by Leslie North
“You’re worth it. You. You are worth fighting for. I don’t ever want to hear you say anything different.”
Nobody had ever said anything like that to her before, and she had no idea what she was supposed to say. As it turned out, she never got the chance to decide. Instead of letting his hand drop now that his point was made, he leaned in closer, closer, until the only thing in her universe was him. She tried to shake her head, to negate the wonderful things he was saying, and at the same moment, he moved in to kiss her on the cheek. The two actions coincided at precisely the perfect moment, and instead of landing on her cheek, his lips landed on hers. There was a moment of full body shock, and Katie waited for him to jump back and make his apologies. She waited, and still the kiss lingered.
If she’d been in trouble before, she was in a whole mess of it now.
9
“Come on; you can do it! You’ve just got to rub them together a little faster, that’s all. I know we can get this, buddy, we just have to put some elbow grease into it.”
Katie sat cross-legged in the middle of the Grant Ranch’s gravel front drive, focusing intently on the latest experiment at hand. Andy sat right beside her. It had been her idea to see if they could make a fire the “old-fashioned” way, but Andy had been immediately all-in. The two of them had been bent over their sticks, rubbing them together for a good fifteen minutes, without once striking success. Katie could feel herself getting frustrated, but Andy never wavered. She was rapidly beginning to think of him as her little scientist, and this experiment was no different. He was only six years old, but she couldn’t help admiring his tenacity and perseverance. He never let himself get discouraged but used every failure as an opportunity to learn and try something different. Even now, while their sticks were busy not igniting, he was looking around for something new to add.
“Here! We can use these, Katie. See?” He held out a little fistful of dried leaves, his eyes alight with excitement, “We can put ‘em down at the bottom, and when there’s a sparky-thingy, it’ll set them on fire. Think so?”
“Um, I think that’s kind of genius, little man. Let’s do it and see what we get. Did you learn about this in Scouts?”
“I dunno. Guess so. I don’t really listen. I only like talking to Ethan and the marshmallows and stuff. This won’t get me a badge or anything.”
“That’s okay,” Katie said, a little surprised by the slight downward tone Andy’s voice took at the mention of Scouts, “we don’t need to get any badges, do we?”
“Troop leader wants me to. Daddy wants me to, too. I just don’t really care.”
“You just want the play time and the mallows, huh?” she asked, putting an arm around his shoulders with a satisfying amount of meat added to them over the weeks she had been at the ranch. He looked up at her and grinned, shoving his tongue up against a gap where a baby tooth had recently lived.
“Mallows,” he repeated, “that’s funny. Yeah, just the playing and the mallows. That’s what I like.”
Andy went right back to his sticks, more determined than ever to light a fire. Katie sat back and watched, considering what he’d just said. She knew enough to be sure now that Ian wanted nothing more than to make his son happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. The thing about it was, when you wanted something badly enough, sometimes it made it difficult to see what was right in front of you. To Katie, it was sort of painfully obvious that Andy would be happier having a playdate in the dirt with Ethan than going to Scouts. She just wasn’t sure it was her place to say anything to Ian about it. She’d already heard, some from Ian and some from Carol when she came to visit Andy, about the extracurricular mishaps the poor kid had already been through. There had been swim team, which came to an abrupt and messy end when Andy wound up in the hospital and got tubes in his ears. Before that had been a black eye in T-ball, before that some serious bumps and scrapes from rodeo. Rumor had it there had even been some talk about dance classes before Carol had gently but firmly convinced Ian that Andy simply wasn’t coordinated enough. Katie knew something about failure, having gone through it so spectacularly herself. She knew that enough of it could create a complex, and that was the last thing she wanted to see sweet Andy saddled with.
“Whew,” she sighed, sitting back on her heels, “you know what?”
“Hm?” Andy asked, copying her posture and blowing the hair out of his face. He looked like he was losing interest in their project at last, which was perfectly fine with her.
“I’m not so sure we’re going to get this today. It looks like the fire gods aren’t with us.”
“Yeah, I think maybe so,” he agreed, happy as a clam. That was good because Katie had a surprise for him, and she thought he was going to be way more into it than playing with two sticks.
“You want to know what else?” she asked innocently, getting to her feet and helping Andy to do the same.
“Hm?” he asked, sliding his hot little hand into hers companionably.
“A little birdie told me that Matty was hoping to take you on a horseback ride this afternoon. Don’t worry, I told him you’re very busy, with lots of important things to—”
Before Katie could finish her sentence, Andy was off and running in the direction of the stables, crowing with delight at the top of his lungs. Matty was one of Andy’s favorite ranch hands, and he was already standing in the open barn door, wearing a wide grin and waving Andy on. Katie brushed her ass off, then wiped her hands on the front of her jeans before giving up entirely. At a certain point, there was just too much dirt and dust to do away with without the use of a shower.
And speaking of showers, there was an outdoor shower jerry-rigged around the corner of a barn that Katie had had her eye on since she first arrived on the farm. With Andy otherwise occupied and nothing pressing in the house or the kitchen, Katie didn’t see why she shouldn’t give herself a little treat, too. Humming softly, she ambled through the field’s tall grass, letting her fingers graze along the tops of the wildflowers as she went. She was almost to the shower door before she realized she wasn’t the only one there.
“Oh!” she exclaimed softly on a sharp intake of breath, “Oh my God.”
She was most definitely not the only one there, nor was she the only one with the idea of making use of the outdoor shower on such a pretty day. Ian had beat her to it and seemed to have no idea that she was there. It even sounded like he was humming the same tune she’d just been humming. It was one of the country songs he was always playing while she made lunch. She liked to tease him for it, but secretly, she was sort of becoming a fan.
What she needed to do was turn around and get the hell out of there. If Ian looked up and caught her standing there like a deer in the headlights, it would result in the kind of mortification she would never live down. Even so, she couldn’t seem to make her legs work. What she really couldn’t do was make herself look away. Not when there was so much to take in. She couldn’t see everything, but that made it almost more enticing. She could glimpse just enough to know for a fact that his body was even better than she had already thought. There were glimpses of arms, pecs, the ropey muscles of his thighs and ass. His skin was taut and tanned, his body so lean and sexy it made her mouth water. She could easily have stood there until she got herself in real trouble, except that Ian’s eyes finally moved up and away from whatever thoughts had been preoccupying him. Katie squealed with fear, then clamped her hands over her mouth. She turned and ran back in the direction of the house, but not before she caught a glimpse of what he had going for him between his legs. That was something she would be thinking about that night in bed for sure, whether she wanted to or not. By the time she made it through the front door, she knew that a shower was definitely in order. A cold one.
When she got to the top of the stairs, though, she found Carol in the home office, sitting in front of the computer. She looked up at the sound of Katie’s feet on the landing and smiled. Katie smiled back, happy to see the woman she was fast considering
to be a friend. She looked forward to their visits, as well as the extra bit of help.
“Katie, sugar, come on in here, won’t you?” she asked. Katie did as she was bid willingly enough. Her shower could wait.
“Hey, Carol, so good to see you. What are you up to?”
“Well, I’m computing, sugar, and it got me thinking.”
“About what?” Katie smiled.
“About you, of course,” Carol answered promptly and with not a hint of jest.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You and what you’re going to do. What are you going to do, sugar? About all of this?”
Katie’s stomach dropped as she traveled around the computer desk to get a look at Carol’s screen. She saw one thing that surprised her and one thing that definitely didn’t. She tackled the second thing first, wanting, as ever, to get it out of the way and done with.
“You know I already know about that, don’t you?” Katie asked gently, looking at one of many articles written about her fall from grace and the accompanying scathing comments.
“Of course you do, sugar, but what are you doing about it?” Carol pressed. Katie was used to the questions. Those had come hard and fast in the immediate aftermath of her massive mistake. What she wasn’t used to was questions like this. Carol didn’t want to know why, not like everyone else. She wanted to know the solution, and that was something Katie hadn’t yet determined.
“Um, nothing, I guess. There really isn’t anything to do. It’s already out there in the universe, isn’t it? Once it’s out there, there’s not a whole lot you can do.”
“For what it’s worth, I think you got a raw deal. The whole thing seems unfair to me.”
“That’s so sweet, Carol, but it was fair. I did something wrong, and I faced the consequences for it. Simple as that.”
“No!” she insisted, her face a little red with indignation, “Not simple as that. If it hadn’t been for where you came from... if it hadn’t been for who your father was—”
“Believe me, Carol, that’s not a road I want to go down. We all have issues with our parents, right? My dad was a good one. There were plenty of benefits I got from being his daughter. If I suffered anything for being associated with him, it’s that he was always so good and what I did was so, so not.”
“Katie, really—”
“Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that. It’s all in the past. What I want to talk about is the other browser tab you’ve got open.” She reached around Carol and clicked on the tab for the online dating site.
“Oh,” Carol answered, immediately going beet red, “that. It’s nothing, sugar, just an old lady’s fantasy of a romantic act two. It’s so silly. I honestly don’t know what made me do it. I guess recently it’s just felt like love’s in the air or something of the sort.”
“Carol, online dating is a great idea!” Katie exclaimed enthusiastically. Carol was one of the best people she had met in a long time, and she absolutely hated the idea of her being alone. Ian told her about Carol and her late husband, what a love affair the two of them had. Her husband had passed a couple of years ago, and as far as Ian knew, Carol hadn’t ever so much as spoken to another man with romance on the brain ever since. If that was changing now, Katie was all for helping it along.
Carol sighed, closing the laptop. “I don’t know if I’m up for all of that again. Look at us both, won’t you? I guess we might be better off if I’d never opened the stupid computer after all. Serves me right for sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong.”
“Where’d you stick your nose, you old troublemaker?”
Katie jumped about a mile in the air and she and Carol both turned guiltily towards the study door. There stood Ian and Andy, both of them looking to be in the best of moods. Andy’s hair was windswept from his danger-laden foray into the land of horseback riding. He was too small and inexperienced to handle more than short bursts of the activity, but he looked thrilled, nevertheless. Ian’s hair was still wet from his shower, and when Katie thought about that, she turned bright red. Desperate to redirect her thoughts, she cleared her throat and clapped her hands briskly.
“Right, that settles it. We need a diversion.”
“A diversion from what?” Ian asked, a slightly puzzled look on his face.
“Everything. And I have the perfect idea.” She skipped across the room to an overstuffed bookcase and plucked a fat spine from the top shelf. She turned, her face split open with a grin, and held it up happily.
“I’ve been thinking about getting this started for Andy for a while now, and I think this is the perfect time. Harry Potter! We’ll start from the beginning and see where it takes us. What do you say?” she asked, looking from Carol, to Andy, and then finally, heart skipping a beat in her chest, Ian.
“The book, though?” Andy asked doubtfully, “How ‘bout the movie? I heard those are real neat.”
“Um, no way—” Katie started to say at the same time Ian opened his mouth to speak. She stopped, smiled, and waited to hear his verdict.
“Andy, my boy,” Ian said, ruffling his hair and motioning for Katie and Carol to follow him to the downstairs couch, “there’s an important lesson for you to learn in life and that’s that the book is almost always better than the movie. You should always, always read the book first.”
And that, Katie thought, was just about the best verdict the man could have delivered.
10
“Shit. Shit!”
Ian stopped just outside of the kitchen door, happy Katie couldn’t see his face yet. Listening to the tone of her voice, it sounded like she was in no mood to be messed with. He would probably do best to walk away and revisit her kitchen later. Because as far as Ian was concerned, it was her kitchen now. He didn’t need to be a genius to guess that she was having a rare hard go of it. She sounded just the way he felt when he was having a bitch of a time getting an especially stubborn colt broken. If anyone dared to talk to him at times like that, that someone was liable to regret it. Perversely, that was exactly why he wanted to see what she was doing now. He coughed, made a half-hearted attempt to wipe the smile off his face, and entered enemy territory.
“Whoa, there, little lady. Sounds like something’s going on in here. Don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound pissed in the kitchen before. Thought this was your happy place.”
“It used to be my happy place,” she countered, her face flushed and her thick red hair piled on top of her head in a mess of curls. While she was focused on the source of her annoyance, Ian took advantage of the opportunity to give her a good look up and down. Gone were her customary heels in favor of a pair of flats. Instead of one of her little dresses was a pair of truly excellently fitting jeans with a simple V-neck shirt on top. The only bit of her customary flair was a large, flashy necklace that glinted in the kitchen light. All in all, the effect was a startling one. She was a sight to see in her normal wardrobe, but like this? Simply put, she looked hot as hell. Good enough to eat, he thought, then cleared his throat. If he wasn’t careful, he wasn’t going to be able to behave himself, and Katie clearly wasn’t in the mood to be toyed with.
“Okay,” he said slowly, taking measure of the scene, “what’s the problem?”
“Ugh,” she huffed, “it’s nothing. Honestly, I’m being a baby. It’s just this recipe I’ve been trying to work out. I thought it would be perfect and I think it still can be if I can get it to come together. It’s the ‘if’ that’s the problem.”
“Have you not made it before?” Ian asked, feeling slow and stupid. He didn’t know enough about baking to be more specific.
“No,” she smiled ruefully, “I haven’t. I’ve only just made it up this morning. These things always take time, and I know that, I know that, but I’ve never been a fan of waiting, and I really wanted to serve this for Andy tonight.”
“For Andy?” Ian asked, surprised. He’d never figured that she’d be so riled up over a recipe for his son. She looked even hotter now than she had only a
couple of seconds before.
“Well, sure, for Andy. I thought up this really fabulous dessert that’s completely egg and dairy free, and will still taste like heaven. Only…” She stopped talking and gestured towards two mixing bowls with one arm. Ian looked over and saw one bowl with little chunks in it, one bowl with a heap of glop that looked decidedly not right, and a whole lot more of both in the sink. He looked back at Katie, and he couldn’t help it; he started to laugh.
“Oh, right, ha, ha. I know it looks funny, but it’s actually completely maddening. I think I know what the trouble is, too.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, really getting into it now, “What’s that?”
“My hands,” she answered sadly. He looked down at them and saw that her fingers were long and slim. The perfect kind of hands to hold. He looked up again quickly, feeling like he’d got caught doing something he shouldn’t have. But if she’d noticed anything, it didn’t register on her face. She was in the zone, and nothing was getting her out.
“Your hands look pretty good to me,” he said mildly.
“Right, but there aren’t enough of them! That’s it. That’s the issue. I need two sets of hands,” she finished. There was a finality to her tone when she ended, something that made it sound like her mind was made up. When she looked at him, her frustration replaced by a wicked little grin, Ian realized where this was headed.
“Oh, no,” he laughed, holding both hands up palms-out, “I don’t think you want me on the crew. I’ve never made anything more than toast, and that didn’t go so well.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fine. And it’s for Andy, okay? Just remind yourself of that while we’re in the trenches. It’s for Andy, so it’s worth it.”
“Right you are,” he said, smiling despite himself. “So let’s do this.”
“Let’s,” she agreed. “Ready? Do you feel like a soldier about to do battle?”
“Honestly? Yes, a little bit,” he agreed. She threw her head back and laughed so that the perfect curve of her milky white neck was entirely exposed. He licked his lips, thinking about how sweet her skin would taste under the tip of his tongue. He shook his head quickly to clear the naughty thought and looked to Katie for his next instructions.
