Harlequin Romance September 2013 Bundle: Bound by a BabyIn the Line of DutyPatchwork Family in the OutbackStranded with the Tycoon

by Kate Hardy

  Poppy’s face flushed hot and she hoped she wasn’t blushing. “I, ah, hope you don’t mind, but I slept in yours.” There, she’d said it. Besides, he’d probably already been in there and noticed, anyway.

  “Good. I didn’t want you sleeping in the bunks, but I’m just sorry I didn’t have time to put fresh sheets on.”

  She swallowed. Then swallowed again. She was glad he hadn’t washed the sheets. His aftershave had been all over the pillows and she wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t appreciate the scent.

  “It was fine, honestly. I’m just pleased I could help out,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant when in reality her heart was beating overtime.

  “Well, I left my things in the hall, anyway, just in case you had anything private in there.”

  Poppy’s heart slowed then. Her embarrassment died faster than it had appeared. How the heck had she managed to meet a man with manners this good? Still, she was ready to change the subject.

  “So when are you heading off? I hope you’re not going to drive tired.” The last thing she needed was to be worrying about him.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll leave tomorrow, so the kids will have at least a few days off school.”

  She shrugged. “No problem. Swing past if you want to take some reading or anything for them.”

  Poppy cradled her coffee and looked outside. She’d felt a lot of things around Harrison, but never awkward, which was exactly how she was feeling now.

  Now? Now she didn’t know what to say to him, how to look at him. Because she’d slept in his bed, cooked in his kitchen, cared for his children...and now it was him she was thinking about. What kissing him would be like, what touching him would be like, what letting something further develop between them would be like.

  Stop! Poppy cleared her throat and just stood there, watching the children as they played outside. She was rebuilding her life here, on her own, to prove that she was capable of starting over. Men were not in her immediate future—not one-night stands, not relationships and certainly not Harrison Black.

  “Poppy?”

  He was standing behind her; she could feel it. Knew that he was too close, closer than he should be when they were nothing more than friends.

  “Sometimes I think I could just stand for hours watching them,” he said, voice low. “They’re pretty good at leveling me when everything feels like it’s turned to crap.”

  Poppy was still staring out the window, but she didn’t know what to say, how to respond. But he was right. The way children could make you feel, the way they did make her feel, was one of the reasons she loved her job. Why she loved children.

  Her body went rigid as metal. Harrison’s hand had closed over her shoulder gently, as warm as if there was no fabric between them, even though there was.

  She kept staring out the window even though she couldn’t see anything, was blind to everything except his touch. Poppy wished she didn’t feel this way, wished her resolve about men was stronger, but Harrison was the kind of man she’d wished she’d met all along. The kind of man that might be able to make her trust again, to make her love. And no matter how much her brain was telling her not to think that way, her heart was starting to tell her a different story altogether.

  “Thank you, Poppy.” His grasp changed then, becoming a soft squeeze that made her shut her eyes, trying to relax and summon enough courage to turn toward him. Because he still hadn’t moved, which made her think he was waiting for her. “They’ve experienced a lot of heartache, a lot of pain over their mom leaving, even though they were so young when she left. It’s not often I let someone close to them, so thank you for being there when they needed someone.”

  She pivoted slowly on the spot, and as she moved his hand fell away, brushing her hip as it skimmed past. But the rest of him seemed carved from stone—unmoving, unblinking, but not unseeing.

  Harrison’s gaze was steady, yet there was a seriousness in his stare that in equal parts thrilled and terrified her.

  “I should go,” she mumbled, her voice so quiet she wasn’t even sure she’d spoken.

  Harrison didn’t say anything, but he did move. Now it was Poppy standing as if she was carved from stone, still as a statue as he slowly raised his hand, fingers brushing her jaw and staying there. When he pressed lightly, she moved into him, stepping into his space as if he’d asked her to.

  Poppy ignored the warning voice in her head, switched it off and refused to be drawn away from something so magnetic, something she instinctively knew was going to feel good.

  Harrison’s mouth moved closer to hers, lips slightly parted, his eyes no longer looking into hers but staring at her mouth instead. His fingers were warm against her skin, sending tingles through her body that curled into her stomach, and his lips were hot.

  Harrison kissed her so tenderly that she had to stifle a moan. She stood still, rooted to the spot, as though if she moved even an inch he might stop what he was doing and...

  Oh. He didn’t stop. Instead, he reached with his other hand to touch his fingers to the back of her skull, teased her even more with his mouth. Harrison’s tongue softly, wetly tangled with hers, and still she didn’t move, lost to the sensation of his lips against hers, in the most tender of embraces she’d ever experienced.

  And then he pulled away—so slowly that she leaned forward, hungry to feel his mouth back on hers, to lose herself in the moment again.

  But he put his hands on her arms then, holding her back, as if she’d been the one who’d started this in the first place.

  “I don’t know where that came from,” he said, his voice a husky whisper.

  Neither did she. But she did know that she’d liked it, even though her kissing Harrison had a voice in her mind screaming “No!” so loudly that it should have sent her running.

  “Daddy!”

  Katie’s excited call made Poppy jump back a step, not wanting either of his children to catch them kissing. It was bad enough that she’d let it happen without having it complicate things for them, too.

  Harrison cleared his throat. “In here, honey.”

  They were still staring at each other, not saying anything, and Poppy was alternating from having a million and one things to say to him to nothing at all.

  “I think it’s time for me to go,” she murmured.

  Harrison smiled, one side of his mouth kicking up at the corner. “You sure you don’t want to stay for dinner?”

  Did she ever. But she wasn’t going to put herself through an evening with Harrison when what she needed was to establish distance between them. To set boundaries and follow through with them. To think about what had just happened.

  “Harrison...” she began, not knowing how to say what she was feeling. Not knowing how she was actually feeling inside.

  “Dad, we found a field mouse.” Katie burst into the room. “Alex saw it, too.”

  Harrison kept watching Poppy, a beat too long, before turning his attention to his children. “How about you show me where you saw it,” he said. “That’ll give Poppy some time to get her things together.”

  Part of her liked that he was giving her some privacy, but another part? That part wanted him to ask her one more time to stay.

  * * *

  “Are you sure you won’t stay for dinner?”

  Poppy shook her head, but he could tell she’d considered it. The way she glanced around the room and looked at the kids told him she’d given it more thought than she was letting on.

  “I really do need to go,” she told him, slinging her overnight bag over her shoulder. “I don’t want to drive back in the dark and Lucky will be missing me.”

  “Let me walk you out, then,” he said, wanting a moment to talk to her alone before she left, because things were only going to get more awkward between them if he didn’t b
ring up their kiss.

  Why he’d needed to cross that boundary, when he had zero interest in taking things further with any woman, he didn’t know. But he had, and now he needed to deal with the consequences.

  “Honestly, I’m fine,” she said, giving him a tight smile that he didn’t buy for a moment. “Enjoy your trip to Sydney, kids.”

  They called out goodbye to her and Harrison followed Poppy to the front door, leaning past her to open it. She stayed still, as if she was too scared to touch him even by accident, until he stepped aside and she walked out to her car.

  “Poppy, about before...” he started.

  “You don’t need to say anything, Harrison,” she replied, not letting him finish.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, watched her as she threw her bag in the back and did everything to avoid making eye contact with him.

  “It was a heat-of-the-moment thing and there’s nothing to discuss,” she said.

  If there was nothing to discuss, then why was she trying to flee the scene so quickly?

  “Poppy, I’m sorry,” he said, needing to apologize before he managed to completely ruin their friendship. “I’m sure you’re as hesitant as me to get, ah, involved.” He paused, not wanting to dig himself a bigger hole than he had already. Nothing was coming out like he wanted it to. “What I mean is you’re a beautiful, wonderful woman, but I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea.”

  She was looking even more embarrassed now than before he’d started to try and explain himself. Crap! He was making a complete hash of the entire situation.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I got carried away before, but our friendship means a lot to me, and I’m so grateful for what you did, looking after the kids. I don’t want to ruin that.”

  Poppy looked like a startled animal ready to flee, staring at him as if he’d announced he wanted to boil her cat and eat it.

  “There’s no need to apologize, Harrison,” she finally said, breaking the silence. “It just happened, but I couldn’t agree more. We’re friends, and the last thing I’m interested in is something, well, something happening between us.”

  Harrison stood on the grass, wriggling his toes into it for something to do, and watched her get in her car.

  “Thanks again for helping me out.”

  She nodded. “No problem. See you when you’re back.”

  He pushed his hands even deeper into his jeans pockets and watched her drive off. Kind, sweet, beautiful Poppy, who he’d managed to thoroughly embarrass after she’d done so much for him. Then he’d talked rubbish, trying to explain his way out of what had happened.

  But the problem wasn’t what he’d done, it was how she’d responded. How they’d both responded. He’d meant to just touch her, then deliver a soft kiss, but the moment their lips had collided he’d been a goner, and if his daughter hadn’t called out and broken the spell between them, he wasn’t sure when he’d have pulled away.

  Poppy was making him think things that weren’t even a possibility for him or his children, not if he wanted to protect them, and it scared the hell out of him.

  Harrison watched until her car disappeared from view, then went back inside. He had to heat the pie Poppy had left behind and slice it up for dinner, then pack their bags before they all went to bed. An early night was exactly what he needed before they made the drive back to Sydney. He wanted to leave early in the morning so the kids could just jump in the vehicle in their pajamas and fall back to sleep. That way, they’d make it to the city in time for lunch.

  He also had to get on the phone and organize his workers, since he was going to be away for up to a week.

  Poppy. Not seeing Poppy for a week? It was playing on his mind. He shrugged the thought away and slid the pie into the oven. Two weeks ago he hadn’t even known her name and now he was acting as if he’d known her all his life.

  So some time away? That might be just what he needed to get perspective again. Reset his boundaries; reaffirm them. Before he forgot all the reasons why he couldn’t let a woman close to him. Not ever again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  POPPY SURVEYED THE garden and wondered where to start. She hadn’t ever had a lawn to contend with before, or at least not since she was a little girl, and back then all she’d had to do was pretend she was mowing it. In fact, now that she thought about it, she recalled having a tiny pretend lawn mower that had blown bubbles.

  The reality of mowing her own lawn wasn’t so appealing, but it had to be done and she had nothing better to do.

  Poppy looked at the old mower and sighed. She’d got it for nothing from one of her pupils’ parents and she doubted it had been used for years. And her lawn looked as if it hadn’t been cut in forever.

  “Here goes,” she muttered under her breath, pushing with all her might.

  Five minutes later she was covered in sweat and the lawn looked as if it had been hacked by a machete. The only positive was that pushing the hell out of the mower had taken her mind off Harrison.

  And now she was exhausted and thinking about him all over again.

  She wanted to know why he’d kissed her, why he’d looked at her like that, why he was acting as if he wanted her one minute and then telling her why nothing could happen the next. She got it; she had to. Because if she was honest, she was the same, like a pendulum swinging hard one way, then zooming back in the other direction a second later. One moment she wanted Harrison to kiss her, to make her think that something could happen between them, and the next she was terrified by the idea of it. Thinking about what could go wrong, how he could hurt her, what had happened in the past... But deep down, she wanted to see if maybe she could make the right judgment call about a man. And whether that man could be Harrison.

  The phone was ringing. She’d been so lost in her thoughts, and in surveying her stupid backyard, that she hadn’t even noticed it bleating.

  Poppy ran for the back door, scooted inside and grabbed the phone from its cradle.

  “Hello?” She had no answering machine, and it drove her crazy to miss a call and not know who it was.

  “Hey! It’s me.”

  Poppy untwirled the cord and jumped up to sit on the counter. It was her sister. “You have no idea how much I needed to hear from you.” She sighed down the line.

  “You’re not getting bored living out there in hickville, are you?”

  “Do you have any idea how much I miss your teasing?”

  They hadn’t lived in the same place for years, but she was used to talking to her sister constantly—on the way to school when she’d been in the city, early in the evening, all the time.

  “Tell me the goss. Any gorgeous single men?”

  Poppy was pleased her sister couldn’t see her smile. “You’re not going to believe it, but yeah. There is.”

  Kelly screamed down the line. “I knew it! You little minx!”

  Poppy twisted the cord around her finger, feeling like a teenager again just yapping to her sister on the old-fashioned phone. “I’m not interested in a relationship, Kelly. You know that.”

  She had a feeling that her sister would have slapped her if she’d been in the room. Especially if she’d seen the man they were talking about.

  “Who says you need a relationship? Just have hot, steamy sex with him.”

  Poppy’s face was suddenly on fire. Seriously, trust her sister to say something like that. “It’s complicated,” she started.

  “How?”

  “I teach his kids, and we’ve sort of become friends. And it’s a really small town, did I mention that?” She was trying to think of every excuse possible, because now that she’d told her, Kelly was never going to back down.

  “When are you seeing him next?”

  Poppy sighed. “He’s been out of town, but Mrs. Jones mentioned t
his morning that he’d been in to get his groceries.”

  “Think of an excuse and go see him. You know you deserve to be happy, right? So be happy. Not every guy is an asshole, Poppy, and if he is? Kick him straight to the curb.”

  Yeah, it was easy for her sister to say. She wasn’t exactly the type to end up with the wool pulled over her eyes. Come to think of it, she probably tired of men before they had a chance to hurt her.

  “He kind of lives a long way out, and I’m—”

  “I said make up an excuse to see him, not make up an excuse to give me.”

  What could she say to that?

  “Hey, I have to go. Call me tomorrow after you’ve seen him,” Kelly said. “See ya.”

  Poppy hung up the phone and stayed seated on the counter, legs swinging. Lucky jumped up and joined her, looking out the window.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at the state of the grass,” she ordered.

  The truth was, she didn’t care about the grass right now, because her sister had told her exactly what she’d been thinking anyway. And if they both had the same gut feeling...

  What kind of excuse could she make to drive up to the ranch? To just turn up out of the blue? And what if she didn’t want anything to happen between them?

  She’d just come out of a long-term relationship, just dealt with her heart being broken. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Harrison, but...she wasn’t a one-night stand kind of girl, either. And he’d made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t interested in something permanent. So unless he changed his mind on that, she was going to have to forget all about him. But first she wanted to give him a chance.

  * * *

  Poppy was either making the biggest mistake or taking the best risk of her life. Given the intensity of the rain that was falling, she was starting to think it could be a sign, but then again, maybe she was just making excuses again.

  The rain had come from nowhere, was bucketing down as if the sky was trying to punish them and her wipers were going flat tack.