Читать книгу Wild Ride Cowboy - Maisey Yates - Страница 10
ОглавлениеALEX WAS IN a mean mood by the time he got back home. It was late, and he was starving, and he was still replaying the scene with Clara over in his mind. He really should have gone to see her sooner. He had noticed the stacks of mail sitting on the counter. Had noticed the general state of disrepair of the place.
But he had a plan now, one that had been affirmed when he’d gotten there and spoken to her.
Bees.
Of all the hipster bullshit.
“Where have you been?”
Alex’s older half brother Cain was walking toward the main house, probably heading down from the little converted barn he lived in with his fiancée, Alison, and his teen daughter, Violet.
“Busy,” Alex responded.
“Well, considering you didn’t just follow that up with sexual innuendo, I’m going to go ahead and guess that you were actually taking care of that property you’ve been needing to see to.”
“Not that it’s your business, but yes.” There was no reason for him to be short with Cain. But since his older brother was an extreme hard-ass and didn’t seem to care, Alex didn’t see a reason not to be.
“Good,” Cain said. “About time for you to man up.”
“Thanks. Next time I need your opinion on my masculinity, I’ll ask. Right after I finish polishing my dog tags and disassembling my AR.”
“We could save time and you could just whip it out and measure, Alex. I’m not threatened by that.”
“What are we measuring?” Finn, Alex’s other older half brother, chose that moment to walk out the front door.
“What do you think?” Alex asked.
“Wow. Okay. I think I’ll pass on this brotherly bonding experience,” Finn responded, clearly picking up on the tone of the conversation without further hints.
“You weren’t invited,” Alex said cheerfully. “And I’m starving.”
“You’re in luck. Lane cooked.”
Finn’s fiancée usually did cook. She owned the specialty food mercantile on the main street in town, and had a passion for not only spreading good food around, but for elevating the eating experience of the Donnelly brothers—or at least trying to.
If she had seen what Clara was eating tonight, she probably would have force-fed her some kind of specialty cheese.
Alex walked up the steps with Cain behind him. Then the three of them filed into the house. Whatever Lane was cooking, Alex could smell it already. Something warm and comforting. Something that smelled like home. Not Alex’s childhood home, but the way he had imagined other people’s homes had smelled.
Or maybe, it smelled like this home. This was the longest he’d been in one place for a long damn time.
It was strange just how easy it had been to get used to it. Living here with so many people. When he walked into the kitchen, Liam was there already, the only brother he’d been raised with. He was sitting at the counter, making conversation with their niece, Violet. Or rather, he had a feeling Liam was doing his best to harass Violet, since she was looking mildly perturbed and more than a little amused.
Cain’s fiancée, Alison, was busy cooking with Lane, both women wearing aprons as they dashed around the kitchen. It was like Alex had fallen into some kind of manic 1950s dream.
Violet, who was sixteen and more than a little surly, grabbed a potato chip out of the bowl that was sitting on the island and crunched it noisily.
“This is bad for feminism,” she announced, talking around a mouthful of chip.
“How so, Violet?” Lane asked, turning and putting one hand on her hip.
“Cooking for the men,” she returned.
“Maybe if we were doing it out of obligation, but Lane and I like to cook,” Alison said. “In fact, our chosen careers center around food.”
“Mmm,” Violet made a musing sound.
“I cook,” Lane said, lifting a brow, “your uncle Finn does the dishes, which I don’t like to do, and it works for everyone. But most importantly...”
“We choose to do it,” Alison finished.
“I choose to sit and eat potato chips,” Violet said, clearly also choosing to remain unmoved on her position. And unmoved in general.
“I’ll help,” Liam offered, standing up and slapping the countertop.
“You absolutely will not,” Lane said, turning around and pointing her spatula at him. “I haven’t forgotten the great over-salting incident that happened last time you helped.”
“I’ll help by sitting here,” he said, grabbing a chip out of the bowl.
“Smells good,” Alex said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Thanks,” Lane returned.
“Where have you been?” This time, it was Liam who asked the question.
“It’s really touching how concerned you all are about my whereabouts,” Alex responded.
“I wasn’t concerned, jackass. I was mad because you got out of doing your evening chores.”
“Wow, Liam. Maybe you should tell me about your childhood.” Alex leaned in and stole a chip. “You seem to have some issues.”
“You were there for my childhood. That’s possibly why I have issues.”
Alex snorted. “I’m pretty sure our dad is the reason we both have issues.”
Finn snorted. “I think he’s the reason we all have issues.”
Their father had done one thing well—made children he wasn’t particularly interested in raising. Cain and Finn had different mothers, with Cain being raised in Texas and Finn in Washington. Though Finn had come to live on the Laughing Irish ranch with their grandfather when he was only sixteen.
Liam and Alex had grown up with their mother in a different part of Washington than Finn, and had spent sporadic summers in Copper Ridge.
Until recently, the half brothers had all spent a limited amount of time together. Though, truth be told Alex and Liam hadn’t spent all that much time together either, since Liam had left home at eighteen.
As soon as he could, Liam had gone off to school. And he didn’t return home. Two years later, Alex had enlisted in the military, and he’d done the same—left it all behind.
Liam had gotten a scholarship that had paid his way through, and as far as Alex knew, was the only one of them to get any kind of higher education. Liam didn’t talk about it much though. He never had. And whatever work he had gotten into afterward, he wasn’t doing it now.
Damn. They really were dysfunctional.
“So, what were you doing?” Liam asked, clearly not content to let the subject drop.
“I had to go and handle that property I’m responsible for,” he said, “like I told you guys a month or so ago.”
“What’s the situation with that?” Finn was the one who posed that question, and Alex wasn’t particularly surprised. His brother would need to know how it would impact the work that was happening around the ranch. They were all part owners of the Laughing Irish now, but Finn had bled for this place since he was a teenager.
They all loved it in their own way, but nobody loved it like Finn. That was another thing Alex paused to marvel at for a moment. The fact that they were all getting along as well as they were. Claiming their part of the inheritance, rather than taking a payoff. Finn had been less than amused when they’d first showed up, but gradually it had all started to work, and he’d come to see them as more of an asset than a burden.
Mostly.
“I’m going to be doing some work on it,” he said. “For up to a year, I have decision-making power on the place and then it will pass to Clara’s possession. Right now, it’s part of Jason’s estate, and I’m the executor. And if I end up dropping the ball here, I swear I’ll hire somebody to pick up the slack. And I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket. But this is something that I have to do.”
“I’m not sure I know this story,” Alison said, opening the oven and taking out a pie.
“It’s not a feel-good one,” Alex said. “An army buddy of mine was killed in action about six months ago. He left me his ranch.”
Alison’s eyes went wide. She set the pie down on a trivet on the counter. “Really? I’m so sorry.”
“Yes. His sister isn’t very happy about it, but he did it to help her.”
“You’re talking about Jason Campbell and his sister Clara,” Alison said, “aren’t you?”
“Did you know them?”
Alison shook her head. “Not Clara. I kind of knew Jason in school. Not well. But I saw him there, and around town over the years. I was sad to hear about his death. I met Clara when I started doing some work with Grassroots Winery.”
Alex cleared his throat. “Jason kind of...left her to me. She doesn’t have anyone.”
“And you’re supposed to drop everything and help her?” That question came from Liam, his voice surprisingly hard. “You have your own life. Didn’t your friend consider that?”
“As he was considering his death at the time, I suppose he figured I could take the inconvenience. You know, since I’m above ground.” Clara was mad at Jason for his decision. His brothers clearly thought it was crazy too. It made Alex feel defensive of his friend. The fact that Jason was willing to do anything—even inconvenience Alex—to protect his sister, to make sure that she was taken care of, was a mark of what made him such a good man as far as Alex was concerned.
He and his brothers had been self-sufficient from the beginning. There had been no alternative. They also hadn’t been raised to be close. He and Liam were close enough, but it wasn’t that same caregiver relationship Jason had had to Clara. He had been ten years older, and they’d lost both of their parents. He’d felt responsible for her in a way Alex had never felt responsible for anyone.
“Sorry,” Liam said. “You’re supposed to hire someone to cover for you here? Why not just hire someone to work at the Campbell Ranch?”
“It’s not just about working on the ranch,” Alex said. “Clara isn’t functioning on her own. She’s not paying her bills. And I think Jason was afraid that might happen. He wanted to make sure she had... Another older brother around to look after her.”
Something inside of him—deep inside of him—rebelled at the thought of being Clara’s older brother. It didn’t sit right.
She was just so damn pretty. That was a fact, and one he’d never been blind to. Of course, there was a difference between realizing a woman was pretty and wanting to actually touch that beauty. Clara was off limits. She always had been. But now more than ever before.
He thought of her extreme, ridiculous and unintentional double entendre earlier. About him getting too close to her hive.
Yeah, she was beautiful. Blond hair, full, pink lips. Skin that looked so soft any man could be forgiven for thinking about brushing his fingertips against it.
But that... That crazy bee thing. And the fact that she seemed to think it wasn’t completely transparent she had a crush as deep as the Pacific Ocean on that ridiculous barista in that equally ridiculous coffee shop, all spoke of not only their decade-wide age gap, but the gap they had in life experience.
He shook his head, banished any thoughts of her skin or her lips from his mind, and focused on the brother thing. Or, if not brother, then at least the fact that he had been entrusted with protecting her.
There were any number of women with soft skin in Copper Ridge—he assumed—and if he was starting to think in that way, he was going to have to find one of them.
He had really enjoyed harassing Cain and Finn about their celibacy before they’d found their respective fiancées, and implying that he himself was getting a lot of play. But the truth of the matter was all he’d done was a little flirting over at Ace’s bar.
He enjoyed that. Spending a few hours blowing smoke and telling tall tales. Having a group of women look at him like he was interesting, funny and not... Well, what he was.
He preferred the joke, every time. Because the fact of the matter was when he was alone, there wasn’t much to joke about. There were just endless images of the kind of carnage he had witnessed during war. The darkness serving as a reminder for what it was like to hunker down for hours in a bunker and wait out threatened attacks.
To watch your best friend bleed out in front of you. A guy who had someone depending on him.
Unlike Alex.
Well, now he did. Now Clara was his responsibility. And dammit all, he was going to take care of her. He didn’t have time to sit around and feel sorry for himself. Didn’t have the luxury of feeling like it had been the wrong man’s blood that soaked into the desert sand that day.
Jason was gone. Alex was here.
End of story.
“Whatever you need to do,” Cain said. “Do it. We can cover it here. Unless Liam can’t pull his weight.”
Liam shot their older brother a look. “Maybe some of us like having a life off the ranch.”
“You don’t have one, though. No matter how much you try to make me believe it. Anyway, some of us like our lives right here on the ranch. Don’t ask me to feel bad about that, because I don’t.”
“Glad to have your support, Cain,” Alex said, cutting off the bickering between the two of them. “Of course, I was going to do it either way.”
“I figured as much,” his brother said. “I also thought that this was a great way to come out looking benevolent.”
Finn laughed. “Yeah. That’s what they say about you, Cain. That you’re extremely benevolent.”
“As dictators go, he’s not that bad,” Violet offered as she jumped down from the stool and grabbed a handful of chips before wandering out of the room, looking at her cell phone.
Alison made a squeaking sound. “I don’t mind taking orders from him,” she added, the words coming out quickly. “That was difficult to hold back, but I was not going to say it in front of his daughter.”
Cain grinned, and Alex wanted to punch him. He imagined this was exactly what Cain had felt like for the past few months while he and Liam gave him endless hell over his lack of success with women. Now he was smug. And Alex and Liam were celibate.
“You could also not say it in front of his brothers,” Alex said.
“You’re adults,” Alison remarked. “You can deal.”
“Some of us have already dealt with enough trauma,” he returned. “I’m a soldier. I fought for this country. I’ve been through enough without being exposed to insinuations about my oldest brother’s sex life.”
He didn’t actually care. But he did like a joke. Especially one that worked to make his past less serious somehow. That made him feel like maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. Like maybe it was a movie or something that happened to somebody else.
“Thank you for your service,” Alison said drily. “But it does not exclude you from being treated like I would treat any of my brothers.”
He couldn’t even be irritated at her. Because he knew that Alison had had a difficult life. He also knew that she didn’t have any siblings at all. Family. That’s what they were. That’s what they were becoming anyway. More seamlessly than he had imagined was possible.
“Okay,” Lane said, turning away from the stove. “Everybody quit bickering. It’s dinnertime.”
* * *
CLARA FOUND HERSELF dragging at work the next day. She’d had a near impossible time sleeping, and that was making it difficult for her to keep a smile pasted on her face in the tasting room. Summer was drawing to a close, the wind whipping down from the mountains taking on a sharp edge that spoke of the coming fall.
But that didn’t mean tourism in Copper Ridge had abated any. The weather was mild on the coast when the rest of the state was dry and hot or buried beneath snow, which made it ideal pretty much all year round. Though, once it got into October, the fog would start to linger longer and longer, stretching into the afternoon then rolling back in as the sun went down. That would last all through the winter, though there were still people who came to visit during those months.
Especially those who found the low, gray sky atmospheric. Or who just liked getting away from other people.
Even inland, at the winery, it was much cooler than it was down in the southernmost part of the state, and people had migrated upward en masse to escape the last gasps of summer heat.
The sky was bright and blue today, and customers were out in force. Locals who had a day off, coming in to order a flight of wine and a tray of cheese, mixing in with the tourists.
The large, converted barn was full today, the tall tables made from wine barrels all taken up.
And Clara was doing a pretty poor job serving everyone, and she knew it. She slunk behind the counter, hoping she could extricate herself from customer service, that Sabrina or Olivia might take a hint and leave any kind of straightening up to Clara while they handled the guests.
She could only hope that Lindy, the owner of Grassroots, didn’t come in. Lindy had been extraordinarily gracious to Clara, both in offering her the job, and in training her. Lindy had gone through a nasty divorce a year or so ago and she was very sensitive to the fact that Clara was grieving a loss. Much more so than most bosses would be. Much more so than any boss had to be.
But it had been six months. And a sleepless night wasn’t the best excuse for shoddy work. Not only that, it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair to her coworkers. And it certainly wasn’t fair to Lindy.
Clara sighed and put her head down, then squatted behind the counter, hunting for a bar towel so that she could wipe down surfaces and look busy.
“Are you okay?”
Clara looked up and saw Sabrina leaning over the countertop, staring down at her. She and Sabrina had forged a pretty strong work friendship in the months since Clara had started at Grassroots. She had a feeling it could be more than just a work friendship if Clara ever took Sabrina up on her offers to go out after work.
She should, really.
Sabrina Leighton was Lindy’s sister-in-law. And Clara had never really felt comfortable prying into the particulars of all of that. Or asking why Sabrina and Beatrix—Lindy’s ex’s sisters—still hung around the winery instead of siding with their brother. She was curious. But if she asked, then Sabrina would have the right to ask how Clara was doing. To want real details. And Clara...didn’t want to get into real details.
“I’m fine,” she said, lying.
“You seem distracted.”
Darn Sabrina. Couldn’t she be more tunnel-visioned like their other coworker, Olivia?
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she said, going with honesty. “Actually, I think I’m kind of an ogre today. Would you mind handling the customers? I’ll do any and all grunt work.”
Sabrina smiled. “That’s fine.”
She was too nice. It made Clara feel like a jerk.
“Thank you.” She retrieved a towel and stood up.
“Is anything going on... Or...”
Clara sighed. “It’s complicated. And I’m sure you have things to do.”
It wasn’t really complicated. And she didn’t have a reason not to tell Sabrina about the situation with Alex.
“Everybody seems settled right now. Tell me about complicated.”
“It’s not interesting.”
“Is it a guy?”
“Well, yes.” If Sabrina were an antennaed creature, said antennae would’ve been pointing straight upward. “Not in that way,” Clara added, her cheeks starting to feel hot.
“In what way?”
“I’ve been avoiding dealing with Jason’s lawyer,” she said, keeping her voice quiet.
“I understand that,” Sabrina said. “I get it. Legal stuff is terrible and my only experience with it is as an observer. Lindy and Damien’s divorce was just...so toxic. And the fight over the winery and whether or not the prenup meant Lindy got it... My parents were horrible to her. Damien was horrible. I never want to talk to a lawyer again. Anyway... This isn’t about our drama. It’s just to say I understand why that must be completely overwhelming on top of everything else.”
“Except it turned out the lawyer was calling me for good reason. My brother didn’t leave the ranch to me.”
Sabrina’s eyes widened. “What?”
“Apparently, he left it to Alex Donnelly. Well, I mean, not for...forever. But he’s in control of it for a year, before it passes to me.”
She had entertained the idea of contesting it...for about a minute. She could hardly manage to open her mail. And anyway, it was only for a year. A year of Alex. But there was an end point. She could handle anything for a year.
Sabrina’s entire demeanor changed. Her usually cheerful mouth went flat, her blue eyes turning cool. “Alex Donnelly?”
“Yes,” she said. “Is that...significant in some way?”
For some reason, she imagined Sabrina and Alex together. Together, together. It made her throat feel tight.
“I’m not a fan of the Donnelly brothers,” Sabrina said, her tone stiff. “I don’t know Alex that well. I just can’t imagine him being less of an asshole than Liam.”
Her lips looked pale all of a sudden, her expression strained.
“Well. I’m kind of stuck with this one. Unfortunately.”
Clara had a feeling there was a lot more to the story about Liam Donnelly. And she also had a feeling it absolutely was in that way. Clara didn’t have any heartbreak like that in her past. She’d experienced too much heartache in the form of death, loss and grief. Putting herself out there romantically hadn’t seemed worth the effort.
Until Asher. He was...well, it was difficult to explain, even to herself. But he was just so fascinating. So unlike her. So unlike everything in her life. He felt like hope. Like the possibility of something new.
She didn’t like to think that Asher could end up replicating in her the strange heartbreak-induced facial expression that things with Liam had clearly provoked in Sabrina.
Clara had been through enough.
She needed something good. She deserved something good.
“Alex isn’t going to come up here, is he?” Sabrina asked. “I mean, the Donnellys aren’t going to start hanging out here?”
“He’s not my guardian,” she said. “It’s not like we’re close or anything. Or like he’s taking care of me. Although, I think that is maybe what Jason was thinking.”
Her stomach clenched tight. It was so easy to feel mad at Jason, but the anger made her feel guilty too. And she knew that regardless of how she felt about him going back into the military after their father died, no matter how much she wanted to second-guess all of it, she couldn’t demand answers of a dead man. But why couldn’t he simply have stayed with her? Why had he felt compelled to test fate like that? If he didn’t care about himself, the least he could have done was care enough about her.
Then again, she supposed whatever this was with Alex...it was Jason caring in his way. Through somebody else. By not being here. By sending a check. In this case, he was sending a friend.
She gritted her teeth. She wasn’t being fair. She knew that. She was just in the anger stage of grieving, wrapped somewhere around denial. Angry denial.
“I mean, of course if they come up here it’s fine,” Sabrina said, forcing a smile. The color returned to her cheeks, to her lips, and she seemed to be grappling now with feeling embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s really stupid. The whole thing about me not liking the Donnellys. It was a long time ago. A lot has changed.”
“Is there a meeting I don’t know about?”
Olivia Logan had walked across the dining room, and was now standing behind Sabrina looking, well, smooth and implacable and impossible to read.
It was difficult to say whether Olivia liked them or not. She wasn’t unkind at all, she was just extremely focused. On work, on her boyfriend. And there was a kind of natural aloofness to her demeanor. But then, her ancestors were quite literally the founders of Logan County, the namesakes. It was entirely possible she perceived Olivia as being slightly uppity for that reason alone.
“No,” Sabrina said. “We were just talking about family stuff.”
Olivia’s mouth tightened into a firm line. “Oh.”
“Do you need help?” Sabrina asked.
“Oh, with all the guests? Actually, no. Everything is handled.” Olivia was a funny, efficient creature. She was nice enough, but sometimes seemed like she didn’t quite understand how to make light conversation. She was intense and goal-oriented, which made her good at every job she set out to do. But made her not so great with small talk.
Not that Clara was an expert in it.
“Do you guys want to hang out tonight?” Sabrina looked so hopeful. And it made Clara feel slightly guilty.
Olivia looked surprised. “Me?”
“Yes. All three of us.”
“I can’t,” Clara said, feeling like a jerk. Because she actually could. And she maybe even should. “I mean, Alex is at the ranch. He has been all day. And I need to see what he’s thinking about doing. But once I get settled... Once everything is a little bit more settled I think maybe I can go out sometime.”
Sabrina turned her focus to Olivia, slightly less hopeful-looking now, but clearly still eager.
“I’m closing tonight,” Olivia said. “It will be really late by the time I get out of here. So I shouldn’t.”
Grassroots Winery was nestled in the trees, between the communities of Copper Ridge and Gold Valley, where Olivia lived.
“I understand,” Sabrina said, sounding slightly deflated.
“Well, Bennett dropped me off this morning and he’s getting me tonight too. I don’t want to put him out,” Olivia added.
Bennett was Olivia’s boyfriend. Clara had only seen them together a few times but she couldn’t really see them as a couple. He seemed protective of her, caring even, but in a lot of ways, more like a brother. A strange observation for someone with as little experience as Clara had, but she figured if even she got a strange vibe, something had to be off.
“Sorry,” Clara said, truly meaning it.
Sabrina lifted a shoulder. “That’s okay. Some other time.”
When the shift ended and Clara got in her car to leave, she was still thinking about Sabrina. About the offer of friendship that Clara hadn’t taken. But it felt too hard right now. Like it would intrude too much on the little bubble she’d created for herself.
Grief, she realized, was such an isolating thing.
It was just that Clara had been relishing the isolation. Accepting the social parts in small doses. In the interactions with Asher that she chose, with the job she had taken at Grassroots. The little chats that she had with Sabrina while she was working.
She wasn’t craving mass amounts of human interaction. And the potential problem with that was on the other side, she wouldn’t have a lot of connections when she was ready for them again. She wondered how long it would take her to get to that place.
Clara sighed and successfully spaced out most of the half hour drive along the tree-lined highway back to the ranch. Alex’s truck was in the driveway, and the sight of it made Clara’s heart slam against her chest. He really was here. And she really was going to have to deal with him.
She put her car in Park and killed the engine, getting out and shutting the door with gusto, hoping her completely unsubtle arrival would draw him out of hiding.
But when she saw Alex striding across the property, the very idea that he might have been hiding seemed ludicrous.
He walked out of the barn, his white hat tipped low over his face, his torso bare. He was wearing work gloves and low-slung jeans, a pair of cowboy boots. Positively nothing else.
She couldn’t look away. She was utterly transfixed.
His chest was deep and broad, well-defined with hair slightly darker than what was on his head sprinkled across it, thinning out and tapering down to a line that disappeared between the waistband of those very, very low pants. Very low.
He lifted his hand and pulled one of the work gloves off, the muscles on his torso and forearms shifting with the movement. Then he tugged off the other glove, and she could only watch the sure, strong movements of his fingers, the way his biceps jumped as he lifted his arm, then lowered it.
His ab muscles moved with each step he took, but as incredible as they were, she found herself completely taken in by another set of muscles. A line that cut in hard at his hip bone. She had never been big on science, but she had a feeling that even if she had paid attention in anatomy class she wouldn’t have known the name of that muscle, because every single one of her brain cells had been wiped out by the sight of it.
Alex was...well, she had always known that Alex was good-looking, but it had been kind of abstract in her mind. Because while she had always known he was handsome, he was also very much not the kind of man she was drawn to.
He was too hard. Too masculine. And she would have said she was definitely not the kind of woman who was into overly muscled physiques and body hair.
Apparently, part of her appreciated those things. At least, as an objective observer and admirer of...beautiful things. Though, thinking of him as beautiful in any context just seemed wrong.
Alex wasn’t beautiful. He was too hard to be beautiful.
“You’re back,” he said.
His voice sounded so casual and normal, and she realized it was because he hadn’t just experienced an entire internal episode that had caused him to question fundamental things about himself.
“Yeah. I had an earlier shift today. Are you...are you working a bachelorette party, or...”
“It’s hot,” he said, looking down at his own bare chest, which prompted her to follow his line of sight.
Good God.
There was sweat rolling down between his pectoral muscles—see, that she remembered—and it should have looked gross or unclean in some way, and instead she found it fascinating. Vital. Alive.
That made her shiver.
She wrenched her gaze away from his body, and forced herself to look at his green eyes. She found that didn’t help at all. Her mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton. Her head did too, actually.
“I can honestly say I’ve never decided to work shirtless just because it was hot,” she said, immediately regretting the words, because there really was no point in continuing to talk about his state of undress. Talking about it only drew attention to the fact that she was aware of it.
She did not want to be aware of it.
She took a step back.
He lifted a shoulder and she forced herself to keep her eyes locked with his. To not look down and see exactly what that motion had caused the musculature on his chest and stomach to do in response.
Her fingertips tingled and she wiggled them.
He didn’t say anything, he was just looking at her. She wasn’t sure what he wanted her to do. What he wanted her to say. She supposed it didn’t matter either way. Because since when had she cared about his expectations or whether or not she met them? She didn’t.
“What exactly did you do today?”
His lips tipped upward into a lopsided smile. “Is that the game? Are we pretending that you’re the ranch owner and I’m the lowly ranch hand?” He shoved his hands in his pockets and yet again, it was a study in self-control to keep her eyes on his face. “Because I do like to play games sometimes, honey. As long as you understand who’s really in charge here.”
She forgot about his bare chest. “You’re an ass.”
“Maybe, but I’m a hard-working one. One who’s going to help fix your situation here. Come with me.” And just like that, she found herself trailing behind him, any illusion of home-court advantage lost as she stared at the broad expanse of his back while they walked to the barn.
His back was nearly as problematic as his chest. It filled her vision, and she found herself pondering the exact nature of what a nice-looking back was. She had never really considered it before.
She didn’t allow herself to look below his belt line. Because she was a lady. A lady who had looked at Asher’s butt this morning. It was her preferred butt. Alex’s was not. And she wasn’t going to test the theory by looking. She didn’t need to.
Not that casual perusal of the male form equated to feelings.
It was just that she wasn’t the kind of person who engaged in that kind of casual perusal. She liked Asher. Had actual, deep feelings for him, harbored hopes about a future. It didn’t matter how good-looking another guy was.
Asher, seeing him every morning, getting her daily coffee—which she summarily dumped out—from him had provided a kind of light in a long dark tunnel.
Alex’s bare chest could not compete with that.
Alex paused at the barn door. “After you.”
“Now you’re being chivalrous?”
He shrugged again, then went ahead and walked into the barn in front of her. She scowled, but followed after him.
And then she stopped dead. There were coils of fence rolled up and stacked six deep against the back wall. A pile of lumber lay on its side on the ground, fenceposts, she assumed.
And there was a tractor sitting in the middle of the barn that had been pulled apart.
“What exactly are you doing with the tractor?” she asked.
“Making sure it’s fixed.”
“You’re going to fix it? Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Kind of. I have a little bit of experience doing emergency fixes on heavy equipment. Plus I called Anna McCormack for a consult. She said she could order a couple of parts for us at a lower rate, and gave me some instructions over the phone.”
“Doesn’t she want to do it so she can get paid?”
“She was happy enough to help me out. I explained the situation to her.”
Right. So Clara was on the receiving end of pity tractor help. Well, wasn’t that what all of this was? Pity help?
“Great,” she said, knowing she didn’t actually sound like she thought it was great.
“And the fencing is for the bison.”
“Right. I forgot you were actually doing that. Bison.”
“Unless you’re planning on running this place the way your father did, then I think you’re right and beef is completely pointless. But if you want to go the direction of that more organic, specialized stuff...”
“Right. I get it.”
“You only have to put up with me for a limited time, Clara, and the sooner we get things sorted out, the sooner I can get out of your hair. I’ve actually done research on this,” he said, the expression on his face sincere and not at all pitying. She wasn’t sure what to do with that. “And I mean, I went over a lot of options. Sheep. Llamas.”
“Llamas?”
“I discounted that pretty quick. They’re mean as far as I can tell.”
“Don’t they spit?”
“That is what I hear,” he said.
“I could do without spitting livestock, to be honest. Apart from everything else, I don’t need an animal hocking a loogie on me while I’m trying to take care of it.”
“Fortunately for you, bison don’t spit. I think they’re the best option for this area, and for your property in particular. But they need damn sturdy fences.”
“Apparently,” she said, surveying the equipment.
“I saw your beehives, or whatever those are. I didn’t want to get close, you know, in case I became a target.”
“I have a suit,” she said. “A bee suit.”
He arched a brow. “Like a bee costume?”
“No,” she responded primly. “The kind you put on that keeps them from stinging you.”
“Less interesting than what I was imagining.” His smile was wicked, and she wondered exactly what he had been imagining. Probably nothing. Probably he was messing with her. Or maybe it was still just the fact that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“Less interesting, maybe,” she said, still not quite sure what he meant by that, “but effective.”
“Well, sometime you’ll have to show me. The bee suit. And the bees.”
“Sure,” she responded.
He reached over toward a peg on the wall and took his T-shirt off it. It was gray and faded, and when he pulled it over his head, she was powerless against the urge to watch the way the motion affected his muscles. The way they shifted. The way they bunched. Rippled.
The material of the T-shirt was thin, and it clung to his body, and for some reason, it didn’t seem any less obscene than his near nudity had. She swallowed, and it was hot and prickly.
“Dinner should be ready,” he said.
She blinked. “Dinner?”
“Yeah, I put something in the Crock-Pot.”
“I have a Crock-Pot?” She wrinkled her nose.
“Actually, I don’t know if you have a Crock-Pot. My future sister-in-law sent one. To be clear, I didn’t cook, I just followed her instructions.” He smiled, sure and easy. She didn’t feel sure or easy. She felt clumsy, awkward. She couldn’t figure out why.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, following him out of the barn and back up the well-worn footpath that led to the house.
She didn’t really know what to expect when they got to the front porch. If he would stop at the door or assume he was joining her for dinner.
When he opened the door and held it for her, she assumed he would be taking his leave. But then he came inside behind her, his heavy footsteps making that first floorboard squeak. It made her feel conscious of how long it had been since she’d spent any meaningful time in the house with someone else. That second squeak upon entry.
It made her feel unaccountably lonely. Sad.
She didn’t know why a squeaky floorboard had the power to do that.
Alex walked across the kitchen and opened a few cabinets, his movements confident even though he clearly didn’t know where anything was. His gestures were broad, firm. When he took the bowls out of the cabinet and set them down on the counter, he didn’t do it tentatively.
It was funny because she had watched Asher make her drink this morning and yet again she had thought of his movements as elegant. There was nothing elegant about Alex’s movements. They were like the rest of him. Rough, masculine. Somehow lethal-looking.
She had imagined that when Asher put his hands on her skin, if he ever touched her hand, he would apply that same fine elegance to his actions. If Alex ever touched her, with all that hard-packed muscle, and those work-roughened hands, he might break her.
Why are you comparing them?
A good question. Probably because she had such limited interaction with men. And these particular two men were as opposite as they came.
Anyway, Alex didn’t fare well in the comparison. And she ignored the strange tightness in her lungs that accompanied that thought.
She didn’t want to be broken. She was broken enough.
He opened the Crock-Pot, and ladled a couple big scoops of stew into one of the bowls. “Come get it,” he said, pushing the bowl away from him slightly, before picking up the second one to serve himself.
Her throat tightened. Almost closed completely. She opened the silverware drawer and took out a spoon, then retrieved the bowl. “Thank you.”
“Sure.”
He got his own spoon, then took two cans of Coke out of the fridge, sliding one over to her before he popped the top on his own and took a seat.
That was two times he had served her first. It shouldn’t matter.
But she noticed.
She pressed her spoon down into the thick stew and tilted it sideways, grimacing when she unveiled an onion. She carefully shunted it off to the side and scooped a chunk of meat onto her spoon.
“I’m thinking it’ll probably take about two weeks to get the facility prepared to bring in animals,” Alex said, taking what appeared to be a very reckless bite of stew as far as she was concerned.
“Two weeks? That’s it?”
“Should be about that long.”
“That’s not much time for me to prepare for big stinky animals to be on my property,” she said, flicking another onion off to the side before she took another bite.
“Well, there are already stinging animals on your property, so why not?”
She shrugged, then took another bite of stew, grimacing when she bit into a carrot that clearly had a hidden onion welded to the back of it. She looked around and cursed the lack of napkin.
She decided she wasn’t going to try to muscle past it out of politeness. It wasn’t like Alex himself made the stew.
Clara stood and took two quick strides to the sink, leaning in deep before she spit the carrot and onion down the drain. She turned the sink on, then the disposal and tried to ignore the fact that she knew Alex was watching her.
She straightened, brushing her hair out of her face. “I don’t like onions.”
She walked stiffly back to her seat and sat down, making a point to be a little more careful with the dissection of the stew from that point on.
“And you don’t like coffee,” he noted.
She furrowed her brow. “I like coffee.”
“You don’t.”
Clara narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know my life.”
“You don’t like coffee, you don’t like onions. You do like SpaghettiOs and apparently prefer Coke to beer.”
“Beer is gross,” she countered.
“Right, but SpaghettiOs are fine dining.” He shook his head. “Okay. You don’t like beer. What else don’t you like?”
“The list of what I like is shorter and takes less time,” she said.
“Okay. What do you like? Because if I’m going to bring you food sometimes, it would be nice if you didn’t have to tiptoe through your dinner like it was full of land mines.”
She sniffed. “Nobody said you had to bring me food. But if you must know, I like pasta as long as there are no onions. Or excess greens.”
“Hamburgers?”
She nodded. “Without lettuce.”
“What are your thoughts on kale?”
She frowned. “What are your thoughts on evil?”
“Chard?”
“Satan’s preferred salad fixing.”
“Do you like any kind of lettuce?”
She scowled. Then she realized that she was doing a very good impression of a cranky child. But, oh well, she didn’t like feeling she had to give an account of the things she enjoyed eating. No one had cared if she ate her vegetables for a long damn time.
“A salad with iceberg lettuce is fine,” she explained. “As long as it has cheese. And a lot of dressing. Good dressing, though. And not blue cheese.”
“I think I’m getting the picture. Pretty sure I can work with these instructions.”
“Pizza is good,” she said.
“Obviously. But pizza without beer?” She stared back at him blankly and he sighed heavily. “I’m going to have to stock my own, aren’t I?”
“Alternately, you could let me handle feeding myself, which I have done pretty successfully for the past ten years.”
“I think you and I might have different definitions of the word successful.”
She rolled her eyes and took an ostentatious sip of her Coke. “I didn’t ask for your definition of anything.”
“I’m going to get you eating less canned pasta.”
She squinted at him. “You’ll have to pry it from my cold dead hands.”
A smile shifted his handsome features, the expression as affecting as it was infuriating. “Lasagna?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Acceptable.”
“As long as there are no onions.”
“Obviously.”
“Save your canned food for an emergency. I’ll bring dinner tomorrow too.”
She rolled her eyes but continued eating in silence, putting her focus on making sure she didn’t get an undesirable bite again.
“What time do you get off tomorrow?” he asked.
The question jarred her focus away from her stew. “I’m off tomorrow. I’ll be here all day.”
“Okay. Then I’ll come in the morning, and maybe you can show me around the ranch. Show me the bee suit.”
She sighed grumpily. “I have a feeling the bee suit is only going to underwhelm you at this point.”
He lifted a shoulder, pushing himself into a standing position and bringing his Coke can to his lips. He knocked it back, finishing off the drink. “I think I can deal with it. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Okay. Tomorrow.”
She stayed sitting at the table while Alex walked out the door. And she tried to ignore the inexplicable feeling of pressure in her chest.
It was nice to have somebody take care of her like this. But it wasn’t something she intended to get used to.
If there was one thing that life had taught her at this point, it was that people didn’t stay forever. And the increased attention you got after you lost someone didn’t last.
Heck, there was a stipulation in the will that made it clear it wouldn’t last.
She swallowed around the prickly feeling in her throat, then picked up her bowl of stew. She wrinkled her nose and dumped the remaining contents back into the Crock-Pot. Then she took a can of SpaghettiOs out of one of the cabinets and set about fixing herself some dinner.
