“Then it’s time, isn’t it?” He bent down from his much greater height so that his face was near hers.
She splayed a hand on his chest. “Kirk . . .this isn’t a good idea,” she whispered huskily. Apparently he didn’t agree, which was all right, because she wasn’t absolutely sure she meant what she’d said, anyway.
His lips were as firm as she remembered. He kissed her scar, warmly and tenderly, then moved on up to her lips, catching her slight gasp so that that it drew the taste of him into her mouth. His hand on the back of her neck flexed, and she tilted her head in response, opening herself to him with a shaky, trembling sigh. He swung his other arm around her, urging her onto her toes as she clung to his shoulders with both hands.
Moments later he lifted his head and slowly lowered her back to the floor. They stared at each other for a long, silent time, until she slipped under his arm and bolted.
Kirk let her go, although it was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to hold her, wanted to feel her heat, hear her breathing quicken.
“Be nice to her,” Lester Brown had said. “You never know what might happen. You might even learn to like her.”
Kirk pulled a face. Like her. Of course he’d probably learn to like her. Hell, he did already. Simply talking to her Friday night, starting to get to know her, had told him she was a likable woman. This morning, he’d learned he liked her quick wit and sense of humor. She didn’t whine and complain, though he was certain she’d had a tough life since her husband died. But that didn’t mean he had to lust after her. More important, it didn’t mean he had to give in to Brose’s hidden agenda. Dammit, he’d spent seven years fighting the old man on all sorts of levels, and mostly winning. Now, he was damned if he’d let him dominate from the grave. He knew exactly what Brose’s will had been geared to force him into. Marriage.
He jammed his feet into his boots, dragged his jacket on, and opened the back door. The cold cleared his head quickly after the warmth of the house—and the scent of the woman. She wasn’t his type in any way, he told himself as he strode through the crunching snow. What he had to do was forget about her altogether and stick to women who suited him better. Not only was she the wrong type and the wrong size, they lived in the same house and he’d never wanted a live-in lover before. He was a bachelor, just as Brose had been for most of his life, and that was the way he meant to keep it.
He kicked one of the big tires on the tractor and a clump of snow thudded down. He began brushing snow off the machine, then started the engine and drove it into its shed, where he should have put it Friday night. Friday night . . . Liss Tremayne . . . her bed behind her . . . Hell and damnation! Liss, in bed, was a thought he refused to dwell on. He was not taking her to bed.
He got off the tractor, flipped open the engine cover, and stared inside blindly. Liss Tremayne was a woman to stay the hell away from because he refused to play into Brose’s hands.
He snatched up a wrench to tighten a bolt that wasn’t loose. It slipped off the nut and his knuckles lost several square centimeters of skin. He cursed with undue fervor before sucking the sting out of them, then he heaved the wrench across the shed. It hit the plow blade with a satisfying clang.
* * * *
“I’m going into town,” Kirk said, after he’d finished the unnecessary monkey-wrenching on the tractor, and had showered and changed. “Is there anything I can pick up for you while I’m there?”
Liss looked up from the stove, where she was stirring a pot of thick, homemade pea soup. Kirk had changed from his ragged jeans and green sweater into a pair of newer jeans, equally tight, and a blue sweater that lightened the gray of his eyes. He was also wearing the inevitable cowboy boots and carried his hat in his hand. He looked just as good as he had half an hour before.
She forced herself to concentrate on his question. Hadn’t she spent the past thirty minutes telling herself to quell her foolish attraction to this man? Of course she had. It was time she listened to her own words of wisdom. “Yes, please. Fresh fruit—apples, bananas, oranges, whatever you can get—and some carrots and onions.”
“And some chocolate,” Ryan said, grinning up at Kirk from where he knelt by the box of kittens. Mama cat now purred contentedly while the children played with her babies.
Liss scowled at him. “Ryan! You aren’t supposed to ask for things.”
“But Grandpa always brings us chocolate when he goes to the store,” Ryan said.
Liss clenched her teeth. That was all too true. “Kirk is not your grandpa.”
“Is he going to be our daddy?” Jason asked. “If he was our daddy he could bring us chocolate even if you said no ’cause daddies are the boss. Grandpa said so.”
Liss groaned and covered her face with her hand, wishing she could drown out Kirk’s chuckle with a shriek. “Hey, I like your attitude, kid,” he said. “And your grandpa sounds like my kind of guy.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “’Cept he and Grandma won’t let us bring our bikes to our house. They make us keep them at their house and we only get to ride them when we go to visit. If you were our daddy could we have bikes here?”
Liss cringed. “Jason! I told you that maybe if you’re really good, Santa Claus will bring you and Ryan bikes for Christmas. But if you’re not good, you might not get anything. And being good means not asking for things.”
“Hey, lighten up, Liss,” Kirk said. “Asking for a chocolate bar isn’t exactly a capital crime.”
She glared at him. “Go shove your head in a bucket of water,” she muttered, then added to Jason, “When I say no chocolate, I mean no chocolate, and that’s that.”
“Please? Let me get them some,” Kirk said quietly. “I liked chocolate when I was a kid, too. Heck, I still like it. I’ll pick up a couple of candy bars for them, okay? I really don’t mind.”
“But I do,” she said, her tone just short of a shout. “Be good enough not to interfere with my decisions about what’s best for my children. One of my prime reasons for agreeing to come live in this godforsaken snow-covered wilderness was so I could raise my sons without somebody else trying to undermine me and turn them into whining, demanding little brats who think the world owes them a living!”
He stared at her for a moment, then a closed look came over his face. He nodded curtly. “Sure. Right. Whatever you say.”
She sighed, knowing she had sounded shrewish and mean, but seeing no graceful way out of it. All it had taken to turn her into a virago was the painful reminder that her children’s grandparents tended to give them whatever they wanted—at their house—in order to have them pressure Liss into moving back in with them. Using her own children against her! She didn’t need that kind of interference, and for a moment it had appeared that Kirk was doing it, too.
“How about some yogurt?” she asked, and the kids agreed happily. To Kirk, she added, “Half a dozen little tubs of fruit-flavored yogurt, too, please.”
For a moment, he looked as rebellious as the boys had seconds before, but then he shrugged and jammed his hat on. Liss hated to see him leave like that, thinking she was a bad-tempered snark. She wasn’t sure why it mattered so much, but it did.
“I’m going to have lunch on the table in five minutes,” she said. “Will you eat before you go?” Kirk felt that smile of hers sneak up on him and give him a hard zap in the gut. He took a step back, wondering how he had gotten so close to her. He hadn’t been aware of moving, and she still stood where she’d been when he entered the room, a big white apron tied around her slim middle, her cheeks flushed from the heat. The soup smelled good. She smelled good. He wanted to touch her again so bad, he had to clench his hands into fists.
“No,” he said roughly, turning on one heel and putting space, lots of it, between them. “I’ll be late. Don’t expect me for dinner, either,” he added impulsively, without the faintest idea of where he’d eat. He only knew he had to escape before he kissed the living daylights out of Liss Tremayne in front of her little boys.
&nb
sp; He plunged outside and drew in a deep breath of the icy air. It stung his nose and made his chest ache, but he took another breath, and another, until he had a damned good reason for the dizziness that assailed him. “Damn you, Brose,” he muttered, getting into his truck and slamming the door. “If you didn’t go to hell, that’s where you belong, the Reverend Daisy notwithstanding. What have you saddled me with? And how am I going to deal with it?”
There was no answer, of course. He started his truck and drove out of there as if something were chasing him. Damn right he was going to be late, he reaffirmed to himself. Maybe he wouldn’t go home all night. That, he knew, was the most sensible course, but he still felt as if he were being hounded out of his own house.
He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. Dammit, whose ranch was this, anyway?
* * * *
“That is my place,” Mrs. Healey said, tapping Liss on the shoulder with a stiff, hard finger. “Ambrose sat at that end, I sat at this one.”
Liss jerked around, staring up at Mrs. Healey. Dammit, she thought, for a large woman, Mrs. Healey could moue awfully quietly when she chose not to hammer her cane on the floor at each step. Though Liss had called a few minutes before to alert her that lunch was ready, there had been no response. Now that she and the boys were nearly done, here came the silent mountain, sneaking up on her.
“Excuse me,” she said with exaggerated courtesy. “I had no idea this was your special place.” At lunch and dinner the day before, Mrs. Healey had come in, filled a plate, then disappeared with it, either to her room or to the office. Now, it seemed, she had decided to join the family. “I’ll be happy to sit elsewhere at dinnertime and from then onward,” Liss continued. “But for now, please sit at the other end of the table, Mrs. Healey, and help yourself to lunch.” She indicated the pot of soup on the stove and the plate of sandwiches on the table. “Unless, of course, you’d like to wait until I’ve finished; then you’ll be welcome to this seat.”
With a “Hmmph” and a toss of her head, the older woman grudgingly did as she was asked, sitting down with a thump. She stared at Liss so long and so hard, Liss rose, ladled out a bowl of soup for the old bag and set it before her. It would, she told herself be difficult for Mrs. Healey to handle the hot soup as well as her cane, which made her lurch. Better to serve her than to have to wash the floor again.
Naturally, she received no thanks, just a sniff of disdain. “I don’t much like pea soup.”
Liss smiled. “Sorry, that’s all there is.”
“Can we go now, Mom?” Ryan asked. He shoved his bowl away and left a half-eaten triangle of sandwich on his plate. “You said we could build a snowman right after lunch.”
“Yes, you may go. And help your brother with his boots.” Both boys scampered into the back entry room, where she could hear them struggling with snowsuits and boots.
She was about to go help when a female voice called from the front hall. “Yoo-hoo! Kirk, sweetie . . .where are you?”
The sound of that voice stilled both Mrs. Healey’s spoon halfway to her mouth and Liss in her tracks. They turned to see a tall redheaded woman stride into the kitchen on snowy boots, the smile on her face dying the instant she saw the strangers.
“Oh!” Her glance, the same shade of blue as a winter sky and about as warm, swept over Liss. “Where is Kirk? And who are you?”
“Kirk is out,” Liss said. “He may be late. I’m Liss Tremayne.” She squared her shoulders and reminded herself she had as much right to be there, more even, than the newcomer, though the redhead clearly felt welcome to walk in unannounced without even wiping her feet.
Jason came staggering back into the kitchen, mittens dangling, asking to be zipped. Liss complied, then did the same for Ryan. “These are my children,” she went on to the other woman, “Ryan and Jason. And this is—” “No need to introduce this lady.” The redheaded woman strode right past Liss, failing utterly even to look at the boys, and offered her hand to Mrs. Healey. Smiling, she bent impulsively to kiss her cheek. “You must be Kirk’s mother. He said you’d be coming to stay. How wonderful to meet you at last. He’s told me so much about you. I’m Gina.”
She said it, Liss thought, as if the mere name would explain everything.
“I’m sure Kirk has told you all about me,” Gina went on. Pulling out a chair, she sat close to Mrs. Healey, who so far hadn’t said a word. She only sat staring, her mouth slightly ajar. With a tiny grimace, Gina added confidingly, “He’s probably told you about our little spat.” She laughed lightly. “Tell me, Mrs. Allbright, do you think he’s ready to listen to reason now?”
Mrs. Healey, finally closed her moth and said “I’m Mrs. Healey and I’m not his mother. I’m his coheir.”
Gina’s smile faded instantly. “Are you saying Kirk isn’t sole heir to Whittier Ranch? But why? I mean, what were you to the old goat—to Ambrose?”
Mrs. Healey, Liss was perversely pleased to see, didn’t reserve her bad manners and ill humor strictly for her housemates. “That,” she said, shifting away from Gina, “can hardly be considered your business, and since this is my home now as well as Kirk Allbright’s, I’ll than you not to enter without knocking another time.”
“I . . .of course,” Gina said, suddenly humble. “Forgive me, please, but I naturally had no idea . . .and I’m accustomed to coming and going as if this were my own home. You see,” she added in a sweet little-girl voice that was completely at odds with her statuesque figure, “I expected it would be my own home by now, but when Ambrose got sick, Kirk . . . changed. It think it was grief that did it.” Gina laid one long-fingered, red-nailed hand on Mrs. Healey’s arm. “Please, won’t you help me? I do love him so very much, but like most men, he can be terribly unforgiving at times. Mrs. Healey, I’m begging you, make him listen to me. That’s all I ask, just that he listen to me! I truly wasn’t trying to lure him away from his ranch. I’d be happy to live here year-round.”
Mrs. Healey pulled her arm free, her expression one of distaste. “I have no influence over that young man, miss, nor do I want to. He’s as rude, boorish, and insensitive as his father was. You’re better off without him.”
She turned and fixed a look of dislike on Liss. “And that,” she added, “is advice you’d do well to heed, too, young woman, if you’re tempted to do any more smooching in the laundry room. That boy is his father all over again, using sex and charm and empty promises to keep a housekeeper around rather than paying her a living wage.”
Quickly Liss shooed the boys out the back door, wondering what Mrs. Healey had seen and heard.
Gina’s cold gaze swept over Liss for the second time. “You and Kirk, smooching in the laundry room? I can tell you one thing, when Kirk and I are married, there’ll be no need for a housekeeper, so don’t get too comfortable.”
Liss gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep her hands and her tongue out of mischief. Nothing would be gained by deliberately antagonizing this . . .woman, regardless of how antagonistic she was toward her. But, Liss reflected, that didn’t mean she had to take any abuse, either.
“I hope you’ll both excuse me,” she said calmly. “I don’t like to leave the children outside alone too long. Good-bye, Gina. Nice meeting you.”
“My name,” Gina said pointedly, “is Miss Holland. “
The silence, as Liss walked briskly out of the kitchen and into the back room, was almost palpable. When she returned from outside more than an hour later, after she and the boys had built a marvelous snowman, she was not surprised to see that the table had not been cleared and the soup pot still stood on the stove. From the living room she heard the hum of a low-voiced conversation. Mrs. Healey and Gina Holland, it seemed, had struck up an unlikely friendship. Or was it, Liss wondered, hanging up her coat and the boys’ outdoor gear, so unlikely? After all, both would be happier if Liss didn’t exist. Maybe they thought that, together, they could force her to leave.
She tucked the boys into bed for a nap, then baked a chocolate
cake to make up for being so stubborn over the candy bar issue. The cake was cooling, dinner was in the oven, and Liss was in the back entry hall, reaching up to a high shelf where she’d seen icing sugar stored, when Kirk came home.
“Oh!” Startled, she dropped down from her tiptoes and whirled around as he and Marsh came through the back door. Marsh’s claws clicked on the tile as he walked over to her. He nudged her with his cold, wet nose, then continued on to the kitchen and his water dish, where he lapped noisily.
Kirk halted just inside the door and gazed at her, a defensive expression on his face, a stubborn thrust to his chin.
Her heart rate increased and her insides seemed to melt. She stiffened and said, “Hello. I thought you weren’t coming home until late.”
He set a grocery bag on the freezer, then banged the snow off his boots onto the mat by the door. His stare challenged her. “ I changed my mind. This is my home, too, and I won’t be forced out of it.”
Liss’s eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t aware of having forced you out.”
“You didn’t,” he said. Abruptly, he reached out and caught her around the waist, his cold hands startling on her bare skin, for her shirt had hitched up as she’d stretched for the sugar. “This did.”
“What—” she started to say, but something in his expression silenced her. His eyes glittered under the brim of his hat. His chest rose and fell within the open front of his jacket. His powerful thighs brushed against hers, and his long fingers flexed on her waist, stroking the skin of her back. He bent low, held her tight against him, and then he kissed her.
Chapter Three
What the hell are you doing? Kirk asked himself as Liss’s warm, soft lips parted instinctively under his.
Oh, hell, he was doing what he’d been wanting to do, been thinking what he’d been thinking about incessantly since he drove away at noon. No, dammit, he’d been thinking about it since this morning, since Friday night, since . . . since the first time he ever saw Liss Tremayne. He was out of his mind. He shouldn’t have touched her. He’d told himself he wouldn’t, just as he’d told himself to get out of the house and stay out until he had his libido back under control. But there he was, back home touching her, kissing her, lifting his head and rubbing away the crick in his neck, then bending to kiss her again.
City Girl Page 5
