“Huh?”
“That’s why you’re so unconcerned because one look at your bank account would tell anyone that whatever the insurance company pays you is a mere drop in the ocean.”
“Very good, Tiana,” he said approvingly. “I love the way you think.”
She shook her head, returning her gaze to her chore.
“Not to mention,” he added in a coldly furious voice, “I lost Roan in that fire and I can’t wait to get my hands on whoever set the damn thing. I could never have tried to hurt Roan.”
Tiana’s breath hitched in her throat as she looked at him, “Roan?”
Had someone died in the fire?
“My very first horse. My Dad gave him to me when I was a teenager and now he’s dead. He was too old to run as fast as the other horses.”
“Oh, Christian, I’m so sorry,” she said, covering his hand with hers.
He nodded sadly, accepting her sympathy. His gray eyes flicked up to hers and then looked back down at their joined hands. Just like that, heat kindled in his eyes and Tiana suddenly remembered that the fire that night had interrupted something. They had been about to make love when the blast had interrupted them and in the two weeks since then, heat continued to flare every time their paths crossed but they had both continued to ignore it.
Christian’s lips were slightly parted, his eyes darkened as he watched her and she knew at once that he too was thinking of the same thing.
Slowly, she pulled her hand from his and picked up her roster. As she pinned it to the tiny board, Christian’s eyes followed her every movement. She was wearing a gypsy skirt that flowed to the ground and a small tank top. There was nothing sexy about the attire but somehow, it made her look fetching, feminine and sexy as hell. The skirt emphasized rather than hid the soft swell of her buttocks and his imagination drove him wild, reminding him of just how soft the flesh had felt when he had cupped it that night in the bunkhouse.
It was all he could do to keep his hands off of her.
In frustration, he looked around the kitchen; everyone was busy. But the fat Frenchman met his gaze with an annoying arch look of his own that said he had noticed the direction of Christian’s gaze. Then he too directed his own gaze to the soft swell of Tiana’s bottom.
Christian ground his teeth, almost tempted to fire the man on the spot for his insubordination.
“Get back to work,” he spat.
Tiana spun around, her face shocked at his tone. When she saw he was talking to the Frenchman, she glared at him, “Christian! You can’t talk to people like that! You can’t talk to anyone like that! What has come over you?”
The Frenchman’s arch look intensified as he merrily sliced some onions on a cutting board. He was apparently amused by Christian’s dilemma.
Christian looked over at the temptress breathing fire as she looked at him, her chest rising and falling with anger. He couldn’t very well tell her that he had been checking out her ass and had caught the Frenchman looking too. In her current mood, she would probably twist both their ears!
“Dammit!” he swore, and then turned on one well-shod heel and strode from the kitchen.
Tiana looked around in confusion, uncertain what had driven him out of the kitchen and then with a sigh, she returned to her chores.
***
Christian was in a foul mood as he baled hay with some of his men. He kept remembering the fat Frenchman’s eyes roving over Tiana’s ass as well as the Frenchman’s smug look when she had lit into him for chewing out the other man. His fists tightened into balls of fury as he pictured the man’s face and he wished heartily again that he could punch the smile right off his face.
“You seem a little tense. Everything all right?” someone asked.
Christian looked up; it was Rick, one of the newest hands on his ranch. He had reservations about the man but since the baling season was at hand, he had agreed with his foreman to take him on temporarily. The man proved to be a good hand, but there was just something about him that didn’t sit too well with Christian.
“Fine,” he mumbled.
“That little piece of ass in the kitchen’s been tying the boss up in knots eh?” Rick said, nudging one of the ranch hands beside him as he snorted with laughter.
Christian saw red. In seconds, he was flying across the field and knocking the other man right into the ground. Chaos erupted as all the ranch hands began to converge on the two men rolling around on the ground.
Christian rolled on top and threw a punch, his fist slamming into the other man’s face and breaking his nose instantly. Rick was no slouch in the brawling department either; he retaliated with a right hook to Christian’s eye.
“Watch. Your. Language!” Christian yelled, punctuating each word with a punch.
Several hands intervened, dragging the warring men apart. Christian spat onto the ground, unable to believe he had lost control like that. He had not been involved in a brawl since he was a teenager. Even now, he could feel the collective surprise of his men because they had never seen him so much as raise his voice.
“You’re fired!” he told the other man.
“No kidding! Tell your whore for me that she will be hearing from me soon!” the man yelled, a fine spray of saliva flying from his mouth.
Christian sprung again, hitting out so violently at Rick that he had knocked the other man out cold before the other men could even so much as intervene.
Sweat rolled down his face and body and his jaw and eye were beginning to throb where Rick had got in a few licks of his own. A slight pain in his ribs also told him Rick’s knee had struck home.
“I think I’ve done enough baling for one day. I’ll be at the ranch if anyone needs me,” he said, striding off and clambering into the nearest truck he could find.
Silence reigned in the field until he was gone and then the men erupted into excited conversations. It wasn’t long before they were betting on the odds that Christian had fallen in love with and would marry the new sexy cook.
Christian parked the truck haphazardly on the lawn in front of the kitchen door and stumbled out of the truck. He needed an icepack, he thought as he gingerly opened the door to the kitchen and walked in.
Tiana was at the sink, singing under her breath as she rinsed a plate; other than her, there was no one else around, which was a first.
“Where’s everyone?” he asked as he collapsed onto the nearest seat.
“I gave them the rest of the day off to make up for your thoughtless comment earlier,” she said with a sniff that told him he was still very much in the doghouse.
She picked up another plate and turned to glare meaningfully at him, but she caught sight of his swollen face for the first time and screamed, the plate sliding from her suddenly nerveless fingers to break into a million pieces on the floor.
“What happened to you?” Tiana cried, rushing over to kneel beside his seat as she carefully examined his jaw and eye.
“I ran into a wall?” It was intended as a statement but came out as a question for good reason; she wasn’t buying it.
“Christian!”
“Alright I punched someone’s lights out. He totally deserved it too! But he punched back.”
“Christian! What the hell has gotten into you? First you yelled at my entire staff for no good reason then you go out onto the fields and start punching people left and right! Again, what the hell?”
“You wanna know what has gotten into me? You! You wanna know why I’m scolding and punching people? You!”
She leaned back as she stared up at him, “What?”
“You've been driving me steadily out of my mind, Tiana, and I know exactly why! I need you. I need to be inside you!”
Raw heat spiraled through her and she swallowed, unsure of what else to say.
Christian’s hands shot out and grabbed her face in a surprisingly gentle grasp, his silver-gray eyes locked hungrily on hers. “Kiss me, Tiana,” he ordered.
She needed no further urgi
ng. She sat on his lap immediately and opened her mouth over his, their tongues immediately tangling in a passionate, fiery kiss.
Tiana lost all sense of time and place as she buried her hands in Christian’s thick dark hair. His hands trailed to her breasts, squeezing and kneading and just as he made to lift the hem of her shirt, the kitchen door burst open, startling them. Tiana jumped off his lap and they turned in unison to stare at the person who had just opened the door. It was Rose, and she barely spared them a glance as she marched to the sink to drop her load of tray and tea cups.
When she had, she turned to them with a decidedly smug grin and said, “You have visitors, Christian.”
A sense of dread filled him from head to toe and just as he made to ask who she meant, a tall willowy red-headed woman clad in a very expensive silk shirt tucked into a skirt and impossibly high heels stepped into the kitchen followed by another woman clad in an attire so similar they might have been twins. They even had identical facial expressions; their mouths were pinched in the universal expression of displeasure and their noses were thrust up into the air as though they had smelled spoiled milk.
Tiana mentally rolled her eyes; she knew demanding, hard-to-please guests when she saw them.
“Hello,” she ventured airily.
They didn’t even spare her a glance; she might have been an ant for all the attention they gave her.
“Mother,” Christian breathed, rising to give the first woman a kiss on both cheeks that brushed the air beside her but didn’t quite touch her.
Mother? When it rained it poured.
“Yes dear, and look who I’ve brought; your fiancée Lauren!” she said. Indicating that the younger woman with her, with a satisfied smile,was intended for him. Rose looked as pleased with herself as if she had invented Lauren single-handedly without any help from the Creator.
It took a minute to sink in; Christian had a fiancée?
Tiana gasped, unable to stifle the sound this time. Christian’s gaze met hers and she was shocked; the truth was in his gaze. The Lauren woman was his fiancée!
He was a cheating bastard, she realized as her heart splintered into a million pieces in her chest.
CHAPTER NINE
“Come on, Jamal, back up a little,” Tiana called as she tossed the ball to Jamal in a wide arc across the park.
Jamal tried to catch the ball, his small hands meeting each other in an audible clap over his head as the ball sailed right through.
With a laugh, Tiana sank onto the park bench as she watched him race after the ball. He picked it up and ran back to deposit it in her hands. His attention was caught by a group of kids on swings and he looked back at Tiana with a hopeful expression on his face.
“Alright, you can go,” she said exasperatedly.
He took off at his usual made dash and Tiana reclined against the park bench with a sigh.
She contemplated her nails sadly as thoughts of yesterday’s incident flashed through her mind. She had seen Christian in a whole new light and even though she had convinced herself that she was fine, she couldn’t help the way she felt. She had been in such a foul mood after that that she had burned all the scones for dinner. The lamb was half-cooked and the broth was watery.
Jamal whooped with delight as the swing swung high and she smiled involuntarily; whatever else was wrong with her, her baby was turning out great and that was more than enough for her.
The now-familiar prickly sensation at the back of her neck warned her again that someone was watching her, but a quick glance around the park assured her that everyone else was too preoccupied with whoever they came with to pay any attention.
She was being paranoid for nothing, she thought, relaxing against the park bench.
She looked idly around the park, past a woman with a baby in a stroller and three kids with their hands stuck out for the bit of chocolate she was sharing among them; her gaze swept a young couple kissing on a bench and then past a man sitting alone with a flat cap pulled down low over his eyes.
Their eyes met and Tiana’s heart leaped into her throat as she recognized Hank’s mean, beady eyes. She leaped to her feet immediately, blind panic clawing at her insides as she ran straight to the swing set and grabbed Jamal right off the set and into her arms, her feverish gaze flying to the man’s face disbelievingly.
He rose to his well-remembered height of six-five and took off the flat-cap on his head with hands the size of hams. It was Hank alright.
Tiana didn’t wait to see more, she took off at a run, her baby clutched in her arms as she ignored the people turning to stare at her.
“Mommy, who’s that man? Are we playing a game?” Jamal asked, his little hands encircling her neck trustingly.
She risked a quick glance over her shoulder, her hair flying around her head with the quick motion. Hank was running after her, his long legs easily eating up the distance. Desperately, she quickened her steps, her gaze fixed behind her on the nightmarish figure gaining on them.
All the breath whooshed out of her as she ran into a solid brick wall. Raw fear sliced through her and sob worked its way out of her throat. She turned to face her tormentor and felt her muscles turn to noodles with relief; it was Christian!
Another quick glance behind her showed her that Hank had vanished as though into thin air. She turned back to face Christian, her face leeched of all color, her eyes wild with fright.
“Tiana? What the hell? What’s wrong?” he asked, a concerned frown marring his smooth brow.
“H-H-Hank,” she stuttered through chattering teeth.
Christian looked over her shoulder; he didn’t see anything more threatening than a pair of white-haired, elderly lovers lost in each other’s gaze as they strolled up the path. Both of them were at least seventy years old, if they were a day.
“Hank? Are you sure?” he asked. She had never told him exactly why she was so scared of her ex but he knew fear and hers was very real. It was so profound he could almost taste it.
“He’s found us. We need to leave,” she announced in a hushed tone as she side-stepped him and began to race towards the exit from the park. Christian didn’t like the sound of that; she sounded as though she wanted to leave Paradise and not just the park. He wanted to ask her to explain but in her current state, he didn’t think she could.
“We’ll take my truck,” he said instead, guiding her towards it and driving off as soon as she and Jamal were safely ensconced.
Jamal lost interest now that the ‘game’ had ended and promptly went to sleep.
“So how about you tell me exactly what we're dealing with,” Christian suggested.
“We? You have a fiancée remember?” she snarled in a voice she barely recognized as hers.
Christian didn’t respond, just regarded her slow and steady, as effective as any response. Within seconds, she felt ungrateful. He was rescuing them after all; whatever else he may be, he had gotten them away from Hank!
“Hank was abusive,” she said, relenting. “He hit me several times, broke a couple of ribs and even busted my wrists and hip bone, twice!”
Christian winced. It wasn’t just what she was saying, but the emotionless, almost accepting manner in which she said it. It was almost as though she had accepted it as a fact of life.
“When I was pregnant with Jamal, they had to sew my cervix shut so I wouldn’t lose the baby.”
“He hit you when you were pregnant?” Christian asked disbelievingly, with quiet fury reverberating through his voice.
There was no circumstance under which a man should hit a woman in his book; to hit a pregnant woman was sick, twisted, and just plain evil.
“He didn’t like sass. Apparently, I'm as sarcastic bitch.”
“I haven’t noticed that,” he said, frowning as he checked the rear-view mirror to make sure they were not being followed.
“Yeah well, Hank beat it out of me,” she said matter-of-factly.
His heart constricted in his chest. How could he have been s
o blind? How could he have failed to see how much pain she was carrying around?
“Tiana? You don’t think it’s your own fault he beat you, do you?” he asked softly, his mind working feverishly. Lydia was a shrink. Perhaps she could help.
“I know it was not my fault. Hank is a sick man. He twisted my love for him until I became a puppet. The day he hit Jamal though, Jamal was just two years old and had left muddy prints on his suit pants just as he stood to leave for work. Hank slapped him hard, sending him flying clear across the room. That day, I filed a police report and got his ass arrested. He served time and while he was in the pen, I took Jamal and I left.”
“Good for you,” Christian murmured approvingly and she relaxed against her seat.
She had been afraid he would criticize her for not leaving Hank the very first time he hit her; which was all her own parents and his had said when she almost lost her baby. But he seemed angry on her behalf. In fact, his hands were completely white against the steering wheel as he drove the rest of the way to the ranch.
The ranch?
She sat up apprehensively, half-expecting Hank to pull in behind them as they parked in front of the house.
“We can’t be here. Hank...”
“Would never get past my men,” he interrupted. “Besides, you should know that I would protect you with my life. I would die before I would let anyone hurt you!”
Quiet sincerity rang through in his voice and she realized with a jolt that he meant every last word. Warmth washed over her as she relaxed back against the seat, her fear draining out of her and leaving her boneless.
“Why?” she asked.
“I think you know why,” he said quietly, his silver gaze holding hers so intently that she could have sworn he saw right into her soul.
“Don’t be staring at me like that,” she mumbled with a sniff. “Think of Laura.”
“Lauren,” he corrected automatically, taking her hand in his warm, gentle grasp. “And she’s sure as hell not my damn fiancée!”
“Alright. You’ve convinced me with all that cussing,” she shot back sarcastically, trying to wrench her hand from his grip. It was like breaking a core of iron even though he was careful to hold her loosely enough that he was not hurting her soft skin.
The Love Ranch (BWWM Romance) Page 6
