by Lea Kinkade
She dried her body carefully, trying not to stimulate her pussy or nipples any more than they already were. She smoothed lotion over her body and moisturized her face. She took the twenty minutes necessary to blow dry her hair thoroughly then pulled it into a loose ponytail at the base of her neck. Her hair was very thick. If she left it loose overnight, she’d be fighting snarls in the morning. She unwrapped the towel from around her body and hung it back in the bathroom. Naked, she pulled back the covers enough to slip into bed. She lay there thinking about Ryan until she fell into a fitful sleep. In her dreams, Ryan made mad, passionate love to her.
Chapter 5
The next afternoon at 5:30 p.m., Ryan parked his truck in the alley behind Bach Florists. Grabbing the bag from the hardware store that contained the security light and a dead bolt lock he had picked up earlier in the day, he pulled his smaller toolbox from the truck-bed toolbox in the back of his truck and headed up the stairs to Samantha’s apartment. He’d decided to get the dead bolt after he’d noticed last night that she didn’t have one on her door. He couldn’t believe the lack of security at her apartment. After the flack she had given him about putting the security light in, he expected an argument about the dead bolt, but he was determined to win that discussion as well. It was a matter of safety. A single woman could never be too careful. Gaining the landing at the top of the stairs, he knocked on the door and waited for Samantha to answer.
As she swung open the door, she looked puzzled. Holding up the sack with the hardware store’s logo, he stepped into her apartment without waiting for her to say anything.
“What’s the frown for?” asked Samantha.
Ryan hadn’t realized that he had been frowning. “I just realized you don’t have a peephole or a safety chain on your door either. I should have noticed last night and picked them up today so I could install them along with the dead bolt,” he explained to her as he moved to the kitchen table where he hefted his toolbox and the hardware sack.
“What dead bolt?” asked Samantha. “We agreed on the security light, but I don’t remember anything being said about a dead bolt."
“I noticed as I was leaving last night that you didn’t have a dead bolt on your door. You need the dead bolt for safety, too. I got one while I was at the hardware store getting the security light.”
He could see her gearing up to argue with him about it. “Don’t argue, Samantha. You’ve got to realize this is a safety issue. Everybody has dead bolts on their doors. I can’t believe the last tenant didn’t demand one.”
He could see her acquiescence when she realized he was right. “Okay, fine,” she muttered. “Where’s the receipt? I insist on reimbursing you for both.”
“Receipt’s in the bag. Knock yourself out. I’ll install the security light first.”
“I’m going to start supper if you don’t mind.” She moved toward the kitchen.
“That’s fine, darlin’. This will take about fifteen minutes then I’ll start on the dead bolt. It’ll take a while to drill all the necessary holes.” He responded absently as he opened the box to the new motion-sensor floodlight he had gotten to replace the light currently at the top of the stairs.
When Ryan was satisfied with how the security light was installed, he moved directly to installing the dead bolt. Halfway through the project, the delicious smell of curry tickled his senses. Ryan loved curry and he loved spicy foods. The spicier the better. His stomach growled hungrily.
“How much longer do you think it will be before you get done with that?”
“Hot date?” he questioned sarcastically.
“No. You? I just wanted to know if you want to eat now or after you’ve finished the job.”
“I’m invited to supper?”
“Of course. I can’t let you do all this work and have you leave with an empty stomach, can I? I hope you like curry, and I hope you like it hot.”
“The hotter the better, darlin’,” Ryan responded with veiled innuendo. “This will take another fifteen minutes or so. Can it hold that long? If not, I say let’s eat now. It smells delicious.”
“No, that’s okay. It’ll keep that long. I’ll finish up and get the table set. Do you want a beer?”
“A beer sounds great. Let me just finish this up,” he responded absently as he continued to work on the lock. Ryan finished installing the dead bolt in ten minutes, then took a few minutes to replace his tools and take his toolbox back down to his truck. As he let himself back into the apartment, Samantha was putting supper on the table. It smelled delicious. Beautiful, creative, and she could cook, too.
“Can I wash up first?” he asked.
“Of course. Bathroom is the first door on the left. Help yourself.” A few minutes later, he came back into the room and settled himself across from her at the table. He wasn’t surprised that she had tried to put distance between them by setting his place across from her rather than next to her.
Samantha dished up the rice and chicken curry onto both of their plates then waited for him to dig in. He took a big bite of the curry and nearly groaned as the flavors burst in his mouth. It was delicious. Ryan swallowed several bites before he took a drink of his beer.
“Delicious,” he said. “Do you have a recipe for this? My mother made sure all of us could cook, and I’m always looking for new recipes to try out.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously, darlin’. Maybe you’d let me make you dinner some night.”
Ryan didn’t know where the offer had come from. He’d never offered to fix a meal for another woman, except for a member of his family, before. He would make her dinner here at her apartment, since he and Ryder shared a house for now, and he would talk her into bed afterward. Maybe her body could be his plate. His own body responded viscerally to the thought of Samantha spread out before him with various foods in strategic places on her delectable body. Good thing he was sitting down. His dick was straining at his zipper already, and they weren’t even touching.
“I think a dinner at your place isn’t going to happen anytime soon, handsome. We haven’t even gone out on a regular date.”
“That hasn’t been by my choice. I asked you out more than a week ago and you turned me down flat, if you’ll recall. Do you think you know me well enough now that you’d say yes if I asked you out again? Dinner and dancing? Very public places?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see how the dinner conversation goes, shall we?” He could see that she was only half joking. “Why don’t you tell me about your family? It must be nice to be part of such a large, close-knit family. What was it like growing up with so many brothers and sisters?”
Seeing that she was seriously interested in his answers, Ryan started talking about the joys and pitfalls of being part of such a large family where everyone was in your business all the time. She peppered him with questions while they ate and cleared up after the meal. Getting him another beer, they settled on either end of the couch.
* * * *
Samantha was truly fascinated by his stories of growing up with five brothers, two sisters, assorted cousins, aunts and uncles and grandparents. Although she could tell that Ryan really loved his family, his stories revealed exasperation and some envy of his siblings as well. It was obvious in the way he spoke about his older brothers that, although he loved them dearly, he’d felt like he was compared to them his whole life. He had a strong sense of competition with his brothers. These feelings had led him to follow the rodeo circuit after he graduated from college, following in several of their footsteps. When they had both decided they’d had enough of the gypsy-style life that was rodeo, it had also led him and his twin, who he referred to as his best friend, to spurn the family business and pool their rodeo winnings to conceive of and create Chaps & Spurs.
Samantha could tell that, in addition to loving his twin, Ryan truly liked Ryder for who he was. He told Samantha that, for most of their lives, Ryder had seemed content to follow his lead. Since they had created the club, though
, Ryder had really come into his own. Ryan really liked the man that Ryder had become. That wasn’t a given. The two brothers might look exactly alike, except for Ryan’s goatee and earring, but their personalities were totally different. Ryder was easygoing until you got him riled up. Then you’d better watch out. Ryan admitted he was quick to anger but couldn’t hold a grudge. The brothers had similar tastes in music, food, and women, but they hadn’t fought over a woman since college. Ryan was the more outgoing of the two, but Ryder was beginning to come out of his shell more and more.
Although Ryan told her that Chaps & Spurs had started as a rebellious idea, she got the sense that Ryan was more himself now than at any time in the past. He had come into his own as a man and was comfortable in his own skin. That someone from his privileged background had gone through this type of self-evaluation intrigued her even as the attraction she felt toward him grew.
Samantha ached for the love and affection she could see Ryan had for his siblings. She had never had that type of relationship with anyone. Growing up, she had been in a series of foster homes. It seemed to her that, in all the foster homes she had been in over the years, the children all seemed to be vying for the attention of the parents, so they never seemed to grow close to each other.
Samantha, being somewhat shy and unassuming as a young girl, had gone virtually unnoticed as she passed from foster home to foster home. Early on, Samantha had learned that it wasn’t safe to care for anybody too much, as they could be gone in the space of an hour. That’s about how long it took her to pack up her belongings when she was moved between her various foster homes. People promised to keep in touch, but they never did.
“I understand your mother is a force to be reckoned with. What was it like having her for a mother growing up?” She was really enjoying the stories he was telling her about his siblings and business and wanted to keep him talking.
“Oh, no. That’s a conversation for another evening. I’ve talked your ear off already about my family. Tell me about yourself, darlin’. Do you have any brothers or sisters? What do your parents do?” He seemed to genuinely want to know more about her.
Knowing how he would probably react to the full-blown version of her life, she decided to give him a short version of the truth that was her life and see how he reacted.
“As far as I know, I’m an only child. I haven’t seen or talked to my mother since I was around seven. I was in and out of state custody since I was a baby. I was in and out of foster homes for most of my childhood. One day, she just stopped showing up for the visits. I was in foster care until I turned eighteen. My father was never in the picture.” While telling him the story, she had been looking down at her lap. Raising her glance to meet his, she saw surprise and an emotion resembling pity flash in his eyes.
“No! I didn’t tell you so you could pity me, damn it. I just felt you had a right to know the real me before this…thing between us goes any further.”
“I don’t pity you, darlin’. I feel stupid for bellyaching about my family to you, and I feel a little angry at your mother for not seeing what a wonderful person you are, but I don’t pity you. Look at you. You had nothing and no one to count on. With hard work you now own your own business. You’ve left that all behind and you’re a success. If you thought your story was going to make me run away from you, you were wrong.” He moved closer to her on the couch.
Touching her cheek with his fingertips, he softly caressed her. “It only makes me admire the person that you are today even more. I thought you were pretty awesome before I heard what you had to overcome in your life. Now, I think you’re almost too good to be true.”
* * * *
Seeing that she was becoming emotional and knowing instinctively that she wasn’t ready for him to see her like that, Ryan stood.
“Look, it’s getting pretty late and I should probably get going. How about I meet you Monday under our oak tree and we can have lunch together and swap a few more stories. I’ll even tell you about my mother.” She had really seemed to like his stories about his family, so he dangled the story of his mother to her as an incentive.
She laughed, as he’d intended. “Okay. I’ll see you Monday then.” She looked a bit uncertain as she walked him toward the door. Seeing her vulnerability touched him on a level that he’d never been touched on before.
“Monday it is, darlin’. Take care, and be sure to lock up after me,” he said as he leaned in gently and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek. “By the way, I’m glad you’re finally acknowledging this ‘thing’ between us.” As she locked up after him, Samantha could hear him whistling as he walked down the steps to his truck.
* * * *
As Ryan entered Chaps & Spurs, he couldn’t stop thinking about Samantha Michaels. He wanted her. He hadn’t been this interested in a woman in a long time, if ever. Heading toward his office, he was waylaid by Sheila Baxter. Ryan had broken up with Sheila nearly three weeks before he first met Samantha. Ryan hadn’t felt like dating anyone since Sheila, so he hadn’t dated since he told Sheila he was through. He supposed Sheila could have gotten the wrong message by his failure to immediately replace her in his bed, as was his norm. He hadn’t talked to Sheila since the breakup. He knew he was being a prick. He should at least have let her down easy. It’s true he hadn’t made any promises to her, but he wasn’t a total asshole. Sheila had been great in bed and very inventive. She had a zest for life that he found attractive, or at least he had before he’d met a certain blonde-haired bombshell who had taken his breath away.
Knowing she wanted to get together for a little horizontal action, he told Sheila he would be busy at the club until well after closing and excused himself. He could see in her eyes that she knew their relationship, such as it was, was really over. She had to have seen him dancing all night with Samantha. He just hoped she didn’t try to cause any trouble.
He thought about what he would like to be doing with Samantha right now and his cock grew rigid. In the past, he had always made sure the woman he was seeing knew what he was, and was not, offering. Despite his considerable charm, Ryan had to acknowledge that he’d never had to work this hard to get into a woman’s bed. They hadn’t even gone out on a real date together and he was thinking in the long term. He thought of the damage that some of his old girlfriends could cause between him and Samantha if they chose to and had a brief moment of clarity regarding his love-’em-and-leave-’em attitude since college.
Hell! What was he thinking? Ryan Chisholm was not ready to settle down. He hadn’t met a woman yet who could change his mind. Or had he? came the disquieting thought.
Hell, no! thought Ryan. He had a jones for Samantha Michaels. That was all. He hadn’t even gone on a real date with her yet. It was the chase, that was all. He hadn’t had to chase a woman his whole adult life. Once he had her, he would eventually lose interest just like he had with all the others. He wanted her and he was going to get her. He would just have to make it clear to her what he was and wasn’t offering and then sweet-talk his way into her bed for a few weeks in order to scratch this itch.
* * * *
Ryan continued to join Samantha for lunch under their big oak tree in the park during the next week. Samantha was falling further and further under this potent man’s spell. She had to decide whether to totally cut him off or go with the flow and take what pleasure she could get while she could get it. She had been with rich and powerful men before and come away burned. She hadn’t realized what she was getting into with Brandon and J.T., though. Now, she totally understood her position and, if she wanted to, she could take the next step with Ryan and keep her heart safe from him. She could enjoy him for as long as this attraction lasted between them and move on unscathed. She could do that. Really. She could.
Their lunch dates in the park hadn’t gone unnoticed, however. Several women, both her age and older, had felt it necessary to stop by the shop and warn her away from Ryan. The worst thing any of them had to say about Ryan was that he didn’t d
ate a woman longer than a few weeks before he moved on. None of the women that felt compelled to speak to her were women he had dated, but they felt the need to warn her off just the same. Samantha already knew Ryan was a player. It was obvious in his flirtatious manner and the sheer number of women that trailed after him. She didn’t really have a problem with that. What you saw was what you got with Ryan, and she definitely liked what she saw. She did her best to ignore the gossip and concentrated on how he made her feel when they were together.
Chapter 6
It was Friday night and Samantha had met the girls once again at Chaps & Spurs. She counted each woman as a friend. They invited her to do girl things like go shopping and have lunch during the week. They shared their lives with her and she reciprocated to a point. She was still holding part of herself back. Residual wariness from growing up in a bunch of different homes, she thought. She knew that Ryan was upstairs playing pool with his brothers. She still couldn’t get over how much all the Chisholm brothers looked alike. It was funny that out of all of them she was only attracted to Ryan. At lunch on Monday, she had accepted a date with him for tomorrow night. They were going to dinner and then to the club for some dancing.
While it was just Taylor, Jordan, Jessie, and herself at the table, she broached the subject of dating Ryan.
“I’m going out with Ryan tomorrow night,” she blurted out. “That’s not going to make any of you uncomfortable, is it?” asked Samantha as she watched them closely for their reaction.
“When did this happen?” asked Taylor curiously.
“Well, he’s been joining me for lunch every day at the park. He’s asked me to go out for dinner several times, but I just agreed to a date earlier this week. He sort of wore me down,” she said with a smile.
