped it when I first began to talk to Sam about coming to annoy you."
Taren's eyebrow went up. "But that was months and months ago."
He grinned at her and leaned over towards her, making Taren want to crowd herself against the driver's side door, but she forced herself to stay right where she was. He sounded as if he was confessing some terrible secret about himself. "I have an eidetic memory. It's a great help when trying to memorize scripts."
"I bet."
She pulled up to the booth where she had to pay for parking. As she was reaching for her purse, he handed her a twenty, which would have paid for them being there for two full days.
She handed him back the change, and he tried to refuse, but she was adamant. "It's your change, Mr. McCullough. Please, take it."
He did, if grudgingly. "Please call me Bruce. I'd tell you to call me what my sisters call me, but it's unprintable."
It was the wink that got her.
She refused to go all fan girl on him. She wouldn't. She couldn't.
But she was almost there already.
Before they headed home, she pulled into a gas station, and he beat her to paying for that, too, jumping out of the truck practically before she'd stopped it fully to put his debit card in and pump the gas for her.
Taren said an awkward, "Thank you," when he got in.
"You're welcome."
"But you really don't need to do that."
"I know that, lass. I wanted to."
That accent was just going to kill her. She could already feel how wet her panties were, and she was sweating, but it wasn't because of the heat, although she had to admit that she was cursing herself for being such an idiot and not bringing one of the more comfortable vehicles they owned that had air conditioning.
That's what she got for being a stubborn cuss.
Her last stop before they got back on the road was to pull through a drive-thru, and she already had her money ready for that. "Can I get you something?"
He grinned at her, as if he knew she was feeling proud of herself for having outwitted him. "I don't usually drink soda, but I think one would taste good about now, please and thank you."
Finally, minutes later, they were on the road to the ranch. Taren supposed she should have given him the choice of what to listen to, but she couldn't bring herself to – what if it was bagpipes, for Chrissakes?
So she plugged her phone back in, and it picked up where it had left off on her preferred playlist. She didn't usually sing in front of anyone, but he apparently had no such compunction – not that she was surprised, considering his chosen occupation.
And damned if the man's voice wasn't a glorious, throaty baritone.
She hated him so much – and wanted him even more – after hearing him crooning A Great Big World's Say Something.
Eventually, though, he reached over and turned down the music. "So. Tell me about your ranch."
He couldn't have chosen a subject more calculated to draw her out of her shell. She could talk about that place forever, where she and her brother – and several generations before them – had been born, raised, and died, and she told him with absolutely no reservations that she would be perfectly happy to die there, some day, too.
She talked about the cattle, a bit about the business end of things, and the horses, which were her favorites, he picked up on immediately. Her face lit up when she spoke of them. She mentioned that they were trying to diversify and not keep all their eggs in the one proverbial basket.
"And I'm assuming that I'm a part of that diversification?" he asked with a smile.
She gave him a rueful grin. "Something like that."
"Well, if I learn as much from your brother in the next weeks as I've already learned from listening to you, I'll be glad to recommend you to my friends, and that should go a long way towards helping you get that side of things off the ground."
Why, oh why, could this man not have been the typical Hollywood asshole? Why did he have to be a devastating six-four, two-hundred-and fifty-plus pound – she'd guess – hunk of man with gorgeous, shoulder-length, midnight black hair, stark blue eyes and a permanent smile plastered on lips that were so full and red, they would almost have looked better on a woman?
Almost.
She was still going to do her best to steer clear of this man like the plague, perhaps for a different reason than originally, but that hadn't changed her need to except to amplify it. She'd do what she needed to for him, teach him what she had to but only spend whatever time she had to near him. Her resolve to do that hadn't changed at all.
But her will to was another matter entirely.
When they arrived, he was instantly surrounded by a crowd of
people, the likes of which she hadn't seen since the last hand's wife had come home with their new baby – and that was years ago.
He took it all in stride, smiling and signing things that were presented to him, posing for pictures and even signing Nila Higgin's breasts, which Taren rolled her eyes at. The men were gazing up at him adoringly, and the women were falling all over themselves drooling – except for her, of course. Even her usually levelheaded brother was wearing a stupid grin on his face when she introduced them – she seemed to be the only human who was immune to his charm.
Well, more immune, anyway.
As the crowd dissipated, she went to the back of the truck to retrieve his bags, and suddenly he was there, next to her, pressing himself against her to reach past her and grab the handle of the nearest bag, saying in what had damned well better be a mock threatening tone, "Don't you dare, Taren. You'll earn yourself a smacked bottom. My bags are heavy, and you are not to even attempt to lift them."
Feeling much more cosseted and coddled than she ever had in her life – and liking much, much more than she knew she should – she nonetheless withdrew her hand as if she'd realized she was reaching for a rattler rather than a suitcase and warned, "You touch my butt, and you'll withdraw a bloody stump, guest or not. Fair warning."
He laughed, but she wasn't smiling.
It turned out, though, that her 'fair warning' was just words, since he'd done a helluva lot more than just smack her butt the night of the dance, and his appendages were all still intact. But since then, she had done a much better job of avoiding him than she had at first, and it helped that they were now so busy that he was away from the house all day. He'd been there long enough that he was relatively comfortable in the saddle all day, and if he wasn't, he kept his complaining to himself which was some kind of miracle in and of itself, since most of the new hands they were actually paying couldn't manage to do the same.
So she really only saw him at breakfast and dinner, and at breakfast, they were all still asleep, and at dinner, they were all wishing they were, so it was pretty quiet, regardless.
She was always the first person up because she fed everyone else and provided packed lunches before they all trooped off to a day of very physical activity, so she couldn't just offer them toast and coffee – not that she minded in the least. Taren would get up about four-thirty or five in order to have everything ready when everyone descended around six or so. She knew she had the house to herself for about an hour, so she rarely bothered to actually dress when she came down to the kitchen, and this morning was no different.
She had one of her designated 'sleeping t-shirts' on beneath her pretty pink jersey robe – the one with the ruffles at on the hem, cuffs and lapels – and because she knew the house so well, she didn't even bother to turn the lights on until she'd gotten all the way through the kitchen.
And that was when she'd run into a solid wall of man flesh that had her literally staggering back several steps until his hand snaked out to steady her in the darkness.
"Jesus Christ, Bruce, announce yourself, huh?" She didn't even need the light to recognize him, and she wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not. "It's like walking into a fucking brick wall."
"Sorry."
He did sound very contrite, in fact, he sounded as if he was trying hard not to laugh at her.
"I was looking for the light switch."
"When the house was rebuilt, we didn't have much money, so everything was banked together as much as possible." She reached under a set of cupboards – where you had to know to look – to flip the lights on.
"When the house was rebuilt?" he asked, unthinking, then wanted to smack himself for having done so. She was instantly tense, instantly on the defensive, which was exactly what he didn't want.
Of course, the house had to be rebuilt – after the fire.
Her mouth was open to respond to him, although she was looking at the floor, and he could barely stand himself for having been the cause of her change in demeanor. "Sorry – I'm a little dense in the morning before I've had my coffee."
"You're not alone," she answered him a bit absently, still not looking at him, finally seizing on the Keurig as something to do that didn't involve either thinking about or looking at him.
Or remembering events she would much rather forget.
He jumped towards the coffee maker. "I don't know what kind you take, but I'd be glad to make it for you."
She smiled at him absently, again without looking at him. "Well, why don't you fix your own instead, and then I'll do mine."
"Whatever you say, la – Taren."
Her eyebrows went up. That was a new response from him, not teasing, not flirting, almost…contrite. It sounded genuine enough, just not what she'd come to expect from him, and that was kind of unsettling.
As she began to get the ingredients for this morning's breakfast together – sausage gravy, which she'd heated in the slow cooker all night, huge cat's head biscuits, eggs, and a fruit compote with a yogurt sauce on the side – she did her best to ignore the man who took up two thirds of the big kitchen. Well, close to it, anyway, at least it seemed so to her – but it wasn't easy, and neither was the silence between them.
"So, what are you doing up so early? Aren't you absolutely exhausted with the roundup prep, like everyone else is?"
"Yes, but I realized I hadn't seen you in several days, and I missed your smiling face."
That was hardly how she would have described her face, but then he didn't seem to want to do what everyone else did and shy away from directing any remarks towards her that mentioned her glaring imperfections.
It was then, as she was leaning down to get a pan for the eggs, that she felt a bit of a draft in a rather delicate area. She realized that she'd been so nervous about him that she'd forgotten to remember she was standing there, in front of him – her back to him most of the time – bent over some of it, like now. In a shirt that was so ancient it was almost paper thin that said, "I Meant to Behave, But There Were Too Many Other Options", a barely-there, pink lace thong, with her also thin, pink robe thrown hastily over it and not even knotted around her waist, leaving very little to the imagination.
Not that he needed much of one. He knew how she felt – what she sounded like in pleasure – what she smelled like.
No wonder she could feel his eyes on her.
And his hands were next.
Chapter Four
Bruce was good for just about as long as his body allowed him to be, and then he just had to touch her. His fingers had been gripping the side of the snack bar built into the island in the middle of the kitchen until they were numb and practically bloodless. Trying not to reach out and stroke his fingers up the backs of her thighs or over that pert bottom or through the sleep-tangled waves of that gorgeous hair of hers.
When she'd reached up, to the cupboard above the stove where she apparently stored the spices, her robe and whatever she was wearing that was supposed to pass for a nightgown rode up over her bum, revealing two of the most beautiful ass cheeks he'd ever seen. And he was getting a good look at them for the first time, even though he'd already spanked them.
And he wanted nothing more in that moment than to lift her onto the marble countertop of the big island and have her for breakfast.
But he was being good. He was being amazingly, gold-medal-deserving good. He knew she wasn't happy with him for spanking her, and perhaps she had a point. He'd been pretty high-handed with her, considering they weren't even dating – although he intended to change that as soon as possible. But he couldn't say he regretted what he'd done in the least. She should not be smoking, and, as he'd warned her already, he'd do it again only much, much worse – if he ever caught her near a cigarette again.
But then she leaned over, and he had to stand, had to touch her or die trying.
When she straightened, she tensed, he could see it as he rose – parts of him having long since risen – as if she was just now realizing her vulne
rability.
Although everything in him wanted him to simply grab her and take her, Bruce, instead, slipped his hands slowly around her waist, pulling her gently back against him. She was the absolute perfect height for him. He could rest his chin on the top of her head if he was so inclined; she fit into him as if made for him, his cock resting just slightly above her behind.
"What are you doing?" she asked, but she wasn't screaming bloody murder, so he figured that was a good thing.
"Hugging you."
She wanted to lean back against him.
She wanted to turn around and slap him silly for spanking her.
She desperately wanted to put her hands over his and luxuriate in the feel of being held like this, as any woman would – especially if 'The Bruce' was holding her.
His chin was on her shoulder, near her ruined left cheek, where she least wanted him to be, and then he lay his perfect, blemish-free face against hers, and she simply could not take it. She just – couldn't – and wiggled and squirmed her way out of his arms, her almost mindless pursuit startling him into letting her go.
"Are you okay?" he asked, letting her stand away from him, not wanting to crowd her. Even though everything in him was rioted against the loss of her, wanted him to go after her and grab her to him, especially since she looked so pained and uncomfortable in her own skin.
In her own skin.
What a colossal idiot he was. He knew she was sensitive about the scars, but he didn't give a flying fuck about them, and instead of trying to be empathetic and aware of how she was feeling about what he was doing to her, he simply assumed she'd be okay because he was.
So he stood there, about five strides – ten for her – away from her, arms wide open as he walked slowly towards her. In a perfect world, he could have stood there and waited for her to decide to come to him, but he was – as she was inevitably going to find out – far from perfect, and he wanted her. He wanted her in his arms. He wanted her beneath him. He wanted her astride him – he wanted her any fucking way he could get her, and if she wanted him to respect a discreet distance from what she obviously considered to be hideous scars, then he'd do that.
Beauty's Beast Page 4