Caught Up in the Touch: Sweet Home Alabama

by Trentham, Laura

  Wednesday? Three days? No way could she call her father back and tell him that Logan had put her off . . . again. Eric and his Porsche would be pulling into Falcon by then.

  “With the money we’re offering, you could get a Porsche or a Corvette or—” Her mind blanked on the names of expensive cars. She pushed off the tailgate and wrapped her hand around his forearm. The vibrations of the ATV through him to her.

  “Anything you want.” She added in a hoarse voice, not sure he even heard.

  He flashed her grin, his gaze skimming down her body and away. “You don’t mean that, darlin’. Let’s talk Wednesday.”

  He revved the engine, the noise scattering a group of birds off the garage roof. The ATV rolled forward, pulling his arm from her hand. If she let him get away, she might as well kiss the CFO job good-bye. Without thinking about anything but the next second in time, she hopped behind him, sidesaddle, and grabbed the metal rack on the back, careful to avoid the barrel of the gun.

  He hit the brakes, throwing her forward into his broad, sun-heated back. He half-turned, his face a mask of disbelief. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “You’re not blowing me off.”

  “I’m heading into those woods”—he pointed as if it needed clarification—“and not coming out until Wednesday morning. You are not prepared. You’re in three-inch heels, for God’s sake.”

  If he intended to scare her, it worked. Just a little. From here, the woods seemed an endless, unbroken ocean of brambles, wild animals, and dirt. “I’m tough.”

  He shook his head and laughed a “you are insane” kind of laugh. “Hop off. Last chance.”

  “Nope.” She tightened her grip.

  “You’re going to break your neck like that. Throw a leg over and hang on to me.” His voice was flavored with more amusement than exasperation.

  She scrambled to follow his directions, thankful he didn’t turn to watch the peepshow she put on. Her feet fit awkwardly behind his boots, the spiked heels vibrating against the side of the ATV, numbing her toes. She grabbed handfuls of his shirt along his sides.

  The ATV launched forward, faster and more powerful than she’d expected. Circling around the back of the garage and house, they tore across the field. It was scary and . . . kind of exhilarating. The hip-high grass parted like magic and rose up behind them as if untouched.

  He slowed a bit and turned them onto a narrow path. The ATV bumped into troughs worn down by use. She shifted to peer over his right shoulder. A narrow bridge spanned a swiftly moving river a good twenty feet wide. The water was clear and shallow, but she had no desire to plunge from the side of the rusty, rickety-looking truss.

  Surely they would parallel the river until they came to a safer crossing. No such luck. Logan stayed on the path and even picked up speed on the downward slope to the river. She pressed into him and clenched her thighs around his hips. Her hands dropped down his shirt and slid to clamp together at his waist, her face pressing into the back of his neck.

  The groan of beams cut through the engine’s growl, and clanging metal punctuated everything. She expected to weightlessness of plunging into the water at any moment. A few seconds later they were on solid ground. She didn’t even have time to take a breath before Logan hit the throttle.

  Over her shoulder, the bridge was a flash of rusted red through the green leaves. The wind whipped her hair around her face. Tree trunks blurred on either side of them. Birds flew in all directions at their approach, and a squirrel jumped overhead, racing them.

  Instead of the darkness and gloom of a Grimm’s fairytale, sunlight dappled the path and the energy of life teemed on all sides. The farther into Logan’s woods they travelled, the lighter the weight on her chest grew.

  She laughed and fit her chin on his shoulder. The corner of his mouth closest to her rose, and the ATV surged forward, even faster. The path curved, and the land rolled, but she sensed them gaining altitude, the muddy mostly pine forest giving way to more hardwoods.

  The ATV slowed with a series of jerky gear changes, and Logan steered them toward branches hanging so low, she had to duck down to avoid being poked in the eye. Thorns scratched at her bare legs. The trees petered out, and Logan pulled to a stop at the head of a beautiful clearing full of wildflowers.

  The machine rumbled into silence. At first, the stillness was off-putting after their wild ride, but the quietness wasn’t the same as silence. Songbirds trilled a soft backdrop to the hammer of a nearby woodpecker. A squirrel chattered overhead.

  A rabbit sat on his haunches at the far edge of the clearing. Jessica tugged Logan’s arm, excitement pushing her whisper high. “Look, a bunny!”

  She felt more than heard his sniggers. “You’ve never seen a rabbit before?”

  Of course she’d seen them hopping around her yard in Richmond, but spotting one out here seemed different. “I have. It’s just that . . . I don’t know. It’s wilder out here.”

  He swiveled on the ATV, grabbed her hand, and held it over his heart. No smile was visible, yet he was definitely laughing at her. “I promise to protect you from wild, marauding bunny rabbits with my last breath.”

  His heart thumped against her hand. Steady, but quick. Or was that her own out-of-control pulse? The urge to spread her fingers along his pectoral muscle was overwhelming her good sense. She wasn’t out here to feel him up. The only reason she’d jumped on the ATV was to badger him about the job until he caved. Except, her goal of being CFO of Montgomery Industries seemed ephemeral faced with the world—and the man—before her.

  6

  Jessica pulled her hand away, and Logan missed her touch, even though he’d been the one making the dumb joke. She shifted on the seat and tugged at the hem of her skirt. Her action only emphasized the length of her legs. He was between her nearly bare, insanely long legs. Legs he’d dreamed about wrapped around him the night before.

  A pair of shorts would have revealed as much skin, yet something about her skirt riding up made the exposure feel naughty and erotic. His gaze travelled from her upper thigh down to the ridiculously sexy, inappropriate high-heel shoe resting behind his worn, muddy boot.

  Oozing red lines along her calf killed the moment. He covered her knee with one hand and lifted her leg by the ankle with the other, tipping her backward over the duffle on the rack. “Ah, Jessie, I’m sorry. I’m not taking very good care of you.”

  He swung a leg over the handlebars. A flash of white panties stole any sane thought in his head about seeing to her boo-boos. As graceful as a dancer, she’d arched her leg over and joined him by the ATV, bent over and examining the scratches.

  She straightened, a tense, defensive look in her eyes. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  “Don’t get all prickly on me. I didn’t mean to offend.” His voice was gruff, and he wondered if her knee-jerk sass was from working with her father or dating assholes. He grabbed a first-aid kit from under the duffle and crouched down in front of her. He fumbled with the latch, feeling like a teenager about to get his first touch of female skin.

  He squeezed a dollop of antibacterial gel on his finger, grasped her ankle, and lifted her foot off the ground, pulling it closer. Her skin was soft, and the floral scent of lotion mingled with the smells of the forest, making for a potent combination.

  The ankle supporting her wobbled on the soft earth, and she leaned back on the cushioned ATV seat. Holy shit, when she’d climbed behind him and wrapped her arms and legs around him, he’d had to recite backward from one hundred to keep his arousal under control. The woman was as beautiful and dangerous as a Venus flytrap, and he was the poor, dumb bug.

  He dabbed a finger up and down each cut, methodically moving up her leg. The last scratch trailed a few of inches along her outer thigh. He skimmed a steadying hand up to cup her calf and applied the gel with the thumb of his other hand, wickedly allowing his fingers to caress the back of her knee.

  Her leg trembled. Did she feel this inadvisable
pull too? Desire shortened his breaths and quickened his heart. He wanted to tip her back, pull her legs apart, and discover exactly what her underwear looked like. Lace or cotton? Bikini-cut or thongs? Granny-panties? Honestly, he wasn’t picky.

  Before he could do something that would have the pointy end of her stiletto buried in his eye, he let go of her leg and packed up the kit. Standing, he rubbed his hands down his pants and stared up at the blue sky. Fluffy white clouds passed over the sun and offered a respite from the heat.

  “So,” she drew out. “How far are we from a road or house?”

  “As the crow flies? Only about five miles from the homeplace.”

  “Homeplace?”

  “My grandmother’s house. My house now by deed, but I still think of it as hers. Sometimes, I swear the smell of her blackberry cobbler wakes me up.”

  “You learned to cook at your grandmother’s knee? That’s sweet.” Her smile was wistful.

  “Hate to shatter my image, but not at Ada’s knee.”

  “Then where?”

  He moved toward an old stump and kicked at it. Fire ants poured out, pissed and defensive. “I got into some trouble when I was seventeen. My punishment was to attend a wilderness camp for troubled youth. You know, one of those places that combines nature therapy with manual labor.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Got caught with pot, alcohol, cocaine. I swore I was framed, denied it was mine. Of course, the judge had heard it all before and knew I was lying. It was mine, and I was spiraling out of control quick.” He bit the inside of his cheek. Around town, he joked about his stint in juvie to deflect attention. But, it hadn’t been a joke then and still wasn’t. He was ashamed and regretful, partly for even going down the path, but even more for lying about it. “The camp therapist thought I’d wanted to get caught. He thought I did it for attention. Crazy, right?”

  Silence. He risked a glance at her face, but no judgment clouded her eyes. Finally, she whispered, “Don’t we all have some crazy in us?”

  Every moment that passed in her company strengthened his odd fascination with her. “Until you jumped on the back of my ATV, I didn’t think you had a smidge. Now I’m not so sure.”

  She ducked her head, but her hair didn’t swing forward. It waved around her face, messy and windblown. She tucked a piece behind her ear and smoothed down the back. “I guess the camp got you straightened out.”

  “It was less the camp and more the look on Ada’s face when I left.” Any thought about straying off the straight and narrow after that day had been extinguished by the memory of the pain and disappointment and love etched in the troubled lines on his grandmother’s face. That was the first time she’d ever looked old to him.

  Jessica hopped on one foot, leaned on the back of the ATV, and slapped at her calf. “Stupid ants.”

  He backed her up a few paces, away from the stump of fire ants he’d riled up. “You got these little buggers in Virginia yet?”

  “Nope. But, I’ll never forget stepping barefoot in a pile of them one summer at my ma-maw’s house.”

  “Running around barefoot, climbing magnolia trees . . . Are you a country girl at heart?”

  She huffed a laugh, but her brow wrinkled and she didn’t actually smile. “Not really. I only got to spend part of my summers with her. Your grandmother raised you, didn’t she?”

  “Yep. Darcy too. The best family anyone could ask for.” He looked up and blinked, the sudden sting of tears surprising him. It had been two years since Ada had passed on, yet in that instant, her loss was immediate and raw. “She left me enough money to start Adaline’s.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what happened to your parents?”

  The way she asked made it clear he could safely tell her no, yet he found himself saying, “My mom died when I was too young to even remember her. I’ve only got stories Ada told me and pictures from when she was a kid, but she sounded like a really sweet person. My father lives up in your neck of woods. Washington, DC. We haven’t had contact for a few years now.”

  “Is he unstable?”

  “He could have taken care of me if that’s what you’re asking, but I don’t really know what he’s like.”

  Her curious gaze darted over his face. He looked away, the trunks of the trees blurring into a wall of brown. She cleared her throat. “Was your grandmother a good cook? Do you use any of her recipes besides the cobbler?”

  Relief surged at the change in subjects. “She taught me to fry up a mean chicken, but the idea I could actually be a chef was planted at the wilderness camp. I was raised in these woods. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around singing “Kumbaya” and speculating about what kind of tree I thought I was, so they put me on KP. At first, I hated it. Stuck inside, scrubbing potatoes, peeling vegetables. Lucky for me, the man in charge of the kitchens was a local chef who volunteered a couple of weeks each summer. Once I showed an interest, he taught me about glazes, sauces, braising. You name it. Those kids had never eaten so good.”

  “You left there wanting to be a chef, then?”

  “Unfortunately, I left still an idiotic seventeen-year-old boy.” He grinned and shook his head. “But I stayed clean, kept my grades up, went to college, played as a walk-on on the football team, got a degree in business. After I graduated, I bounced around a few months before joining the army. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. What about you?”

  “Me?” She sounded shocked.

  “Yes, you. Did your daddy groom you from the womb to take over the family business?”

  She pushed off the ATV and walked into the meadow of flowers. The smile she aimed over her shoulder was tight and uncomfortable. She crossed from shadows into light, red sparking in her wild hair. He followed her in a half-trance.

  She squinted in the bright sunlight, her makeup-free skin pale. He dropped his hat on her head. “You’re going to burn if you’re not careful.”

  She pushed the brim up and tucked her hair behind her ears. His too-big hat emphasized her green eyes and made her look like a teenager. How had he thought her fierce? But then, she’d always struck him as a contradiction—hardened yet vulnerable, confident yet uncertain.

  “Thanks.” She bit her bottom lip, the natural soft pink infinitely sexier than the harsh red lipstick she’d worn at dinner. “My father doesn’t think I’m capable of running Montgomery Industries. Actually, in his mind, no one is capable except for him. And he makes everyone affirm his greatness on a regular basis.”

  “Sounds like a fun place to work.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his irony or return his smile. Instead, her voice sounded weighed down by long-shouldered troubles. “It’s uber-competitive. By age ten, I knew I’d get my business degree at Georgetown and my MBA at Wharton. Can you imagine what my teacher thought when the other kids had dreams of being astronauts or ballerinas or football players?”

  “Ambition is a good thing. Maybe you could lend me some.” Her seriousness made him veer toward joking, and he immediately regretted it during the resulting silence.

  “I wonder sometimes if it’s truly my ambition or my father’s.” Her voice had become stronger and no-nonsense. “Anyway, you don’t care, right? What are these little purple flowers called?”

  He hesitated. Crazily, he did care. Her stellar legs had been a strong bait, but the vulnerability she flashed through her shell had hooked him good. He wanted to figure out what made her tick and discover her depths. Unfortunately, as soon as he refused the offer, she’d be gone from his life forever. The smart thing would be to tell her no, take her back to her car, and let her go.

  His stomach clenched. Darcy had called him an idiot countless times over the years. It seemed he was going to prove her right. He took the tiny flower from her hand and taught her how to identify the flowers and trees around them based on the shape of the leaves, and even pointed out poisonous and edible mushrooms. He led her around the meadow, the su
bject familiar and soothing.

  The taut undercurrents between them loosened. Her shoulders relaxed and the swing in her hips returned. Her smile was teasing and genuine. “You sound like a professor.”

  “That’s code for boring. I’ll shut up.” He propped a shoulder against a live oak, picking at the bark.

  “Not at all. It’s fascinating.” She stepped onto a patch of springy green moss and spun around. “Look at these mushrooms. They grew in a perfect circle.”

  “You better watch yourself. The fairies might come and spirit a beauty like you away forever.”

  “What do you mean?” She froze and stared at him. His ball cap made her look young and innocent, while her skirt and blouse emphasized her very grown-up curves.

  He dropped his gaze to his boots and scuffed the moss. “Mushrooms that grow in a circle are called a fairy ring. The fairies lure mortals into their world through them. They especially like beautiful young women. Or so the stories go.” He ran a hand through his hair and rubbed his nape. “You hungry? I’ve got some food packed. We could have a picnic.”

  “Actually, I’m starving. I ran out of Lilliana’s before I had anything but coffee.”

  “Come on then.” He almost reached out to grab her hand but instead stuffed his hands as deep into his pockets as they would go. Jesus, this wasn’t a date. She’d jumped on his ATV to manipulate him into a job.

  He pulled an insulated cooler out of the duffle off the back of the ATV. He had plenty of food packed, fully expecting to be out in the woods a couple of days by himself. “Let’s sit in the shade against that log.”

  After she had settled herself on a patch of moss, he handed her a sandwich. She lifted the top slice of bread. With a hint of surprise, she said, “Avocado and tomato? And what’s this spread? Not mayo.”

  “My special sauce. Expecting spam or bologna, were you?”

  She took his ball cap off and fluffed her hair, chuffing a small laugh. “I don’t know why, considering you’re a renowned chef, but yes.”