“I promise,” she croaked, unable to speak with any kind of conviction. It was sapping enough energy out of her just to keep her jaw from hitting the floor as the belt came off and Finn slid his jeans down his hips, letting them fall to the ground.
"I like to do this, sometimes. Times when I've been working really hard, and I feel so hot and parched, it seems I'll never get comfortable again. I come down here, and I slip everything off, and I let the water take it all away. Do I sound crazy?"
“No,” she answered, shaking her head violently just in case she hadn’t gotten her point all the way across. “Nope, you don’t sound crazy at all.”
“Good,” he grinned, “I was hoping you would say that. So, now that we’ve gotten that cleared up, would you care to join me?”
"You mean, take my clothes off?" she asked, immediately feeling like the world’s biggest moron for asking such an obvious question. Of course he meant without her clothes. What on earth else could he have meant?
"Well, now," he chuckled, removing his boxers, his last stitch of clothing, with none of the fanfare Callie felt it deserved, "that part is up to you, I guess. Personally, I don't think I'd enjoy it near as much with all that mess on. But hey, to each their own."
Callie took a deep, shuddering breath. She had been naked with a man before, but never in her life had she been naked like this. She’d never stripped off all her clothes in the middle of broad daylight, outside under the blazing sun, and with a guy who could have been a model in another life looking on. She liked to think she was reasonably self-confident, but anyone in her right mind would be a little rattled by this prospect.
“Honestly, Callie, if you’re not comfortable,” Finn started to say, the first shadow of doubt moving across his face.
“No way, José,” she stopped him. “I want to get in that water.”
Ten minutes later, Callie and Finn were both up to their necks in the water, their toes sinking into soft, cool mud. The water wasn’t cold except for some small pockets, but Callie found herself trembling all the same at the nearness of him. That, and knowing that beneath the water’s surface, there was nothing between his skin and hers.
“Not so bad, right?” Finn asked, splashing her with water in an uncharacteristically playful gesture. “Nothing to be afraid of, right?”
“Hey,” she said, pretending to be offended right before she splashed him back, “who said I was offended?”
“Oh, you want to play, do you?” he grinned, splashing her again, and with more gusto this time. “I warn you, I’m an expert. There’s not a chance you’re going to beat me. You’ve been warned.”
“You don’t think so?” she smiled, paddling closer to him, so close she imagined she could feel the heat coming off of his body despite the water separating them. “You don’t think there’s anything I could do to distract you? Maybe throw you off your game a little?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, his voice instantly low and husky. “There might be something. There just might be.”
“Something like this, maybe?”
Even as she moved closer to him, she could hardly believe what she was doing. Making the first move wasn't her thing. She'd never done anything close to this, and yet nothing about it felt phony. In fact, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, and there was not a drop of hesitation in her when she finally wrapped her arms around his neck. She leaned into him, pressing her breasts against his chest until she could feel the rapid thumping of his heart. Beneath the water, she felt something else, too. It was something that made her go instantly hot all over, and she let out a little gasp.
“Please,” she whispered, not even sure what she was asking for but feeling like she needed to ask all the same. “Please, Finn.”
“Honey,” he groaned, “you don’t have to ask me twice.”
He kissed her, his hands sliding slowly up the length of her body as his tongue parted her lips. Her own hands moved to his chest as of their own volition, trembling as they explored his miraculous muscles, stopping just above his pubic bone. She wanted to go further, was almost desperate to, but she didn’t dare. There would be no going back, and she had only just remembered that Stacy was back at the house, waiting to see Finn before he headed out to baseball.
“Finn,” she gasped, ten minutes and a lifetime of kissing later, “we have to stop.”
“Oh, honey,” he groaned, “that might be my least favorite thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I don’t like it, either,” she laughed, positively giddy with the full sensation of him, “but Stacy’s at the house. It’s Tuesday.”
“All right, I get it,” he relented, getting in one last nibble of her earlobe before he let her go, “but just so you know, I’m calling this an intermission. There’s no way things are done between me and you. And that’s a promise.”
She nodded happily, wading to the creek’s bank and allowing Finn to help her back onto land. As she slipped into the coveralls he’d brought, and followed him to the house, all she could think of was his words. She was sure, positively sure, that Finn would be in her dreams tonight. Tonight, and quite a few nights to come.
Twelve
“But why, Daddy?” Wendy asked for maybe the fourth time in as many minutes, “Why is Grandma coming when it’s not a baseball night?”
“I told you, sweet pea,” he answered indulgently, “I’ve got something special for Callie. I wanted to do something for her for helping us out so much this summer.”
“But she’s not going anywhere, right?” Wendy asked, her little brow creasing with concentration. “She’ll still be here tomorrow?”
“She sure will,” Finn assured her, although he couldn’t meet her eyes in the mirror. He didn’t quite feel like having the conversation with her about how all good things came to an end, especially when he himself wasn’t in the mood to think about Callie leaving. There would be a time for that, Lord knew he understood that much, but it didn’t have to be tonight.
“So then why, Daddy?”
Finn’s eyes finally left his reflection in the mirror, where he was concentrating on shaving his neck without cutting himself. When he looked down at Wendy, she was peering up at him with wide, expectant eyes. It took him a second to figure out what was different about the way she was looking at him now from the ways she had looked at him before. When he got it, he laughed and ruffled her hair.
“Are you making fun of me?” he asked, making a big show of being shocked and offended. “Is my own sweet daughter making fun of me in my own bedroom?”
“No way, Daddy,” she shook her head. He could tell she was going for perfectly innocent and doing a pretty good job of it, except for the fact that she couldn’t quite keep her giggles under control. He ruffled her hair harder, grinning at her when she grabbed at his hand.
“I think you are, little lady. You ain’t fooling me.”
“You like her, Daddy, huh? You like Callie a lot.”
“Well,” he said, turning back to his own reflection and hoping she wasn’t watching him too closely, “I think she’s nice. You think she’s nice too, right? She’s a good person to have around.”
“Yeah,” Wendy said, considering what he said with the absent-minded concentration he so often envied in his child. “Everybody at school thinks so. But you wanna know what I think?”
“I don’t know,” Finn answered truthfully, “do I?”
“I think you like her the most!”
Before he got a chance to say anything, although the good Lord only knew what he was going to answer that wasn’t a lie, she took off running, the sound of her cackles trailing after her. She was an intuitive little thing, his daughter, and much as he loved her, he was glad to have her leave him be. If she kept on asking questions, he might have to start really looking for some answers, and now was not the time.
Tonight, he was taking Callie out, hopefully to do something she would really love. He wasn't sure—and the not knowing was driving him crazy—but h
e had done his best, and that was all he could do. It had always been like this before when he'd gone on a first date. He hadn't done anything like it in a long, long time, but those first-date jitters came back in an old, familiar rush.
“What in the world do you think you’re doing, buddy?” he asked his own reflection.
It was a stupid question, one he already knew the answer to. He’d been thinking about taking her out for a while now, probably ever since they’d danced at the bar. The urge had only gotten stronger every day after that, until he couldn’t keep on ignoring it.
When he was being honest with himself, which was easier some days than others, he had to admit that he was in awe of her, the way she had come into his and Wendy's lives and made herself at home. Looking back on the start of the whole arrangement, he was one hundred percent sure that she'd had no intention of becoming Wendy's nanny when she'd talked about helping him figure out the best way to handle Wendy. Even so, not only had she taken the whole arrangement in stride, but she had made him feel as though she was indispensable. On more than one occasion, he had found himself wondering how in the world he had gotten along before she came. She had integrated not only into Wendy’s life but into the ranch as a whole as well. On top of everything, she worked as hard as he did, and there was little to nothing he respected more in a person.
“Hey, Finn?” Callie called up the stairs, the sound of Wendy and Stacy playing some kind of singing game in the background. “Everything okay? We don’t have to do this, you know. I know how busy you are.”
"No way!" he shouted back. "You're not getting out of this so easily. We've got somewhere to be, and we're going to be there. Just try to keep an open mind, promise?"
“If you say so,” she sang up the stairs, and he heard her laughter at the end of the declaration.
* * *
“Is this okay?” he asked for what felt like the fiftieth or sixtieth time, adding, “If this isn’t your kind of thing, we can go. My feelings won’t be hurt.”
"Stop it, Finn," Callie said gently, looking at him with bright, happy eyes and just the hint of a smile. "We're not going anywhere. This is great. I didn't even know we had this kind of thing in town."
“Not sure how long it’s been open,” he answered, trying to ignore the suspicion that he was rambling. “Might be you haven’t been missing it for long. I just heard about it through the grapevine. The Stacy grapevine.”
“She’s pretty great, isn’t she?” Callie said warmly.
"She is," he agreed. There was a little pang of regret or guilt, maybe a combination of both, but he did his best to swallow it. He knew that Stacy was okay with this because she had told him so. Hell, it had been her idea for him to do something nice for this woman none of them could live without. Those had been her words, not his. He had a feeling that Stacy was going to miss having Callie around when she left, just as much as he was, if not more.
“So, you excited to get your painting skills put to the test?” Callie asked, a mischievous grin lighting her face and making her look more like one of the pranksters from the local high school than one of the teachers.
“Whoa, hold your horses,” Finn said with a laugh, “who said anything about me doing any painting? This whole thing is about you. I'm just here for the wine.”
"Nope," she said smugly, "hate to break it to you, but that's not how this works. I just went and registered us. They had both of our names down on the reservation you made. Which means you're going to be painting right alongside me."
“Oh brother, that's a joke, right? Tell me you're joking right now.”
"Finn Henry, if I can help birth baby horses with you, you can do a paint-by-numbers with me. Just guzzle that glass of wine. By the end of it, you might find you are enjoying yourself. It's the little things, remember?"
“Yes ma’am,” he answered sheepishly, “if you say so. Just try not to think less of me when you see my stick figures, okay? Try not to forget that I’ve got other things going for me.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, rolling her eyes and reaching for his hand so she could drag him to one of the painting stations.
At the start, the going was rough. Not for Callie—at least, he didn't think so. He'd never known she was into painting, when she had been his daughter's teacher and nothing more, and he had been surprised and more than a little impressed to see how talented she was. Having her at this paint-by-numbers shop, at an event given the cutesy name of The Sip ‘n’ Paint, he got to see her in her element. That was all well and good, but the converse was that he was more out of his own element than he could remember being in a very long time.
Little as he wanted it to, it made him think about all of the things he should have been doing—and wasn’t. One of the reasons he’d wanted to hire Callie in the first place was so that he could devote as much time as possible to getting himself ready to get back into the rodeo gig. Instead, he’d been finding more and more excuses to spend time indoors, or at the very least, with Callie and Wendy. Callie made it an easy thing to do. She was forever presenting him with little home improvement tasks around the house, the upside of which was that he got to spend more time with his kid than he’d done since she was born. It was another reason for him to be grateful for everything Callie had done for his family. Another reason he felt this date was long overdue. Sure, he needed to get more on the ball with his own projects, and he would.
For now, though, he found himself oddly excited about trying his hand at the painting thing. He listened carefully to the instructor standing in front of them, gesticulating wildly in all her artistic glory. He made sure to set his painting things up exactly as she commanded, down to copying the angle of the paintbrush she was gliding over her own easel. He glanced at Callie's station, fully expecting to see that she had done the same thing, only better, and frowned in surprise.
“Something the matter?” he asked quietly, borderline petrified at the idea of being first heard and then called out by the teacher of the class. “Not into it?”
“What makes you think that?” she asked, genuinely puzzled. “So far, I think this is great!”
"I don't know," he said, trying to sound casual and making a pretty poor job of it. "You didn’t set up your station."
“Oh, that?” she laughed, laying a hand on his shoulder and leaving a patch of skin that burned to feel her touch when she lifted it again. “That’s not a bad thing, Finn. Let’s just say, I like to dance to the beat of my own drum when it comes to things like painting.”
“I don’t think that’s the saying,” Finn said doubtfully, frowning again when she burst out laughing. This time, her laughter was loud enough to draw the attention of other painters as well as the instructor.
“My, my,” the white-haired artist said with a smile. “I must be leading a very successful class indeed, for her to be so happy. Or does that have more to do with your handsome date, my dear?”
“Sorry,” Finn said, his face growing hot as Callie laughed again. “Very sorry, ma’am. We’ll keep it down.”
“I’m sorry,” Callie whispered when she seemed to be sure she could keep from being too loud. “It’s just that you seem a little nervous. I was trying to make a joke with the drum thing.”
“Right,” he said sheepishly, “I knew that.”
“I’m ready now, though, okay?” she said, nodding her head and taking a dainty sip of her wine. “I’m ready to see what you can do.”
In the end, the evening wound up being much more about seeing what Callie could do. The class was only three-fourths full, and most of their fellow painters were clearly novices. Callie, though, was in a whole other league—a whole other universe, in Finn’s humble opinion. He might have thought that it was just his personal partiality to her, except that the woman teaching the class seemed at least as impressed as he was. In a room full of paint-by-number projects and step-by-step instruction, she had somehow managed to produce art that looked entirely unique, seeming nonchalant throughout the
process, too, as if she was only giving it a fraction of her effort and concentration. At the end of the class, the instructor took her aside and told her that if she was looking for some extra work, the Sip ‘n’ Paint would be happy to have her.
“Thank you,” Callie said, beaming from ear to ear. “That’s such a sweet offer, but I’ve got two jobs as it is, and I’m moving out of state at the end of the summer. I don’t think I could take anything else on if I tried!”
The words hit him like a kick in the gut, hard, but somehow he was able to put on a smile and thank the teacher before they turned to head out the door.
The two of them left the little shop, the little brass bell hanging above the doorway ringing out a friendly goodbye. Finn and Callie walked side by side, each carrying a painting under one arm. Finn wouldn't have cared if his own effort wound up in a dumpster, never to be seen again, but he would happily put Callie's up on his wall. Now that the class was done, he had a sneaking suspicion that it had been the equivalent of taking a professional golfer to a putt-putt course.
“What’s the matter?” Callie asked after they had walked in silence for a couple of minutes, making their way lazily toward his truck.
“What makes you think something’s the matter?” he answered, sidestepping the question.
“Oh, I don’t know, you just seem awfully quiet. Was it really that bad? Doing the painting yourself, I mean? I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to. I shouldn’t have pushed, I guess.”
“Come on now, sugar,” Finn smiled, stopping and turning to face her, “you don’t really think that’s bothering me, do you?”
“I don’t know,” she laughed, although she still looked uneasy. “You should have seen the look on your face when you realized you were going to have to pick up a brush. You were almost green.”
“I was nervous,” he laughed. “I don’t mind admitting it. That’s not what’s on my mind though. I’m just wondering if that was the wrong place to take you.”
The Rancher’s Unexpected Nanny Page 10
