The man clenched his jaw in the back, and she waited to hear the snap of his teeth breaking. “Like I said—what did you do to my dog? He doesn’t behave for anyone.”
Sooo…wait. He hadn’t been accusing her of abusing the animal?
“I just, ah, tried to be assertive with him. Let him know who’s in charge. You know.”
“I don’t know, actually.” His jaw loosened but he still seemed grudging with his words. “Thanks.”
“You should watch The Dog Wrangler.”
“Right,” he said sourly.
Wow. This guy and his dog both needed attitude adjustments. Big-time. Raising her brows—was there something bitter here in the water in Napa or what?—she turned back to her open trunk and suitcase.
“I’ll just take my bag and check in—”
“Let me.” Before she could object, and she planned to object because she hated it when overzealous bellhops or doormen snatched the bags out of your hand in their relentless quest for a big tip, even when you could clearly handle the bags yourself, he reached for her bag. “I’m happy to help.”
She studied his grim face. “I can see that. But really, I’ve got it.”
Ignoring her, he set the bag on the ground and walked around to peer inside the car’s window for who knew what. Seeing nothing but empty car, he looked back up the drive, as though he expected the imminent arrival of someone or something.
“Where’s the rest?” he asked.
“Of what?”
“Your luggage? Your entourage?”
Oh. Oh, okay. She got it. He, like other idiots worldwide, assumed that because she was a famous model, she was a diva-licious bitch. Or maybe he’d read some of her press coverage from back in the day, when she was young and stupid, and thought she was still as big an airhead as she’d ever been. Whatever. Clearly he needed a little schooling in both manners and customer service relations, and she was just the woman to do it.
“I take it you know who I am.”
Nothing at all changed in his expression, but the quick skim of that light brown gaze down her body and back up again all but ignited sparks across her skin.
“Every man who’s ever bought the swimsuit issue knows who you are.”
Livia froze, her pulse galloping away like a bee-stung horse, because she realized, with sudden excruciating clarity, that this man was trouble. Men checked her out all the time, which was no big deal. She was used to and impervious to it.
This was different.
This was the subtle peeling away of her cute little capri pants and fluttery top. There was banked heat in those eyes, as if he could look at her now and see her as she’d appeared on that Sports Illustrated cover when she was nineteen: sun-kissed and dewy, wearing a white triangle scrap of a bikini bottom with the strings undone and dangling on one side, and a loopy crocheted top that displayed every inch of her upper body—except for her nipples—in vivid detail. She’d had her windblown hair in her face, her hips cocked to one side, her lips and thighs parted, and sand dusted across one side of her body while the blue waters off Fiji lapped in the distance.
She’d been a young dingbat then, but as beautiful as she’d ever been—or probably ever would be—in her life. This man, whoever he was, remembered all that. He’d looked at that cover shot and now thought he knew her, but he knew nothing about the girl inside that shell.
Men never did, and she was used to their snap judgments.
What she wasn’t used to was the responsive curl of heat in her belly and the tug she felt toward this jerk, as though she’d been secretly magnetized and he was the North Pole.
Shake it off, girl.
“You might know who I am,” she said, painfully aware that her Georgia accent was thickening the way it always did when she was upset, so that might became maht and I became ah, “but you don’t know me. I don’t travel with an entourage when my job doesn’t require it, and I only brought one suitcase.” She snatched it up from the ground before he could touch it again. “And I will carry it myself.”
Propelled by her wounded dignity, she stalked off toward the house, well aware of the surprised widening of his eyes. She’d put several feet between him and his mangy dog when he spoke again.
“Whatever you want.”
The subtle mockery made something snap in her brain, covering her vision with red. Halfway to a graceful exit, she discovered that she couldn’t let this jackass have the last word. It just wasn’t in her.
So she marched back up to stand in his face, suitcase in tow, and pointed her free index finger right at his perfectly straight nose. “You’re very rude,” she informed him. “You better believe I’m going to complain to the owners about you.”
To her further annoyance, this pronouncement only amused him, if the slow smile creeping across his face was any indication. “You do that,” he said. “They’ve had problems with me before. Make sure you tell them my name’s J.R.”
It would have been so nice to smack that wicked smirk right off his face and teach him a thing or two about the right way to treat a) women and b) paying guests, but that would have required moving and she found she couldn’t do that. There was something so sexy about this man, so unabashedly masculine and unaffected, that he made her breath hitch and her heartbeat stutter. And that was something that athletes, actors and rock stars alike hadn’t been able to do to her in more years than she cared to remember.
The amusement slipped off his face, leaving something altogether more disturbing and intense. Something that, as the old folks liked to say back home, scared the stuffing out of her.
Time to go, Livia.
Pivoting, she walked off toward the house.
The dog scrambled to his feet and ambled along after her.
Chapter 2
Man, what a day.
Hunter Chambers Jr. edged the pickup onto the road and beneath the cool tunnel created by the elms’ outstretched branches overhead, heading home after a quick trip to the neighbor’s winery. Rolling all the windows down, he enjoyed the rush of air on his overheated face and arms, although the refreshment came at a steep price: now he could smell himself. It wasn’t pretty. Atop the mild funk of clean sweat was the not-so-clean aroma of mud. What a winning combination that was. It was like he’d rolled several miles in the muck rather than merely walked the vines, picked a few bunches of cabernet—almost ready now; another couple days should do it—and carried the load on his head.
Braking as he went into a switchback, he slid the baseball cap back and swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Mistake. Big mistake. A glance in the rearview mirror showed an unfortunate brown streak across his skin, adding to the general pigpen effect.
Nasty.
Just the way he liked it.
There was nothing like a hard day outside from dawn to dusk to make him feel like he’d done something, and the sweat and dirt were badges he wore with honor. You couldn’t grow grapes sitting nice and clean in the air-conditioned inside—no, siree. Today had been especially productive, especially grueling, and he couldn’t be more pleased.
Especially since he’d worked off some of the agitation caused by that woman this morning.
Livia Blake—aka Trouble with a capital T.
Having put her out of his mind only through a lot of sweat equity, he wasn’t going to think about her now. No, he wasn’t. He would keep his mind on, ah…he’d keep his mind on…
Oh, yeah. Shower.
Yeah. An emergency shower was in his immediate future; possibly two. And then it’d be time to open a nice bottle of—
Holy shit.
He came out of the curve and had to cut the wheel hard and stomp the break to keep from plowing into a stupid-ass biker stopped on the shoulder. Hell, it wasn’t even the shoulder. Biker and bike were standing on the edge of the road, which was where you hung out when your fondest wish was to be launched three hundred feet into the air and then smashed into roadkill beneath the tires of an oncoming truck.
&nb
Dumbass. Like he was the reckless one. And Hunter would have been at fault if he’d hit the idiot and culled a weak and clearly stupid member from the herd. Was that fair? Giving the horn a furious honk, he glanced in the side mirror to see if the fool needed help and that was when he realized who it was.
Oh, shit.
It was her. Livia Blake. Trouble.
His gut lurched with a crazy excitement that had nothing to do with playing the Good Samaritan and everything to do with her. Keep going, he told himself, but the damn truck was already reversing as though it’d been caught by an invisible tail hook and reeled in. A smarter man would’ve sent someone back for her, but he and smart hadn’t been on speaking terms since he laid eyes on the woman that morning.
Stopping the truck properly on the shoulder, where all stopped vehicles belonged, he got out and took his time about walking back to her. Like the worst kind of Peeping Tom, he sent up a quick prayer of thanksgiving that his shades allowed him to study her with something like discretion. Which was shameful, especially for a man who had a mother and a small daughter. Women were not objects, and they should not be ogled. He was ashamed of himself. Truly. Deep down—deep, deep, deep down—in the farthest reaches of his soul, he felt like pond scum for checking her out so thoroughly. God would probably punish him later, and he’d deserve it.
He stared, anyway.
That was the funny thing, not that it was really funny. He’d been aware of Livia Blake, of course, and he’d ogled her in the occasional Victoria’s Secret catalog that’d strayed across his path over the years. Certainly he’d seen that cover issue of Sports Illustrated and lusted, but that was in the generic way that all men universally lusted over all the women in that issue. Wow. Sexy models… I wonder what’s in the fridge.
But this…
Seeing her in person was a whole ’nother kettle of fish, and he wasn’t quite used to it yet. Especially since she’d far exceeded his expectations and was beautiful in addition to intelligent, funny and intriguing.
Having scrambled back onto the road after darting out of the way, she now bent to pick up the bike. Which was the perfect way for him to appreciate the way her shorts highlighted both her round plum of an ass and her long, smooth and shapely brown legs. This was no tiny little five-footer who you’d be afraid of bending and breaking in bed if things got a little too enthusiastic. Oh, no. This was an Amazon who’d wrap those strong thighs around him—a man, he meant, not him—and give as good as she got before demanding more and then more again.
In a fateful move that made this one of the luckiest days of his life, she’d worn a stretchy little tank-top-type thing in white. White! Which, out here in the late afternoon sunlight, was really something to see. Maybe that top looked fine in a dressing room, but she’d apparently been riding that bike hard—lucky bike—and she was nice and sweaty. Wet and sweaty. And, as every man in the world knew, white top plus sweaty woman equals a spectacular view of breasts.
No doubt she’d die if she knew it, but he could see… Jesus, he could see everything. Rounded breasts just saggy enough for him to see that they were hers and not some pair purchased via installment plan from a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Dark areolae, pointy nipples, the thrilling valley between. Then all that bounty gave way to a narrow waist and curved hips. Anyone who thought all supermodels were bony anorexics with no hips, butt or breasts had never laid eyes on this fantastic creature; no wonder she got millions just for showing up and smiling.
She was one tall drink of water, and he wanted to lower his head and drink.
The face was even better, if that was possible. All the makeup was gone now, not that she’d been wearing much to begin with, replaced with the damp glow of a healthy woman who’d gotten some good exercise. Her hair was up, damp around the edges with curling strands skimming her neck. Those hazel eyes glittered with fire, and her pouty lips were ripe for kissing.
She looked, in short, as though she’d spent a thoroughly satisfying afternoon in bed, and this view of her was definitely not the sort of thing he needed burned into his brain if he wanted to ignore and then forget her.
“You.” She kicked the stand down on the mountain bike, hung the helmet from the handlebars, planted her feet wide and jammed her hands on her hips. “I should have known. You’re a menace on the road, you know that?”
His blood, he was beginning to discover, flowed a little faster when she was around, and his skin felt a little warmer. It wasn’t his imagination and it wasn’t just his generalized appreciation of a beautiful woman. There was something about this woman that made his heart pound, something intriguing in those bright eyes that he longed to explore.
“I like to drive on the road,” he told her. “That’s what it’s for. Not loitering and admiring the scenery.”
“I wasn’t admiring the scenery, genius. I have a flat tire.”
Yeah, he’d seen that already. He stooped to examine the tire in question, mostly because it brought him much closer to her. Close enough to admire the smoothness of her skin, the attitude in her expression and to smell the clean, earthy musk of her.
Mistake. Big mistake.
And yet, when he stood again, he edged even closer, within kissing distance, if that sort of thing had been on his mind. Only the bike separated them, and God knew they were both tall enough to lean over the bike.
“You and your flat tire should be on the shoulder so you don’t get hit.”
“That’s where we were headed when you and your monster truck almost plowed us down.” Here she paused to give him a pointed and disdainful once-over. “What have you been doing, anyway?”
“Working in the fields,” he told her, unabashed. No doubt she’d never in her life raised her pretty little manicured hands for anything other than to signal for another glass of champagne. “That’s what we do here at the winery.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Shower much?”
Oh, she was funny. Stripping off his shades so she could see what he was doing, he gave her the kind of look-see she’d just given him, only his was quite a bit more lingering and appreciative. Her cheeks colored accordingly, but she didn’t drop that haughty chin by so much as an inch.
“Yeah,” he said. “You?”
Giving him a killing glare, she reached for her little pack on the ground and unzipped it. “Thanks for making sure I wasn’t killed when I dove out of the way of your speeding death machine. Kindly leave me in peace while I patch this defective Chambers Winery bike tire.”
What? Patch? Her?
To his astonishment, she withdrew a repair kit and actually looked like she knew what to do with it, which really screwed with his preconceived notions of her as a partying airhead with nothing inside her skull but marshmallow fluff. But, of course, it’d only taken one look into this woman’s keen hazel eyes for him to know that there was way more to her than what he could see on the outside.
He’d have to stop misjudging her and give her a chance.
Maybe.
If only he didn’t have such fierce reactions to everything about her.
“There’s nothing defective at the Chambers Winery, including the bikes. You must have ridden over a nail or something,” he informed her gruffly. “And I’ll do that for you.”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s the least I can—”
“No, thanks. I can do it.”
Yeah, he could see that. The sight of her, tired, dusty, sweaty and proud as she stooped beside the tire, was really doing a number on him. It was a terrible time to discover that he was a caveman at heart, but she shouldn’t have to fix that tire, and he was incapable of standing by with his thumb up his ass watching while she did it.
He could do it for her. He wanted to do it for her. An irritating voice inside his head was egging him on, pushing him to prove to her that, even though he wasn’t a Hollywood millionaire with flashy cars and a plane, he was strong and capable, and if she needed help while she was here on his land, then he was the one she could rely on.
Crazy, huh?
Insanity. But he still squatted on the other side of that tire, stared at her startled face through the spokes and put his hand on top of hers where it rested on the rubber treads. Something sparked a shiver across his skin. He told himself it was the cooling sweat on his body but that was as blatant a lie as he’d ever told, even to himself. The contact between their flesh tied him up in knots. That, and the wary turbulence in the depths of those astonishing hazel eyes.
“I’ll either do this for you or take you back to the bike rental. Your choice, Livia.” Her tightening jaw reminded him of his manners. “Please.”
“I’m not a spoiled diva.”
The stubborn insistence in her voice said it all. She was tired of being stereotyped and dismissed on the basis of her looks, tired of being treated like a china doll that could break and ruin the franchise. She was a strong, capable woman, and she wanted him to see that about her, to acknowledge it.
That pride tugged at his heart. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
“I know you’re not,” he said softly. “And if the truck gets a flat, you can change that for me, okay?”
That got her. A sudden laugh lit up her face and it was every bit as breathtaking as a vivid red sunset on the ocean’s horizon or sunlight hitting a rainbow. He started to laugh with her, but halfway through the maneuver his throat seized up and he could only stare, wishing she’d release him from whatever spell she’d spun around him.
“You’re just being nice because you know I’m going to try and get you fired.”
He floundered, trying to get his voice back online. He wasn’t quite sure why he hadn’t told her that he was one of the Chambers that owned the winery, or why he’d given her his old nickname, J.R. for junior, rather than his real name, other than the idea of her trying to get his parents to fire him was hilarious.
This woman… She did things to him.
“Can we go now?”
“Yeah.” Her smile faded, probably because she’d seen—she had to see—how she intrigued him, how he wanted her. There were lots of things he was good at, but controlling his reactions to her didn’t seem to be one of them. Their touching hands became a fulcrum, the ground zero of a growing wave of heat that would ignite a fire capable of torching all these surrounding elms if they weren’t careful. “Can I have my hand back now?”
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