by Alisha Rai
He tightened his grip on her when she stumbled, but that somehow threw his balance off-kilter, and the momentum toppled them both to the ground. He twisted at the last minute so he took the brunt of the fall. He grunted when she landed on top of him like a graceless sack of potatoes.
His shirt was damp and cold, and his hair was messier than before, with pieces of hay stuck in it. So bedraggled, so sexy. She scrambled up. “Are you okay? Your knee?”
“Yes.” He stroked her back. “You?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good.” His fingers played over her sides rapidly.
She stacked her hands on top of his chest and rested her chin on them. “What are you doing?”
He frowned. “Using my tools.”
“Your tools were your kiss.”
“No, my tools are tickling you.” His fingers moved with renewed vigor.
“Oh, I’m not ticklish.”
His frown deepened. “I just need to find the right spot.” His tickling attempt moved to her back.
She stared at him, then touched her fingers lightly to his side. He cringed and laughed immediately. “Stop!”
He was ticklish. Delight ran through her. The devil in her wanted to continue, but she’d give him a break. “This was very enlightening, thank you.”
He grunted in acceptance. “I’ll find your ticklish spot later.”
She waggled her eyebrows. “Feel free to find all my spots.”
His eyes widened, and she hoped she hadn’t crossed some kind of line . . . double entendres with Jas would take some getting used to. But he chuckled. “Will do.”
“My first snow slash hay slash water fight was quite fun.”
His smile stretched ear to ear. “Agreed. A snowball fight might actually be boring after this.”
“I’d like to try it. And snow cones. I’ve never had one of those.”
His smile turned quizzical. “Never?”
She wrinkled her nose. “My childhood pretty much ended at nine, and I never went back after to try some of the smaller pleasures.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Someday, perhaps you could tell me more about your life with your father.”
Her fingers curled into his chest. Her people-pleasing personality urged her to please him, but talking about her father too much made her want to throw up. It was a testament to how good her therapist was that she was able to listen to her body instead of her instant desire to make someone else happy. “I can try,” was the best she could do.
“Whatever you feel comfortable with. In the meantime, next month, we could attempt a trip to Big Bear or Tahoe. Have some actual snow-related activities.”
Her heart caught, then accelerated at the thought of a romantic couple’s getaway. She didn’t know where she’d be in a month mentally, but the thought of making even a small long-term plan with Jas was comforting. “I don’t think I want to learn to ski.” Strapping sticks on her feet and flinging herself down a hill held no appeal for her.
Jas’s hand slid down her back, to her butt. He flexed his fingers. He wasn’t demanding or coarse, just there, his touch light. “Skiing wouldn’t be my priority.”
Katrina was supremely conscious of his body under hers, long and strong. “I’d like that,” she said, and rubbed her nose over his chest. He smelled vaguely of musty hay. She’d never found the scent seductive before. She probably never would, on anyone else. “Or I’d like to try.”
“If not, no big deal.”
A surge of emotion rose inside her at his compassion, and it swamped her sense of self-preservation. She lifted her head to look him in the eyes. “I like you.”
His lips curved up. “I like you too.”
She inclined her head, and their lips met.
Oh the zings! The zings were different than they’d been the day before. Sweeter, familiar, more intense. What if the zings grew exponentially every day? Would she short-circuit at some point?
The kiss was closemouthed, but that didn’t make it any less hot. Katrina didn’t know how long it lasted, but when she lifted her head, they were both panting, and her heart was pumping in glorious time to his.
Her romantic little brain ran away with the implications of how dazed his gaze was. Even when he said, so romantically, “My entire back is wet and cold.”
“I’m going to get a complex if you always complain about how uncomfortable you are when I’m on top of you,” she teased, and shifted off of him to kneel on the ground.
His perfect eyebrows met as he rose to his feet. “It’s not you.”
“I’m teasing.” She accepted his help to stand and dusted off her bottom. He recaptured her hand, holding it securely in his.
She’d never held hands with anyone. It was a singularly intimate experience. A different kind of intimacy from sex, the kind that came from showing off affection to the world.
Though there was no world here, only her and him.
“You’ll probably want a hot shower,” he said, and stroked his thumb over her palm.
Her stomach tightened. How was she not supposed to think of his long, hot body in the shower with her? Slick with soap, the steam rising off both of them.
“I’ll want one too,” he added. “But the water heater here isn’t really big enough to withstand two people showering at the same time.”
Oh. Katrina slid him a sideways glance, perfectly timed to catch his sideways glance. She cleared her throat. “Um. Well.” She gestured as they walked closer to the house. “Why don’t—what are you doing?”
He dragged her back, falling to his knees behind a hay bale and forcing her down as well. He checked his pockets and cursed. “I must have dropped my phone back in the trees. The cameras should have alerted me. Or the guards should have.”
His face had gone hard and blank, like he’d flipped a switch. Her unease quadrupled. “Alerted you to what?” she asked, automatically matching his whisper, if not his flat affect.
“Someone’s in the house.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“WHAT?”
Jas ignored her incredulous question and held out his hand. This wasn’t the man who had made love to her so sweetly or tussled with her amid the trees. This was a protector, a guard. If she wasn’t scared at the thought of someone invading her home, she might find it sexy.
“Do you have your phone?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Give me. You have the camera app.”
She handed it to him, and tucked a strand of damp hair behind her ear. “It could be your brother or grandfather, right?”
“The shadow I saw through the window was too small to be either of them.” He pulled up the security video app and his lips went flat. He handed the phone back to her, and stood. “But not too small to be my mom. False alarm. No wonder the guards didn’t contact me.”
“Your mom?” She accepted his help to come to her feet, and took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. “Oh thank God.”
“Yeah. Thank God,” Jas said, with less relief.
Katrina trailed behind him to the little house, not sure if she should be a part of this reunion or not. Then again, she couldn’t very well hide. Could she?
She smoothed her sweater, and then her hair, but without a mirror, it was a useless endeavor. “Should I wait in the barn?”
Jas opened the front door. “Absolutely not. Don’t worry, this won’t take long.” He stopped, one foot over the threshold. “Unless . . . you’d rather not meet her?”
“No, no.” She scraped her shoes on the old welcome mat in a vain attempt to get the mud off. “I would love nothing more.” Than to meet your mother when I look like a drowned rat that was rolling around on the ground.
Katrina stifled the inappropriate urge to laugh.
This made perfect sense, didn’t it? It made perfect sense, that the day right after she kinda slept with her bodyguard, his mom would crash the party.
FML.
“Mom,” Jas called out as they went inside the house. “
Where are you?”
A woman came bustling out of the kitchen, Doodle happily padding along at her side.
Jas’s mother didn’t look anything like Katrina had imagined. She’d had a vague picture of a woman as tall and imposing as her father and sons were.
Jas’s mom was ethereal, petite and slender. Her henna-red hair was braided and hung over her shoulder. Her skin was a light, honey-kissed brown, her eyes big and lined with kohl in her smooth and youthful face. Despite the fall weather, she wore a long gauzy skirt and off-the-shoulder top, round blue designer sunglasses perched on top of her head. “Right here, my love,” she said. Her voice was breathy.
Jas accepted her hug and looked down at Doodle. The big canine thumped her tail and gazed adoringly at Tara. “Some guard dog you are, Doodle.”
Though Katrina would have given anything to hide shyly behind Jas and escape his mother’s notice, she moved forward. “Doodle’s not a guard dog. I don’t want her to ever feel like she has to earn her keep.” Katrina patted her thigh and Doodle obediently moved over to her side. “Hi, I’m Katrina. You’ve met my dog.” She wiped her hand on her jeans and held it out. She hadn’t been so nervous to meet Bikram and Andrés. They were far more imposing physically, and had been slow to warm up to her.
But this was Jas’s mother. She’d never met the mother of the man she lov—was sleeping with, and she’d hoped to do it when she wasn’t a mess.
“Doodle is a beauty, and greeted me so sweetly. Call me Tara.” The woman beamed at her and spread her arms out. “I feel like I know you. I don’t want to attack you with a hug, but would love to give you one.”
Bemused, Katrina scratched her head. “Oh, well. I like hugs, but I’m afraid I’m a little messy right now. We were, um . . .”
“Working outside,” Jas supplied.
“Yes, working.”
“You put a guest to work on the farm, Jasvinder?”
“I love working,” Katrina hurriedly said. Which wasn’t a total lie. She did like to be industrious.
“Well, I’m a farm girl.” Tara’s sharp brown gaze tracked over her. “A little sweat never hurt me. Come on over here.”
Tara’s hug was lovely, and gave Katrina the same sense of homecoming Daisy’s had given her. Katrina took a step back and smiled, her anxiety melting away. “It’s lovely to finally meet you.”
“And you. I always liked Hardeep. He was a good friend. I know he passed a while ago, but my condolences.”
She relaxed. She’d tried not to take Andrés’s annoyance with Hardeep to heart, but it was nice to have this, too. “Thank you. He was a great man.”
“The nicest. So generous too. Whenever he visited, it was like Christmas in whatever month of the year it was.”
Jas cleared his throat. “Mom, what are you doing here?”
“I came by to see if you were home. The door was open, and I wanted to ensure your kitchen and toiletries were stocked.”
“I mean, what are you doing here, on the farm, in Yuba City?”
“Oh, I thought, my whole family’s here, I should take a couple days off and stop in, too.” Tara turned to Katrina. “I’m a teacher, so is Jas’s stepfather. Unfortunately, he couldn’t arrange the time off, or he’d be here to meet you as well.”
Jas grunted. “What a coincidence that you decided to drive up after last night’s—”
“What’s all that hay doing outside?”
Jas rocked back on his heels. “It’s . . . being stored here.”
“That’s weird.” Tara moved closer to Jas and reached way up. They all stared at the tiny piece of hay she retrieved from behind his ear. “What kind of work were you doing out there?”
Katrina scratched her nose. FML indeed. “Jas, um, I mean, we had a mishap.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We were . . . making hay.” Was that the right word? Or phrase? Damn it, why had she never read any articles about farming.
“Interesting.”
“Katrina, why don’t you go shower?”
She grasped on to Jas’s suggestion like a lifeline. “Yes, let me do that. I’ll be quick.” She gave them both a wave and escaped, Doodle panting at her side as she accompanied her upstairs.
JAS WAITED UNTIL he heard Katrina close her bedroom door before he yanked the piece of hay out of his mother’s fingers and tossed it aside. “Damn it, Mom.”
Another woman might have scolded her son for cursing, but his free spirit mother had never been a conventional mom. Tara dimpled. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist. You’re so cute when you blush.”
“You embarrassed her.”
“By implying you two were rolling around in the hay together? I don’t see why. Surely she knows I am aware my children might engage in sexual activity.”
“Mom.”
“Stop being so uptight, Jas, sex is a natural act.”
He huffed out a breath. “Let’s talk in the kitchen.” He didn’t particularly want to talk at all, but better to talk there than out here in the foyer, if his mom was going to go on and on about sex. Less of a chance of Katrina hearing them.
Tara rolled her eyes and spun around in a cloud of tiny bells on her anklets and a wave of her cotton skirt. His mother had always embraced the hippie aesthetic. When he was a child, he’d follow along behind her to bonfires and prayer circles, clutching her colorful loose clothes. She’d been so young when she’d had him, and until she’d met Gurjit, it had been her and him and his grandparents against the world. Sometimes Jas felt like they’d raised each other.
She was his number one weakness, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t get annoyed as hell with her. “You can’t just barge in here. I thought you were an intruder,” he said, when they were in the kitchen and out of earshot of Katrina. The pipes squealed as the water turned on upstairs, and he relaxed.
Tara leaned against the counter. “Don’t be silly, who would break into the little house? It’s safe.”
Normally, that was true. Beyond the fact that it was a safe community, no one, not even a rebellious teen, would dare cross the Peach Prince of Yuba City. “I protect a rich woman, Mom. This is my job.”
“Oh right.” His mom shrugged, though, which told him she didn’t quite get it. “I was surprised when Bikram told me you were here.”
“He shouldn’t have told you.”
She ignored that. “Why are you here?”
His mom was paranoid and suspicious about the internet, convinced it was a tool used by capitalism to spy on her and sell her stuff she didn’t need. Which, given the ads that were frequently served to Jas, he couldn’t entirely defend against.
Tara grudgingly embraced only the parts of technology and the internet that could help her students. He didn’t want to freak her out by explaining how Katrina had gone viral. “Katrina needed to get away. There were some problems for her at home.”
“Oh no. Are they resolved now?”
Katrina had told him this morning that she and her roommates were plotting a counter campaign. He’d been too busy planning his hay/water/snowball fight to ask her how her talk with the other women had gone. “Soon, perhaps.”
“Good! How are your friends in L.A.? Are you keeping in touch with them while you’re here?”
“I’ve only been here for a couple of days, Mom.”
“Yes, I know. But you do have a problem, I’ve noticed, staying in touch with people. You should text them, tell them what’s going on with your life.”
Jas was mildly offended. He knew how to keep in touch with his friends.
Do you? You mostly only kept in touch with Lorne because she provides you with a service.
He rolled his shoulders, disliking how he could kind of see the truth in his mother’s gentle criticism. “I’ll text them more,” he allowed.
“How are you enjoying being home?” Tara asked.
Like he was home. Pleasure. Hurt. The joy of being in his family’s old home, his home. The pain of reopening old wounds with his grandfather.
/>
She nodded when he was silent. “You don’t have to answer. Katrina’s dog seems to like you.” She came closer and brushed a speck of dirt off his shoulder. “That’s unusual for you.”
That statement he didn’t take offense to, because it was a fact. They hadn’t been able to keep any indoor dogs when he was young because of how little they cared for Jas.
It had hurt his feelings when he was a child. Animals had a sixth sense about people, right? What did it mean when they decided you weren’t worthy? “Doodle tolerates me.” Which was the best he could expect from any four-legged creature.
“That’s a sign.”
“What’s the sign with other creatures who don’t tolerate me?” he asked dryly. He’d never been able to suspend skepticism for his mother’s talk of signs and fate, not even when he was a child.
“That they weren’t yours, of course.”
What did that even mean? He changed the subject. “What are you really doing here?”
Her lower lip stuck out in a pretty pout. “I told you, everyone’s here, and I felt left out.”
“You told Grandpa that I was home, didn’t you? That’s why he came back early? That’s why you haven’t called me since I got here, because you knew I’d know?”
She drew herself up, the picture of outraged sensibilities. “Of course not.”
Jas studied her. Her lip twitched at the corner, which gave her away. His mom had a decent poker face, but she’d never been able to control that lip twitch when she was lying. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, you can believe me or not.”
He sighed. “Don’t bullshit me, Mom.”
Her lips firmed, and she turned away from him, taking a couple of steps away to the counter. “I spoke with Bikram yesterday night.”
“Ah.” His brother had snitched about the fight.
She examined an apple in the fruit bowl, then gave Jas a determined, toothy smile. “I am not going to let this foolish feud between you and your grandfather go on any longer.”
Jas clenched his teeth together. “He’s acting like a child.”
“And so are you! Go to the damn ceremony, Jasvinder. It’ll be in the high school auditorium, for crying out loud, in the midst of an event you know quite well. The only people there will be other people from this town, people you grew up with.”
