“You were?”
He nodded. “Actually, I had a lot of foster parents. The State was always moving me around. That’s the thing about foster care, you could never get too attached to your guardians because the next week, they may not be your guardians anymore.”
He’d expected her to react with surprise. To maybe call him a butthead again and go back to arguing about the dance. Instead she tilted her head in an oddly endearing way.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I lost my mother in a riding accident. Worst day of my life. I can’t imagine losing both parents.”
“Riding accident?”
“A colt reared up, she slipped back, and when the horse fell, the saddle horn caught her in the chest. She died instantly.”
But there was something in her eyes, something that made him say, “You saw it happen, didn’t you?”
He saw her eyes widen a bit just before she looked away. “I did.”
His heart did something odd then. It hurt in an almost physical way, her pain becoming his, her heartache shared.
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Dad took it hard.” She met his gaze then. “He drowned his sorrows in a bottle. Literally. I threw myself into schoolwork, got a scholarship, earned a degree in business agriculture.”
She’d learned to live without her mother, Scott finished for her, much as he’d learned to live without his parents, but one never forgot a parent. There were all those reminders. Mother’s Day. Father’s Day. Birthdays. Not to mention the times it would come upon you suddenly, the desire to speak with someone who was gone from your life. Forever. Just gone.
“What about you?” she asked, voicing the question he’d been dreading.
He shrugged, too, saying, “They were spies for the U.S. government. Both of them died while helping a Communist defect to the United States.”
And as he’d hoped, a smidgen of amusement shot through her eyes as she said, “Liar.”
He laughed a bit, even though he’d never laughed before when discussing his parents’ deaths. “They were shot by the Mafia when a hit man mistook my father for a famous don.”
She came forward and hit his arm then, saying, “Liar,” on a huff of laughter.
And in a moment of total honesty, one that took him by surprise, he said, “They died in a car crash on their way back from a hunting trip. My mom and dad loved to hunt. It used to drive me nuts when they’d leave me behind. And then one day they were gone.”
Her laughter faded, as did his smile, and they both felt a current of mutual understanding, one that said “I’m sorry.” in a way that no words ever could.
“So,” he said, once again trying to inject a lighter note. “Now that you feel sorry for me, and I feel sorry for you, we have to go to that dance tomorrow night, if only to drown our sorrows.”
“They don’t serve alcohol.”
“For real?”
She nodded, her expression turning oddly pensive for a moment.
“Then we’ll bring our own. We can have a tailgate party. Always wanted to have a tailgate party.”
To which she just shook her head, her expression going back to impatient as she said, “I have a hard time knowing when you’re serious and when you’re not.”
He took a step toward her, and this time the horse followed. Perverse creatures, horses.
“Where you’re concerned, Amanda,” he said, “I will always be serious.”
And then he handed her the reins, saying, “Go put your horse away. I’ll make us some breakfast.”
Chapter Six
He was not, Amanda admitted as she readied herself for the dance, what she’d expected. Not at all. Not even a little bit.
She’d expected uptight and overzealous. But he was fun and—all right, she would have to admit it—a hard worker. Every task she’d given him today, and yesterday, from doing his own laundry to mucking out the chicken coop, he’d performed without complaint. Most men she knew thought washing clothes was women’s work, but not Scott Beringer. He just went about the job as if he didn’t have a housemaid who normally did the chore for him.
And here she was going on a date with him.
Okay, maybe “date” wasn’t the right word. But there was no denying that she primped for him that evening. As she donned a denim skirt with appliquéd running horses sewn around the hem, a silver concho belt that hung loose around her hips and a black stretch top that hugged her slender waist and accentutated her breasts, she admitted to herself that she did so because of Scott. He may be Mr. Big City Man, but he was about to learn a country girl could look pretty good when all the dirt was washed off.
Of course, she should have figured her “date”—and she tried not to wince as she used the term again—would get his part wrong. It wasn’t that he didn’t dress western, he did. He just looked like a walking picnic table in his red-and-white-checkered shirt, which she recognized from their first meeting. It was obviously one of the few not destroyed by her bull. Pity.
“Wow,” he said, and it was only then that she realized he was staring at her in a dazed kind of way. She watched as his eyes swept her up and down, and then those eyes of his narrowed—of course, the wolfish look he gave her was spoiled by the ten-gallon hat on his head.
“Yee-hah,” he murmured.
And it was funny, because she’d have thought herself long past the state of needing a man’s approval. Point of fact, she’d thought herself firmly in the I-don’t-need-a-man phase. But as Scott eyed her up and down, she suddenly realized she wasn’t as immune to the opposite sex as she thought. Specifically, this member of the opposite sex.
“You look great,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. “You look—” She frowned, not wanting to insult him. “Good, too,” she finished.
But she forgot that Scott was an intelligent man, because he caught her hesitation, must have seen the way her eyes caught on his hat.
“What’d I do wrong?” he asked.
And it was so cute the way he asked. Like a kid who’d arrived home to find his parents at the front door waiting for him.
“Nothing,” she lied.
“Is it the hat? Is it too big? I thought it looked kind of big in the store, but the saleswomen told me it looked great.”
She almost lied again. Almost told him the hat was just fine. But she couldn’t let him out in public looking like that. She’d once shown up at a school dance in a satin dress when everyone had been wearing jeans. The humiliation had been so extreme, her cheeks burned even now. It hadn’t helped that she’d always been known as poor little Amanda Johnson, and that the dress had obviously been a re-tread of her mother’s. Gosh. She could never consciously put someone in the same position.
“Let me put it this way…if you wear that thing on a plane, you won’t need a parachute if it crashes.”
He blinked at her, moved his lips as if he might smile, then said, “I was afraid of that.”
“Maybe you should take it off,” she said with an encouraging smile.
He did, the shirt he wore moving to reveal biceps that she’d noticed earlier were surprisingly sculpted. “Is that better?”
“You have hat head.”
“Hat head?”
“Here,” she said, coming forward. “Let me fix it.”
She moved forward as she did so. She caught a whiff of him, the scent instantly reminding her of warm lips and a too hot tongue. Her body remembered, too, because suddenly she felt as charged as shag carpet. As she lifted her hand to his hair, a jolt went through her when she accidentally touched his scalp.
“Sorry,” she murmured, because it hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. She’d shocked him with a snap of static electricity.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I never knew your fingers could double as a cattle prod.”
Their eyes met, and though Amanda had sworn off men, though she’d told herself after her last relationship that she would never, ever let sexual attraction sway her
into a relationship with a man, she found that her hand had stilled, the limb suspended there as if held by a magnetic force. And that was the way her body felt, too: attracted. She leaned back, appalled to realize that she’d been staring at his lips.
“There,” she said, though she hadn’t done a thing. “That’s better.”
“I don’t think so.”
She looked up at him suddenly, surprised to see a feral look in his eyes. That masculinity was completely at odds with how she thought of him. He had an alpha maleness that directly contradicted his beta profession.
“You don’t think what?” she found herself asking in a near whisper.
“That it’s better.”
“No?”
He bent down, lightly kissed her lips, and said, “Now, that’s better.”
It wasn’t an aggressive kiss—well, it was a bit forward, but not in a bad way. This was a softer, gentler kiss than before, and yet every bit as neck-tingling as the first. And though the feral look didn’t disappear, though she had the feeling he wanted to do more than peck her on the lips, he didn’t. Instead he said, “How about the shirt?”
Shirt?
He held out his arms.
Oh, the shirt. “It’s uh—” Man, what was with her? He was a computer geek. A Silicon Valley techie. Not the blue-collar type she was usually attracted to.
No, a voice said, she had it all wrong. He was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Powerful. Rich. Dynamic. And only at that moment did she understand why. People underestimated him. Beneath that little-boy exterior beat the heart of Tarzan. Tarzan with a slide rule, but Tarzan nonetheless.
“Should I change it?”
Change what? “Oh. Ah…” She stepped back. Didn’t help. “Yeah,” she said. “You need to wear something a little less…” She thought a moment. “Roy Rogers.”
“Roy Rogers?”
And gradually, every so slowly, she inserted the buffer, her mind warring with a healthy dose of sexual attraction.
“Yeah. You look like you should be leading Trigger.”
He released a huff of amusement. “Thanks,” he said.
“Do you have anything less checkered? And that isn’t ruined?”
“I do.”
“Good. I’ll wait here while you change into it.”
“Okay.”
But she didn’t wait. The moment he disappeared, she was on the move, heading for her truck like an animal seeking refuge. And though she knew it was wrong, though she admitted what she was about to do was the equivalent of playing Ding Dong Ditch back when she was a kid, she left him. She was starting to like Scott Beringer entirely too much to trust herself on a date with him.
“YOU SHOULD JUMP HIS BONES.”
Amanda stared in mute horror and amusement as Flora, the more outspoken of the three ladies who comprised the “Biddy Brigade”—as Amanda affectionately called the three older ladies who’d taken on the role of surrogate mother when her own mother had died—nodded her head.
“Seduce him,” Flora said again. “That’s what Alexis Carrington would do.”
“Oh, you and that damn Dynasty,” Edith said. “You watch entirely too much Nick at Nite.”
“What the hell else am I supposed to do?”
Flora—who also swore like a sailor—said to Edith. “There’s not a man within fifty miles that’s worth a lick of my time. And I mean that in its most literal sense.”
“Flora!” Martha gasped.
“Prudes,” Flora grumbled.
They were in the town hall, a single-story building that used to be a school back about a hundred years ago. Someone had laid down linoleum on the floor. Another person had made drapes out of a floral-print fabric. Around the perimeter walls were card tables with the auction items—homemade items like quilts and Flora’s jam and pot holders with Home Sweet Home handwritten on them—a far cry, Amanda thought, from the usual items someone like Scott Beringer would be used to at his fancy-shmancy benefits.
The whole town had come tonight—kids varying in age from two to sixteen ran around the place while their parents socialized. Such was a Los Molina barn dance. They weren’t in a barn, but people did dance at one end of the room. A string band comprised of two fiddles and a guitar shook things up with “Old MacDonald.”
“It just doesn’t seem fair,” Edith said, shaking her head. She wore her hair in a long braid down her back, just like she had when she was seventeen. Amanda knew this for a fact because she’d seen the pictures. At sixty-four she was still a looker, still rode horses—though the ranch she lived on had long since passed on to her son—and still competed on the seniors rodeo tour as a barrel racer. “Amanda’s had enough tragedy in her life. And if that no-good man who calls himself her father had any kind of brain to speak of, he’d have never let this happen.”
“I’m telling you, she needs to seduce him. Maybe not go all the way, but get him good and interested. Hell, maybe he’ll get so hot and bothered he’ll offer to pay her a million dollars just to have sex with him…like in that movie.”
It was just like Flora to suggest such a thing. Just like Martha to protest, and just like Edith to complain. Nearing their seventies, the Biddies had been a part of Amanda’s life since before she could remember. They’d changed her diapers, helped her get ready for her junior prom and held her together when Amanda’s world had collapsed after her mother’s death…and when she’d needed them.
And here they were for the next crisis in her life because Amanda had arrived at the barn dance utterly convinced that her days on the ranch were numbered. Scott Beringer not only seemed to enjoy working like a hired hand, he thrived at it. Not good. Not good at all.
And then there was that kiss.
Correction, those two kisses.
“That movie was a crock,” Edith said. “Nobody in their right mind could believe Demi Moore would have relations with a man old enough to be her father. Not even for a million dollars.”
“It’s Dem-me,” Flora said. “Dem-me. Say it right.”
“I’ll say it how I want.”
“Children, children,” Martha the mediator said. “Do we have to talk about this in public?”
“Why the hell not?” Flora asked.
“Because we shouldn’t be talking about movies when our little Amanda has a problem.”
To which both Edith and Flora said not a word, thank the good Lord, Amanda thought. Really, the last thing she needed was interference from the Biddy Brigade. As much as she loved them, sometimes they were a bit overwhelming.
“It just doesn’t seem fair,” Edith said again. “All those years of putting up with her father—” she looked at the other two Biddies as she continued “—and then Jake.” She enunciated “Jake” as if it was a rare and communicable disease. “And now this. Amanda just got her life back on track, and that lump of coal she has for a father goes and messes it all up.”
“Again,” Flora added.
“Um, excuse me,” Amanda said. “I’m still here. You don’t need to talk about me as if I’m not in the room.”
“I know that, dear,” Martha said. “I just get so frustrated. I just wish I knew what to do.”
“What is that?” Flora asked.
“I said I wish I knew what to do, not that I knew what to do.”
“No, you big boobie. What is that noise?”
Leave it to Flora, who still had the ears of a cat, to notice the low rumbling in the distance.
“Is that your boyfriend, Edith? Did he fix that souped-up car of his again?”
“No,” Edith said. “This sounds different.”
“It sounds like a—” Martha squinted, as if it would help her to hear.
A helicopter, Amanda thought with a sudden stretch of her shocked spine. That sounded just like—
“A helicopter,” Flora confirmed. “It’s a helicopter.”
And Amanda knew. She just knew, like she’d known before, that it was him.
The partygoers at the other
end of the room slowly stopped dancing. Even the band quit playing one at a time. And outside, the sound of the helicopter got louder and louder.
“You think it’s him?” Martha asked.
“Naah,” Flora drawled sarcastically. “You think?” Then she looked at Amanda. “Guess you should have taken the keys to the chopper, too.”
SCOTT WAS MAD. No other way to put it. After Amanda had ditched him he’d decided that what she needed was a reminder of just who, exactly, he was.
Billionaire.
Intelligent.
Geek.
So the last had slipped in there, but he couldn’t deny that he felt a whole lot better about how he looked. He’d had his pilot pick him up, then fly him over to the western store that conveniently happened to be open late thanks to its location in an outlet center, one with an overlarge parking area where his chopper could land. After going straight to the manager and explaining the circumstances, he now found himself in the Wild West’s version of corporate attire. A new pair of Wrangler jeans, a purple long-sleeved shirt with some kind of cowboy emblem on the front and a new black hat that the manager claimed would impress anyone who knew anything about hats. Scott didn’t know a lick about hats, but this one had been expensive, and it was soft, and it fit low over his brow. Perfect for a man on a mission.
He pushed past the people who’d come out of the Los Molina Hall to see his helicopter land, and entered the building as if he owned it—which he could, if he wanted to.
It wasn’t hard to find her. She was the only person in the fluorescent-lit room with her back turned to him, surrounded by three old ladies gawking as they caught their first glimpse of him. The room went completely quiet, well, more quiet than it had been before. It was an odd-looking room, with narrow windows spaced every five feet or so and a rectangular shape that made Scott think it might have been a school at one point, only now it’d been converted. He entered on the short end of the long rectangle, where Amanda stood in front of a dance floor. Those who had peered outside the windows instead of going outside stared at him as he entered, making Scott feel a bit like a gunslinger entering a bar.
Then he heard one of Amanda’s companions say, “Hell, Amanda, if you don’t do him, I will.”
Cowboy Lessons (Harlequin American Romance) Page 5
