by Stacy Gail
“Hello?”
“Pull your curtains right the hell now,” came Ry’s voice, and the clear irritation in it made her spine snap up straight. “For fuck’s sake, woman, anyone could come along and see you rolling your hips all over the damn place with your windows open like that.”
“What? You...oh, goddamn it.” In a blink she tossed everything she held aside and shot out the front door in her bare feet onto the concrete walk. When she spotted Ry climbing out of his truck parked beside her car, her head nearly exploded. “What the hell are you doing sitting in my driveway?”
“Getting a fucking eyeful of an idiot who wouldn’t last five minutes in a big city. You wanna shake your ass, that’s fine by me. I love it. But you damn well better close your curtains so you can pull that sexy shit in private.”
“I was doing it in private, you epic dick,” she bellowed, ready to cork him while embarrassment flooded through her. Seriously, why? Why, of all people, was it Ry Brody who always wound up being her personal audience to life’s most embarrassing moments? “Don’t you have anything better to do than be a pervy Peeping Tom?”
“What the fuck.” For the first time since she’d known him, Ry’s smile was nowhere to be found. “I was doing the gentlemanly thing by making sure you got home safely after our date, only to find that you don’t know the meaning of safe. Close. Your damn. Curtains.”
“That wasn’t a date, that was a business meeting. A meeting, by the way, that was a waste of time for both of us, because I’ve just made up my mind about your proposal,” she rolled on, and the decision was so rock-solid it was almost possible to overlook the tiny hint of disappointment swirling around its edges. “Thanks but no thanks. This right here convinces me that you’re not worth the headache your Pure Angus project would bring to my life. Go away.”
“Oh no, you don’t. You wanted twenty-four hours to make your decision, so that’s exactly what you’re going to get. You will be taking this project on, whether you know it or not, so there’s no point in you saying otherwise.”
“No, I won’t.” She didn’t even realize she was going to stomp her foot in her fury until she did it, and something crunched underneath it.
Crunched...and wriggled.
Her muffled scream coincided with her launching straight up and into Ry’s surprised arms, her own arms wrapping around his neck in a stranglehold.
“What the...?”
“Bug!” It was the best she could do.
“A scorpion? Did you get stung?” In an instant he had her inside, carrying her at a near-run to set her on the huge kitchen island topped with a slab of dark gray granite. “Celia, are you stung?”
“It crunched.” God, God, why didn’t he understand the horror?
“Which foot? The right?” Untangling himself from her strangler’s grip, he picked up her foot by the ankle, bent to examine it...and began to smile. “Looks like a small, garden variety beetle.”
“It’s still there?” Her screech had now reached supersonic levels. “Get it off, get it off, get it off!”
When he burst out laughing, she vowed that one day she would kill him. Slowly.
“Okay, I’m getting it off, though this is your own damn fault.” Still chuckling, he turned and ripped a wad of paper towels off the roll suspended under the weathered-finish cabinets. “This is South Texas, woman. You know better than to run all over creation without shoes.”
“Don’t talk. Bug. Get it off.”
“Yeah, I heard you. Along with the rest of the county.” Grinning, he wet the paper towels and with quick efficiency swept the bottom of her foot clean. “There we go, all better. Wanna see it?”
“Ugh, no! God, just...no, no, no, no, no. Ugh.”
“I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark and guess you don’t like bugs.”
Valiantly she fought off a shudder of revulsion and tried to remember how to communicate without screaming. “The first time I saw a tomato hornworm I almost blacked out. Nearly ended my love of gardening then and there.”
“You still look like you might faint.” Tossing the towels into the nearby trash, he leaned his hands against the counter on either side of her and dipped his head until his face was level with hers. “Want me to carry you to bed, darlin’?”
Her eyes met his, and for a full second her heart stopped beating. The question hung between them, full of such wild possibilities it made her breathless, and a startling flash fire of hungry awareness scorched her skin until she thought she might be glowing with it. Then the memory of being spanked for being a naughty child reared its ugly head, and that heat morphed into prickling humiliation.
Deliberately she shifted her gaze to the spiky tribal tattoo on his right forearm—mainly because no one with a double-X chromosome could breathe when looking into those devastating green eyes—and tried to edge away from him. “No, I’m fine. Except I’m not fine,” she couldn’t help but add, at last giving in to the shudder. “I think I need some antiseptic. And a foot bath. And maybe surgery, because I can still feel it wriggling and crunching. Ugh.”
Another burst of laughter erupted from him, and to her shock he rested his forehead on her shoulder. “God, you’re killing me with the cute.”
He was so close, so warm, so freaking touchable... “Laugh all you want, but I’m not joking. I think I’m traumatized.”
“What you need is a distraction. I got just the thing.” Still chuckling under his breath, he lifted his head and caught her mouth with his.
Whoa.
Time froze.
Everything froze, from the thoughts in her head to the hitherto calm flow of blood in her veins.
Kissing.
He’s...kissing.
Ry is kissing...
Me.
Piece by shocking piece, the reality of the situation filtered into her stunned brain. But by the time she got a firm mental grasp of what was going on, she discovered her body had gone merrily on ahead without her.
While Ry was kissing her, she’d been busy kissing him back.
His lips were warm and bold, and a shockingly good fit against hers. He’d been sneaky, catching her by surprise like that, so there had been no chance to shut her mouth before he’d closed in on her. Not that she would have. She honestly didn’t know how she would have responded if he’d given her even a hint of warning, because in her mind there had been zero chance of this happening.
But here they were.
Kissing.
Somewhere along the way her eyes had closed, allowing her to concentrate on pure sensation. Automatically she tilted her head to change the angle of the kiss, and the action fused their lips so hotly she couldn’t imagine how they’d ever manage to separate. A growl of surprised pleasure at the deepening of the kiss rumbled from his mouth to hers, making her stomach clench with such sweet tension it caused wet heat to bloom between her legs. That slick wetness intensified as his tongue came to dance invitingly over hers, delving so deeply it stole her ability to breathe.
A match thrown into a vat of gasoline couldn’t have lit her up better.
She met the invasion of that amazing tongue of his head-on, delighting so completely in the feel and taste of him that it made her head spin. To anchor herself, she brought her hands up to his powerful shoulders, marveling at how he could feel both chiseled from stone and feverishly hot all at the same time. He was like a living statue, and she was an instant and ardent fan of the masterpiece that he was.
The moment she touched him, it was as though some internal tether that held him back snapped. His hands moved from the edge of the island to slide over her back, as if he needed to memorize the feel of her. That action pulled her closer, deepening the kiss even more, and she whimpered at the growing roughness of it. Logic began slipping away as easily as water through fingers, yet she couldn’t find a way to make herself care about that when
his hands were on her and his tongue was promising to do delightfully nasty things to her.
How was it possible she’d made it this far in life without knowing that wanting someone so much could almost hurt?
The juncture of her thighs tingled with the hot rush of arousal, while her pelvic muscles tightened until she ached in places she didn’t know she could ache. They were fast approaching the point of no return, something that set off faint alarm bells, though she couldn’t remember why. Then his hands slid down to brazenly cup her butt, his hips nudging between her knees while he pulled her up against him. The contact of his chest against her breasts jolted through her like electricity, and for a moment the red haze around her brain cleared.
What was she thinking?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Such was the extent of his power over her, when all he’d really done was kiss her.
Wow.
She lowered her chin to break the kiss, and struggled to ignore how her lips and the place between her legs throbbed. She had to ignore it, because reality was crashing through her like a wrecking ball, and it wasn’t pretty.
She’d just kissed the crap out of the man who’d slapped her hands, spanked her in public and called her a naughty child. Worse, she’d let him start the whole thing like she was grateful for his damn attention.
Sure, she was lonely. Hell, who wouldn’t be, after becoming invisible to every man around? But this was way too self-destructive, no matter how lonely she was.
“So.” The sound of Ry’s voice, so close to her ear, made her gaze snap to his, only to find he was already looking down at her like he couldn’t get enough of the sight of her. “That’s what it’s like.”
She blinked, her turmoil sinking into confusion. “What? Kissing? Don’t tell me you’ve never kissed anyone. The Brody men are legends in that regard.”
“I’ve never kissed you.” He threaded his fingers through her hair while his gaze held hers with a smoldering intensity that made her burn in shocking ways. “I had no idea a kiss could stop a heart and start it up all at the same time. Wonder what I’ll learn from our second kiss.”
“No. Huh-uh, nope, not happening.” Scrunching up her legs to avoid coming into contact with him—a little late for that, but whatever—she scooted along the island to a point where she could hop off a few feet away from him. “No more kissing, no more touching, no more ass-grabbing. Time for you to leave.” And time for her to remember she was getting the hell out of Bitterthorn, so the last thing she needed now was a complication the size of Ryland Brody.
“I was wondering if you’d picked up on that.” As if he had all the time in the world, he strolled along in her wake as she sped her way to the front door. “This time it was my turn to grab your ass. Both hands, too.”
Good grief, he sounded downright proud. “Congratulations.”
“You should know I’m big on being fair. If you feel like I one-upped you on that score, feel free to go ahead and give my ass a squeeze. I won’t mind this time around.”
Oh, man. “Again with the nope. I’m like a kid who had her fingers burned on a stove. I’m not going anywhere near that thing again.”
“You sure know how to disappoint a guy. Shoes,” he added with surprising sternness when she opened the door wide. “You can’t wander around without any damn shoes on, Cel.”
“I’m not going outside, you are. Good night and goodbye.”
“This is how you thank the man who saved you from the thing that went crunch under your foot?” He shook his head and leaned back against the door jamb, lingering half-in and half-out of her house. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget how you literally jumped into my arms. It’s like you knew without even thinking about it that I was the safest place in the world that you could ever be.”
“I didn’t jump into your arms. I just...jumped.” She hadn’t really thought about it until that moment, and the lurking possibility that he was right bothered her no end. “Would you mind moving so I could shut the door in your face?”
“I’m coming over around nine tomorrow morning to pick you up so you can spend the day at Green Rock,” he announced, ignoring her. It was as if he became selectively deaf whenever she said something he didn’t want to hear. “Bring your music. I like it.”
“My music?” Distracted, she glanced back at the MP3 player. It had changed to Jace Everett’s “Bad Things” when she’d been up on the island, a highly appropriate song, considering she’d wanted to do more than a few bad things to Ry...
She gave herself a mental shake. “Look, I’ve already made my decision. There’s no need for me to spend any time at your ranch to get a feel for it. I’m declining your offer.”
“You wanted twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours is what you’re going to get.” Before she could react, he caught her by the nape and tugged her close for a quick, breath-stealing kiss. “Nine o’clock, darlin’. Lock up behind me, and don’t forget to close your curtains.”
Then he was gone, leaving her with the realization that there were some people in the world who honestly didn’t know how to take no for an answer.
Chapter Four
By half past nine, Ry was behind the wheel of his truck. Celia was in the passenger seat beside him, her kickass tunes flowing through the truck’s speakers—Mumford and Sons’ “Broken Crown” unless he missed his guess. It hadn’t been easy getting her there, but that was fine by him. Easy would have been boring.
Celia Villarreal was a helluva lot of things, but boring wasn’t one of them.
“The more I think about it, the more I think I’ve made a mistake.”
He glanced at her before returning his attention from Green Rock’s main entrance—an ornate metal arch topping twin pillars faced in slabs of the vivid green malachite that had been mined from the property in the late 1800s. “About?”
“Coming with you.” He felt more than saw her dark gaze brush over him. “Would you really have carried me out of my house if I’d insisted on staying?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that would be kidnapping, so...no. I don’t think you would have actually followed through with the threat.”
“Really.” He slid her another glance as he slowed to make the turn. It was damn difficult not to look at her. Celia was as bright as sunshine in a short yellow dress and well-worn brown cowgirl boots that matched the wide braided brown leather belt at her waist. The noisy bracelets on her wrists made him grin, as did the curls in her hair. She might not have been dressed when he’d shown up, but she’d done her hair and had her makeup and jewelry on, as if she’d already accepted that she was going with him. “It’s nice that you’ve got such a high opinion of me that you think I wouldn’t break a law or two to get what I want. It’s not accurate, but it’s nice.”
There was a beat of silence. “You’re saying you would have carried me out of there if I’d refused to go with you?”
“I’m saying I’m glad it didn’t come to that. And I appreciate that it didn’t take you long to get dressed, either.” He took the time to give her a side-eye. “Maybe next time, you’ll be ready when I say I’m going to pick you up.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time. There was barely a this time, but for some reason I decided to answer the door. I’m already regretting it.”
“No, you’re not. And you’re not going to,” he added, grinning at her feistiness. “I’ve got plans for you today.”
Her expression was hilarious. Leery, with the faintest dash of alarm. “What kind of plans?”
“Now that would be telling.” There was a bounce as they went from smooth blacktop to dirt road, a long brown swath cutting through rolling green land that eventually led to the main house. He didn’t live there; none of his brothers did since that house had been their parents’ personal warzone. But the main house was th
e best place to start her tour.
He had definite ideas on where he wanted the tour to end.
“In a few weeks we’re hosting a Texas-sized barbecue for Pure Angus’s current clientele, as well as a few prospective ones we’re actively trying to sign.” As they drove past a stand of century-old live oaks that created an arboreal tunnel, he pointed at a construction area alive with activity. “We decided to build a permanent bandstand out where we usually have the tables set up. Green Rock Ranch hosts three to four blowout parties on an annual basis, and since we do it up right with live music and lots of dancing, we figured it was finally time to build someplace that was wired up and elevated for whatever musical talent we bring in.”
She leaned forward, taking it in with an interest that made him smile. “I’ve heard about the parties you and your brothers throw out here. Everyone says they’re over-the-top awesome, like something out of a movie.”
“You’d know that for a fact if you’d ever deigned to show up. You’ve been invited.”
She sat back in her seat and looked away. “Hm.”
“What does hm mean? You were invited to the hayride and petting zoo fundraiser we did for Growing Garden charity in October, as well as our annual Christmas Eve bash. I know you were, because I’m the one who sent you the invitations.”
That brought her attention snapping back to him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because one, why would you send an invitation to a woman you publicly humiliated? And two, why would you think I would accept an invitation from a man who publicly humiliated me?”
“One, I spanked the hands of a bratty little girl who was misbehaving in public in a dumbass and dangerous way. I can only pray that if I ever have a daughter—who no doubt will be hell on wheels just like her parents—she runs into a man who cares enough about her safety to make sure she never acts in a dumbass and dangerous way again.”
