“Right,” he said. He pulled his arm off of her, and gestured toward the house. “The bar comes first.”
He led the way up to his front door, and glanced back at his vegetable garden. “I had to stand there like a fool waitin’ for that moose to finish up eatin’ my tomatoes.” He laughed.
“Tallest plant, easy pickin’s,” Allie said, mimicking some of his accent with a smile.
She shook her hands. as if to dispel the sexual tension they’d built between them. Don’t think about doing that again. For all she knew, he was just trying to distract her from the fact that he’d let her apartment and bar go to hell. That she was only there at his house in the first place, because he had royally screwed her over.
Or maybe she only heard what she wanted to hear — that she could live in the apartment right away.
Bill pushed open his unlocked front door — apparently locking up after himself was a foreign concept — and gestured her inside.
The interior of the cabin was warm and homey. From the entranceway, she could see the entire house, even the little kitchen off to the right. It was so small she couldn’t imagine more than one person cooking in it at any time. An open area consisted of the living room and dining area, and what appeared to be bedrooms down a little hall.
“Nice place,” she said.
“Built it with my own hands,” he said, and smiled. Then, “Well, the guys helped quite a bit, too.”
His teeth were white and straight, and his whole face brightened without his permanent scowl. She needed to get him to smile more often. It certainly would make him easier to be around.
Allie smiled back at him. “Being able to build your own home is a good skill to have.” Realization dawned on her. “I guess that’s why you decided to help me with the renovations… you have more experience than I do.”
Bill put his hand on her lower back, just like he’d done in the bar. His touch made her stand up straighter, the sheer unexpectedness of it. Why did she like it so much? He guided her into the kitchen. There was barely enough room for them both, and once again Allie found herself in the position of being so physically close to Bill that their bodies kept touching accidentally, a brush here, a bump there.
He smelled of fresh hay, wood, and something indescribably sexy…perhaps that was just his natural musk. His body heat warmed her whenever her skin came within a few inches of him. While Bill had been acting before like he was ready to tear her head off in frustration at the bar, Allie was about ready to tear his clothes off after that kiss. She could only imagine how incredible his muscles would look without his shirt covering them…
Breathe.
It had been too long since she’d been with a man, that was all. The way he kept getting into her space felt so intimate, so personal… almost sexual. And she liked it way too much to keep her own hormones from rising.
He swung the cabinet open, his bicep suddenly up right near her cheek.
“Mugs are up here,” he said, “an’ dishes.” He closed the cabinet and pointed to the sink. “Don’t leave dirty dishes laying around — wash ‘em as you go. I ain’t cleanin’ up after you.”
Allie looked up at him in confusion. He’d kissed her only moments ago, and she’d even admitted that she understood why he was going to help her renovate the bar. So why was he being prickly again?
Maybe he was just trying to diffuse the tension… to remind them both not to get too friendly. Well, it was working.
“I know how to clean up after myself,” she said.
“If you need to cook somethin’, don’t bang up my cabinets.”
Allie shook her head. “You seem to have mistaken me for a bull in a china shop. However have I managed all this time without your micro-managing?”
“You think this is micro-managin’? Wait till we get back to the bar,” he warned, his face close to hers. “You’ll have to earn my trust. You’re gonna have to prove to me you’re worth it.”
“I am worth it,” she said immediately.
“I bet,” he murmured.
Any anger she had melted with those words. He didn’t seem to be saying that sarcastically. His face was too close to hers to be anything but…sincere.
As if he realized just how close he’d gotten, Bill abruptly pulled back, knocking the back of his head on the cabinet behind him with a thwack.
“Oh no!” Allie gasped. “Are you okay?”
She reached her hand up to touch his head. Her fingertips grazed the ends of his dark hair, but Bill caught her wrist in his large hand.
“I’m fine,” he said. Slowly, he let go of her wrist. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to grab you like that. It was just instinct or somethin’.”
A look of genuine concern crossed his face, and he rubbed her wrist with his thumb.
“It’s fine,” she whispered.
“I um…” Bill shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “Before the kitchen cabinet decided to attack me—”
“You can joke!” Allie interrupted, feigning shock. “The surprises just keep coming.”
“You’ll like this surprise, then,” he said. “When you open the oven door, it won’t go all the way.”
Allie laughed and pulled the oven door open, to see. Sure enough, it only opened just enough that she be able to get something in and out, no more, before hitting the cabinet behind her.
“Just a suggestion,” she said, “perhaps if you’re going to help me with the renovations, we should spend a little extra time focusing on measurements.”
She meant it as a lighthearted joke, but Bill shot her a warning look, as if she’d be sent to the principal’s office if she kept it up.
And once again, his hand was on her back, the heat of it burning through the thin material of her blouse as he led her back out of the kitchen. She stumbled a bit on her heels. So dumb to wear heels to a ranch. What had she been thinking? This man obviously didn’t care one bit about how she was dressed.
He walked her across the living room to the painted white door, and opened it. “You can stay in this room while you’re here,” he said.
Allie stepped inside the bedroom, looking around in surprise. The queen-sized bed was fitted with a rose floral comforter, and an iron bed frame. The dresser with the large mirror over it and the little accents around the room all spoke of a woman’s touch. But there was nothing that spoke of Bill in this room.
“Where are you going to sleep?” Allie asked, suddenly unsure of herself.
It seemed like this room must’ve been Melody’s. If it had been Melody’s, didn’t that mean it had been Bill’s, as well? Was he giving up his bedroom for her?
Bill took off his hat and set it on top of the dresser by the door. “I’m not gonna bother you,” he said, cocking his head. “You’ve made yourself clear enough. I’ll be all the way at the end of the hall, in my room. They may call me Big Bad Bill, but I’ll keep my hands to myself if it kills me.”
If it kills me? Interesting…
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” she said. “That wasn’t at all why I was asking where you would sleep. I didn’t think you were going to…barge in and ravish me or something.” She forced a laugh and looked away, first at the bed, then the window.
Look at anything but the bed.
A strand of dark brown hair had fallen across Bill’s forehead. “Then why would you care where I’m sleepin’…unless it’s to make sure it won’t be in your bed?”
A flush heated Allie’s cheeks, and she focused on not looking at either him or the bed — hard to do in a tiny room filled only with him, and a bed.
Now she was certain she was blushing. How ridiculous. It took a lot to make her blush — so how could this cowboy affect her like that?
“This looks like your wife’s bedroom,” she said finally. “And if it was Melody’s bedroom, then I assumed it would be your bedroom, too. Since she was your wife and all.”
“That’s none of your business,” he growled. “If you think you’re gonna
stay at my house, don’t you dare talk about her.”
Oh hell no — he did not just say that.
He left her alone in the bedroom, her mouth hanging open like fish. Allie stormed after him and — though she had no idea what possessed her to do such a thing — grabbed his shoulder in an attempt to turn him around to face her.
Bill’s body was immovable, a tree trunk against her palm. She wouldn’t have been able to turn him if she had tried. But she got what she wanted anyway when Bill snapped his head back toward her and faced her full on.
“Is this what you want?” he growled, stepping in closer to her. “You’re tellin’ me you ain’t done with me yet?”
“Don’t pull that ‘my house, my rules’ bullshit,” she said. “You’re the one who sold me an uninhabitable apartment. It’s your fault I’m here in the first place.”
“And you’re the one that showed up two weeks early.”
“Forget it,” she said.
He was right about that. And, she’d chosen to completely ignore everything he’d told her about needing to fix the apartment up first, because she’d thought it would be fine to rough it. Still, Bill needed to learn to talk to her nicely if they were going to be working together.
He couldn’t just be mean one moment, and then kiss her the next. There had to be an in between. A cordial business partner type of relationship.
“I’m too exhausted to fight,” Allie said. It wasn’t an apology or admission of being wrong, but it was her way of putting up a white flag, at least for now. “I think I need to take a nap and charge my phone before I can go back to start cleaning up the bar,” she admitted. “Is that…okay?”
“Are you asking my permission to fall asleep?” The anger faded from his face, and he raised an eyebrow in amusement.
Allie laughed at the absurdity of it. “I guess I was,” she said. “I thought you’d like that…” Ooh, that sounded a touch too flirty. She tamped it down a notch. “I need to get out of the heels.”
Not much better. What was it about the heat of an argument that made Bill seem so…sexy to her? It must be his testosterone rising — she could sense it. Hormones, nothing more. She kicked off her heels right where she stood, and picked them up to bring into her room.
Bill looked at her. “Now you’re even tinier,” he mused. “You’re gonna get a crick in your neck starin’ up at me all the time like that, you know.”
He was too handsome for his own good. Thank goodness he was an asshole as well — that made it easier not to want to mix business with pleasure. Though Allie couldn’t ignore the tiny voice inside that suggested a little fling after the painful separation from her former husband would be nice. As long as she didn’t let her heart get involved. And as long as they kept the business out of it.
No. Bill was clearly still tortured by memories of Melody. He probably had no desire to start up a “friends with benefits” sort of deal. But were they ever friends at all? Or had they gone from emailing about business to flirting online? But he sure looked like he’d be amazing in bed.
Stop that.
She turned and walked into her room and shut the door. As long as she could actually sleep in this stranger’s house (that’s what he was, no need to think otherwise), in his dead wife’s bed, then she’d be ready to tackle cleaning up the mess she could now proudly call fifty percent her own. And no matter what, she absolutely wouldn’t let herself dream about how amazing working with Bill would be, if only they could both avoid either killing each other, or sleeping with each other.
Either one seemed like a real possibility at this point.
***
Bill sat heavily on the couch in the living room, his hand automatically running across the cracks in the leather along the back. The leather was seriously beat up, with worn spots and scratches. The nice thing about it, though, was at least no one was afraid of messing it up. When the guys came ‘round to visit and fill him in on the goings-on at the ranch, they were glad to have a place to kick up their cowboy boots after a long day on the mountain or working with the cattle.
It was a bit early in the season for the fireplace, but staring into the dancing flames always soothed his soul. It was better than TV (at least he thought so, but then again he didn’t have a TV). The only problem with sitting on his couch was the vantage point: looking straight at the room where Allie slept.
How many nights had he done the same thing, over two years ago? Just staring at that shut door, wishing his wife would come out and simply… sit on that busted couch with him. It wasn’t fair to expect her to love him the way he did her — how do you match something so strong that the loss of it nearly killed him now?
Melody had never truly loved Bill, she’d even admitted it herself. Their shotgun wedding after she got pregnant from a one night stand resulted in a miscarriage less than three months later. She was different after that, she pulled away, and any talk of their future together was gone. At least when they had the idea of a baby to keep them together, she’d been able to hold onto that hope that she might learn to love her husband. As for Bill, he’d fallen fast. She’d been so kind, so tall, so beautiful. And knowing that she had his child growing inside of her had made him fiercely protective of her.
It’s not Melody in there anyway. Forget about it.
No, it certainly wasn’t Melody — silent, depressed Melody. She’d hated living on the ranch with him, hated collecting the eggs from the chickens, tending to the garden. She wouldn’t even go near even his most gentle horses. Zach, Eric, Jay, and Chris had done everything in their power to make her feel at home on the ranch as well, but nothing worked. She’d retreated further and further into her shell.
On the night she’d left him to go stay at her mother’s house — even her own separate bedroom wasn’t far enough from Bill for her — the fateful night she swerved in front of some poor trucker on his way home, and died. When Bill heard the devastating news, he’d wondered if she’d done it on purpose.
He still wondered.
Melody was the closest thing he’d had to a relationship with a woman that went beyond the few dates and sex. But could it truly have been love when the other person didn’t love you back?
It was strange to have another woman in the house, especially since Allie was the exact opposite of Melody. She was feisty and loud where Melody was not, even short when Melody was tall. Allie had kissed him with such passion, but Melody had stopped even pretending to want or desire him, her own husband.
So he needed to stop looking at that door and imagining that Melody was behind it.
Allie was her own woman — the kind of woman Bill had never imagined himself feeling attracted to, despite the fact that seeing her name in his inbox had been the highlight of his day for the past several months. Yet here he was, interrupting himself when he was with her just to look at her, to hear her shout or whisper or feel her brush up against him…
No, Allie was no longer just an unseen confidant, no longer solely the woman he’d befriended online sight-unseen. She was here, right behind that door, in person.
What would happen between them, now that their relationship had been brought into real life?
Chapter Seven
When Allie woke up, it was to a rooster crow at dawn.
She shot up in bed. What the heck had happened? She’d only meant to take a little nap.
That was a whole half-day wasted last night, when she could have been cleaning up the bar. Apparently Bill had let her just sleep all the way through till morning, She must’ve really needed the sleep after all that driving, so it was probably a good thing.
And she wouldn’t have wanted him waking her up, right? That would’ve involved him coming into her room while she slept, seeing her so vulnerable like that. She didn’t want to be vulnerable in front of Bill. He needed to learn as fast as possible that having half-ownership with her meant she was also the boss. Not only him — in addition to him.
Two bosses; that could work, why not?
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She peered her head out the guest room door, but didn’t see him. The cabin was small enough that if he was there, she’d know.
“Bill? Are you here?” she called, just to be sure.
No reply.
Allie grabbed her toiletry bag and went into the bathroom, with its river-rock floor and shower stall. No tub.
When she was all showered, dressed (sensibly this time, in jeans and a tank-top with a sweater for the early-morning chill), and ready to get to work, Allie walked down the driveway that would eventually lead her to the gravel road to the farmhouse.
It felt good to walk. In Miami, she’d been afraid of the very real threat of getting mugged… or worse. There had been too many stories on the news about crimes against early-morning female joggers (and in one recent instance, a woman just waiting for her bus). That and the sticky, humid heat of Florida had always kept Allie from exercising outdoors.
But here in Bear Creek Saddle, the air was crisp and smelled of cows, grass, and manure, (which wasn’t nearly as disgusting as she’d have imagined it would be). Maybe she was just getting used to it? Either way, the walking helped clear her mind.
By the time she’d reached the farmhouse, she was glowing with excitement and ready to start fixing up her bar.
“Good mornin’, Allie.”
She turned at the voice and saw Bill, walking slowly in front of Pirate, leading his wild stallion that had nearly killed her the day before. Pirate had blinders on, so he couldn’t see her, she imagined. They were behind a post-and-rail fence, but if Pirate decided to crash through it to escape, nothing would stop him. Just like that moose — Pirate had a lot of unbridled, pure power. He could do anything before Bill would be able to stop him.
Allie’s stomach flipped at the thought.
“Good morning,” she said. “Thanks for letting me sleep all night — I needed it.”
Pirate tried to look at her, but Bill gave him some big lumpy sugar cubes and kept him moving.
I am Not Your Melody: (steamy cowboy romance) Page 6
