I stare at him for a moment, absorbing the fact that Caleb is not only handsome as hell, polite, and endearingly direct, but that he also takes time out of his day to go check on nearby widows. It’s like he came out of some Perfect Man machine.
His roommate is a very lucky man.
Caleb notices me staring at him, and he gives me an easy smile, although his hands are back to that restless flexing again. And that’s the moment Mrs. Parry emerges with a bag of jars, gives me a fond hug as if we’ve known each other for years, and lets Caleb kiss her on the cheek.
“I know the drill, son,” she says as he’s opening his mouth to say something. “I’ve got the weather radio on full volume and an arsenal of flashlights at the ready. Now you go tend to your work and let me tend to mine.”
Caleb gives her a final peck on the cheek, along with a sheepish you got me smile that makes my pulse race, and then heads back for the truck. I’m about to follow when Mrs. Parry catches my wrist.
I stop and turn.
“You would be good for them, you know,” she says softly. I’m about to gently deflect this, to find some way to hint to her that Caleb isn’t interested in a sweetheart because he already has one named Ben, when she says, “It’s more complicated than you think. Just keep an open mind.”
“Mrs. Parry, with all due respect, my mind is plenty open, and I completely understand what’s going on with Caleb.”
The smile she gives me is a little sad and a lot pitying. “You don’t yet. But you will. And I hope that plenty-open mind will stay that way when you do.”
Chapter Four
Caleb
Ireland seems pensive when she finally climbs into the truck. Greta nestles her head in Ireland’s lap without so much as a friendly lick first, and I find myself jealous of a damn dog. I want my head in Ireland’s lap.
I want to give friendly licks.
Lots of them.
Until she screams my name.
I’m both irritated and grateful Mrs. Parry mentioned Ben. Irritated because I wanted to ease Ireland into the idea, because I wanted to seduce her to it slowly. Bracket her with me on one side and Ben on the other and palm her ass again while he kisses the lavender lipstick right off her mouth.
God. That ass.
The moment I caught her tumbling out of my cab with that madness-provoking skirt riding up her thighs…the moment I realized I had my hand on one of her softest, lushest curves—and so close to her most secret place—I nearly lost it. My dick, already thickening from the mere sight of her, went fully erect in less than a second. It was everything I could do to keep myself from pulling her tighter against me and grinding that hot column of flesh into her round cheeks. Everything I could do to keep from sliding my hand from her bottom to the luscious lace-covered lips between her legs.
Especially after that choked-off oh she made.
Especially after she arched against me.
Had it been some other woman, I might have. Because I wouldn’t have cared what happened next. But I did care what happened next because I want more than a cheap grope with Ireland. I want to make her mine—make her ours.
Besides, Ben and I don’t start things apart. Or finish them apart, for that matter. So yes, I was irritated when Ben’s name came up, but I was grateful too, precisely because we don’t do things separately. I needed that reminder, and it was as good a time as any for Ireland to learn there is a man named Ben who I live with.
I do wish I knew what Mrs. Parry said to Ireland before she climbed into the truck, though. She’s very quiet now, and I don’t know her well enough to interpret her silence.
I’m going to do everything I can to change that. Starting now.
“Your car,” I say, giving a final wave to Mrs. Parry as we circle through the short gravel-speckled grass to go back down her driveway. “I can probably get it free now with my truck, but my concern is that it will get stuck in a different part of the road and you’ll be in the same mess. It might be easier if we plan on coming back tomorrow or even the day after.”
I steal a glance over at her, not missing the way her knee jogs slightly in agitation.
“I thought that might be the case,” she says. God, her voice is irresistible. I can’t wait for Ben to hear it, to hear how smoky and breathless it is. “I noticed there was a hotel off the interstate—I could take a cab there—unless there’s a place in Holm I could stay.”
She sounds doubtful about the last thing, and she should, because Holm consists of four hundred people, a bar, a volunteer library, and more churches than you’d think a town of its size could sustain. But no hotel. There used to be rooms for rent over the bar, but Ben stopped that when he bought the place, because the effort of keeping up the rooms wasn’t worth the one or two customers a month.
“There’s not a place in Holm,” I say, turning onto the road to head back to my farm. “And I’ll take you back to the hotel if you’d like, but you’re more than welcome to stay at the farm. I could talk to your boss and explain about the car and the storm if you’re worried about the extra time away from the office?” I know Drew would understand—he’s one of the most laid-back guys I’ve ever met. The kind of guy who offers to help you move a couch and doesn’t even notice if you don’t offer free pizza in exchange.
“I can handle my own boss,” Ireland says dryly, and I get the feeling my offer might have been overstepping a little.
Well, tough. She better get used to being pampered and taken care of, because I want to make it my life’s work.
And that’s after only an hour together. Christ, I have it bad.
The road is straight and easy, despite the mud, and I risk another look over at her. She has this look on her face—a twist of her lips that looks self-knowing and rueful, a slightly determined furrow of concentration on her forehead—and it’s the look of an impulsive person who’s trained themselves not to be impulsive. It’s the look of someone spontaneous and brave who’s forced themselves into a box of stiff reserve.
I should know. I’ve spent the last five years unboxing Ben after his last deployment.
“I promise I’ll keep you safe from the storm. And that you’re safe in every way in my house.”
She lets out a long breath, and it’s hard to read her tense posture. Is she tense because she wants to say yes? Because she doesn’t know how to say no?
“It’s not that,” she replies. “I just don’t want to intrude on you and Ben is all.”
I’m back to irritated with Mrs. Parry.
“It’s no intrusion, I promise. We’ve got a guest bedroom—shame not to use it when it’s called for.” It would be a shame to have her sleeping in the guest room instead of mine, but I keep that thought to myself.
Come out of that box, I want to coax her. Be brave for me, little peach.
“You know, it would make the assignment easier,” she rationalizes aloud, her knee still bouncing. “Drew really wants to put together something magical for this client, and the more pictures I can gather, the better.”
I nod. Drew mentioned the client on the phone to me—the Kansas Tourism Board—and how he hoped it would be a stepping stone to even bigger accounts.
“And it will be more convenient this way, certainly…” She smooths that tight, tempting skirt over her soft thighs, and I can’t help but track the movement with my eyes, wishing it were my own hands moving over her body. “Okay. I’ll stay with you, as long as it’s really no imposition?”
I can still feel the warm heft of her peach-shaped bottom in my hand.
“No imposition,” I murmur, shifting in my seat to relieve the pressure on my cock. “None at all.”
My folks died when I was in college—my dad of a heart attack and my mom just a couple of years later from cancer—so the farmhouse has been officially mine for thirteen years…but hardly anything has changed since I took over the place.
Some of the equipment is newer, sure, and I have Greta-dog instead of my old collie Connor, but the house is still the same w
hite, gabled affair—two stories of modest turn-of-the-century architecture, with a nice porch, big glinting windows, and a windmill right outside. I keep the land around it real trim and nice, and the same with the outbuildings and barns. All of it is freshly painted, and the grass is cut into a low green carpet nearly as far as the eye can see.
But it’s humble for sure. It’s practical. And I have to wonder what Ireland is thinking as we rattle down the gravel driveway to the house. Girl like her, with the slinky clothes and hair like silk, she’s probably used to something more hip. Exposed brick and city views and all that. Here, the only view is of fields and the pond shining like a mirage behind the house—and the top of the water tower down in Holm.
I want her to like it anyway. I want her to like me anyway. And I think I get my first wish as she steps out of the truck and stares around her.
“Wow,” she whispers, the wind tossing her hair. It also plasters her blouse against her body, showing me every place she curves and dips and rounds.
My hands are itching to touch her again, to shape over her body the way the wind is right now.
“You like it?” I ask, trying not to sound too eager.
She looks into the dark clouds crawling over the brown-green hills and then at the wind-whipped oaks and cottonwoods around the house. Tall, branching sunflowers bob and nod from the sides of the driveway and around the front porch. “It’s beautiful out here,” she says softly.
“It is,” I agree with no small amount of pride. “Let’s get you settled inside, and then I’ll give you a tour before the rain starts for real. Maybe you can start finding places to take pictures. Forecast says it’s supposed to be nice and sunny tomorrow after the storm blows through.”
Ireland hums in agreement, and the sound goes straight to my balls. It’s the kind of hum an aroused woman would make, and even though I know she’s just stirred up by the pretty scenery and maybe the pictures she’ll be able to take, my body doesn’t care. My body wants to crush her back against the truck, shove up her skirt, and show her exactly what a country boy is good for.
I behave, though, and grab her bag from inside the cab and lead her into the house. She pauses at the porch to finger the petals of a sunflower, and I make a mental note to give her entire bouquets of them every chance I get—buckets and bushels of them if necessary.
Our footsteps echo across the old hardwoods once we come through the front door, and I point out the living room, the kitchen, and the old-fashioned parlor near the front.
“Is Ben here?” she asks, sounding a little nervous.
I wish I could tell her not to be nervous because Ben’s going to be head over heels in an instant for her, but that would require too much explanation. And besides, I’m not aiming to yank her into our life without her having the chance to learn about us. What Ben and I share is…unusual. There was never a moment we didn’t know we’d have to be real clear with any woman about what we wanted so she could choose that unusual thing for herself.
Some women chose yes. Some women didn’t.
And after Mackenna left us when Ben got home from the war, we almost stopped looking altogether. It seemed easier to spend the nights alone than risk that kind of pain again.
But Ireland…something about Ireland makes me want to try again. Well, not just something, I admit to myself as I watch Ireland climb up the stairs and then follow behind her. Her skirt hugs the rounded curves of her ass and hips and pulls around thighs that I know would be so very plush around my waist and hips. Heavy and warm and soft over my shoulders as I settled in to taste her…
And her hair hangs like some kind of dark magic down her back, the sway and swish of it as she climbs mimicking the sway and swish of her hips and highlighting the contours of her waist—which dips in more than enough for my arms to slide around to toy with her breasts.
It’s not just something about her. It’s everything about her.
She’s got that body that makes me feel like a caveman, a body that offers lush handfuls even for my big hands, a body that promises a warm welcome on cold winter nights. That hair and that playful mouth with its quirky lipstick. Her light-blue eyes and sultry voice.
But even more than that, there’s something simmering under the surface of her that I want to touch, even if it burns me. She reminds me of one of the wild kittens we’ve got in spades out here—she’ll play once she decides she likes you, but until then, all you’ll get is quivering, wary stillness. But once you can coax her into playing, she’ll play with claws and teeth and still you’ll be grinning the whole time. She reminds me of Ben that way, although Ben’s more lion than kitten.
Ireland turns at the top of the stairs, waiting for me, and I touch the back of her elbow to guide her to the guest bedroom, wishing I could touch more. The small of her back. The sensitive skin between her shoulder blades. Maybe even wrap my hand in her hair and pull until she gasps ever so faintly.
Ireland steps into the room, and there’s still enough light even with the clouds rolling in that the dust is visible in the air. But the creaky metal bed has a fresh set of sheets and clean quilt laid over the top—it’s not unheard of for Ben to bring home one of the town drunks to sleep it off here at the farm rather than in the sheriff’s drunk tank—so we keep the room and the nearby bathroom pretty clean.
All the same, the room is fairly minimal—white walls, the quilt-covered bed, and an old dresser—with only the window and a framed cross-stitch pattern on the wall for decoration. There aren’t even any curtains.
I fidget a little in the doorway, watching the storm-tinted daylight gleam along the silk of Ireland’s shirt, and I have the same discomfort I felt outside the house. What if this isn’t good enough for her? Nice enough or new enough or—
“I love it,” she says simply, spinning to face me. There’s that smile on her face again, lips twisting up in some kind of private joke, like she’s only just caught herself from doing something she’ll regret.
I’d do anything to know what.
I set her bag on the bed. “Do you have something you’d rather change into?” I ask, hoping that’s not rude as hell to ask, but surely she doesn’t want to tramp around the farm in that tight skirt—as much as I wouldn’t mind the sight. Or the excuse to help her over fences or up into the hayloft…
“I do have some jeans,” she muses aloud. “No other shoes, though. I just didn’t think…” She drifts away to the window, looking out to the grass and sunflowers and, farther off, to the fields waist-high with golden wheat. “I guess I didn’t think about how it would be different,” she finishes in a soft voice, almost as if she’s talking to herself more than me.
It seems like she feels good about the different, not bad, and I give a quiet exhale of relief. Of course, I want her to like it here. I want her to like everything about here.
I want her to stay here.
Slow down. You’ve only known her for half an afternoon, and Ben hasn’t even met her yet.
And if Ben doesn’t feel the same as I do…then I’ll have to give up this craving for her, this clenching urge to bring her close. He and I are a package deal and have been since the day I helped him pick up a pile of spilled crayons in kindergarten.
“Ben’s sister sometimes comes to stay with her wife and kids,” I say, “and we have some boots for her here. If you’d like to try them out, they might be better than the shoes you’ve got on.”
Ireland gives me a smile—a real one now, not one of her secretive and slightly unhappy ones. “I’d like that,” she replies.
“Then I’ll let you change,” I say, and then I leave her in the room, closing the solid wood door and resisting the urge to linger like a pervert in the doorway. I don’t need to hear the sounds of fabric rustling over skin to know it will make me hard. I don’t need to hear her small sighs and steps to know I’ll want to hear those sounds every morning for the rest of my life.
So I go downstairs, put out a bowl of food for Greta along with a bowl of lefto
ver chicken for the barn cats, and then I finally text Ben.
You still coming home this afternoon?
Thursdays are one of the days someone else closes the bar down, and Ben and I have a standing…well, not date, really. It’s not like that.
I mean, it’s not not like that either.
Yes.
It’s a terse reply, but it doesn’t bother me—Ben’s been short with words and even shorter with smiles since his first stint in the Korengal Valley. One of the reasons Mackenna left us all those years ago.
There’s someone here from Drew’s company to take pictures. Ireland Mills. She’s staying with us because of the storm.
No reply from Ben, which isn’t surprising. He would consider that text a conveyance of information that doesn’t require a reply, not a lead-up to something bigger.
Which it is.
I like her, Ben.
That’s all I have to say, because when it comes down to it, I’m pretty simple with my words too.
Three dots appear and then disappear and then reappear again. I must have surprised him.
Finally, he answers.
Be there in an hour.
And that’s as much as I’ll get out of him until he arrives, I’m sure.
I put my phone in my back pocket, and then footsteps down the stairs make me turn.
And swallow.
Ireland has toes painted a bright, cute kind of blue, and a toe ring winks off her right foot. I wasn’t expecting these adorable wild-child feet to come out of those fancy office shoes of hers. And then—holy hell—she’s in jeans.
Lots of girls Ireland’s size don’t wear jeans, or at least they don’t wear tight jeans. But Ireland’s got on jeans that hug every delicious line of her body, tight enough that I can see the tempting shape of her groin. And then she finishes coming down the stairs, and my brain sort of goes blank, white and blinded, like after a bright flash of lightning.
Misadventures of a Curvy Girl Page 3
