Читать книгу Rich Rancher For Christmas - Sarah M. Anderson - Страница 12

Three

“What?”

CJ had to stop himself from stepping forward and brushing the snowflakes from her eyelashes. She was an ice princess right now, the White Witch of Winter. If he wasn’t careful, she just might bewitch him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

She shuddered again and this time, he didn’t think it was entirely from the cold. Now what? Maybe he should have just left her out there, since he couldn’t seem to get rid of her any other way.

But even as he thought it, he felt guilty. That was not the Wesley way and he knew it. So now, it appeared he would be spending the next several days—possibly even Christmas—with Natalie Baker. The one woman who had not only figured out he was related to Hardwick Beaumont, but also wanted to use that knowledge for...for what? Ratings?

“I could...” She looked out the front window. CJ looked with her. It was a solid mass of gray. It could’ve been fog, except for the small particles of snow and ice pinging off the window.

“No, you can’t. I’m not going to let you freeze to death out there.” He gritted his teeth. How was he going to keep her out of his business if she were physically stuck in his house?

How was he going to keep his hands off of her if she were stuck in his house?

Hell, he’d already failed at that. He’d picked her up and all but slung her over his shoulder like he was a caveman, dragging her back to his cave. Her body had been cold, yes—but also soft and light and...

“You’re probably freezing,” he went on, trying to stay in the present.

Because the present was a wet woman who was criminally underdressed. He needed to get her warmed up before she caught her death. And given the way the wind was howling out there, he didn’t have a lot of time. “You better take a hot shower while we still have power. And if there’s anyone you need to call to let them know you’re all right, you should do that now.” She opened her mouth but he cut her off. “You can use my house phone.”

He wanted her to move, or at least do something—but she didn’t. Instead she looked at him with a mixture of confusion and anxiety. “Are you being nice to me?”

“No,” he answered quickly, even though it was a lie and they both knew it. “But I don’t want your death on my hands.”

That statement sobered her up. “Oh.”

She sounded small and vulnerable and dammit, that pulled at something inside of him. But he wasn’t going to listen to that something because he liked to think he wasn’t an idiot. And only an idiot would fall for whatever Natalie Baker was trying to pull over him. She’d spent weeks hunting for him and she’d already tried to use her fabulous body as an enticement on more than one occasion. For all he knew, she had decided raw sexuality wouldn’t work and instead was making a play for his heartstrings.

It wasn’t going to work. He was immune to all the vulnerability she was projecting right now. “Who do you need to call?”

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she seemed to get even smaller. “Well, I guess...” There was a long pause. “Well...” she said again, blinking furiously. “No one.”

He stared at her. “You’re probably going to be here for Christmas, you realize that, right?” Surely, there had to be someone who would miss her. She was a famous TV personality. He’d recognized her the moment she set foot in the feed store. Someone as beautiful and talented as Natalie Baker... Even if she didn’t have close family, she had to have friends.

She shook her head. Then she tried to smile. “I’m not going to lie, the shower sounds great. I don’t think I’ve ever been this cold.”

He eyed her clothes again. She kicked out of her other shoe, and suddenly, she barely came up to his shoulder. She had nothing on her legs but a tight, short skirt underneath a peacoat in a wild fuchsia color. He couldn’t decide if she was oblivious or just stupid about the weather. Or if she’d planned it this way—planned on getting herself trapped out here with him.

Either way, he was willing to get her some dry clothes. That skirt wasn’t going to keep her warm even if he got his fireplace cranked up. “All right. But,” he said before she could make a move deeper into his house, “these are the rules. I hold on to your phone for as long as you’re here and you stay out of my life. Otherwise, it’s a hell of a long walk to town in this weather.”

He wouldn’t really kick her out—but she didn’t need to know that.

For a second, a sign of toughness flashed over her face and he thought she was going to argue. But just then, the wind rattled the door and the color—what little of it she’d managed to regain—drained from her face. She nodded, looking almost innocent. “Understood. I’m sorry that I’m intruding upon your Christmas.”

He rolled his eyes. “Are you?”

It wasn’t a nice thing to say—thereby proving her wrong. He wasn’t being all that nice to her. Which bothered him, even though it shouldn’t. It especially bothered him when she had the nerve to look so...defeated. Sure, maybe that was the wet clothes and the straggly hair—and the mascara that had started to slide. The woman before him right now was anything but polished.

Before his guilt could get the better of him, he said, “This way.”

This was a mistake because someone like Natalie Baker—he didn’t even know what to call her. A journalist? A reporter? A talking head? Well, whatever she was, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep her out of his life, not if they were going to be stranded here for four or five days. Sooner or later, she’d stumble upon something he didn’t want her to see. His baby book or the awkward photo from eighth grade when he accidentally cut his hair into a mullet while trying to be fashionable.

He hoped she’d take a long shower so he could do a sweep of the house and hide as much of his life as he could.

He passed the thermostat and cranked it up. It might get warm in the house, but with the way that wind was blowing, they would lose power sooner rather than later. If he hadn’t been busy arguing with her, he could’ve gotten the generator going already. As it was, he’d have to wait until the snow stopped. And who knew when that would be.

Besides, when he glanced back at her, she had her arms wrapped around herself as she trailed after him. Her lips were blue—actually, all of her looked blue. Crap. He really did need to get her warmed up.

He led her back to the guest room, which had the advantage of being the room with the least amount of family pictures. As long as they had power, he’d leave her in this room. If he could, he’d lock her in it—but he knew that would only make matters worse. He could see the headline now—Long-Lost Beaumont Bastard Locks Beloved Celebrity in Guest Room.

No, thank you.

The guest room had an attached bathroom. “We’re probably going to lose power in the next half hour, so plan accordingly.” He thought she nodded—it was hard to tell, because she was shaking so hard.

God, what a mess. He went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water. “Make sure you stay in there until you’ve returned to a normal temperature.”

The other alternative to get her body temperature back up was to strip them both down and crawl under the covers with her.

He looked at her legs again. Long and, when not borderline frostbitten, probably tanned. The kind of legs that would wrap around him and—

Whoa.

He slammed the brakes on that line of thought something quick. There would be no nudity, no cuddling and absolutely no sex. What he had to do right now, as steam curled out of the bathroom and she shrugged out of her fuchsia coat to reveal a thin silk blouse that was soaked at the cuffs and collar, was remember that every single thing he said and did from this point on was as good as public. He wouldn’t touch her and, what’s more, he wouldn’t allow her to touch him. End of discussion.

“I’ll bring in some better clothes for you,” he said as he headed out of the room. Because if he had a look at her walking around in that tight skirt and that sheer blouse for the next three or four days...

He was a strong man. But even he wasn’t sure he was that strong. Not if she was going to look all soft and vulnerable as well as sexy.

“Thank you,” she said again in that delicate voice.

No, he wasn’t going to think of her as vulnerable. Or delicate. It was probably just an act designed to get him to open up to her.

He hurried to his parents’ room and dug out some appropriate clothing—long underwear, jeans, shirts and sweaters and socks. His mom was a little shorter and a lot curvier than Natalie Baker, but her things should fit. Better than anything of his, anyway. She’d swim in one of his sweaters.

He knocked on the guest room door and, when no one replied, he cracked it open. Good. The bathroom door was closed and he heard splashing. She was in the shower, then. Standing nude under the hot water, maybe even running the soap over her body, her bare breasts, her...

He hoped she’d locked that damn door. He laid the clothes out on the bed and almost scooped up her things to take them down to the laundry room to dry. But then he caught sight of the lacy bra and matching panties—pale pink, like a confection that she’d worn on her body—and he drew back his hand as if he’d been burned. Okay, so now he was going to not think about her body wearing those things. And he also had to not think about her not wearing those things.

Oh, God. This was a disaster in the making.

He forced his thoughts away from the woman steaming up the shower. He had practical things that he needed to get done. It was obvious she had no idea how to ride out a blizzard, which meant it was up to him to keep them both from freezing to death.

He made sure that every other door on the second floor was shut, then he hurried downstairs, pausing to snag the family photos off the wall. He shoved those into the coat closet. Luckily, he’d laid a fire in the fireplace before he’d gone to town this morning, so all he had to do was light it. Once it was going, he went to the kitchen. He had a roast in a slow cooker, but he turned on the gas oven anyway, just to build up the heat in the house. Once the power went, the wind would sap any warmth from this room in a matter of minutes. And if he just left it on, he wouldn’t have to worry about lighting it with a match later.

He scrubbed a couple of potatoes and put them in the oven and then, after a moment of internal debate, dug an apple pie out of the freezer and put it in the oven, too.

Every fall, his mom went into a frenzy of cooking and baking. CJ had long ago figured out that it was her way of coping with the guilt of leaving her only son alone during the holidays. He had an entire deep freeze full of casseroles and cobblers and meals in bags that all he had to do was heat up in the oven or the slow cooker. Pretty much the only thing she didn’t leave him was pizza and beer, which was why he’d headed to the store this morning after sending his hired hands home for the storm and cutting his chores short. If he was going to be snowed in for Christmas, he wanted a couple of pizzas to round out the menu.

Then he did another sweep of the downstairs. He pulled more photos from the wall and the mantel over the fireplace. These he carried back to the office—that had a door he could lock. If he could, he’d put the entire house in that room and bolt the door shut.

The parlor was where most of the photo albums were—it had a door, but not a lock. Well, he’d just have to keep her out of it. Much as he didn’t like it, he would have to stick to Natalie Baker like glue.

Finally, with dinner underway and as much of his life hidden as he could hide, he headed back up the stairs. Just as he reached the top, she opened her door and stepped out into the hall.

CJ’s breath caught in his throat. Gone was the too-polished, too-perfect celebrity. And in her place...

She’d pulled her hair into a low tail at the side. Her face was free of makeup, but somehow she looked even prettier. Softer, definitely.

That softness was dangerous. So was any question he was asking himself right now about whether or not she’d put the lacy pink panties back on.

So he did his best to focus on anything but that. “Better?” he asked in a gruff voice, but he didn’t need to ask because he could tell. The color had come back into her cheeks—a natural blush instead of an artfully applied one. Her hair was fair—more blond than it looked on-screen. Without the heavy layer of eye makeup, her eyes seemed wider, more crystal blue.

Bad. This was bad.

“Yes, thank you.” Even her voice sounded different now. True, she was no longer shivering with cold, but when she was on television, talking to the camera and interviewing stars, her voice had a certain cadence to it, low and husky. That was gone now.

CJ realized with a start that he might be looking at the real Natalie Baker. And he couldn’t do that. If he started thinking of her as a real person instead of a talking head, then he might get lost in those blue eyes.

Luckily, the storm saved him from himself. With a pop, all the lights went out. Natalie didn’t scream, but he heard her gasp in alarm.

“It’s all right,” he said, coming the rest of the way to get her. The hall was darker than normal because he’d shut the doors. “It’s okay. I’m right here.” He reached out to touch her—just to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. But when he did so, she latched onto his forearm with a tight, fearful grip.

He sucked in air and fought the sudden urge to wrap his arms around her and keep her safe. Dammit, she was getting to him.

“Sorry,” she said, loosening her grip—but not letting him go. “I guess I’m a little jumpy. I’m not normally this poorly prepared.”

CJ didn’t think he could believe she’d gotten stranded by accident. But whether or not her presence here had been planned didn’t change things, at least not for the next few days.

Suddenly, he was aware that they were standing in a mostly dark hallway, touching. He withdrew his hand. “We should grab the pillows and things.”

She jerked her head up in surprise. “What?”

“I’ve got a fire going downstairs in the living room. Once the snow stops, I’ll go outside and get the generator started, but until then we should stay in front of the fire.” He didn’t tell her that he had a fireplace in his room and that there was another one in his parents’ room. This wasn’t his first blizzard.

He wasn’t letting her sleep in his parents’ bed—or his. Absolutely no sharing of beds.

He felt her exhale, the warmth of her breath around him. Almost without being aware of it, he started to lean toward her. “Is that so you can keep an eye on me?”

There wasn’t any point in lying. Besides, lying did not come naturally to him. Perhaps Hardwick Beaumont had been good at it, but Patrick Wesley was honest to a fault. The only thing he had ever lied about was CJ’s mother and CJ. In fact, CJ was sure that Pat had told the lie so many times about marrying Bell on leave and having CJ arrive before he’d been honorably discharged that both his parents believed it, heart and soul.

CJ wanted to believe it, too—because Pat was his father. CJ resented the fact that the ghost of Hardwick Beaumont hung over him—always had, always would.

And he resented this woman for bringing Hardwick Beaumont’s ghost with her. Yes, the anger felt good. He was going to hold on to that anger for as long as he could. She might be prettier in real life, and that softness about her might call to him, but he was furious at her and that was that.

He walked back into the guest room and stripped the blankets and pillows off the bed. “Here,” he said, shoving them at her. Then he went to his own room and did the same. There. Now they didn’t have a reason to come back upstairs for the next several days.

Wordlessly, he led the way back downstairs to the living room. The fire had taken and the room was bathed in a warm, crackling glow.

He dropped his bedding on the couch and went to work rearranging the room. The coffee table went to the far side under the windows, where it would be darkest and coldest. He pulled the couch forward so it faced the fire and then dragged the recliners over so they boxed in the heat on each side. He laid a blanket over the coffee table so that drafts wouldn’t come in underneath it. And then he made a pallet on the floor. “You can take the couch.”

Her eyes widened and CJ knew she understood him perfectly. He would sleep on the floor, directly in front of her, to keep her from sneaking off in the night and snooping.

She hesitated. “You’ve done this before.”

He wasn’t sure how he was going to talk to her without revealing things. Well, the trick was to reveal as little as possible. “I have. This is not my first blizzard. But I’m gathering that it’s your first time.” The moment the words left his mouth, he winced. That was an unfortunate double entendre.

But, gracefully, she ignored his poor choice of words. She fluffed her pillows and shot him a sheepish grin. “I suppose that was obvious. It’s different in Denver.” She folded her blankets, making a sort of sleeping bag on top of the couch. Then she straightened, her hands on her hips. He got the feeling she was judging her work—and finding it lacking. “I didn’t plan this,” she said softly. “I’m not... I’m not always a good person. But I want you to know that I didn’t come out here with the intent of making you rescue me.” She didn’t look at him as she said this. Instead, she kept her head down.

If that were the truth—and that was a big if—he wondered how much the admission cost her. “Might as well make the best of it. I prefer not to spend the next few days being miserable. It’s the Christmas season—good will toward all men and women.”

She glanced at him, but quickly dropped her eyes again. Her mouth curved down in a way that CJ recognized—it was the kind of smile his mother made when she was trying not to cry.

He didn’t want Natalie Baker to cry. She hadn’t cried when she’d been half-frozen. Why would she do so now? Finally, after several painful seconds, she whispered, “Peace on earth?”

That was the truce. “Can’t promise you a silent night, though—that wind’s not going to stop.” Her smile was more real this time and somehow it made him feel better. What was wrong with him? It was enough that he had saved her from freezing to death. It was not his responsibility to make her happy. End of discussion.

However, that didn’t stop him from adding “Dinner should be ready. We can fill our plates and sit in front of the fire.”

She followed him into the kitchen. The house had always had a gas stove and this was exactly the reason why. CJ got a burner lit and put the kettle on.

“We have some instant coffee and a lot of tea.” He left out the part about how his mom vastly preferred tea to anything else. Those were the kinds of details he had to keep to himself. He went on, “There’s a roast in the slow cooker and potatoes and apple pie in the oven.” He lifted the lid and the smell of pot roast filled the air.

“Oh, my God—that smells heavenly,” Natalie said. She stepped up next to him and inhaled the fragrant steam.

They worked in silence, assembling the meal. He got down two big bowls and showed her where the tea and the instant coffee were located. He carved the roast and filled their bowls with meat, vegetables and gravy. The kettle whistled and she moved to turn it off.

He was not going to think about how effortlessly she moved around his kitchen. She did not belong here and the fact that he was having to remind himself of this fact approximately once every two-point-four seconds was yet another bad sign. At this point, he wasn’t sure he’d recognize a good sign if it bit him on the butt.

It was only when he settled onto the couch with his feet stretched toward the fire that she spoke again. “This is wonderful,” she said as she gracefully folded herself into a cross-legged posture on the couch—a solid four feet away from where he sat.

He appreciated that she wasn’t starting with another line of questioning—even if she was just trying to soften him up, he was glad there was no full-on assault. That didn’t mean he was going to not ask his own questions, however. “How come you don’t have anyone waiting for you?”

She didn’t answer for a long time—which was understandable, because she was devouring the pot roast. CJ did the same. They ate in silence until she set her bowl to the side. “I could ask the same of you—you’re here all alone and Christmas is coming. You don’t even have any Christmas decorations up.” She looked around his living room. It seemed more barren than normal, with all the pictures gone. “But I won’t ask,” she said quickly before CJ could remind her of the rules.

He didn’t miss the way she avoided answering his question. He glanced up—no ring on her finger. He didn’t think she ever wore one—but it was entirely possible that, if she had a ring, she just didn’t wear it while she was on TV.

She tucked her hands under her legs. “So, what are we supposed to talk about? I’m not allowed to ask you questions about yourself and so far, I haven’t felt comfortable answering any of your questions.”

He shrugged. “We don’t have to talk about anything. I don’t have a problem with silence.”

“Oh.” Her chin dipped and her shoulders rounded. But then she straightened. “Okay.”

He gritted his teeth. At any point, she could stop looking vulnerable and that would be just fine by him. “I don’t want to be your lead story. I would rather not talk than have everything I say be twisted around and rebroadcast for mass consumption.”

She sighed in resignation, but she didn’t drop her gaze this time. “I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’m off the clock. Anything we talk about would be off the record.”

Like he was going to take her word for that. “Patrick Wesley is my father. That’s the end of this discussion. I will not allow my personal life to be monetized for someone else’s gain.”

Besides, outside his parents and apparently Hardwick Beaumont, there was only one other person who knew that Patrick Wesley was not his birth father. CJ had been in love in college—or he thought he had. Really, he had been young and stupid and full of lust and he’d confused all of that with love. But he thought he’d had what his parents had found so he’d told his girlfriend about Hardwick Beaumont being a sperm donor because if he were going to propose to a woman, he wanted her to know the truth about him. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life hiding behind the Wesley name.

He had never forgotten the look on Cindy’s face when he’d told her that actually, he was sort of related to the Beaumonts. Her eyes had gone wide and her cheeks had flushed as he’d sat there, waiting for her to say...something. He hadn’t been sure what he’d wanted her to say—that it didn’t matter, maybe, or that she was sorry his mom was paranoid about the Beaumonts. Something. Hardwick Beaumont had still been alive then, although CJ had been twenty-one and beyond his reach.

Cindy hadn’t done any of that. After a few moments of stunned silence, she had started to talk about how wonderful this was. He was a Beaumont—and the Beaumonts were rich. Why, just think of the wedding that they could have on the Beaumonts’ dime! And after the wedding, they could take their proper place in the Beaumont family—and get their proper cut of the Beaumont fortune and on and on and on.

That was the moment he realized he’d made a mistake. Panicking, he tried to write the whole thing off as a joke. Of course he wasn’t a Beaumont—look at him. The Beaumonts were all sandy and blond—he was brown. It was just... Wishful thinking. Because he’d been bored with being a rancher’s son.

He was never sure if Cindy had believed him or not. She’d been pretty mad at him for “teasing” her with all that money. The breakup that followed had been mutual. She wasn’t going to get her dream wedding with the bill footed by the Beaumonts and he...

Well, he had learned to keep his mouth shut.

Besides, it had always been easy to ignore the two fundamental lies that made up his life—that Pat Wesley was his father and that his parents had married quietly a year before Pat had brought Bell home with him. It’d been an easy lie to tell—Pat had been finishing up a tour of duty in the army and they told everyone that he and Bell had met and married in secret while he was home on leave. That was why he’d shown up with a wife and a six-month-old that no one else had known about. And because Pat Wesley was an honest, upstanding citizen, everyone had gone along with it.

CJ’s mother was brown and Pat Wesley was light. Pat was tall and broad, just like CJ. The fact was, CJ looked like their son. There had never been a question.

The Beaumonts had no bearing on CJ’s life. He would’ve been perfectly happy if he’d never heard the Beaumont name for the rest of his life.

But now he was sitting across from someone who knew—or thought she knew. Which was bad enough. But what made it worse was that she was looking to capitalize on the knowledge.

She was staring at him, this Natalie Baker. “What do you want me to call you?” she asked.

“My name is CJ Wesley. You can call me CJ.”

She held out her hand. “Hi. I’m Natalie.”

He hesitated, but when he touched her, palm to palm, a jolt of something traveled between them. He might’ve thought it was static electricity, but it hit him in all the wrong places. His pulse quickened and warmth—warmth that had nothing to do with the roaring fire only a few feet from them—started at the base of his neck and worked its way down his body.

Oh, no—he knew what this was. Attraction. If he wasn’t careful, it might blow into something even more difficult to contain—lust.

He jerked his hand from hers. “Natalie.” Quickly, he got to his feet and gathered up the dishes. “I’ll get the pie.”