Her cheeks pinkened as she lowered her gaze to the countertop and opened the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Damn if that extra color in her cheeks didn’t make her even more beautiful.
He turned on the hot water and squirted soap into the palm of his injured hand. “Sorry if I embarrassed you.”
She shrugged. “It’s okay. Guess I have take-charge tendencies no matter how much I try not to.”
“Why would you try not to?”
She opened her mouth but froze before words could come out. He got the oddest sensation that she was scrambling for what to say. He knew he should say something to let her know she didn’t have to answer, but he didn’t. Truth was, he wanted to know more about her. And he knew that wasn’t fair in light of the fact that he didn’t want to reciprocate and spill any beans about his past.
“Let’s just say I’m starting over, new life and all.”
She looked uncomfortable, and he’d swear he could feel the tension coming off of her in tangible waves. He searched for some way to ease her.
“Sometimes that’s good.” His attempt at putting her at ease was weak, but it was all he could offer without opening up and letting his own fresh-start story spill out in all its gory detail.
She simply nodded and handed him a towel to dry his hands. After he did so, she took his hand in hers again. He nearly moaned at the soft, feminine touch. How could something so simple affect him so deeply? He’d touched other women’s hands while shaking hands or during the occasional dance at the music hall, but he’d never wanted to have any of them lift her palm to his face, to run her fingers over his entire body, leaving sparks in their wake.
After using a cotton ball and the peroxide to clean his wound even more, she examined the injury more closely by turning his hand this way and that. “Despite the ill treatment, I think you’re beginning to heal.”
“My job requires working with my hands.”
“Most do.” She folded a piece of gauze several times. “I’m going to pack it heavier over the wound to cushion it more while you’re working.”
He watched, mesmerized, as she rebandaged his hand, taking care to cause him as little discomfort as possible. Not once did she meet his eyes. He probably shouldn’t have said what he had about her being pretty, but it was the God’s honest truth and had seemed a crime not to tell her so.
When she was finished, he examined her handiwork. “You’re good at this. If you ever get tired of cooking, you could have a future as a nurse.”
“Ugh, no thanks. I’ve bandaged my share of cuts and scrapes and burns, but I can’t handle much beyond that.”
“Sounds like your sister must have been really accident-prone.”
“A tomboy, at least when we were young. Wouldn’t know it now. She’s settled into being a regular Miss Domesticity.”
“White picket fence, huh?”
“Barbed wire, actually. Her husband’s a dairy farmer.”
He didn’t think she was aware of the quiet sigh and the look of longing tugging at her features.
“You don’t get to see her often?”
She hestitated before answering. “Not as often as I’d like.”
Ryan feared he’d asked too much as she turned and walked out of the bathroom. After silently cursing himself, he followed.
“So, what’s on the agenda this morning?” she asked. “I can help for a little while but need to get back in time to fix lunch.”
“It shouldn’t take long. I just need you to hold a piece while I finish carving a design. It’s too big to put in the vise, and my hand’s still too blasted sore to hold it in place.”
He led the way back into the indoor part of his shop and pointed to the bottom end of a headboard.
Brooke ran her fingers over the wildflowers he’d already carved along the edge of the headboard. “This is beautiful.”
Her praise lit a light inside him. “It’s for the Wildflower Inn by the lake. They’re adding a couple of new rooms, and I’m doing the furniture for them.”
Her fingertip traced the outline of one of the bluebonnets. “Appropriate.”
“Yeah, this is wildflower country. Can’t throw a stick without hitting some business with ‘wildflower’ in its name. Sometimes I think they should have named the town Wildflower.”
She smiled. “I like Blue Falls. It’s very evocative.”
He liked how she talked sometimes, with an easy sophistication that wasn’t showy. Like it was something she’d cultivated to add to who she’d always been, not replace it.
With a mental shake, he pointed at a spot on the wood. “Can you press down there? Stand up against the edge, too, so it doesn’t slip. This shouldn’t take long.”
He picked up one of the smaller gouges and set to work, forcing himself to focus on creating shapes in the wood rather than the sound of Brooke’s soft breathing or her trim legs pressed against the bottom edge of the headboard. He would not think about how a headboard went on a bed, and a bed had a thick mattress, and what you could do with a beautiful woman on said mattress. He clenched his teeth and gave himself a mental slap.
“How long have you been making furniture?”
“Just a couple of years.”
“Really?” She sounded so surprised that he looked up.
“Yeah. Saw a magazine about woodworking and thought I’d give it a try.” That magazine had been one of, God, hundreds he’d gone through during his hospital stay. He would have read the tax code if someone had given it to him, anything to keep his mind off what had landed him in that hospital bed.
His hand shook just enough that the gouge slipped out of its intended groove, but he caught it before he made like a fool and injured himself again. He knew better than to think about that day so far away when he was working.
“You okay?”
Brooke didn’t miss anything.
“Yeah, just a tough spot in the wood.” And he hated lying to her. It felt profoundly wrong.
“What all do you make?” she asked.
“Tables, chairs, beds, chests of drawers, armoires, desks, you name it.”
“I can see the allure,” she said with a dreamy quality to it. “It seems like a peaceful way to spend your days.”
She had him pegged without even knowing it. After his tour of duty, he couldn’t imagine being around people all the time. Some were fine, he wasn’t totally antisocial. But the idea of working in an office all day made him twitch. So he’d served out the remainder of his service time in a hospital bed then come home.
“Is that how you feel in the kitchen?”
“I guess. It’s quiet time to think. But I like talking to the guests, too, learning where they’re from, what they do.”
“Who knows, maybe somebody you know will stroll in one day. People come from all over.”
When she didn’t respond, he looked up to see she’d gone still and some of the color in her face had drained away. “Brooke?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, fine. I think it’s just taking me a while to get used to the heat here.”
He believed that about as much as he believed everyone in Texas would suddenly give up their trucks for compact cars and stop eating barbecue. But he didn’t press her, even though the sudden change bothered him.
After a few more minutes of carving, he finished the necessary gouge and chisel work on the headboard. “There, that’s done.”
Brooke stepped away and wandered across his shop as he smoothed the edges around the carved designs. She lifted a birdhouse from the shelf and looked at it from every angle. “This looks like your parents’ house.”
“It is. Mom’s birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks, so I made that for her.”
“It’s beautiful.” She slid it carefully back into its spot on the shelf. “There certainly are some pretty birds around here. I woke up listening to them. I saw one this morning that was so colorful, he would have been at home in a rainforest.”
“Blue head, orange and green feathers?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a painted bunting, one of the males.”
“Interesting how the male birds are always so much more striking than the females. My mom loved cardinals, and lots of people don’t realize the bright red ones are the males. The females are brown.”
He noticed she referred to her mom in the past tense. More curiosity tugged at him, but he kept quiet.
“Do you need help with anything else?” she asked as she turned toward him.
Yes. He needed help in figuring out how to not be so attracted to her, to not want to know every little detail about who she was. To not want to take her face in his hands and kiss her.
He mentally shook away that image. “No, I can handle everything else. Appreciate the help.”
She smiled for a moment. “Then I’ll be getting back to work. You should take a break and come up to the house for lunch.”
“I doubt the guests would appreciate sitting next to me in the middle of a workday.”
She took a few steps toward the door and glanced at him for a quick moment. “They won’t be sitting in the kitchen.”
He knew as soon as she said it that come noon, he’d be sitting at the island willing to eat whatever she had on the menu.
BROOKE EXPERIENCED THE oddest urge to skip on her way back to work. It had felt as though she was swimming beyond the safe zone when she’d invited Ryan to come eat lunch in the kitchen, but she’d chosen to ignore the warning alarms bleating in her head and go with it. And something about the look on his face, something indefinable, told her he’d be there. Was there a possibility that Simon wasn’t the only brother who wouldn’t mind spending time with her? After all, Ryan had told her she was pretty.
It had been so unexpected that she’d bolted like a rabbit at the sound of hunting dogs. But her entire body had filled with a delicious warmth that soothed the bruised and battered emotions she’d shoved into the dark places inside her.
But now that she had the space to look back on it without him right next to her, that solitary sentence spoken in his sexy voice made her smile wide. A part of her whispered that Chris had been flattering and charming in those early days, too, but she shushed it. Just because she was basking in a compliment didn’t mean she was going to get serious with Ryan. Considering his family was her employer that wasn’t a good idea anyway. But still, after everything she’d been through in the past year, it felt so incredibly good to have something positive to focus on.
By the time she reached the kitchen, she couldn’t wait to start cooking. Her feet felt light as she made Amish-style potato salad, mint chocolate cookies and mouthwatering chicken salad on sourdough, the recipe for which she’d coaxed out of the chef at the Davenport. She was just setting out the crisp lettuce, slices of tomato and pickles when the back door opened and in walked Ryan.
Though he still wore his work clothes, she didn’t think she’d ever seen anything sexier than worn jeans and a faded green T-shirt accessorized by a cowboy hat and boots that had seen their share of use. Now she fully understood the attraction to the cowboy mystique. There was something primal and deep-seated that reacted to it, yearned to be closer to it. She reined in those thoughts the way the Teague brothers had no doubt reined in countless horses.
“Looks like I’m just in time.”
“My mom always said the one thing a man would never be late for was a meal.”
He laughed a little and hung his hat on the wall rack next to the door. “My stomach’s been grumbling for half an hour just thinking about lunch.”
She liked to think of herself as independent, even when she’d been going through all the trouble with Chris, but it gave her a powerful sense of satisfaction to serve lunch to this man. He worked hard, really worked, with his hands, and he was kind and giving.
Stop right there, the voice inside her screamed. You’re in danger of losing yourself to a man again.
I didn’t lose myself to Chris. He took over when I didn’t expect it.
Brooke turned away under the guise of setting the rest of the food into the dining room for the guests. She needed a few moments to shove memories of Chris away, to remind herself that being friendly with Ryan was okay as long as she remembered to not go too far.
The guests filtered in, chatting about everything they’d seen on the wildflower tour they’d just returned from and showing each other photos on their digital cameras. After a little chitchat, Brooke returned to the kitchen to find Ryan had cleaned his plate and was nabbing another cookie.
She laughed. “You were hungry.”
He held up one of the mint-chocolate cookies. “Don’t let Simon have any of these or he’ll be down on one knee with a diamond ring and booking the reception hall.”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “I would venture your brother is the biggest flirt in all of the Hill Country.”
“You’d win money on that bet.”
“Does it usually work for him?”
“Amazingly well, which has always been annoying.”
Brooke laughed again as she felt herself slip a touch more into the Teagues’ lives.
Merline entered the room through the back door. “Everyone sounds like they’re having a good time in here.”
“Ryan was just telling me about Simon’s well-honed skill of flirting and how no woman in the Hill Country is safe.”
Merline shook her head. “That boy will be the death of me one of these days. Everyone else I know, it’s their youngest who is the wild one. Me, it’s the oldest. Guess I should just count myself lucky he didn’t rub off too much on the younger two. I love him, but I don’t think I could have handled three of him.”
“Well, that makes Nathan and me sound boring,” Ryan said.
“Not at all. I didn’t say you two were angels, now, did I?”
Brooke smiled at the mock affront on Ryan’s face.
Merline walked over to the sink and washed her hands. “Please tell me there’s food left. I’m so hungry I was about to gnaw off my arm.”
“There’s plenty. Let me fix you a plate.”
While Brooke filled her boss’s plate, Merline wandered into the guest dining room. After a round of hellos, she said, “I’ve got a wonderful surprise for you all. A friend of mine runs a tour boat on the lake here, and he wants to try out some dinner cruises this summer. So we’ve set it up to where you all get to be the first guests. Now, I know you’ve been spoiled by Brooke’s delicious food, but rest assured Lon’s wife, Amelia, is a wonderful cook as well.”
Brooke listened through the open double doors into the dining area as the guests asked questions, and Merline filled in the details.
“I guess I’m cooking for a smaller crowd tonight,” Brooke said, actually looking forward to a little break. Maybe she could even get her car unloaded.
“Honey, you don’t have to cook at all,” Merline said as she returned to the kitchen. “You’re going on the cruise, too. We all are.”
Brooke half expected Ryan to object, but he didn’t. She couldn’t help hoping, just a little, that maybe it was because of her.
Chapter Seven
Brooke nearly locked herself in the bunkhouse and stayed there. In fact, for a few minutes she did when the reality of what she was doing and how she was thinking hit her like a bag of bricks. Nothing had happened between Ryan and her, and yet everything felt as if it was moving too fast. She’d never needed a rebound guy after any other breakup, so why was she leaning toward one now?
She sank down on the edge of her bed, braced her elbows against her legs, and pressed the base of her palms against her forehead. The thing was, Ryan Teague didn’t feel like a rebound guy. She’d swear something more was going on inside her, and maybe even on his end. But how could she be sure he wasn’t just someone who’d hurt her again?
She couldn’t. And that uncertainty was even scarier than thinking what she was feeling toward Ryan wasn’t just the need to attach herself to someone so she wasn’t alone.
Why was she waging a war inside her head? It wasn’t as though they were going on a date. There was going to be a boatload of people enjoying the lake cruise. And, honestly, it sounded really nice to have a night of leisure. Pulling herself together, yet again, Brooke surged to her feet and started going through the two bigger suitcases she’d just lugged inside the bunkhouse.
Right now, Ryan had the makings of a friend, and goodness knew she needed one of those just about more than anything. If she focused on that instead of her unwise attraction to him, maybe she’d stop making herself crazy.
Remembering her resolve proved difficult, however, as she rode beside Ryan into town in the backseat of his parents’ truck. He wore clean jeans, a newer-looking pair of boots, and a crisply pressed chocolate-colored shirt. And he smelled heavenly, all fresh, simple soap with a hint of pine. She wondered if her willpower to not lean over and sniff his neck would run out before they reached the boat launch.
What didn’t make matters any easier was when she caught Merline watching her in the rearview mirror, the older woman had a smile on her face that made Brooke feel as if she was on an episode of Texas Matchmaker.
That was it. No matter how late they got back tonight, she was clearing out her car and driving herself from now on.
“Here we are,” Merline said as they pulled into a parking area next to the lake.
Finally.
Brooke mentally congratulated herself for not leaping from the truck and her awesomely powerful attraction to Ryan. Once her feet hit the ground, she didn’t even have to extricate herself from her riding companions. Little Evan did that for her.
Cowboy to the Rescue Page 8
