“Would it matter if I said no?”
“Where’s your father?”
Back when she had money, she kept the heirloom jewelry passed down to her from Joel’s mother in a vault at her bank. To get to it, she would have to pass through a series of armored doors with locks and keys and pass codes. An armed guard.
And all those doors and vaults and guards had just closed up tight in Eli’s head.
But he reached out to her, his fingers tracing her cheekbone, and just that touch made his intentions clear.
“Do you forgive me?” she asked, her voice made out of steel and concrete, because honestly, he had to be joking.
“Do you really care?”
Her body certainly didn’t. Not when the calluses of his fingers sent ripples over her skin like water after stones had been tossed in.
Luckily, her self-respect, wearing cashmere and silk and a dozen buttons she could mentally count and stroke, shored her up.
She stepped away and his mouth twisted into a grim line.
The silence wasn’t comfortable, but not pained either, and she was reminded of those days in the penthouse, before Jacob—when it was just her and the housekeeper, trying to avoid each other in every room.
“The Elms, downtown,” he said. “He’s got Alzheimer’s. Dementia. Violent … tendencies they call it.” He shrugged, but there was nothing nonchalant about him. “Took care of him as best I could until it became obvious the man needed help full time or something was going to get burned to the ground.”
“How long has he been there?”
“Seven … eight years, this December. Put him in at Christmas …” He stopped, tipping his hat low as if he couldn’t bear her watching him. “That’s the kind of son I am.”
Oh, his heart was right there on his sleeve and she’d never expected to see it. Never expected him to show so much of himself. The desire to kiss away the worst of his guilt, the load he carried like a backpack of dead weight, was hard to resist.
“Sometimes you don’t have a choice in those things.”
His sigh was heavy and deep, pulled up from the bottom of his guts, full of disagreement.
“I was sixteen when I left my mom,” she said, surprised to be talking about her own ancient history. “I left her to her boyfriends who didn’t really care about her. The painkillers that cared even less. I tried for years … but in the end I had to save myself. I just stayed at boarding school, didn’t come home on holidays, told her I was too busy with classes.”
“I never met your mom. All those years you came down.”
“She hated it here. Too boring for a woman who had to surround herself with people just so she could feel something. And with Celeste—”
“Must have been hard.”
She shrugged, because he seemed to know how hard it had been. He seemed to see right into the damaged places, because those same places were damaged in him.
“I actually liked the holidays at school. It was just me and some of the housekeepers. A couple of teachers. Mr. Jennings the gardener. We played a lot of poker. I got to read all day long if I wanted, or help Mr. Jennings in the greenhouse.”
She smiled. The air smelled like sun-baked grass and sweat and horses, and it was better than a glass of wine at taking care of those knots in the back of her neck. The worries that grew on them.
Or maybe it was the man next to her who did that.
She hoped not, she really did, for her own sake.
“Once I pretended to be sick, just so I could spend the day reading,” he offered.
“Once?” Pretending to be sick had been her bread and butter for a lot of years.
“The Hobbit,” he said. “Uncle John gave it to me for my eleventh birthday and two days later, I had a hundred pages to go and just couldn’t wait.”
“Your Uncle John, I don’t remember him.”
“He steers clear of Bakers.”
“Because of the land?”
Eli nodded. “John’s polished that grudge to a high shine. Doesn’t like the fact that I’ve stopped caring about getting the land back.”
“Where is he now?”
“Full of questions tonight, aren’t you?”
“Sorry. I … I didn’t mean to pry.”
But she did, and he knew that, and she intended to pry until he stopped letting her in, which seemed like it might happen this very moment.
It was time to go home; she’d tried to call off her guard dog and had managed to keep her clothes on. This … conversation was only going to make a complicated situation worse. She didn’t need to like him. She already wanted him plenty.
“Jacob,” she called, “it’s time—”
“He’s in Galveston until after Christmas,” he said, winding and unwinding that towel he’d been carrying around the fence post. “When I was a kid, John was an oil rigger. He came to visit once when I was about ten. Dad had been on a three-day bender and I had done what I could with the animals and his work and school, but … well, Uncle John saw what was happening and didn’t leave. Bought a house over in Springfield and tried to pick up the slack as much as he could.”
“Thank God for him.”
Eli nodded. “I do most days.”
She waited a few more seconds just because she wanted to, like lingering in a bath before the water got too cold, and then she pushed herself away from the fence. “We better get—”
His hand covered hers and she gasped at the contact, the sudden heat, the roughness. All the receptors in her body were thrown wide open and she wanted to absorb him, pull him in through her skin, her nerves.
“Come back. Tonight.” If his touch was desperate, his face was unreadable, a granite mask, and she knew if he’d shown the least bit of weakness, desire, lust, anything, for her, she would have said yes.
But right now, this need he had for her had little to do with her.
“Have you forgiven me?” He was silent, his grip on her hand hard enough to hurt, and then he let go. All the answer she needed. “I told you I wouldn’t come back unless you did.”
“How do you know I haven’t?”
She ached to touch him, to cup that jaw in her hands, to press her lips to his, to sip the bitterness and grief from him. “Because I haven’t forgiven myself.”
“Hey, Eli!” Jacob came running up, the dog at his heels, and she jumped backwards about eight hundred feet, not that her son noticed. Nope, he only had eyes for the cowboy. Must run in the family. “Can I come back, help you feed the horses again at night? After school?”
“I … ah …” Eli looked over at her and she reached out for Jacob, putting her hands on his head. She needed distance from Eli, not friendly horse-feeding visits. It had been stupid to stay here, asking questions.
“I don’t know, Jacob, Eli’s a busy—”
“It’s fine with me.” Eli scratched his dog behind the ear and the dog’s fool face split in a wide, happy doggy smile, his tongue hanging down to the tall grass.
Jacob cheered, the dog barked, and she mentally went back to counting those buttons on her self-control.
Back at the ranch, the moon was coming up over the house, the yellow lights leaking out through the new windows installed today. Surprisingly, Amy’s truck was still there and when Victoria got out of her car, the woman emerged from the shadows.
“Amy? What are you still doing here?”
“Is he coming back?” she asked.
“Eli?” Victoria watched as Jacob trotted up the stairs, yelling for Celeste so that he could tell her every detail of feeding those horses.
“Did you tell Eli to stay away?” Amy demanded, pulling Victoria from her thoughts about Celeste’s eerily good grandmother ways.
“I tried.”
“Damn it, Victoria, why’d you do that?”
“What? He’s causing problems, isn’t he? Starting fights with your employees?”
“Thomas started it, and he’d pick a fight with a scarecrow if he thought it was looking at him f
unny.”
Victoria tossed her hands in the air. “Well, everyone was acting like he’s been sitting there like a giant pain in the butt.”
“Oh, he is. Yesterday he wouldn’t move his truck to let the guys delivering the two hot tubs closer to the house. We had to get everyone on the crew to carry the things right past him, while he sat there, eating a sandwich.”
“So? It sounds like I tried to do everyone a favor.”
Amy stared at her, her jaw looking as if she were chewing rocks. “Is he coming back?”
Too late, too wrapped up in her own head, Victoria realized what this was about: a mom being close to her son.
Amy’d had Eli, hating her, causing her nothing but grief, sitting a hundred yards away from her every morning. The closest she’d been to him in decades.
And Victoria had told him to stay away.
“If you want to see him, go see him, Amy.”
“You know it’s not that easy.”
“Yeah, and whose fault is that?” Victoria didn’t think Amy was going to walk out on her, she had enough faith in Amy’s professionalism, but she totally understood why Eli would think the worst. It wasn’t just that his mother had walked out on him, it was that she’d worked here for a week without going to see him. Three miles away and she couldn’t bridge the distance she’d created so many years ago.
“Is he coming back?”
“Yes. He said he’ll be here until you’re gone.”
Amy’s tense face relaxed into a relieved smile. “Good. That’s … good.”
Amy walked away, back to her truck.
What the hell is wrong with all of us? Victoria wondered.
chapter
18
Celeste was usually very good with a blank slate. The fashion industry was all about blank slates. But the barn wasn’t blank. It was full of cats and hay, saddles and bridles, equipment and generations of hardware. It was the opposite of blank. And she just couldn’t see past the reality to the possibility.
So, she called in some help.
“Hey, Celeste,” Gavin said, walking down the wide center aisle of the barn. Dust motes glittered around him, and looking directly at him was like looking into the sun. “Thomas said you were looking for me.”
He tucked his thumbs inside his tool belt and leaned against a stall door. The last two weeks she’d been eating lunch with him, and his glamour was undiminished by familiarity. None of his appeal had worn away. And now she knew that beneath his surfer hair he had an artist’s clever brain and a saint’s generous heart. A combination that drew her in like gravity.
“We need more room,” she said.
Gavin held up his hands, his laugh a deep ripple through the air. “I’ve been in the middle of this fight with you and Victoria too often.”
“But you know I’m right.” She smiled at him over her shoulder and the air popped and smoked between them. Flirting was dangerous, since it was obvious he was as attracted to her as she was to him. Or at least as attracted to the idea of her, that poster of her. But it was hard to resist the flirtation sometimes. The interest of a man like Gavin put the panicky gerbils in her heart to sleep. And she no longer cared about looking younger, because she felt younger.
“You’re right, Celeste. You ladies need more room.”
“And this barn is just sitting here. How much square footage do you think we have?”
He pulled his tape measure from his tool belt. “Hold this.” He handed her the metal tab and walked away from her, the metal ribbon uncoiling between them.
She followed him around the barn, holding the tab when he asked her to, remembering the numbers he called out.
“You’re a good assistant,” he said, as the tape measure snapped and slithered back into the case in his hand. “If the spa business gets old, you can come work for me.”
“You can’t afford me.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, chastising her. He’d gotten very comfortable calling her on her snobbery. “I might be rich.”
“Fine. You can afford ten of me. How big is this barn?”
“I’d say you could get ten more rooms, between the main floor and the hayloft. Or ten more rooms and a yoga studio.”
“What about the arena?”
He looked at her in a way she was utterly unfamiliar with. Men were captivated by her surface. They didn’t try to figure her out; they didn’t guess at her inner workings. Didn’t care if she had any. But Gavin did. Gavin looked at her as if she were his favorite puzzle, and it made her feel like she had a bag over her head.
It was liberating.
“What are you thinking, Celeste?”
“I’m thinking about weddings.”
His eyes went wide, and he spun on his heel to look into the dark shadows of the riding arena at the end of the hallway. “A ballroom.”
“Yep.”
“Absolutely. You could do it. In fact …” He walked down the hallway and she followed, drunk on his enthusiasm.
He pointed up. “Skylights.” He spun. “Open the doorway up. Lay down some hardwood. A few windows. Maybe take out the walls between the arena and the barn and you could get a hundred people in here, easy.”
It was as if he were singing her love songs.
“How much will it cost me?”
He took his time, this methodical man. He walked around, pushed on joists, paced the barn again, and she walked back out into the aisle, where it was lighter. “A hundred grand.”
She blew out a long breath. That was better than she’d expected. Another call to her son would be forthcoming.
“You think Victoria will go for it?” he asked.
“No.” She laughed. “Absolutely not.”
“Why do I get the feeling that’s not going to stop you?”
“You think it should? You said it yourself—I’m right.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against a closed stall door. “I think you and Victoria are complicated enough without you going behind her back.”
Celeste fought the urge to fidget. To bite her lip, or put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. She just stared at him and wished he weren’t right.
“What’s the story between the two of you?” he asked.
Immediately she turned away. They’d discussed a lot of things over their lunches. Politics. Art. The many blessings of a Starbucks drive-thru, but they hadn’t talked about anything personal. At least she hadn’t. But it was getting harder and harder to stop herself. To keep what was private private.
“She’s not your daughter. And you don’t treat her like a friend.”
Celeste whirled back around, a strand of hair getting caught in her lip gloss. “She is my ex-husband’s bastard daughter, born a year after my son.”
“Oh … Celeste. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be. Honestly.” She waved her hand as if she could wipe up the mess that was the Baker family. “She had the worse end of the deal.”
“What do you mean?”
Oh Lord. She felt the familiar chill of her anger, of her self-directed guilt and loathing. She pulled the hair away from her icy smile. “Thank you for your help, Gavin.”
He stared at her and she stared right back. And right about the time most men would walk away, Gavin tilted his head back and laughed up at the ceiling. Birds darted from their nests, startled by the sound of his howling.
She frowned at him, and still he laughed.
“Does that usually work?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Does that usually scare away all the men that want to get to know you?” He stepped closer to her, his work boots silent on the dirt and straw.
“It scared you, remember?”
He lifted a big, callused finger and she wanted that finger in her body, against her skin. “But I’ve seen you, Celeste.” He was close now, very close. She could see the faint glimmer of his blond beard coming in, the handsome wrinkles that crinkled in the
corner of his blue eyes. The smell of him, masculine and earthy with just a hint of the apple he ate every morning, curled and coiled around her and she had to open her mouth to breathe just so she could taste him.
His eyes touched every part of her face and his smile was sweet, tender, even, as if he were staring at something with sentimental value. As if he were staring at something that mattered.
“You can talk to me, Celeste. And I know you’re going to hate this, but I’ll say it anyway. I think you could use someone to talk to. I think you could use a friend.”
“Is that what you are?” She wanted to sound sarcastic, but instead she sounded plaintive. Yearning almost.
“Yes.” He was definitive. Rock-solid. “So, tell me, Celeste. Tell me about you and Victoria.”
And just like that, as if she’d been standing on the edge of a cliff she wasn’t even aware of, she opened her mouth and the whole sordid tale came out. Her anger with her husband; the way she’d taken it out on Victoria, punishing her for something that had never been her fault.
“Guilt won’t change anything,” Gavin said. “I used to feel so bad about my divorce, like if I had just tried harder Thomas would have a real family—”
“You can’t save a marriage on your own, Gavin,” she whispered.
“Yeah, it took me a long time to learn that.” His smile was bittersweet. “But you and Victoria seem like you’re on good terms now.”
Her eyes burned with tears and the ache of so much sensation, so much feeling, made her gasp. “I’m so proud of her, Gavin. I’m so proud and I can’t even tell her. What …?”
She stopped herself before asking, What’s wrong with me? Certainly she wasn’t so much of a fool that she’d lay herself naked like that.
“Oh, babe,” he sighed, and before she could stop him or prepare herself, he pulled her into his arms. Against his chest.
The heat and strength of him was intense and she gasped, her skin, every nerve ending, thrown open to soak him in. This was dangerous, reckless.
And it certainly wasn’t just friendship.
She pulled away, wiping her eyes, frantically searching for some kind of joke, something sarcastic to remind her of the distance she liked around herself.
Can't Hurry Love Page 20
