Adam

by Joan Johnston

  Only this T-shirt had the neckline cut out so it slipped down to reveal one shoulder—and the obvious fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Anyone with eyes in his head could see she was naked under the T-shirt. The three cowboys were sure as hell looking. The wind was blowing and the cotton clung to her, outlining her generous breasts.

  Adam told himself he wasn’t going to make a fool out of himself by going over there and dragging her away from three sets of ogling male eyes. However, once his footsteps headed in that direction, he didn’t seem to be able to stop them.

  He arrived in time to hear her say, “My brothers taught me how to get even when some rabbit-shy horse bucks me off.”

  “How’s that, Tate?” one of the cowboys asked.

  “Why, I just make that horse walk back to the barn all by himself!” Tate said with a grin.

  The cowboys guffawed, and Tate joined in. Adam caught his lip curling with laughter and straightened it back out.

  “Don’t you have some work to do?” he demanded of the three cowboys.

  “Sure, Boss.”

  “Yeah, Boss.”

  “Just leaving, Boss.”

  They tipped their hats to Tate, but continued staring at her as they backed away.

  Adam swore acidly, and they quickly turned tail and scattered in three different directions.

  He directed a cool stare at Tate and said, “I thought I told you to stay away from my cowhands.”

  “I believe your exact words were, ‘Finish your work before you go traipsing around the ranch,’” Tate replied in a drawl guaranteed to irritate her already irritated boss.

  “Is your work done?”

  “Had you been home for lunch, I’d have offered to show you the bookkeeping system I’ve set up. Everything’s been logged in and all the current invoices have been paid. I have some suggestions for ways—”

  He interrupted with, “What the hell are you doing out here half-dressed, carousing with the hired help?”

  “Carousing? I was just talking to them!” Tate flashed back.

  “I want you to leave those boys alone.”

  “Boys? They looked like grown men to me. Certainly old enough to make up their minds whether or not they want to spend time with me.”

  Adam grabbed the hat off his head and slapped it against his thigh. “Dammit, Tate. You’re a babe in the woods! You’re playing with fire, and you’re going to get burned! You can’t run around here half naked and not expect—”

  “Half naked?” she scoffed. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “That T-shirt doesn’t leave much to the imagination! I can see your nipples plain as day.”

  Tate looked down and realized for the first time that twin peaks were clearly visible beneath the T-shirt. She decided to brazen it out. “So what if you can? I assume you’re familiar with the female anatomy. Besides, you’re not my father or my brother. You have absolutely no right to tell me what to wear!”

  Since the erotic feelings Adam was experiencing at the moment weren’t the least fatherly or brotherly, he didn’t argue with her. However, he had appointed himself her guardian in their stead. As such, he felt it his duty to point out to her the dangers of such provocative attire.

  He explained in a reasonable voice, “When a man sees a woman looking like that, he just naturally gets ideas.”

  Tate looked sharply at Adam. “What kind of ideas?”

  “The wrong kind,” Adam said emphatically.

  Tate smiled impishly and batted her lashes at him. “I thought you were ‘flat not interested’ in li’l ole me.”

  “Cut it out, Tate.”

  “Cut what out?”

  “Stop batting those lashes at me, for one thing.”

  Tate pouted her lips like a child whose candy had been taken away. “You mean it isn’t working?”

  It was working all right. Too damn well. She was just precocious enough to be charming. He was entranced despite his wish not to be. He felt his body begin to harden as she slid her gaze from his eyes, to his mouth, to his chest, and straight on down his body to his crotch. Which was putting on a pretty damn good show for her.

  “You’re asking for it,” he said through clenched teeth.

  She batted her eyelashes and said, “Am I going to get it?”

  “That’s it!”

  The next thing Tate knew she had been hefted over Adam’s shoulder like a sack of wheat, and he was striding toward the house.

  “Let me down!” she cried. “Adam, this is uncomfortable.”

  “Serves you right! You haven’t been the least worried about my comfort for the past three weeks.”

  “Where are you taking me? What are you planning to do with me?”

  “Something I’m going to enjoy very much!”

  Was Adam really going to make love to her? Would he be rough, or gentle? How was she supposed to act? Was there some sort of proper etiquette for the ravishing of virgins? Not that she had ever worried too much about what was proper. But she felt nervous, anxious about the encounter to come. Finally, Adam would have to acknowledge that greater forces were at work between them than either of them could—or should—resist.

  The air inside the adobe house hit her like a cooling zephyr. The dimness left her blind for an instant. Just as she was regaining her sight, they emerged once more into sunlight and she was blinded again. Several more strides and she felt herself being lowered from Adam’s shoulder.

  Tate barely had time to register the fact that they were in the courtyard when Adam shifted her crosswise in his arms. Grinning down into her face, he said “Maybe this will cool you off!” and unceremoniously dumped her into the pool of water that surrounded the fountain.

  Tate came up spluttering. “Why you!” She blinked her eyes furiously, trying to clear the water from them.

  “Why, Miss Tate, are you batting your eyelashes at me again? Guess I’ll have to try another dunking.”

  He took one step toward her, and Tate retreated to the other side of the fountain. “I’ll get you for this, you rogue! You roué!”

  Adam laughed. It had been so long since he had done so, that the sound brought Maria to the kitchen window to see what Señor Adam found so funny. She shook her head and clucked when she saw the new bookkeeper standing dripping in the fountain. She grabbed a bath towel from the stack of laundry she was folding on the kitchen table and hurried outside with it.

  She handed it to Adam and said in Spanish, “This is no way to treat a young woman.”

  Adam’s eyes crinkled at the corners with laughter. “It is when she’s bent on seducing an older man.”

  Maria hissed in a breath and turned to eye the bedraggled creature in the pool. So that was the way the wind was blowing. Well, she was not one to stand in the way of any woman who could make Señor Adam laugh once more.

  “Be sure you get the señorita dried off quickly. Otherwise she might catch a cold.”

  Maria left Adam standing with the towel in his hand and a smug grin on his face.

  Once the housekeeper was gone, Adam turned back to Tate. And quickly lost his smirk. Because if the T-shirt had been revealing before, it was perfectly indecent now. He could easily see Tate’s flesh through the soaked cotton. The cold water had caused her nipples to peak into tight buds.

  His mouth felt dry. His voice was ragged as he said, “Here. Wrap yourself in this.”

  Only he didn’t extend the towel to her. He held it so she would have to step out of the pool and into his arms. When he encircled her with the terry cloth she shivered and snuggled closer.

  “I’m freezing!” she said.

  He, on the other hand, was burning up. How did she do it to him? This time, however, he had only himself to blame. He felt her cold nose burrow into his shoulder as his chin nuzzled her damp hair. The water had released the lilac scent of her shampoo. He took a deep breath and realized he didn’t want to let her go.

  Adam vigorously rubbed the towel up and down Tate’s back, hoping to disp
el the intimacy of the moment.

  “Mmm. That feels good,” she murmured.

  His body betrayed him again, responding with amazing rapidity to the throaty sound of her voice. He edged himself away from her, unwilling to admit his need to her. In fact, he felt the distinct necessity to deny it.

  “I’m not going to make love to you, Tate.”

  She froze in his arms. Her head lifted from his shoulder, and he found himself looking into eyes that warmed him like brandy.

  “Why not, Adam? Is it because I’m not attractive to you?”

  “Lord, no! Of course you’re a beautiful woman, but—” Adam groaned as he realized what he had just admitted.

  “I am?”

  What had those brothers of hers been telling her, Adam wondered, to make her doubt herself like this?

  “Is it because I don’t dress like a lady?”

  His only objection to the clothes she wore was his reaction to her in them. “Contrary to what you might have heard, clothes don’t make the man—or the woman.”

  “Then it must be the fact that I’m a virgin,” she said.

  Adam felt himself flushing. “Tate, you just don’t go around talking about things like that.”

  “Not even with you?”

  “Especially not with me!”

  “Why not?”

  They were back to that again. He turned her so he had an arm around her shoulder, and began ushering her across the courtyard to her bedroom. “I think it’s time you got out of those wet clothes.”

  Tate’s impish smile reappeared. “Would you like to help me?”

  “Not on your life!” He opened the sliding glass door and gave her a nudge inside. “I’ll meet you in the office in fifteen minutes and you can show me whatever bookkeeping wonders you’ve accomplished today.” He turned and marched across the courtyard, fighting the urge to look back.

  Once she was alone in her room, Tate let the towel drop. She stared at herself in the standing oval mirror in the corner and groaned. She looked like something the cat had dragged in! No wonder Adam hadn’t been interested!

  Tate sat down on a wooden chair to pull off her wet boots, then yanked her T-shirt off and struggled with the wet zipper of her jeans. She peeled her silk panties down and quickly began replacing her clothing with an identical wardrobe. All except the wet boots, for which she substituted a pair of beaded Indian moccasins Charlie One Horse had given her for Christmas.

  While Tate dressed, she reviewed the events of the past three weeks since she had arrived at the Lazy S. Teasing Adam had begun as a way of making him admit the sexual attraction—and something more—that existed between them. But she had discovered that kidding some folks was like teasing a loaded polecat. The satisfaction was short-lived.

  Tate hadn’t been enjoying the game much these days, mainly because she had begun to suffer from the sexually charged situations as much as Adam. The problem was, on her side at least, her heart followed where her hormones led.

  She would give anything if Adam was as interested in her as Buck seemed to be. The lean-hipped cowboy had been asking her every day for a week if she would go out with him on Saturday night. Well, maybe she should. Maybe if Adam saw that somebody else found her worth pursuing, he would get the same idea.

  Tate had a cheerful smile on her face by the time she joined Adam in his office. He already had the computer on and was perusing the statistics she had input there.

  “So what do you think?” she asked, perching herself on the arm of the large swivel chair in which he was sitting.

  “It looks good.” Of course his office wasn’t as neat as it had once been. There were half-filled coffee cups amidst the clutter on the desk, and a collection of magazines and a dirty T-shirt decorated the floor. A bridle and several other pieces of tack Tate was fixing were strewn around the room.

  But he couldn’t argue with what she had accomplished. Tate had set up a program to handle data on each head of stock, providing a record that would be invaluable in making buying and selling decisions. “You didn’t tell me you knew so much about computers.”

  Tate grinned and said, “You didn’t ask.” She leaned across him and began earnestly discussing other ideas she had regarding possible uses of the computer in his business.

  He started automatically cleaning the debris from his desk.

  “Don’t worry about those,” Tate said, taking a handful of pebbles from him. “Aren’t they pretty? I found them down by the creek.” She scattered them back onto the desk. “I play with them while I’m thinking, sort of like worry beads, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Adam forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying, rather than the way her breast was pressed up against his arm. By the time she was done talking about the projects she had in mind, she had shifted position four times. He knew because she had managed to brush some part of his anatomy with some part of hers each time she moved.

  Tate was totally oblivious to Adam’s difficulty, because she was having her own problems concentrating on the matters at hand. She was busy planning how she could make Adam sit up and take notice of her by accepting Buck’s invitation to go out tomorrow evening. She just had to make sure that Adam saw her leaving on the date with the auburn-haired cowboy.

  Her thoughts must have conjured Buck, because he suddenly appeared at the door to Adam’s office.

  “Need you to take a look at that irrigation system to see whether you want it repaired or replaced,” Buck said.

  “I’ll be right there,” Adam replied.

  Buck had already turned to leave when Tate realized she had the perfect opportunity to let Adam know she was going out with another man. “Oh, Buck.”

  Buck turned and the hat came off his head in the same motion. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I’ve decided to take you up on your offer to go dancing tomorrow night.”

  Buck’s face split with an engaging grin. “Yes, ma’am! I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock if that’s all right, and we can have some dinner first.”

  The thunderous look on Adam’s face was everything Tate could have wished for. “I’ll see you at seven,” she promised.

  Buck slipped his hat back on his head and said, “You coming, Boss?”

  “In a minute. I’ll catch up to you.”

  Adam’s fists landed on his hips as he turned to confront Tate. “What was that all about?”

  “Buck asked me to go dancing at Knippa on Saturday night, and I thought it might be fun.”

  Adam couldn’t very well forbid her going. As Tate had so pointedly noted, he wasn’t related to her in the least. But he couldn’t help having misgivings, either. There was no telling what Buck Magnesson’s reaction would be if Tate subjected him to the same teasing sensuality that Adam had endured for the past three weeks. If Tate said “Please” Buck was damned likely to say “Thank you” and take what she offered.

  Adam suddenly heard himself forbidding his sister Melanie from going out on a date with a boy he had thought a little wild. Heard himself telling Melanie that he knew better than she what was best for her. And remembered the awful consequences of his high-handedness. Adam didn’t have to like the fact that Tate had decided to go out with Buck Magnesson. But if he didn’t want to repeat the mistakes he had made with his younger sister, he had to put up with it.

  “Have a good time with Buck tomorrow night,” he said. Then he turned and walked out the door.

  Tate frowned at Adam’s back. That wasn’t exactly the reaction she had been hoping for. Where was the jealousy? Where was the demand that she spend her time with him instead? Suddenly Tate wished she had thought things through a little more carefully. Agreeing to date Buck simply to make Adam realize what he was missing wasn’t turning out at all as she had hoped.

  She felt a little guilty that she had even considered using Buck to make Adam jealous. But since her plan had failed—quite miserably—she could at least enjoy the evening with Buck with a clear conscience.
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  Tate had gotten the broken water hose fixed on her ’51 Chevy, and she used the pickup to drive the ninety miles east to San Antonio that afternoon to go shopping. She could have worn jeans to go dancing, but had decided that she owed it to Buck to show up for their date looking her best.

  She found a pretty halter sundress that tied around the neck and had an almost nonexistent back. The bodice fit her like a glove and showed just a hint of décolletage. The bright yellow and white floral print contrasted with her dark hair and picked up the gold in her eyes. The midcalf-length skirt was gathered at the waist and flared at the hem. She whirled once in front of the mirror and saw that the dress was going to reveal a great deal of her legs if Buck was the kind of dancer who liked to twirl his partner a lot.

  Buck’s smile when she opened the door on Saturday night was well worth the effort spent shopping. She couldn’t help feeling a stab of disappointment that Adam wasn’t around to see her off. Apparently he had made plans of his own for the evening.

  Tate found Buck surprisingly entertaining company. The cowboy had older brothers of his own, and Tate was quick to agree, “Nothing is harder to put up with than a good example!” He and Tate shared older brother horror stories that kept them both laughing through dinner.

  The country and western band was in full swing when they crossed the threshold of the Grange Hall in Knippa. The room was fogged with cigarette smoke that battled with the overwhelming odor of sweat and cologne. The sawdusted dance floor was crowded, elbow to elbow, with men in cowboy hats partnered by ladies wearing flounced Western skirts and boots.

  Just as they made their way to the dance floor, a two-step ended and the band began playing a waltz.

  “Shall we?” Buck asked, making a dance frame with his arms.

  “Absolutely!” Tate said, stepping into his embrace.

  Tate got another welcome surprise when she and Buck began to waltz around the room. The lean cowboy was graceful on his feet. He led her into several intricate variations of the dance that left her breathless and feeling like a prima ballerina by the time the song ended.