by Hope Ramsay
“Uh, well.” She cocked her head to one side. “I didn’t exactly make it. But it turns out that two cans of chicken soup were affordable…barely. But tomorrow is payday, right? And besides, I owe you for the dog leash and food, and an apology for thinking that you were only being nice to me because Willow was paying you. So a couple of cans of chicken soup is really small, you know? As a way to show my appreciation for your kindness.”
Except it wasn’t small at all. He figured she’d probably spent half of her cash on hand for a couple cans of soup. And for some reason, the magnitude of that generosity blew him away. He stood there not really knowing how to respond.
He ought to send her home. But he didn’t want to.
“I know,” she said on a sigh. “You probably don’t want me hanging around. But honestly, I’m not one of those women. I don’t think I have any sort of hold on you because of what happened on Tuesday when you came to chop wood. I was worried because no one at the inn seemed to know why you needed two days off, and I…” She stopped abruptly. “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”
He stepped forward and plucked the bag from her arms. “Thank you. I’m not sick, but I appreciate your kindness.”
He stared down into her big brown eyes for a long, breathless moment, feeling like a goofball teenager who’d just discovered the opposite sex. How the hell did Amy Lyndon manage to scramble his brains every time he looked into her eyes? Right now he just wanted to strip her naked and bury himself in her.
She’d be the perfect diversion, but he couldn’t do that. Not with Daddy here.
“What’s the matter?” she asked softly.
He ground his teeth as the urge to tell her about Daddy’s return came over him, almost as if he’d been waiting for someone to come knocking on his door asking if he might need help. Sharing his feelings about Daddy wasn’t something he did on a regular basis.
But instead of blowing her off, he said, “It’s my daddy,” and his voice wobbled. He needed to get a grip.
“Oh no. Is he okay?”
“Yes. No. It’s complicated.”
“I can heat soup, and you can tell me. I’m sure I can relate to difficult father issues.”
He almost laughed. “I doubt it, Amy.”
“Okay, but I’m a good listener. People tell me that all the time. I think it’s because I don’t usually have much to say, you know?”
Except when she babbled like a brook. That thought worked its way right through the worry and the anger and the guilt that had swallowed him up the last couple of days. “I got a better idea,” he said. “Let’s go to your place and start a fire and heat up the soup.”
She blinked up at him. “Courtney told me you lived in one of those tiny houses that only had room enough for one person. But it doesn’t look that small.”
“It only appears larger because you’re so small. Trust me, we don’t want to hang out here.”
“Okay. Let’s go build a fire. But for the record, I built one for myself yesterday. I don’t know if I did it right, but it burned okay.”
He had to stifle another laugh. “Honey, I think you have the potential to be a great fire starter, among many other things.”
Chapter Twelve
Amy had to coax the story out of Dusty. About how his father had gotten into a fight and ended up in the hospital. About how his father was sick and needed a place to stay. He spoke about his father in a monotone, as if he were trying to hide his feelings, but Amy could see the deep emotions shining from his troubled baby blues like a neon light.
“What are you not telling me?” she asked as they sat at the small table in the cabin’s tiny kitchen, empty soup bowls between them.
Dusty cocked his head. “What makes you think there’s more?”
“Because there is.” She brazenly touched the back of his hand. His skin, warm and rough beneath her fingers, sent a sexual rush through her. She wanted him to turn his palm over so she could hold his hand.
Instead he pulled back as if she’d scalded him. “You don’t know a thing about me.” He dropped his hand into his lap.
“That’s true. But I’d like to know more.”
“About my father? There’s nothing much to know. He’s a bastard and a drunk. And don’t think just because your daddy locked you out of the house that you have some deeper understanding of my life. You don’t.”
“I never said I did. So, does that mean your father locked you out of the house when you were younger?”
He let go of a long, deep sigh, as if he were exhaling all the trouble in the world. “Yeah, he did, all the time, whenever he got drunk. Willow’s mom used to watch out for me. I crashed at the Jaybird Café all the time, and sometimes out at her farm. And sometimes I had to make a fire in the old warehouse and sleep there on the dirty floor in a sleeping bag.
“But I got the last laugh, or so I thought. I bought him out eight years ago and kicked him out of his own house. I handed him more than a hundred grand in cash, and it was worth every penny because I thought he’d go and never come back. God alone knows what he did with that money, but he sure came running the minute he read Sally Hawkes’s article in the Winchester Daily.”
“He came back because of that?”
“Yeah. He thinks he’s entitled to a payday even though the land’s no longer in his name.” Dusty paused for a long moment, giving Amy a deep, sober glance that melted her heart. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to convince folks that I’m not my father. And I’ve failed. This whole fight with the county is all because of who I am. If I had a different last name, do you think the Jefferson County Historical Society would’ve come up with their plan? No. And that’s the point. As far as anyone is concerned, I’m white trash.”
“That’s crap, Dusty. Everyone at Eagle Hill Manor respects you. A lot.”
“Maybe, but that’s just a handful of people.” He shoved back from the table and stood. “Amy, you’ll never know how much I appreciate the fact that you spent your last couple of dollars on this soup. But I really shouldn’t be here with you. I should get going.”
“No, wait. I get that you think you shouldn’t be here because you’re my boss. And if that was your reason for walking away from me on Tuesday, I’ll accept it. But if you walked away because you think you’re not good enough for me, that’s just BS.”
Dusty replied with silence.
“Damn it all. Why is it that the entire world wants to treat me with kid gloves? I can’t even have a no-strings, bad-boy experience without the bad boy himself getting all noble on me.”
“Amy, don’t be ridiculous.”
She got up and moved to stand right in front of him. “I. Am. Not. Ridiculous. I’m so tired of people accusing me of that. If you respect me, don’t treat me like I don’t have a brain in my head. Treat me like you treat any other woman.”
They stood there for a long moment staring into each other’s eyes while a coil of sexual desire twisted through Amy. Did she dare go after what she wanted?
Would he let her?
There was only one way to find out.
He started to turn away, but she grabbed him, lacing her hands behind his neck. “So, you said something about teaching me to make a fire.”
She pulled his head down to her level. He gave her only token resistance, and when their lips met, his resistance vanished, and the kiss, which started as a soft dance of lips and tongues, turned hard and hot.
She leaned all the way into his rock-hard chest as his hands came down to her hips and pulled her close. His noble reticence fled as he pressed himself against her, cupping his broad palms on her butt like a proper bad boy should. She groaned out loud at the delicious sensations his touch unleashed.
And then Dusty took charge.
He hitched her up as if she weighed nothing and flipped her so that she was cradled in his arms. “Before we take this to the next level, Amy, I need to make it clear that no one is paying me to be nice to you, okay? And right now I’m not really thinking about being nice a
t all.”
His words set off a riot of anticipation inside her, especially when he strode off in the direction of the cabin’s bedroom. Now, this was more like it. A Casanova needed to take charge.
“I like naughty,” she said.
“Really?”
She nodded. “I have lots of fantasies about stuff.”
“Why does this not surprise me,” he said in a dry tone, and then followed with, “I like a woman with a good imagination.”
He carried her into the bedroom and gently put her down on her feet, and then he cupped her head and started with the kisses again. His tongue knew things about kissing that Amy had never experienced before. Everywhere he touched, her cells came alive as if they’d been living a pretend life until right this minute. He awakened her in every sense of the word.
But when he freed her from her shirt and bra and got a good, long look at her puny breasts, she braced for his disappointment. Dusty was too kind to say anything, but…
Oh, wait. He put his talented tongue to work on those nonexistent breasts and ignited an all-consuming lust that almost took her away right then and there. She groaned out loud, and damned if he didn’t answer her with one of his own.
He was turned on. For real. Wow.
The idea that she could turn on a guy like Dusty McNeil gave her a strange sense of power she’d never known before. She didn’t have to wait for him. She didn’t have to play this any way other than the way she wanted it. She didn’t have to be nice or restrained or quiet.
So she tackled his belt and his zipper like a kid set loose in a candy store. He let her play while he deftly freed her from her jeans. Eventually he picked her up and tossed her on the bed like she weighed nothing. He followed after and proceeded to make every one of her bad-boy fantasies come true.
* * *
Dusty was gone in the morning, and Amy told herself she didn’t want it any other way. A girl couldn’t expect more than what she’d gotten from the Casanova of Shenandoah Falls. But he hadn’t gone without leaving her something. Not a sappy note, but a fire burning in the woodstove.
And that was fine. She didn’t need sappy notes. She’d gotten everything she needed from him, and she hoped she’d given him something back. Maybe a little space, given the father issues he was working through.
Still, there was the whole boss-employee issue between them, and Amy didn’t quite know how she would react to him at work, so she was relieved when Courtney pulled her away from the grounds crew almost as soon as she arrived at the inn on Friday morning. Instead of raking and weeding, Amy spent the morning working on the flower arrangements in the chapel and didn’t come face-to-face with Dusty until lunchtime, when he sneaked up on her in the dog kennel.
“I’ve been searching all over the place for you,” he said in that deep voice of his.
She turned to find him leaning against the chain-link fence in a loose-limbed male stance that immediately fired up her hormones. Damn, it almost hurt to gaze upon all that tanned, golden-haired goodness. She almost had to squint when he smiled out of the corner of his mouth and his baby blues lit up like a Broadway billboard.
“It’s payday,” he said. “Did you forget?”
Damn. She had forgotten. How could she forget? After she bought the chicken soup yesterday, she had only four dollars and a couple of pennies left—not even enough to do all her laundry at the coin wash.
Dusty held up an envelope. “It ain’t much, honey, but you’ve earned it. Courtney is raving about you. Mario wants to adopt you as his daughter. And it’s clear that Sven thinks you are a dog-obedience goddess.”
She wanted to ask him what he thought about her, but that would be out of line. And probably immature. She didn’t need to beg for compliments from him. After all, she’d earned respect from Mario and Courtney without sleeping with them.
Still, somehow his opinion of her mattered more than anything.
So she turned her back while she checked Sven and Muffin’s water bowls, which were already full, and gathered her composure before she ducked through the kennel’s door. “I’ve been leaving Muffin here with Sven to keep him company. I hope that’s okay, because the kennel is really big. And I was thinking that Willow ought to advertise it, you know? Like for guests who want to bring their dogs on vacation. Maybe she could hire someone to be the doggy day care person. Like a cruise director for canines. Someone who could make up games and train them and, I don’t know, do fun stuff.”
She was babbling again. Damn.
“I see you’ve gotten over your fear of dogs.”
“Yeah, I guess. I had a bad experience when I was little.”
“Here.” He handed her the paycheck, and their fingers inadvertently brushed in the exchange. A shock wave of lust traveled up her arm and right to her nipples. Good thing her oversized Eagle Hill Manor golf shirt hid the reaction, but she could have sworn that Dusty noticed anyway. He hesitated for a moment while his ears turned an adorable shade of red and his baby blues darkened. Wow. She’d made Casanova blush.
You’d think, after all the stuff they’d done to each other last night, they’d be satisfied. They’d be over it. But no. Apparently not. They hovered for a long moment as a force as old as time pulled and tugged at them. Amy’s pulse rate climbed as their mouths moved slowly toward each other. Her girl parts began to anticipate the kiss, and a surge of excitement rushed through her.
And then an unwanted and thoroughly recognizable voice interrupted. “Amy, where the heck are you hiding? You can’t really be back here with the dogs,” Aunt Pam shouted from somewhere around the corner near the front of the barn.
Dusty jumped away from Amy so fast that by the time Aunt Pam rounded the corner and came into sight, he’d turned his back and was walking away. That had been a very close call, and all the more troubling because Willow followed in Pam’s wake, wearing an unhappy expression that turned darker still when she encountered Dusty on the path. They exchanged an ominous glance fraught with meaning.
Uh-oh. Not good, especially when Willow turned to watch Dusty as he continued on his way toward the entrance to his office with a frown on her face.
As usual, Aunt Pam had missed the exchange entirely. Amy steeled herself for Pam’s inevitable comment about her dirty clothes.
“Amy, enough is enough. I’m desperate for your help.”
Wow. No comment about the dirt? She had definitely come up in the world. Since when had Pam ever been desperate for anyone’s help, much less hers? “You need my help?” Amy asked, her words laced with genuine surprise.
“It’s Danny,” Pam said in a flat voice.
“What, is he okay?” Worry pooled in Amy’s stomach. Danny might be misguided, but she loved him with all her heart.
“He’s fine physically. But that woman is about to drive us all crazy with her wedding plans. Thank God she and her girlfriends have decided to stay in New York for the weekend. Which is why I need you. We have the whole weekend to talk Danny out of this wedding. And I can’t think of anyone better than you to make this happen. He listens to you.”
“No, he doesn’t. Not on this score. I already told him not to marry someone he doesn’t love.”
“What?” Pam’s eyes almost bugged right out of her head. “Amy, don’t be ridiculous. Of course they have to get married. They have a child together.”
“So?” Amy tucked the envelope with her pay into her back pocket.
“My God, Amy, do I have to explain the way the world works to you?”
Amy pressed her lips together and refrained from getting all up into Aunt Pam’s face. No one in her family thought she had a brain in her head. No one thought she could manage on her own. No one valued her in the least. She was a problem everyone wanted to solve, and she hated it.
And maybe that’s why Dusty McNeil attracted her. He’d allowed her to be someone else last night—a naughty, worldly girl who could choose to indulge her fantasies without strings. What’s more, Dusty McNeil knew all about her s
hortcomings and her ignorance about some things. But he didn’t think she was stupid. And he trusted her to do things for him and for herself. Hell, he’d even sent her out snipe hunting—an activity that had forced her to face a lot of her fears. And even if she’d failed to catch the snipe, the experience had been worth it.
So really, if she was so ridiculous, why had Pam come seeking her help?
Her courage fully stoked, Amy turned on her aunt. “I’m sure there’s some law in California or Nevada that would allow Danny to legally claim Scarlett as his child. And I’m sure he and Mia can work out some kind of custody arrangement. He doesn’t need a marriage license to be financially responsible for the baby. And I got the impression that the only way he got Mia to agree to marry him was to put the whole thing on television. Besides, it’s pretty clear that she’s only marrying Danny for the TV ratings and his trust fund. She could care less about him. Or Scarlett. And Danny doesn’t love her either.”
“Amy, what has gotten into you?”
“Nothing,” she said, swallowing back a million things she wanted to say out loud but couldn’t. “But I don’t have time to help you, Aunt Pam. Lunch is over, and Mario has me scheduled to plant a few Rhododendron ferrugineum in the new bed down by the chapel.” The Latin rolled off her tongue as if she’d been saying it all her life.
She turned and started down the path, but Willow stopped her. “Did Dusty teach you those plant names?” she asked.
Amy shook her head and pulled the Jefferson County Library’s field guide to trees and shrubs out of her back pocket. “Nope. I figured it out from this book. And I really need to thank you for the job, Willow. I love it. I love getting dirty. I love being outside all the time. I love working with flowers and plants. And dogs. Who knew I had secret talents for gardening and dog training?”
Pam’s face paled. “Amy Jessica Lyndon, are you out of your mind? A gardener? Really? That’s beneath you. All of this is beneath you. Don’t you realize that?”
Amy gave her aunt a long stare. “No, I guess I don’t. But then you know me. I’m dumb and ordinary, and I always screw things up. All of that is probably true, but one thing isn’t, Aunt Pam. I am not ridiculous. I know how things work.
