by Inez Kelley
A shiver of heat danced along her spine. Dinner was long finished, the plates cleared away and coffee grown cold, but they lingered. The sky took on the deep twilight of the setting sun but neither made a move to draw the evening to a close. Kayla toyed with her napkin and studied him beneath her lashes. Whatever fizzed between them was something unique that she’d never felt.
“How’s the spice business this week?”
“Steady, growing. And I had Squeak Iverson give the sugarhouse a walk-through.”
For a long moment, he said nothing, then a twitch angled his mouth up at one corner. “He’s the best sugar-tapper in these parts. What’d he say?”
“That once I bust my butt cleaning the sugarhouse up, things look good for a bucket-haul operation. I’ve spent the last week reading and researching, but I’m going to have to hire someone the first year to teach me. Or let my place rest a season and hire myself out as manual labor.”
He coughed, covering his mouth with his free hand, but wasn’t quite able to hide his laugh. She sent him a questioning look.
“Sorry.” He shrugged. “It’s just most tappers, if they hire out, use either old farm hands or teenage boys. Hauling sap isn’t light work. I had blisters big as dimes despite my work gloves.”
“Do you know how hard it is to lug thirty-pound bags of millet around?”
“I’m not saying you couldn’t do it, but most tappers won’t take a woman on unless she’s family.”
“That’s sexist.”
“That’s men.” Matt stroked his thumb along her skin.
The innocent action made her pulse jump. His hands were rough, the nails blunt, the knuckles scarred. They were a working man’s hands. A shiver worked along her spine imagining those hands cupping her bare breasts. She forced herself to listen to his words.
“The boil season is short and there’s no quitting time. Many tappers don’t leave the sugarhouse. They cook on the wood fire, wash in a bucket, take a leak against the nearest tree and take turns sleeping.”
“So that’s why there’s an old bed frame in the sugarhouse!” The grin that creased his face was too ornery, too mischievous and her attention spiked. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, it was something,” she teased. She tugged on his hand. “Tell me.”
He suddenly found his spoon extremely interesting. “It’s just...sugar camps are a cool place in the summer for teens to party without adult supervision. It’s always BYOB, so it takes just enough cash to buy a case of beer. Then build a bonfire, turn the truck radio up and let it roll.”
Kayla narrowed her eyes. “Let it roll? Hmm, sounds like more than beer and music happened at these parties.”
“Maybe.” The smile broke free, spreading across his face and crinkling his eyes. Sheepishly, he dropped his voice. “Let’s just say that at one of those parties, I went from a boy to a man.”
“Matthew, you naughty boy.”
His rich laugh washed over her, so smooth, like caramel on ice cream. It sent her imagination reeling. “Hey, not a lot to do around these parts for teenagers. You make the best of what you have. What about you? Where was your first time?”
“Cheap hotel on prom night. My date was so drunk he passed out before he finished.”
Matt grimaced. “Ouch. That must have sucked.”
“No, he never got around to that. Plus, he threw up in my car when I drove him home. It took forever to get the smell out.” Kayla wrinkled her nose then cocked her head. “Wait. You worked in a sugarhouse as a teenager?”
The smile melted off his face in slow degrees. “For a while.” He cleared his throat, released her hand and reached for a sip of water. “Did you want dessert or more coffee?”
She declined, hoping the night wasn’t ending simply because they were leaving the restaurant. He signaled for their check, and the waitress held up one finger then took her order pad to a table on the far edge of the deck.
Matt’s phone rang. He glanced at the screen then shoved his chair away from the table. “It’s my sister. I’m going to step outside and take it. I’ll be right back.”
He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and laid his credit card on the table linen as he answered the phone. Kayla narrowed her eyes. His wallet was brown leather but it was worn to a shine in some places, rubbed thin and dull in others and creased to whiteness along the fold. The stitching along the edges was frayed and the slot to hold his license was torn.
She watched him walk away, phone pressed to his ear. The waitress brought their check, tucked inside a red presenter. She started to take Matt’s card, but Kayla grabbed it away.
“Hold on.” She flipped open the presenter, noted the total then slid her own credit card out of her billfold. She tucked it in the presenter with a smile. “All set.”
The waitress only took a minute to return. Kayla signed her name, gathered Matt’s card and headed toward the parking lot.
He stood with his back to her, head tilted up to view the sunset, his hand tucked into his pocket. Khakis were supposed to make a guy’s ass look droopy. Apparently, his hadn’t gotten that memo. They hugged his butt just right and she flexed her fingers, wanting to grab a handful.
The smile he sent her was apologetic as he pocketed the cell. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so long.”
“No problem.” She handed him his credit card. “Here, I took care of it.”
He took it with a frown. “I was coming back in. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Tax write-off, business dinner.”
He tucked the card in his front pants pocket. “Still, I’d have preferred to pick up the tab.”
“Adapt.” She shrugged. “You can cover next time.”
“Uh, sure.” Matt looked over her head. “My sister’s got car trouble. I’ve got to go pick her up.”
“Oh.” She fell into step beside him, headed toward the parking lot. Disappointment sapped her good mood. They’d spent two and half delightful hours together and it wasn’t enough.
The day had cooled with the setting sun and the wind carried the scent of the river and the mountains. Their unhurried steps made the short walk longer but the parking lot wasn’t large. Eventually they came to their vehicles.
He motioned to an older model SUV several spots down from her van. “Mine.”
She liked the sound of that word on his lips. Her gaze fell on his mouth and her breath caught. She wanted him to kiss her, had hoped he might be a little more forward over dinner. He’d flirted but never went too far. Other than her hand, he hadn’t touched her. A few times he’d caught himself before a harsher word slipped out.
Damn him, he’d been the perfect gentleman all night.
If his eyes hadn’t trailed every move she made, she might have thought he wasn’t interested. But she’d watched his fist clench as she’d licked butter from her fork and felt the intensity of his gaze when she stroked his hand. He was interested, all right. So was she. But he was holding back.
Kayla had no intentions of holding anything back.
Stepping closer, she brushed her mouth across his, nipping his bottom lip. Matt’s eyes widened as she demurely shrugged. “First kisses are usually awkward. Now it’s out of the way.”
Heat flared on his face as the chivalry he’d shown all night slipped away. His eyes dilated, the pupils going wide and nearly obliterating the hazel. A calloused hand slid along her neck, fingers sinking into the back of her hair. Hard muscles molded to her softer ones as he pressed her against the car door. Anticipation sped her heartbeat. She hadn’t expected his dominance, the sudden rush of masculine aggression, but wanted to bathe in it now.
“That wasn’t a kiss. It was a peck.”
She expected brute force and unchecked hunger. What she got was tenderness and complete control. He didn�
�t try to shove his tongue down her throat or scrape her teeth or paw her. He simply let his lips glide over hers until they parted willingly, needily. Then he coaxed her tongue to dance with his.
The spicy pepper on his tongue burned her and the sensuous stroke of his mouth drugged her. Something inside melted. The hand in her hair balled, holding her firm as his mouth promised utter abandonment. Her fingertips skimmed up his arms then circled his neck. His kiss went deeper and a soft moan worked from her throat. Her nipples peaked. She submitted, drank in every drop of heat radiating between them. The slow burn of kissing him was intoxicating.
Matt broke away but didn’t step back. Every bone in her frame had turned to water. His mouth, his lips, so warm and kiss-softened, glided across her cheek to her ear. “That’s a real kiss.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “I think my toes curled for a second.”
His brow arched. “Only a second? I can do better than that.”
His palms slid around her hips and down to her ass. Kayla sucked in a fast breath, her arms tightening around his shoulders. He lifted her, not much, just a few inches, enough for the growing swell behind his zipper to rock deliciously into her belly. His tongue thrust into her mouth, licking at every corner and crevice. Poised on the tips of her toes, with her nails digging into his shirt, she trusted him to support her.
A low groan rumbled in his chest when she rotated her hips against his. The sweet mountain air grew thin as she drank him in and thirsted for more. A sudden emptiness between her legs turned wet and achy.
Desperate for breath, Kayla pulled her head back. His heaving chest brushed hers with every rise and fall. They stared into each other’s eyes, letting their racing pulses speak in silence. Slicking her tongue across her tingling lips, Kayla stroked down his chest, toying with the buttons of his shirt. The wind had tossed her hair, and a loose piece fluttered across her brow. Matt smoothed it behind her ear.
“Do you really have to go?”
He stepped back, a rueful thinning of his mouth turning the corners down. “Yeah. Abby’s stuck on Route 93 and the tow company has an hour ETA. My nephew’s only five and he’s getting grumpy.”
Family. She couldn’t find any fault in his devotion. Instead, she found it massively appealing. And sexually frustrating. She dug out her keys and clicked her door locks. Ever the gentleman, Matt opened her door and held it while she tossed her bag onto the seat then climbed behind the wheel.
“Drive safe.” Matt closed the door for her.
She keyed the engine then powered down the window. “Call me?”
Once again, he looked past her. “Yeah.”
Kayla drove away, baffled. Why did she think he was lying?
Chapter Three
Stradivarius violins and cellos are thought to benefit from the retarded growth of maples that grew during the Little Ice Age in the sixteenth century.
Even the buzz of three different chainsaws couldn’t block out the noise in Matt’s head. It pounded, keeping time with his pulse. Angling his Stihl, he sawed through the last inch of poplar. The treetop shook then succumbed to gravity. He stepped into the safe zone, less than a foot from the base he’d just cut, as the tree toppled. It crashed to the ground, shaking the earth under his feet. It fell less than three inches off his mark. Seconds later, Nichols finished his cut and his tree fell, bouncing beside Matt’s fall. The row of downed trees covered the clearing.
He removed his hard hat, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his wrist. On his belt, his radio beeped. “Hey, boss man?”
Matt removed his earplugs, palmed the radio and keyed it. “What’s up?”
There was a second of radio squelch then the buzz of Roberts’s saw drowned out any words. Matt stepped away from the stump and motioned for Roberts to halt. When the noise died, he clicked the radio again.
“Say again?”
“Property owner is here.”
Fury and fear hit at the same time. His stomach tightened as he brought the radio back to his mouth. “Tell her to get off the cutting site.”
His headache skyrocketed to real pain as he waited on a response.
“She says it’s her property.”
Fuck a buzzard. Matt let a chorus of profanity loose then jammed his hard hat back on his head. “On my way.”
He nodded to Roberts and waited until the tree fell before leaving his safe zone. “Go ahead and delimb these, get them choked, then head in. I gotta get down to the landing.”
Nichols walked the short distance to the four-wheeler with him. He grabbed the steel choker cables with the butt locks attached as Matt climbed into the seat. “Everything okay down there?”
“Don’t know. The owner’s on site.”
What did she want? Matt took a swig from his water bottle, watching Nichols and Roberts prepare the trees for the cables. That brief minute was a guilty delay. He didn’t want to face Kayla. Dinner last week had exceeded any other date he’d ever been on, and he couldn’t even classify it as a real date. But that kiss at the end... He never should have kissed her. It teased him with something he couldn’t have, had whetted his appetite for a meal that would never come.
He hadn’t called her, hadn’t pursued any type of follow-up. Not because he didn’t like her or wasn’t attracted to her. Far from it. He’d fought picking up the phone for days, wanting to see her as a woman and yet not wanting to see her as the owner of his childhood home. Now he couldn’t avoid seeing her.
The earthy smell of sweet cut wood blended with machine oil and sweat. The morning had been cool but the day had warmed considerably. He’d shed his plaid flannel by 8 a.m. and now had it tied around his waist. He used it to wipe his face and fill another minute of not moving. Finally, he couldn’t think of a single thing to hold him up longer.
He gunned the engine and headed up the knoll, avoiding the cables snaking across the torn-up grass. Once choked, with the twisted steel lines wrapped around them, the skidder would pull the delimbed logs over the ground and group them in bundles to be loaded onto trucks. The skidder should have made its drop and be barreling to pick up more cut timber. But it wasn’t.
He crested the knoll and saw why. Stolinski, the skidder operator for the day, was standing with a chicken leg in his hand, talking to Kayla. At the sound of his approach, they both turned, Stolinski with a grin, Kayla with a scowl. She spun on her heel and pulled a huge plastic bin from the open van door. A heavy-duty folding table had been set up, its legs sunken into the chewed-up dirt and shed bark.
Matt killed the engine. Every subtle line in Kayla’s frame was tight and her motions jerky. She slapped the container on the table and moved to grab another. Matt crawled from the four-wheeler.
“Hey, boss man.” Stolinski waddled toward him, his ample belly leading the way. “You need to taste this. Fried chicken in some weird batter. Pretty good, actually.”
Matt glared. “I didn’t call a lunch break.”
Stolinski’s smile melted. “But she brought food.”
“So I see,” Matt muttered, stomping by him. He planted his feet wide, blocking Kayla’s path to the table. She whirled around and nearly smacked into him with an insulated cooler.
“Excuse me.” Her tone was cool, haughty, almost challenging.
“You can’t be here while we’re cutting. It isn’t safe.”
The Igloo rammed into his gut. He had to grab it to keep it from crashing to the ground. She whipped a folded paper out of her back pocket and waved it in his face.
“Item 7B, subsection four. ‘Property owner shall not interfere with or be present on location without proper safety gear and permission from the site manager or above.’” She pointed to her feet, encased in pink steel-toe boots. Matt blinked. Pink?
He glanced up as she settled a hot pink hard hat on her head and slid too-large safety gla
sses on. The smug look she blazed at him could have singed an ice cube. “I called the main office. Ms. Garrison said it was fine. She outranks you, right?”
Matt plopped the cooler on the table. “Kayla, why are you doing this?”
Brushing past him, she opened the cooler and took out several plastic tubs. “I need a test group for some recipes. You have a ten-man crew on my property. You do the math.”
“My men aren’t guinea pigs.”
“No, they’re test subjects. You’re the only pig.” She bumped his shoulder, thundering back to the van. Matt tongued his cheek. Well, that explained that. Kayla was a woman pissed and he was her bitching post. The fact that he deserved it wasn’t lost to him.
Beneath her pink hard hat, honey-gold spirals escaped her ponytail and swayed with her movements. So did her butt, and he kicked himself for noticing. She obviously hadn’t come here to sweet-talk him. She was dressed for work, abiding the safety regs, and taunting him with her pert little mouth.
“I’m sorry.” He tucked his hat under his arm. “I should have called.”
Plastic-wrapped silverware in her hand, she turned on him. “That would have been the decent thing to do. Even if it was to say you didn’t want to see me again.”
“I do. I just...” How could a headache spread down his neck so fast? What was he going to say? I want to see you again but you don’t know that you bought my home and I’m too big of a pussy to deal with it. “I’m working on your property. It’s not ethical to date you.”
She smirked. “But sticking your tongue down my throat and squeezing my ass, that’s ethical?”
“Oh shit, boss man, buuurn.”
The snickers behind him closed his eyes. Great, they had an audience. “Back to work.”
“No.” Kayla scooted around him carrying a cardboard box of utensils. “Give me a minute to finish setting up and you’ll have lunch.”
