“Welcome to the ranch,” Summer cried. “We’re so glad you made it through the stormy weather in Chicago. Judah can’t wait to see you again.”
Claudia rolled her eyes even as she watched with rapt interest. Her competition already knew the potential client. Of course.
Marcus got out the driver’s side and surveyed his new surroundings, his jaw tight. Though he wore a pair of black aviator sunglasses that blocked out any hint of his eyes, his head turned in Claudia’s direction and stayed there.
The intensity of his attention was enough to freeze Claudia in place.
He wore another pristine black dress shirt, but had traded in his pressed slacks for a pair of black jeans and hiking boots. On any other man, such a severe outfit would have made him look like a bad guy searching for a sheriff to kill, but Marcus was like the face of some high-end designer’s Western collection.
Another man was getting out on the passenger side, Claudia realized. About the same height as Marcus, he was Caucasian, with the sun-kissed complexion of a man who spent a lot of time outdoors. His curls, not quite blond but not quite brown, ruffled in the breeze and brushed the collar of his weathered white denim shirt. Faded jeans and hiking boots completed his look.
“Oh, my,” breathed Summer quietly as the men shut their doors and made their way up the walk. “They sure do make them nice in New York City, don’t they?”
Yes, thought Claudia bitterly, wishing her cheeks weren’t quite so hot, they sure do.
Just another one of the unfair facts of life, she supposed.
“Summer?” Marcus took off his sunglasses, tucked them into his breast pocket and extended his hand. His gaze flickered to Claudia—yeah, he looked pissed—before latching on to Summer. Then he flashed that smile of his, a sight so breathtaking that Claudia almost expected Summer to look around, blink and say, Mountains? What mountains? “Great to finally meet you. Thanks for having us.”
“We don’t bother with handshakes around here. We’re all family at Sweet Heaven,” Summer said, catching him in a hug and running her hands up his back and down his arms with more frank feminine appreciation than Claudia thought was necessary. Over the top of Summer’s head, Marcus’s smile froze in place and he shot Claudia a bewildered What the hell is happening to me? look. Claudia struggled not to laugh. New Yorkers, she knew, were just as enthusiastic about hugs as Brits were.
“Appreciate that,” Marcus said, managing to look charmed even as he extricated himself as quickly as possible. “We’re thrilled to be here. Did you order up this weather just for us?”
“Naturally!” Summer headed for the other man, who threw his arms open to receive her, his blue eyes glinting with mischief. Summer seemed not to notice. “Hello, Cooper,” she sang, pressing her cheek to Cooper’s broad chest. “I have the feeling you might have lied to me when you told me that your brother Marcus here was hideously scarred in a childhood accident and always wears a mask over his face.”
Cooper let her go, stepped back and put a hand over his heart, looking as wide-eyed and innocent as a puppy bouncing through a dog food commercial. “Did I say that?”
Summer laughed. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, when I talked to Marcus, he told me you were adopted after your birth mother, a yeti, rejected you on sight right after you were born.”
Cooper didn’t seem to mind this insult. “That does make me feel better. Last time he told the story, my mother was a werewolf. Isn’t that right, man?”
But Marcus was on his way up the steps to stand beside Claudia, and he didn’t answer. Claudia braced herself, her pulse skittering like popcorn cooking on the stove. For the millionth time, she wondered if she might have handled the situation last night a little better. The hard lines of Marcus’s face certainly looked as though he was holding on to a grudge.
She waited, breath held.
“Thanks for running out on me like a bat out of hell last night,” Marcus murmured. “It’s not like we could have talked it through, or anything.”
Claudia again crossed her arms over her chest—she felt as if she needed an extra layer of protection between herself and Marcus. Then she ran a shaky hand through her hair to smooth it and frowned, trying hard to look as though she couldn’t understand all the fuss. “What more was there to say?”
“Now you care what I think?” Marcus’s lips—the same lips that had kissed, nipped and/or sucked pretty much every inch of her body last night—thinned into a bitter line as he nailed her with a look that was as hurt as it was angry. “We have everything to talk about, Claudia.”
“Marc?” Cooper approached, his keen interest flickering between Marcus and Claudia. “You lose your hearing all of a sudden?”
Wiping his face clean of all expression, Marcus turned to face his brother while Claudia tried to catch her breath. “Nope. You finished telling lies about me?”
“For now.” Cooper stared at Claudia, his gaze openly speculative now. “Are you giving out hugs, too?”
“No,” Marcus said tightly, glaring at Cooper. “That would be a negative.”
Cooper extended his hand to Claudia, his lips curling into a smile of open and wicked delight. “Cooper Davies. Great to meet you.”
Claudia smiled back and shook his hand. “Claudia Montgomery. Pleasure.”
One of Cooper’s thick eyebrows headed north. “British, eh?”
“Guilty. Londoner.”
“London’s a great city,” Cooper said. “If you’re a duck.” He nudged Marcus with an elbow. “Hey, Marc. Do you know Claudia from London?”
“No,” Claudia said quickly.
“Yes,” Marcus said at the same time.
Summer frowned, glancing between them. Cooper smirked. Marcus narrowed his eyes at Claudia just enough to make her fidget.
Forced to correct this discrepancy, Claudia shifted on the balls of her feet. “I mean,” she began. Another shift. Stop that, Claudia, you idiot! “What I meant to say is,” she said, locking her knees, determined to stand still, “that we met on the plane. Just, you know, idle chitchat.”
Well aware that she was in danger of babbling, Claudia kept her mouth shut before she said something truly stupid.
“Oh, you met on the plane!” Summer chirped. “I meet some of the most fascinating people on planes!”
“So do I,” Marcus said. An awkward beat passed before he released Claudia from his thunderous gaze. She almost collapsed with relief when he worked up a crooked smile for the others. “Should we go inside? I want to see the place.”
“Of course!” Summer sprang into action, held open the front door and waved everyone into the sunny and soaring two-story foyer, which was framed with exposed timbers and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the dock and river. “Come in, come in!”
“This is fabulous,” Claudia said, to murmurs of agreement from the men. “Absolutely amazing.”
She inventoried every exquisite detail, thinking that a being a rock god certainly had its benefits. The roaring flames inside the fieldstone fireplace looked like a perfect place for roasting a whole bison. Weathered leather sofas and chairs, interspersed with rough-hewn tables, benches and more chairs, sat upon Native American rugs. Ethnic hangings, photographs and carvings clung to the walls. Antlers were a crucial component of the decor, from the wrought-iron chandelier hanging over the seating area, which sported a curly set of ram antlers, to a ten-pointed version from some sort of antelope or deer, to the impressive longhorn set adorning the painting above the mantel.
Claudia craned her neck, trying to take it all in.
Off in the gleaming granite kitchen, which was a football-field length away on the other side of the great room, pots steamed atop gas flames, and a woman of indeterminate age added spices to something that smelled savory and delicious. Claudia didn’t want to act like an uncouth idi
ot and shout a greeting to her across the vast space, so she raised a hand in a wave.
The woman nodded, then raised a wooden spoon and ducked her head to taste her creation.
One of the men whistled with appreciation.
“Great place,” Marcus said.
“We get that a lot around here,” Summer said with pride.
“Hang on.” Claudia ventured to the edge of the vast rug just inside the door, her attention snagged as she took a closer look at the moody black-and-white mantel photograph. “Is that an Ansel Adams?”
“Freeze!” Summer barked.
Claudia jumped with surprise, one booted foot hovering over the polished hickory floors, and looked wildly around, half expecting to see a dangerous creature like, say, a rattlesnake approaching. Marcus, acting quickly, grabbed her arm to keep her from losing her balance.
“What is it?” Claudia cried, getting both feet back onto the rug.
“We don’t wear shoes inside the house,” Summer admonished as though the rules inside Judah Cross’s house were well-known facts drilled into every kindergarten child in America. She had, Claudia noticed, already ditched her awful pink shoes, which were now sitting on a corner of the rug. “We don’t want to track any impurities into Judah’s haven, do we?”
Claudia, who tracked impurities into her own New York haven on a daily basis, blinked. “No?”
“No!” Smiling with that bottomless enthusiasm that Claudia was beginning to find a bit tiresome, Summer pointed them to a bench and set of cubbies next to the front door. “So we have a surprise for you—slippers!”
Each cubby sported a label with one of their names written in the kind of flawless calligraphy that Claudia normally saw on high-end wedding invitations. Inside her cubby was a pair of admittedly expensive sheepskin moccasins with fluffy shearling liners.
The slippers were pink.
Looking sadly down at her favorite Stuart Weitzman riding boots, which she’d had for years but had specially polished for this trip West, Claudia stifled her sigh. She tried to smile her thanks for the slippers and plunked herself down on the bench to put them on.
Marcus and Cooper sat on either side of her, sandwiching her between broad shoulders, long legs and testosterone.
“Wonderful! You’ll love them! They’re so comfortable!” Summer clapped her hands with a delight that Claudia frankly couldn’t understand. Jimmy Choos? Yeah, Claudia would clap for those. Fuzzy slippers? Not so much. “And what about your juice orders? We have wheatgrass, kale or chlorophyll.”
Claudia recoiled but focused on keeping her face horror-free.
Cooper made a soft sound of disgust in the back of his throat.
“Do you have anything that’s not...green?” Marcus asked pleasantly. “I’m partial to orange when it comes to juice.”
“Oh, we don’t have orange.” Summer crinkled her nose and waved a dismissive hand. “That doesn’t have any cleansing properties. I’ll just bring a sampling of several for all of you. You’ll love it. Trust me. I’ll be right back!”
With that, she bustled off across the enormous great room to the kitchen.
Claudia, Marcus and Cooper exchanged aghast looks as they went to work on their shoes. Marcus looked so disgusted that Claudia had to grin.
“Oh, cheer up,” she told him. “It’s one shot, and you’ll swallow it down like that nasty Scotch you’re so partial to. No big deal.”
“I did not come out here to be cleansed,” Marcus said darkly.
“What do you Americans say? Oh, yes. Cowboy up,” she said.
Marcus glared at her as she put her slippers on. “I like the pink,” he told her. “It’s a nice pop of color against all the black. Great look.”
“Ah, but not as nice as your pumpkin slippers,” she fired back.
“So, Claudia.” Cooper stretched out his legs to admire his olive slippers. “Marcus was doing all this yammering about this amazing woman he met last night—”
Marcus, who now had his left foot in a slipper, stiffened, looked up and glared at his brother with murder on his face.
“Coop,” he warned, low.
“—and I put two and two together and used my amazing analytical skills to determine that you’re the woman he was talking about, aren’t you?” Cooper continued smoothly. “I couldn’t get him to shut up about you. Surprised the hell out of me.”
A wave of heat rolled up Claudia’s neck and engulfed her cheeks in flames that felt hotter than the ones crackling in the fireplace. Ducking her head to avoid eye contact with either man, she concentrated on her shoes and her composure.
“I’m sure you misunderstood—”
“Oh, no misunderstanding,” Coop said cheerily, standing up and rocking back and forth to test his shoes. “You know why?”
“Cooper.” Marcus sounded quietly apoplectic now.
“Because,” Cooper continued, “the thing about Marcus is, he doesn’t mention women to me. Ever. The last woman he mentioned to me? He married her.”
“Cooper!”
“You know, these are really comfortable,” Cooper pronounced, looking happily down at his slippers. “I may have to keep these when we leave—oh, hey, Summer looks like she needs some help.”
With that, he strode off to the kitchen to help Summer with a tray of juice, leaving Claudia alone with Marcus.
Chapter 9
A sudden attack of nerves made Claudia regress into a twitchy preteen trying not to stare at her crush during recess. She cleared her throat. Brushed nonexistent lint off her jeans. Lined her boots up next to the bench, toes together. Caught herself fidgeting and tried to get a grip.
After a few minutes of letting her twist in the wind—she knew he was going to say something, so why didn’t he just get it over with?—Marcus leaned closer.
“So.” His low voice was as unabashedly sexy as a naked man sprawled across a rumpled bed first thing in the morning. “Fancy meeting you here.”
She snorted back a laugh but couldn’t conquer her grin or her blush. Marcus’s humor was, she decided on the spot, the most disarming thing about him. How could she hide behind her aloof demeanor and protective shell when he made it so easy to laugh with him?
“Yes. Fancy that.”
“Sleep good?”
Her unwilling grin widened, and she dared not look at him unless she wanted to melt into a puddle of milk chocolate on Judah Cross’s pristine floor. No melting for her! She would keep her wits about her, no matter how hard Marcus made it.
More fidgeting ensued, though. She shook her head and tugged an earlobe, then tried to disguise the ear tugging by smoothing her hair. Idiot! She was an absolute idiot!
“I slept wonderfully,” she finally replied, a lie.
“I couldn’t sleep at all.”
“Oh?” She kept her determined gaze on the proceedings in the kitchen, which seemed to be moving at a dead snail’s pace, and inched down the bench a bit, away from the solid heat of his thigh next to hers. “How unfortunate for you. Perhaps some warm milk...?”
He put a hand over his heart. “I’m touched by your concern.”
Silence for a beat or two. She crossed her legs, trying to look bored.
“Why did you walk out on me last night?” he asked when the tension had risen to screaming level.
Despite the increased distance between them, his voice seemed to be directly in her ear—under her skin—and it was disconcerting, especially when it had that hurt note in it.
Do not let this man get to you, she told herself sternly. Do not let him in.
“If you check the record,” she answered crisply once she was reasonably sure she had her voice under control, “I’m sure you’ll see that I didn’t walk out on you. And we did talk. You told me that you were also trying to land Juda
h Cross’s auction, we agreed that we’d dodged a bullet just in time, because we’re competitors with no business canoodling with each other, and I left. End of story.”
Marcus shook his head and looked irritated. “First, you walked out on me without giving me a chance to explain how we could manage our relationship—”
“We don’t have a relationship.”
“—while still pursuing our business interests. Second, we didn’t dodge a bullet, we missed a beautiful opportunity to consummate our relationship—”
“We don’t have a relationship.”
“—and, third, it’s not canoodling when you have a relationship, so it’s not the end of the story at all, is it, Claudia?”
“My God,” she said around a disbelieving half laugh, “you really don’t listen, do you? Is it a hearing impediment? Is that the problem?”
She turned to face him and shoot off some further response that would no doubt be both cutting and witty, but that was when she noticed how close they were. Their thighs were once again touching, and he now had his arm slung across the back of the bench, dangerously near her shoulder. Worse, he was leaning closer to her again, and she, bleeding idiot that she was, had eased to within kissing distance of him without even noticing.
Why did these things happen whenever she was around him?
It was as if the man had a magnetic core and she’d ingested several pounds of iron shavings: her body couldn’t stay away from his no matter what her outmatched mind wanted. Or maybe she was a silly mouse whose leg had been snared in a trap but still couldn’t resist a few licks of the peanut butter that had lured her to her doom in the first place.
This man was not for her, she told herself firmly.
And yet she couldn’t get her muscles to move away.
“I was listening then and I’m listening now,” he said reasonably. “But it’s hard for me to listen when you walk out in the middle of an important conversation.”
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