by Nikki Logan
Hard enough to distract, soft enough not to scar.
It did vaguely occur to her that maybe she’d just swapped one self-harm for another.
‘You haven’t asked the price,’ he said.
‘Price isn’t an issue.’ She cringed at how superior it sounded here—standing in a barn, out of context of the Patterson billions.
His stare went on a tiny bit too long to be polite. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can see that.’
Silence fell.
Limped on.
And then they both chose the exact same moment to break it.
‘I’ll get a fire started—’
‘I’ll just get my bags—’
She opened the door to the pathway and the icy air from outside streamed in and stopped her dead.
A hard body stepped past her. ‘I’ll get your bags, you stay in the warm.’
His tone said he’d rather she froze to death, but his country courtesy wouldn’t let that happen.
‘But I—’
He didn’t even bother turning around. ‘You can get the fire going if you want to be useful.’
And then he closed the door in her face.
Useful. The magic word. If there was one thing Eleanor Patterson was, it was useful. Capable. A doer. Nothing she couldn’t master.
She took a deep breath, turned from the timber door just inches from her face and stared at the small, freestanding wood fire and the basket of timber next to it, releasing her breath slowly.
Nothing she couldn’t master…
* * *
The night air was as good as a cold shower. Jed’s body had begun humming the moment he opened his door to Ellie Patterson, and tailing those jeans up the steep steps to the loft hadn’t reduced it. He had to work hard not to imagine himself throwing the Comanche blankets aside and plumping up the quilt so she could stretch her supermodel limbs out on it and sleep.
Sleep. Yeah, that’s what he was throwing the blankets aside for.
Pervert.
She was now his tenant and she was a visitor to one of the towns under his authority, a guest of the Calhouns. Ellie Patterson and feather quilts had no place in his imagination. Together or apart.
She just needed a place to stay and he had one sitting there going to waste. He’d dressed it up real nice on arrival in Larkville and had left the whole place pretty much intact—a few extra girlie touches for his gram when she came to visit, but otherwise the same as when he’d used it.
It might not be to New York standards—especially for a woman who didn’t need to ask the price of a room—but she’d have no complaints. No reasonable ones anyway. It was insulated, sealed and furnished, and it smelled good.
Not as good as Ellie Patterson did, but good enough.
He opened her unlocked car to pop the trunk.
He’d watched her rental trundle off down the long, straight road from the Calhoun ranch until it disappeared against the sky, and he’d wondered if he would see her again. Logic said yes; it was a small town. His heart said no, not a good idea.
The last person on this planet he needed to get mixed up with was a woman from New York City. That was just way too close to things he’d walked away from.
And yet, he’d found himself volunteering the Alamo in her moment of need, the manners his gram raised him with defying his better judgement. He’d been almost relieved when she so curtly declined his help.
As he swung her cases—plural—out of the rental’s trunk, he heard the unmistakable sound of Deputy protesting. A ten-second detour put him at his front door.
‘Sorry, boy, got distracted. Come on out.’
Deputy looked about as ticked off as a dog used to the sole attention of his owner possibly could, but he was a fast forgiver and barrelled down the porch steps and pathway ahead of Ellie’s cases.
In the half second it took to push the door to the old barn open, he and Deputy both saw the same thing. Ellie, legs spread either side of the little stove, hands and face smudged with soot, a burning twig in her hand. He only wanted to dash to her side and wipe clean that porcelain skin. Deputy actually did it. With his tongue.
Ellie gasped.
Jed barked a stiff, ‘Heel!’
Deputy slunk back to his master’s right boot and dropped his head, sorry but not sorry. Ellie scrabbled to her feet, sputtering. There was nothing for him to do apart from apologise for his dog’s manners and place her suitcases through the door.
As if he hadn’t come off as enough of a hick already.
Then his eyes fell on the work of modern art poking out of the fireplace. He stepped closer.
‘I’ve never made a fire.’
He struggled not to soften at the self-conscious note in her voice. It was good to know she could drop the self-possession for a moment, but he wasn’t buying for one moment that it was permanent. Ms. Ellie Patterson might be pretty in pastels but he’d wager his future she was tough as nails beneath it.
He didn’t take his eyes off the amazing feat of overengineering. An entire log was jammed in there with twigs and twisted newspaper and no less than four fire-starters. And she’d been about to set the whole lot ablaze.
He relieved her of the burning twig and extinguished it. ‘That would have burned down the barn.’
She looked horrified. ‘Oh. Really?’
Deputy dropped to his side on the rug closest to the fire, as though it was already blazing.
Dopey dog.
‘Less is more with fires….’ Without thinking he took her hand and walked her to the sofa, then pressed her into it. He did his best not to care that she locked up like an antique firearm at his uninvited touch. ‘Watch and learn.’
It took him a good five minutes to undo the nest of twigs and kindling squashed inside the wrought-iron fireplace. But then it was a quick job to build a proper fire and get it crackling. She watched him intently.
He stood. ‘Got it?’
Her colour surged and it wasn’t from the growing flames. ‘I’m sorry. You must think me so incredibly inept. First the cows and now the fire.’
He looked down on her, embarrassed and poised on his sofa. ‘Well, I figure you don’t have a lot of either in Manhattan.’
‘We have a fireplace,’ she started without thinking, and then her words tapered off. ‘But we light it with a button.’
Well, that was one step better than ‘but we have staff to do it for us.’ Maybe she knew what she was talking about when she teased him about being the Calhouns’ butler.
‘I’m sure there’s a hundred things you can do that I can’t. One day you can teach me one of those and we’ll be even.’
Her blue eyes glittered much greener against the glow of the growing fire. ‘Not sure you’d have much use for the intricacies of delivering a sauté in arabesque.’
‘You’re a chef?’
His confusion at least brought a glint of humour back to her beautiful face. ‘Sauté onstage, not on the stove. I’m a dancer. Ballet. Or…I was.’
‘That explains so much.’ Her poise. The way she held herself. Those amazing legs. Her long, toned frame. Skinny, but not everywhere.
The lightness in her expression completely evaporated and he could have kicked himself for letting his eyes follow his thoughts. ‘What I mean is it doesn’t surprise me. You move like a professional.’ Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Dancer, I mean.’
Deputy shot him a look full of scorn: way to keep digging, buddy!
But as he watched, the awkwardness leached from Ellie’s fine features and her lips turned up. The eyes that met his were amused. And more than a little bit sexy. ‘Thank you, Jed. I’m feeling much less self-conscious now.’
So was he—stupidly—now that she’d used his name.
He cleared his throat. ‘Well, then… I’ll just leave you to unpack.’ He glanced at the fire. ‘As soon as those branches are well alight you can drop that log on top. Just one,’ he cautioned, remembering her overpacked first effort. ‘As long as you keep the vent ti
ght it should last awhile. Put a big one on just before you go to bed and it should see you through the night.’
‘I’ll do that now, then, because as soon as you’re gone I’m crawling into bed.’
‘At 7:00 p.m.?’ Why was she so exhausted? It couldn’t just be the steer, even for a city slicker.
She pushed to her feet to show him the door. ‘I think my week is finally catching up to me. But I’m going to be very comfortable here, thank you for the hospitality. You’ve done your hometown proud.’
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her Larkville wasn’t his hometown, but she didn’t say it to start a conversation, she said it to end one.
He moved to the door, surprised at how his own feet dragged, and whistled for Deputy. ‘Sleep well, Ellie.’
His buddy hauled himself to his feet and paused in front of Ellie for the obligatory farewell scratch. She just stared at him, no clue what he was expecting, but then his patient upward stare seemed to encourage her and she slid her elegant fingers into his coat and gave him a tentative rub. She released him, and Deputy padded to Jed’s side and preceded him out the door.
Jed stared after the dog, an irrational envy blazing away as she closed the door behind him. He pulled the collar of his shirt up against the air’s bite and hurried back to his house. It was ridiculous to hold it against a dog just because he’d been free to walk up and demand she touch him. Her sliding down his body earlier today was a heck of a lot more gratuitous than what just happened in the barn.
Yet… The way her fingers had curled in his dog’s thick black coat… Her eyes barely staying open. It was somehow more…intimate.
Deputy reached the street first, then paused and looked back at him, a particularly smug expression on his hairy black, tan and white face.
‘Jerk,’ Jed muttered.
Who or what Ellie Patterson touched was no concern of his. She was the last kind of woman he needed to be staking a claim on, and the last kind to tolerate it.
But as he put foot after foot up that long pathway towards his dog, he’d never, in his life, felt more like rushing back in there and branding his name on someone—preferably with his lips—so everyone in Larkville knew where Ellie Patterson was coming home to at night.
Stupid, because the woman was as prickly as the cactus out on the borderlands. Stupid because she lived in New York and he lived in small-town Texas. Stupid because he wasn’t interested in a relationship. Now or ever.
He turned and stared at her door.
But it wouldn’t be the first stupid thing he’d done in his life.
Deputy looked at him with disgust and then turned back to the front door of the cottage and waited for someone with opposable thumbs to make it open.
Not half the look Ellie would give him if she got even the slightest inkling of his caveman thoughts. This was just his testosterone speaking, pure and simple.
Men like him didn’t belong with women like her. Women like Ellie Patterson belonged with driven, successful investment bankers who made and lost millions on Wall Street. Men like him belonged with nice, country girls who were happy to love him warts and all. There was no shortage of nice women in Hayes County and a handful had made their interest—and their willingness—clearly known since he arrived in Larkville. And right after that he’d made it his rule not to date where he worked.
Don’t poop where you eat, Jeddie, his gram used to say, though she generally referenced it when she was trying to encourage him to clean his room. But it was good advice.
His gut curled.
He’d ignored it once and he’d screwed everything up royally. Sticking faithfully to this rule had seen him avoid any messy entanglements that threatened his job or his peace of mind ever since he’d arrived in Larkville three years ago.
But abstinence had a way of creeping up on you. Every week he went without someone in his life was a week he grew more determined to only break it for something special. Someone special. That bar just kept on rising. To the point that he wondered how special a woman would have to be to meet it.
Deputy lifted his big head and threw him a look as forlorn as he felt. It was exactly what he needed to snap him out of the sorry place he’d wound up. He flung himself down onto the sofa, reached for the TV remote and found himself a sports channel.
In the absence of any other kind of stimulation, verbally sparring with an uptight city girl might just be as close to flirting as he needed to get.
If she didn’t deck him for trying.
CHAPTER THREE
GIVEN how many five-star hotels Ellie had stayed in, it was ridiculous to think that she’d just had one of the best sleeps of her life in a converted hayloft.
She burrowed down deeper into the soft quilt and took herself through the pros and cons of just sleeping all day.
Pro: she wasn’t expected anywhere.
Pro: she wouldn’t be missed by anyone. No one would know but her; and possibly the sheriff, although he’d almost certainly be out doing sheriffly duties.
When was the last time she just lay in? While all her classmates were keeping teenage hours, she’d spent every waking moment perfecting her steps, or doing strength training or studying the masters. Even when she was sick she used to force herself up, find something constructive to do. Anything that meant she wasn’t indulging her body.
Now look at her. Twelve hours’ rest behind her and quite prepared to go back for another three.
What had she become?
Her deep, powerful desire to pull the blankets over her head and never come out was only beaten by the strength of her determination not to. She hurled back the toasty warm covers and let the bracing Texan morning in with her, and her near-naked flesh protested with a thousand tiny bumps. Even the biggest log she’d found in the woodpile couldn’t last this long and so the little room was as cold as…well, an old barn. Bad enough that she’d broken a cardinal rule and gone to bed without eating anything, she’d stripped out of her clothes and just crawled into bed in panties only, too tired to even forage amongst her belongings for her pajamas.
More sloth!
She pulled one of the blankets up around her shoulders and tiptoed over to her suitcases, the timber floor of the raised loft creaking under her slight weight. The sound reminded her of the flex and give in the dance floor of the rehearsal studio and brought a long-distance kind of comfort. They may have been hard years but they were also her childhood. She rummaged to the bottom of one case for socks and a T-shirt and dragged them on, then slid into her jeans from yesterday, her loose hair caressing her face.
No doubt, the people of Larkville had been up before dawn—doing whatever it was that country folk did until the sun came up. There was no good reason she shouldn’t be up, too. She looped a scrunchie over her wrist, pulled the bedspread into tidy order, surrendered her toasty blanket and laid it neatly back where it belonged, then turned for the steps.
Downstairs didn’t have the benefit of rising heat and it had the decided non-benefit of original old-brick flooring so it was even chillier than the loft. It wasn’t worth going to all the trouble of lighting the fire for the few short hours until it got Texas warm. Right behind that she realised she had no idea what the day’s weather would bring. Back home, she’d step out onto her balcony and look out over the skyline to guess what kind of conditions Manhattan was in for, but here she’d have to sprint out onto the pavement where she could look up into the sky and take a stab at what the day had in store.
She pulled on the runners she’d left by the sofa, started to shape her hair into a ponytail, hauled open the big timber door…and just about tripped over the uniformed man crouched there leaving a box on her doorstep.
‘Oh—!’
Two pale eyes looked as startled as she felt and the sheriff caught her before momentum flipped her clean over him. All at once she became aware of two things: first, she wasn’t fully dressed and, worse, her hair was still flying loose.
Having actual breasts afte
r so many years of not having them at all was still hard to get used to and slipping them into lace was never the first thing she did in the morning. Not that what she had now would be of much interest to any but the most pubescent of boys but she still didn’t want them pointing at Sheriff Jed Jackson in the frosty morning air.
But even more urgent… Her hair was down.
Ellie steadied herself on Jed’s shoulders as he straightened and she stepped back into the barn, tucking herself more modestly behind its door. She abandoned her discomfort about her lack of proper clothing in favour of hauling her hair into a quick bunch and twisting the scrunchie around it three brutal times. That unfortunately served to thrust her chest more obviously in the sheriff’s direction but if it was a choice between her unashamedly frost-tightened nipples and her still-recovering hair, she’d opt for the eyeful any day.
Of the many abuses her undernourished body had endured in the past, losing fistfuls of brittle hair was the most lingering and shameful.
She never wore it loose in public. Not then. Not even now, years after her recovery.
Jed’s eyes finally decided it was safe to find hers, though he seemed as speechless as she was.
‘Good morning, Sheriff.’ She forced air through her lips, but it didn’t come out half as poised as she might have hoped. The wobble gave her away.
‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he muttered. Four tiny lines splayed out between his dark eyebrows and he glanced down to the box at his feet. ‘I brought supplies.’
She dropped her gaze and finally absorbed the box’s contents. Milk, fruit, bread, eggs, half a ham leg. Her whole body shrivelled—the habit of years. It was more than just supplies, it was a Thanksgiving feast. To a Texan that was probably a starter pack, but what he’d brought would last her weeks.
‘Thank you.’ She dug deep into her chatting-with-strangers repertoire for some lightness to cover the moment. ‘Cattle mustering, fire lighting and now deliveries. County sheriffs sure have a broad job description.’
