by Alison Kent
“Not any of it?”
She thought of old dowries and entailed estates. “Not enough for what you need.”
He paced the width of her office, his thighs, his jeans, his stride, and the roll of his hips bringing the word yes to the tip of her tongue. Bringing a sheen of sweat to her chest and her nape. Bringing one hand to her blouse’s collar where she pulled the two sides close. This ridiculous—God, what was it? Lust? Longing?—had to stop.
Across the room, he curled his fingers over the windowsill and parked his backside against it, his eyes downcast as if a solution lay woven into the carpet’s pattern. “What about the oil money?”
She tried to contain her sigh. “You want a loan against your mineral rights when you don’t even know what’s down there?”
“The well’s due to spud next month. Sooner if the rig can get there. Everyone’s saying the prospect looks good.”
“Until the well’s producing, good doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well, fuck me.”
She didn’t get it. Why in the world would he want to put money into a second losing proposition? Why didn’t he sell the lot and the house as is and be done with it? She didn’t get it, but she wasn’t going to ask because asking meant personal involvement, and even though her brother was a partner in the ranch, she had to separate her business from her personal life.
That’s what he needed to understand. She wasn’t singling him out or punishing him. As much as this was about his request, it wasn’t. “Casper. If I approved this expenditure, I’d lose my job.”
He brought up both hands, scrubbed them down his face, looking as exhausted as he was resigned. “Guess I’ll have to get one that pays then.”
Or he could start acting like he had some sense and let this go. “A job? Doing what? You already work dawn to dusk.”
“That leaves me about ten hours,” he said, walking back to her desk. He stopped between the two visitor chairs, gripped the back of both with strong, capable hands… hands with short clean nails, golden hair trailing along the edges from his wrists. “That should be enough.”
“To do what?” she asked, imagining the thick slide of his fingers and squirming in her seat. “And when are you going to sleep?”
“I don’t sleep much as it is.” He rocked against the chairs, back and forth. “I hear Royce Summerlin’s looking for someone to break a few horses.”
“You. Breaking horses.” She gave a scoffing laugh because he was too close, the seams of his jeans worn and nearly white and messing with her head.
“Why not?” he asked, his hat brim casting a shadow across his eyes.
She sat forward and picked up a pen, looking at the Hart’s paperwork on her desk instead of giving Casper any more of her time. She had work to do, and he was bothering her. Making her itch. Making her damp. Making her heart race and her blood run hot.
Making her foolhardy. “Because you’re a bull rider.”
“I’ve ridden a lot more than bulls.” He pushed up to stand straight. “And I’ve broken more than a few of my rides.”
She brushed him off without looking up. “Don’t be sex-talking me. It’s not going to get you anywhere. The answer’s still no.”
He came closer, until his thighs in her peripheral vision were the only thing she could see. “Sex talk? Really?”
Heat bloomed beneath her white blouse and blue blazer. What in the world was wrong with her? It was his fault. All of it. She wasn’t herself when he was around. She wasn’t anyone she recognized. She was imprudent, allowing in thoughts she had no business thinking, saying things that came with trouble attached.
“Sorry,” she said, returning her pen to her desk and meeting his gaze. “It’s just… I know you. Everything out of your mouth is a double entendre, and that’s only when you’re not being outright provocative or crass.”
“Crass? Are you kidding me?” He narrowed his eyes. The corner of his mouth lifted dangerously.
Her laugh was more nervous than she liked. She knew she didn’t have him wrong. “More like you’re kidding yourself.”
“You, Faith Mitchell, have wounded me.”
“And you, Casper Jayne, are a scoundrel and you know it.”
He took a minute to respond, as if first running his life through the filter of her words. He looked confused, and suddenly not quite sure of where they stood, or where to go next. “Is that why you wouldn’t have anything to do with me in high school?”
Now who was kidding whom? “You didn’t want anything to do with me. I got that message loud and clear.”
“Oh no, sugar.” His voice was deep, hungry, his gaze sharp and to the point. “The message you got was your brother’s.”
“Whatever,” she said, because this conversation was one step away from precarious, and she could so easily fall.
“And anyway, you know the gang’s got a hands-off policy about sisters.”
That sounded as much like a coward’s way out as a challenge. She couldn’t stop herself. “You’ll climb on the back of a two-thousand-pound bull, but you won’t stand up to Boone?”
A vein throbbed in his temple. Heat rolled off his body to wrap her up, tangling her in his scent and the strength of his thighs. “You want me to stand up to Boone? Is that what you’re saying here, Faith? Because all I need is a sign and I’ll make it happen.”
She’d been giving him signs for years. He needed to figure this out for himself. And she needed to figure out if this was really what she wanted—and why his company had her flirting with a trip off the path of straight and narrow and onto the road less traveled where so many things could go wrong.
Why it always had. “Look. Can we talk about this later? I’ve actually got work to do here.”
She wasn’t any more keen on calling the Harts now than she’d been before Casper barged in. In fact, having to turn down his money request made her feel even worse about giving the family their bad news.
But she was too close to making a mistake here. She knew that. She couldn’t think when he was around. She knew that, too. And so she waited for him to go.
A wait made in vain.
He hadn’t moved, hadn’t turned so much as his gaze away—as if he were looking for, waiting for that sign. “Later when?”
His voice, when it came, was gruff and demanding, and it was all she could do to breathe. Be careful what you ask for, Faith Mitchell. “I’m coming out to the ranch tonight to go over our parents’ anniversary party plans with Boone. Will that work for your very busy schedule?”
“I’ll be there,” he said, and then he strode out of her office, and it took her a very long time to get back to work and stop thinking about his thighs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native Texan, Alison Kent loves her cowboys and is thrilled to be writing about them for Berkley Heat. She is also the author of more than forty contemporary and action adventure romances, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance.
If there’s a better career to be had, she doesn’t want to know about it, as writing from her backyard is the best way she’s found to convince her pack of rescue dogs they have her full attention. Alison lives near Houston with her petroleum geologist husband, where every year she fights the heat to grow tomatoes, and spends way too much time managing a feral cat colony.
You can find her online at alisonkent.com, on Twitter at twitter.com/alisonkent, and on Facebook at facebook.com/author.alisonkent.
