“I’ll let you get dressed,” he said, charging back out of the hangar, where the sun assaulted his eyes.
He bent to pick his sunglasses out of the gravel and started polishing them with his shirt. With his back to the hangar entrance, he squinted at the sun, waited for Paige to get dressed, calculated when he should bring up MacGregor, and wondered how out of his depth he really was.
Paige dressed slowly, carefully. When she was reassembled, she leaned back against the worktable and hugged her torso. She glanced out the door at Adam’s silhouette and rubbed her elbows to wait out the thrumming. She willed her breaths to come slower, to normalize her heartbeat.
God, that man was overwhelming.
He was hot. He was passionate. That intensity that lay in his eyes ran heatedly through his muscles, too. And, apparently, though his veins.
She knew this was lust. And she was glad it was over with. It was powerful, and it was exactly what she needed. What she wanted to avoid was letting it breach into territory that felt like too much emotion, where, like her mom said, she would be in serious trouble. She already loved his voice, his work ethic, his arms, his protectiveness, his hands, his generosity, his sense of responsibility, his muscles, and the power that pulsed through his veins. If she met his eyes, and he said one more sweet thing, she was going to fall straight over the precipice of love. She needed to protect her heart.
She glanced at him standing silhouetted in the hangar opening, his eyes on the horizon. He looked dismissive. That might help. Maybe he was done now. Maybe he turned into a jerk at this point to drive his partners away. Maybe she could walk away now.
It was better than falling in love with him.
It was better than feeling guilty she hadn’t told him the whole truth about her involvement in his teenage troubles.
It was better than wondering if this have-sex-in-an-airplane-hangar kind of passion was normal for him and she was just one of a string of summer women this year. Has he done this before? Is this his usual gig? Does he meet women who visit in the summer and have brief flings and then throw them away?
She looked around for her belt. Does he ever fall in love with them, even a little? Has he ever found someone special? Was Samantha one of many? Will he think I’m different?
She pressed her fingertips to her forehead. Oh holy moly, no. Absolutely no. This was not something she could let her mind drift toward. It made no difference whether she was exactly the same as any other woman he might have pulled to his chest, or as different as Venus. Because she was not going to fall in love with him. And he was not going to fall in love with her. She was here only briefly; he was leaving. She hadn’t even told him the truth about their pasts; they were both going to have to get back to figuring out their properties. This was just sex. And it was more than she’d ever hoped for.
She leaned down, still looking for her belt. The force of their wild sexcapade had shoved the table back a couple of inches, and the belt was wedged beneath one of the legs. She tugged at it while her mind drifted again to the other women who probably came through here, and she wondered if she was too wild for his normal taste. Maybe he liked more sophisticated Ingrid Bergman or Rita Hayworth types. Not screaming banshees like her who would have sex in a hangar and warn him of possible future calamities. Then she chastised herself again and wondered why she was torturing herself. This didn’t matter.
The belt was truly stuck. She yanked on it again with greater force, but the table was too heavy to lift alone. She bent to try to pry it out, but when she did, she noted, with curiosity, a large box shoved far underneath the bottom shelf. Its edges were puckered up around the wood from being forced there so wrongly. She walked along the other side and saw the words scrolled in black marker there, almost covered with dust: “Private.”
“Adam?” She finished buttoning the waistband of her shorts. “I think I found something.”
“Shove!” Adam croaked.
He held the table as high as he could so Paige could push the box from the other side. He got the belt out first and threw it to her so she could keep her shorts up.
Once she was pulled back together, she bent again to help. He raised the table into another forceful lift. “Again!” he said through clenched teeth. Paige shoved the box hard with both hands.
The table felt as if it weighed several tons and resented being moved. He took a few deep breaths before each boost. Finally, Paige gave the cardboard a desperate shove from underneath. Adam had the table hovering, and the cardboard monstrosity scuttled across the sawdust about two feet.
Adam let the table’s legs thunder to the floor. “Christ!” He scowled at the cardboard box and caught his breath. The damned thing looked as though it had been wedged there for a decade. He sat down and leaned against the bottom panel of the table.
Paige slid down next to him.
For a long time, the only sounds were their ragged breaths reverberating along the tinny walls of the hangar. Adam stared at the particles of dust that were swirling in the rays of the sunset.
“I didn’t mean to do that earlier—come on to you quite like that,” he said.
“What do you mean you didn’t mean to do that? You had a condom with you.”
He laughed. “Well, hope does spring eternal. I guess what I mean to say is that I’d planned to wait—to take cues from you. But I didn’t even wait that long.”
“Don’t be sorry for that.” She threw her chin out in a cute, haughty way. “Maybe I was the one who wanted you.”
A smile escaped his lips in spite of himself. He didn’t know why he didn’t give her more credit. There was such a strange contrast between her vulnerability and strength—it kept confusing him.
“And I didn’t mean for it to happen like that,” he added.
“Like what?”
“Completely out of control.”
“Damn, don’t be sorry for that. It was hot.”
He smiled and rolled his head toward her. “It didn’t bother you that I barely got your panties off?”
“No. That was hot, too.”
“How about that I took you against a dirty table? In a dusty old airplane hangar? And I acted like some kind of fumbling teenager? None of that disturbs you in the least?”
“You were out of control. And that’s okay. You looked like you were having fun. I was having fun. And that’s okay, too. You’re allowed to have fun, Adam.”
He looked away. He wanted to believe that. He supposed it was true if he thought about it cerebrally. It was what Bob had been telling him in recent years, too—that he’d aged too fast. But throughout his adolescence, “fun” had had consequences in his dad’s home. Ever since he’d been eighteen, his dad’s “fun” meant more gambling debts, more excessive drinking, then more responsibility being placed on Adam. And when Adam had tried to have “fun” himself, with Samantha, for instance, it resulted in banishment from his dad’s house and, ultimately, a daughter he didn’t know about until sixteen years later. Fun had always been trouble.
Of course, Paige was fun. Maybe that’s what her magnetic draw was. She was exactly what he denied himself. And he had to admit, he was like a man in a drought: he kept wanting to drink her up.
“You did have fun, didn’t you?” she asked.
He grinned at the concrete. “Damn, yes.”
“That’s not usual for you?”
Adam let out a bark of a laugh. Losing all control and taking a woman against a worktable in an old storage hangar because he couldn’t wait another second? Uh, no. But he bit back that thought.
“Not at all,” he said.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
He chuckled again.
The sun highlighted the dust particles like beams, and he watched the light play across her legs. Then he had the sudden, pressing thought that he wanted her again. Now. Right now.
But this should probably end. He needed to talk to her about MacGregor. And if he started talking about land right after sex, he’d be co
ming way too close to George behavior—so much so he’d have to throw himself off a cliff somewhere. So he nodded and held out his hand.
Paige took it and unfolded her legs in a graceful yoga move, rising to meet him. She looked up into his eyes, and he had the strangest sense of falling—into another type of responsibility, perhaps, but this one didn’t have any of the negative consequences he was used to. This one felt like something he would welcome. He couldn’t fully define it, though, so he just stared into her beautiful eyes with the long eyelashes for a few seconds too long.
“I’m making quesadillas and salsa,” he finally said.
“A new addition to your repertoire?”
“Well, the salsa was already part of it, but the quesadillas are new. You can be my first victim.”
He balanced the box up on his shoulder as they traipsed across the meadow. The meadow grasses were long where the bison hadn’t come through yet, and the sharp blades whipped around their ankles. About halfway through, the large shipments of ready-to-assemble lumber for the gazebo became visible, sitting on the line between their properties.
Paige turned toward it and stared. He stared, too. And they walked the rest of the way in silence.
CHAPTER 20
The pungent smell of cilantro filled the kitchen while Adam stood at the counter and chopped a cornucopia of vegetables for his salsa.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to look through this for you?” Paige asked from the kitchen table. She poked at the “Private” box with her foot.
He glanced over his shoulder. “No.”
She stared at the box while she listened to the chopping sounds of his knife punctuating the silence. She couldn’t believe he wasn’t at least a little curious. George Mason had left a weird cardboard box, shoved roughly under a bench for years, marked “Private,” named in his will, and Adam didn’t want to know what was in it?
“I could report what’s in it, and then you could decide if you want to look yourself,” she suggested.
“No, Paige.” His voice made it clear this line of questioning was over.
She looked around the kitchen. She felt sort of useless right now. And adrift. She didn’t know if she should suggest a “talk” and question what this was between them. She didn’t want to make it seem more than it was or scare him off. “Are you sure you don’t want me to help you chop or something?”
“Relax. Let me make this for you.”
She took that as her cue. Relax. She tried to settle back in her chair. “It smells great. How long has salsa been part of your repertoire?”
“Since I’ve known Mrs. Teresa Mendez, cocinera extraordinaire and Antonio’s beautiful mother.”
As if she hadn’t already fallen for everything about him, the way he said that Spanish word was very sexy.
“Does cocinera mean ‘cook’?” she asked.
“Yes. Teresa Mendez—everyone around here calls her Mama—makes the meanest salsa and the best chili enchiladas on this mountain. I’m lucky to know her. And you’re lucky,” he said, turning and waving the knife at her, “to benefit from the fact I know her.”
She smiled. “Where is Teresa Mendez now?”
“She’s taking care of family in Mexico, so I’ve been on my own for a month.”
“How are you handling being without her?”
“Well, now that I know Amanda can cook, I might start handling it pretty well.”
“But you’re leaving.”
His knife stilled. Then, eventually, it started chopping again. “Is it strange that I keep forgetting that?”
“No. This has always been your life. It’ll probably take some adjusting. What will you miss most?”
“To my surprise, the list is getting longer.”
“What’s in the top three?”
“Maybe Bob and Gert, my horses, Rosa’s Cantina. I could go on.”
“Feel free,” she said.
“The ranch hands, Kelly, riding, the meadow, the pond, and even the . . . uh . . . hangar is starting to become a special place.”
“Glad I could contribute,” she said.
He chuckled. “I’m realizing I liked a lot more about this place than I thought.”
Paige wanted again to talk about what was next for them. Had they both scratched an insistent itch and now were done? It had been her original plan, too, of course, but now that she was watching him across the kitchen, enjoying this relaxed, good-mood Adam—not to mention thinking back to how incredibly hot that hangar encounter was—she wouldn’t mind keeping things going for a while. She’d work hard to keep it casual. She’d work hard to keep her heart out of the way.
But she wasn’t sure how to bring it up with him right now.
Plus, she’d absolutely have to tell him about that summer and her hand in talking to George.
And she was wondering if now would be a good time to tell him what her mom had said about MacGregor’s commercial plans for the land. Maybe they should get this land talk out of the way.
She fiddled with the stack of napkins.
“Has, um . . . ,” she started. “Has MacGregor told you anything about what he plans to do with this land once he buys it?”
“I figure that isn’t any of my business,” he said. Chop, chop, chop.
“But don’t you care what he’s going to do with the dude ranch and the orchard and the airport, and everything you and your family have worked so hard for?”
“I don’t have the luxury of caring, Paige. I’m in a situation where I have to sell. Quickly.”
“I’ve already told you Dorothy Silver is willing to buy. And pay more.”
“I can’t count on that. That offer is only thoughts and words right now. And she’s not paying cash. MacGregor is here, right now, and he’s ready to buy. Which, by the way, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
“But MacGregor wants to raze everything.”
Adam stalled and turned toward her. “How do you know that?”
“I have it on good authority.”
“What authority?”
“Ginger.”
He went back to cutting. “Well, Ginger might have other motives for making me ignore MacGregor’s offer.”
“We can trust her.”
He turned again to glance at her, and suddenly the word we had a lot of meaning.
He walked over with a cutting board filled with chopped onions and chopped hot peppers and dumped three huge mounds into a big bowl on the table. A smile played along his lips. “So we’re back to talking about business now?”
“I guess. What kind of peppers are those?”
“Serrano.”
“What are those other green things?”
“Tomatillos. So if we’re going to make the dangerous slide into talking about business right after having sex, I meant to talk to you in more detail about MacGregor.”
She investigated the bowl and took a good long whiff of the spicy-scented concoction. She wanted to keep her mind off the way Adam said “having sex” in that slightly cold way. But she had to remember that coldness, too. They weren’t falling in love here.
She took another whiff as he walked back to the counter. “What about him?”
“He wants to put pressure on you to sell to him. Or he wants me to.”
Adam saying anything about putting pressure on her had the zing of sexual overtone. Maybe it was his deep voice. Or the way his forearms grew muscled when he chopped with the knife. Or the memory of his hands roaming over her skin a few minutes ago . . .
Maybe she wasn’t going to be good at keeping things separate, after all. Now she just wanted to flirt with him.
“He wants you to put pressure on me?” she asked. “And how are you planning on doing that?”
“I’m not planning on doing that.”
“Right.” She smiled. “You’re not going to put pressure on me by seducing me in an airplane hangar and giving me some of the most intense sex of my life?”
“Paige.” He gave
her a warning look over his shoulder, but he caught her smile and grinned back. “Don’t do that. You know that’s not what that was.”
She didn’t answer. She wanted to believe that, of course, but she didn’t know that was not what that was. That was what her mother had predicted—that he’d use sex as a bargaining tool. That he’d get her into bed but without caring about her. Not that they needed a bed.
The sound of the knife on the cutting board filled the kitchen.
“My dad was an asshole,” Adam continued. “He always mixed business with pleasure, and he never thought through the aftereffects.”
“He did that with my mom,” she said.
“I was under the impression Ginger was the user in their scenario.”
“I think they used each other. Ginger lent your dad a lot of money—did you know that?”
The knife made slow, rhythmic taps until Adam filled another small bowl with cilantro. “I think I figured it out,” he eventually said. “The other night I studied the books back about fourteen years, and I made some guesses about that time frame.”
“He paid her back by giving her pieces of land,” Paige said. “Then he left her.”
“Or she left him.”
“I think because of you,” she said.
“He told me it was because of you.”
Paige reeled a little at that, but it sounded as though it could be right. Ginger probably blamed Adam, and George probably blamed Paige. She remembered there being a lot of fights outside the door of Gram’s house right after Adam was sent away. The whole situation definitely broke up Ginger and George.
Adam walked back over to the bowl with the mound of cilantro and threw it in. “I’m not fond of Ginger, but I know my dad wasn’t exactly a saint in everything they had going on, either. I’m pretty sure they both screwed things up. Let’s just make sure neither of us is like them.”
“I’m with you.”
“I don’t want to get sex mixed up with money and land and negotiations.”
Paige’s throat was suddenly filled with cotton. Was that Adam’s way of dismissing her? They had sex once, and that was enough for him? She focused on the vegetables so her hurt feelings didn’t betray her.
Love on Lavender Island (A Lavender Island Novel Book 2) Page 21
