by Liza Kendall
Lila swatted his chest and burst into laughter.
Chapter 21
Watching the most eligible men in Silverlake work half-naked on behalf of her stables was good for the soul, but Jules was eager to dig in with her own two hands. Sure, she didn’t want to lose the momentum from Saturday’s work party, but it was more than that. There was nothing she liked better than working outside on a crisp, blue, spring Texas day; Monday was the perfect specimen. And since Rhett had asked her to pull the “fences,” or jumps, out of the old riding ring before the work party, she figured that now was as good a time as any to sand and paint them.
So she balanced a long wooden pole on two sawhorses and got to work with her electric sander. The pole had once been painted a cheery red and white, which had faded to a sad, dusty rust and mottled, dirty gray over the years. Jules took the paint completely off, sanding down to bare wood.
The sun was warm on her neck and seeped through the long-sleeved T-shirt she wore. The air was redolent with the scent of mesquite and cedar and the earth around her. Absorbed in her work, brushing away the sawdust that gathered on her plastic goggles, Jules barely noticed as Scarlett pulled down the gravel drive with Rhett at the wheel. She’d gotten used to seeing his ridiculous car out here . . . and at least riding in it had taken the edge off her dad’s cares the other day.
“Need a hand?” Rhett called over the noise of the sander.
She switched it off and raised her eyebrows. He wore a black T-shirt, snug Levi’s, and his black boots. He’d settled a pale gray cowboy hat over his head. Had he just stepped out of GQ or Texas Monthly? Whichever magazine it was, he looked good. Way too good. And nothing like Rhett-the-Suit who’d initially appeared in Silverlake—not a gold cuff link in sight.
Though something inside of her sat up and begged like a dog at the dinner table, she swatted it down with a rolled newspaper to the nose. “No thanks.”
Was that disappointment under the day’s growth of stubble on his face? “You sure?” he asked. “You’ve got quite a pile, there.”
“You’ll get all dirty.”
“I like getting dirty.” He smiled.
She didn’t.
“Why don’t you quit fighting me and gimme the sander, Jules? You can start priming the ones you’ve already done, and we’ll finish in half the time. Then we’ll get them painted tomorrow.”
She wasn’t trying to be rude. In fact, the sun was actually getting to her a little and she had the extreme urge to crawl into bed for a bit. But she just didn’t want to be around him. He knocked her off-kilter. He always had, and he always would. But it was worse since that kiss the other day, the one Dad had interrupted. It was so much easier to be angry at Rhett than to be attracted to him. Desire for him led nowhere good. Nowhere good at all.
Jules slipped off the goggles and gently smacked the business end of the sander into his chest, leaving a rectangle of sawdust on his black T-shirt. She grinned.
“Nice,” he said.
“Always.”
“You’re getting sunburnt,” he told her, and dropped his cowboy hat over her head.
She was absurdly touched. Touched in the head, probably.
Half an hour later, Rhett’s black T-shirt was soaked through. He switched off the sander, set it down, and grabbed the hem of the shirt with both hands, tugging it upward.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked, alarmed.
“What does it look like?” Off came the shirt, whipping over his head and sailing down to the grass next to them. “This is sweaty work.”
It was one thing to watch him shirtless at a distance, but this was up close and too personal. Jules swallowed and looked everywhere, anywhere, but at Rhett Braddock’s bare chest. His bare arms, bronzed by the sun and cut with muscle. She resumed applying the primer to a pole.
“Jules?”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve already painted that one.” His voice rumbled with amusement.
“What? Oh. Well, it needed another coat,” she said, flustered.
“Is there some reason why you’re keeping your head down and refusing to look at me?”
“Yes. You’re . . . half-naked.”
“And that’s a problem for you?”
“No—why would it be a problem?” Somewhat desperately, she met his gaze. And then . . . then, go figure, but her own gaze slipped south. To his chiseled lips, the stubble on his stubborn chin, and lower still to his pecs and—dear Lord, that was more of a twelve-pack than a six-pack at the abs—and—no! Stop at the belt buckle and move up again, Jules. Eyes up. Back to his, which are crinkling at the edges in a most annoying and oh-so sexy way . . .
She had to speak—say something—do something—anything. Anything to break this unbearable tension between them. Tension that could be chased away only by—
“What changed you so much?” Jules blurted.
The crinkles around Rhett’s eyes disappeared. “Huh?”
“It’s you. This is the you I grew up with. Followed around, like a puppy. Who is that other guy? The one in the suit? Where’d he come from?”
Rhett shrugged and set down the sander. “He . . . evolved.”
“From?”
He leaned back against the wall of the barn and folded his arms over those magnificent chest muscles, glowing with sweat. “Imagine what happens, Jules, when a kid from rural Texas trudges, in his western boots and his Wranglers and his pearl-snap-buttoned shirt and his belt buckle the size of a dinner plate, into a fancy East Coast prep school.”
“I don’t know.”
“D’you think those kids welcome him with open arms? Ask him for a good barbecue recipe?”
His face had gone completely blank. “I’m guessing not.”
“Not. Exactly. Those kids are more likely to open with a snicker, scale up to outright mocking, and finish with shoving that kid’s face into a urinal. And that’s just for starters, darlin’. That’s just the first day or two.”
“Oh, Rhett. I’m sorry . . .”
“Then they find out that he goes by ‘Rhett.’ And it gets nothin’ but worse. Maybe they dog-pile on him and pound on him until he agrees to holler, ‘Scarlett, save me!’ just to get them off him. Just to breathe. And then that goes round the whole school, and there’s more snickering and more dog-piling.”
Horrified, all she could do was stare at him.
“And next thing you know, the kid’s got his head jammed into a toilet, and maybe not so clean a toilet. And he gets real, real sick of all of this, so he learns to fight back. And fight hard. Sometimes dirty. Like the day he gets some good blackmail on his rat roommate—and says he’ll keep quiet if the roommate will loan him some clothes that don’t make him stick out like a nerd’s Adam’s apple in a herd full of no-neck jocks.”
“So that’s how it started,” she said quietly. “As camouflage.”
“You bet. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Camo.” Rhett’s blue eyes had gone hard and cold. “Now they treat me differently. Suck up to me for donations and blather on about school spirit. Ain’t that grand?”
“Wasn’t there any adult you could go to?” Jules ventured. “Anyone who could help?”
Rhett snorted. “The only thing worse than a redneck in a place like that is a snitch. I’d rather have died than report them.”
“Did Grady know?”
“Some. My brother Declan knew—I called him weekly to beg to come home. No dice.”
“I’m sure Deck thought he was doing the right thing . . .”
Rhett’s face darkened. “You know what? Let’s get back to work. You got the answer to your question.”
Jules fidgeted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring back bad memories.”
His expression softened. “I know you didn’t. None of that has anything to do with you.”
She stole another look
at his chest as he picked up the sander.
“Jules?”
“Yeah?”
“You’d better stop looking at me that way, honey, or I’m gonna have to take you into the barn and do some real wicked things to you.” He winked.
She gaped at him. Then, mortified, she fled.
Was that soft laughter she heard from Rhett as he watched her go?
* * *
It seemed like hardly any time had passed at all before Jules stood, hands on hips, unable to believe her eyes. Her much-longed-for indoor riding ring stood before her: a simple construct of hunter green–painted steel arches with a sturdy aluminum roof laid over them.
Rhett had ordered the parts from somewhere, a massive freight truck had delivered them, and then a crane, a construction crew, and half the Silverlake Fire and Rescue squad had shown up again to erect it.
She couldn’t believe how fast it had gone up—like an oversized Lego project.
It gleamed before her now in the spring sunshine, the sky above it cloudless and heartbreaker-blue. It was a testament to the power of dreams.
As she drank in the sight, she felt both giddy and annoyed. And then guilty and ungrateful for feeling annoyed. It was so beautiful, and it truly would triple her business, and . . . Rhett had made this happen, not her. Rhett, with his masses of money.
“Like it?” he asked from behind her right shoulder.
“How did you order a building?”
He shrugged. “Pretty simple, really.”
“How much did it cost?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Let’s see . . . with the labor and materials, around seventy-five K. The office that’s going in next will add to the total. But all said and done, less than a hundred thousand.”
His tone was so casual. So matter-of-fact.
“I’m gonna have to give a lot of lessons and train a lot of hunter-jumpers to pay that back.”
Rhett was quiet for a moment. “I wish you wouldn’t look at things that way.”
“What way? Hard? As if this is a business?”
“You know it’s more than that.” He caught a flyaway strand of her hair and brushed it behind her ear, sending a delicious, dangerous shiver throughout her body.
She stepped back. “What is it you want from me, Rhett?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true. I can feel the lie. So what do you want?”
A long pause ensued as he evaluated her. “To make you happy,” he said at last. He set his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the indoor arena again, where another dump truck had just pulled up, loaded with more sand for the floor. “Does that make you happy?”
She’d wanted this for so long. It was beautiful. Tears welled in her eyes, and despite her best efforts, she couldn’t hold them in. They spilled down her cheeks as the sand spilled out of the dump truck and onto the packed dirt floor of the ring. She nodded. Tried to swallow the lump in her throat.
“Hey . . . oh, hey . . . what . . . ? Why are you crying?” Rhett took her face in his big, warm hands. “What have I done now?” He brushed away her tears with his thumbs.
“Everything,” she managed.
“And that’s bad?”
“Probably.”
“I really do not understand.” He stared helplessly at her.
“I know.” She dredged up a smile.
Rhett pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, despite a whistle from the dump truck driver. “Can you help me to understand?”
“It’s complicated.” She sniffled.
“Try me. I do complicated well.”
“Fine. For example: I do not want to be in your arms right now.”
He stiffened and tried to drop them, tried to pull away.
She hung on to him. “But it feels so good when I am.”
He froze.
“I want to hate you, but I can’t. Especially when you do things like”—she gestured at the indoor arena—“like this! How am I supposed to hate you?”
“Uh . . .”
“But then I tell myself that it’s easy for you to order a building, and that to you, it actually seems inexpensive. So it really doesn’t mean much, right?”
“Jules.”
“But to me, it means everything, and I’m not okay with that!”
“With what?”
“With owing you.”
“You don’t. You’re overthinking things.”
“But—”
He lowered his head and placed his mouth firmly over hers. Warmth flooded her as she fell headlong into the kiss, and as Rhett backed her against the fence, the dump truck reversed, too, beeping as it changed course, getting ready to head back into town. The driver whistled again.
Neither Rhett nor Jules paid any attention.
“I got some champagne,” he said huskily when they finally came up for air. “To celebrate. This should be pretty decent stuff.”
“I wouldn’t know good champagne from shampoo,” Jules admitted.
“Well, then, maybe it’s time you had some. C’mon.” Rhett tugged her by the hand, over to where Scarlett was parked near the barn. He opened her passenger door, and there—in a silver ice bucket, no less—was a bottle chilling. Rhett grabbed it, along with two flutes from a lined box. And before she knew it they were in the cool dimness of the barn, where Blossom and Don Quixote observed them idly as they sank down together on the cement step that led to the tack room.
Rhett popped the cork, and several more equine noses popped out of the stalls to see what was happening. Inquiring minds.
He poured the pale liquid gold into the glasses, bubbles rushing euphorically to the surface. “To your indoor riding ring, Jules.” He handed her a glass.
Don Qui tossed his head and twitched his muzzle, displaying his toothy grin.
“I think he wants some,” she said, inclining her head toward him.
“He’s not getting fine champagne. He can have some beer, along with Frost.”
“Yeah, so . . . it seems to me that if we get bubbles, they should all get suds. You know—a pony keg.” She grinned at him.
Rhett groaned and clinked her glass against his.
“I had to,” she said apologetically. Then she raised the flute to her lips. The champagne flirted its way across her tongue, bubbles sparkling and celebrating before slipping down her throat. One sip was like . . . a gala.
“And I have to do this,” Rhett said. He kissed her again, champagne on his lips. “And this.” He took her glass, and set both flutes down on the floor of the barn. Then he picked her up, ignoring her startled laughter, and took her into the tack room, where he set her down astride a western saddle on a stand.
“What are you—” she began, but his mouth stopped the question. His hands began to answer it, cupping her face, moving down her neck, over her shoulders, and then farther south. Unbuttoning and unzipping things that should have stayed buttoned and zipped.
Jules found herself not caring about shoulds at the moment. But—
“Rhett,” she said against his mouth. “What if somebody . . . ?”
“I don’t give a damn,” he murmured, with a smile so full of wicked intimacy and tenderness that it arrested any further thought. “I need to see you on this saddle without any clothes on.”
“You do?” she said breathlessly.
“Yes, ma’am.” He took her into his arms and kicked the door to the tack room closed.
It was a good thing that horses—and donkeys—couldn’t tell any tales.
* * *
They drank the rest of the champagne in the tack room as the sun set, Jules wearing his shirt and not much else besides beard-burn.
Rhett’s dark hair was mussed and his eyes had gone a shade closer to nav
y in the encroaching shadows. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, reaching for her hand.
“You need glasses,” she teased.
“Nope.” His expression changed, darkened. He closed his eyes. “What I do need to do is talk to Grady. Somehow make this right with him . . .”
“Excuse me?” Jules set her flute down with a snap. “You need to leave Grady out of this. It’s none of his business.”
“He won’t see it that way,” Rhett said ruefully.
“I am not his property. I’m my own person.” She got to her feet, picking up her scattered clothing. She slipped out of Rhett’s shirt and dropped it on the saddle. “Why can’t you see me as separate from him?”
“Jules—”
“I’m sick of being treated as if I belong to my brother, or my dad, or anyone other than myself. It’s so offensive.”
“C’mon, don’t be this way.”
“We’re done, here, Rhett. I’ve got to feed and water the horses, anyway.”
“Jules.”
“This is a complete repeat of Dallas! Where you almost chewed off your arm to get away from me.”
“That’s not true. Can we talk about this?”
“No,” she said, her clothes now back on. “Sorry. I’m not in the mood to talk. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Rhett Braddock: Get out of my barn.” She jammed her feet into her rubber boots.
He sighed heavily as she walked away.
Chapter 22
Rhett had a restless night. Choose, Jules had said. Me or Grady? Impossible choice.
Jules or Grady? Grady or Jules?
Both Grady and Jules. There had to be a way. He just had to figure out how to broach the subject with Grady.
Unfortunately, he was stuck in Sunny’s Side Up waiting for Lila, who had called at the crack of dawn to demand a meeting. This couldn’t be good.
Six thirty-five A.M. Rhett checked his watch again as he sat in a booth with his cup of coffee, the ceramic rooster planter that held silver and napkins, and the red-checked tablecloth for company. “Don’t keep me waiting!” his sister had said.
