14
T he Barbie movie was made a hell of a lot better by Dalton’s grumbling and Lina putting him in his place when their kid clapped his hands, bouncing on their knees in time with the songs. The kid clearly loved it. His dad… not so much.
He glanced down at Rose’s head. About half an hour ago, her eyes had drooped closed, and she’d snuggled up next to him as if she’d always belonged tucked into his side and drifted off to sleep. He’d ignored the raised eyebrows from Tate and the low teasing from Kentucky. He’d pay them back eventually. Now, he had a bigger problem: figuring out if he should wake her or if he could get his seatbelt around them both for landing. She shifted against him, her fingers on one hand bunching into his shirt, the other on his thigh, dangerously close to finding out how attracted he was to her.
You’re killing me, baby girl.
“Strap her in,” Kacey advised from his position on the couch across the way from them. His brother was clearly getting way too good at reading his mind. “It’s safer, and we’ve got those cross winds as we land.”
He nodded and stroked his hand down her back. It sucked when his brother was right. Thankfully, he wasn’t the kind to gloat about it… much. “Baby girl. It’s time to wake up. We’re gonna be landing in a few minutes.”
“Mm.”
Over their heads, the seatbelt notification chimed, and the light came on. “Hey,” he whispered softly, “it’s time to wake up.”
“Wha—I’m up.” She jerked away from him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“You didn’t get much last night.” She didn’t know what that blush did to him. He was supposed to only be helping her out of a sticky situation. He wasn’t supposed to be bewitched by whatever spell the woman was casting over him. She was drawing him in with every passing moment he spent with her, and she didn’t even know it. “Let me help you with your belt.”
“I got it.” She moved back into her own seat, and he bit down on the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from demanding that she return to his side immediately.
Get a fucking grip, man.
But despite the stern talking to he was giving himself in his head, he didn’t want to get a grip. He wanted to explore and find out if she was feeling what he was—attraction like he’d never felt before.
Once the plane touched down, they waited until almost everyone was up and moving ahead of them. He knew there wasn’t a hope in hell Dalton would allow Lina and their son off the plane if there was so much as a sniff of danger, never mind if it was actually present. When the boss and his family were through the doors, he got to his feet and offered his hand to Rose. “Come see the ranch you wanted to spend some time on.”
He was grateful to see excitement was more evident than apprehension on her face. He never wanted her to be scared of anything again. He led her to the door and stepped out in front of her, keeping his body between hers and the outside until he’d scanned the airstrip, much as Dalton had done a couple of moments before. He caught her fingers in his. “Ready?”
“Yes.” She paused outside the plane, and he could hear the surprise in her voice. “Am I the only one who finds it weird that there are trucks just sitting alongside the plane, waiting with nobody to watch them?”
“City girl,” a woman’s voice that she didn’t recognize teased. “I’m Willow, Cormack’s wife, and you are Rose.”
All of them adored Willow. She might be the youngest of the wives, but she had a good head on her shoulders. Trust the military brat to bring her into the fold.
“I’m not sure who Cormack is.”
“That one.” Willow pointed to her husband. “They all called him Jeep, didn’t they?”
Rose nodded. “Yes, I thought it was a weird name. I should have figured out it was a nickname.”
“My man is good with his hands…”
“Eww, Willow.” Kacey carried a suitcase under each arm and one in each hand toward the trucks. “It’s bad enough that you and the old bastard you hooked up with desecrate my kitchen. I don’t need to know what the hell he does to you with his hands.”
“Jerk.” Willow smacked him. “Just you wait and see. I’ll salt every single one of your pies for that wisecrack.” She pouted, then glanced over her shoulder with a smile as Jeep hauled her against his chest. “Hey, love.”
“Are you pissing off my woman, Kace?” Jeep growled. “Because I’d have to punch you in the balls if you are. I might even ban her from being in your kitchen, too.”
“If she salts my pies, I’ll ban her myself.”
Caleb shook his head at their grumbling and teasing. These people were the closest thing he had to family. They were wild, crazy, and they drove each other batshit most of the time. But there wasn’t a single one in the bunch he wouldn’t have on his six in a firefight. If one of them scared Rose off, he would make their lives miserable. As the person who supervised the training schedules, he could make payback freaking hurt.
He led her to his truck and helped her into the seat. Feeling under the wheel arch, he found the magnetic box that housed his keys and climbed into the driver’s seat. Before he put on his own belt, he reached across her, pausing to smile when she jerked from watching the guys hustling to get gear locked down to look at him. “Safety first.”
“I can do it.”
“I know.” He clipped it into the lock. “I like knowing you’re safe.”
“Why?”
“Damned if I know.” He fired the engine. “I just do.”
“Okay.” She was like an excited kid, her eyes wide as she stared at cows and horses in the pastures they drove past. “The boss’s house.” He nodded to where Lina and Dalton’s dog Buddha wooed his head off as they climbed out of their truck.
“Is that a wolf?”
He chuckled. “Nah, it’s an Alaskan Malamute.” He thought it was almost the same damn thing, but he refrained from mentioning it. No matter how many times that dog went through training, he still was a jackass with selective hearing. “Don’t leave anything you don’t want to chase after lying around,” he warned as they pulled to a stop at the team house behind Dalton’s. “Buddha will take off with it, and it might be six months before you find it again if you don’t catch him in time.”
“Noted.”
He tried to see the ranch from her point of view. Their team house looked almost like an apartment block, which wouldn’t be out of place in a European country. Except it had a massive porch, which was awesome for watching the sun rising or setting, depending on which side of the house you were on. “All us unmarried guys have a condo here. We’re separated by team. This is Bravo House. Alpha is that one.” He pointed it out to her. “That’s where the mess—uh—canteen is, too. There’s food on there at all times of the day. But we can ask Kace if there is something you fancy.”
“You don’t have a kitchen in your condo?”
“I do. But unless it’s grilled cheese or canned soup, it’s not gonna be edible. My brother got all the cooking genes in our family.”
“It’s weird to see an apartment building on a ranch.”
“Yup. But it works for us.”
“I mean, I know it’s a ranch as I can see all the animals…” She trailed off, and he glanced in the direction she was looking. A massive black horse gave a loud whinny and galloped up the field to the railing closest to Alpha house with what looked like a tiny, small baby horse, but he knew it wasn’t, hot on its heels.
“Is that a mama and her foal?”
He hated to burst her bubble, but he couldn’t resist the snort. “That’s Logan’s stallion, Baby Girl, and the smaller one is Bison. He’s a mini horse and belongs to Logan’s wife.”
It warmed something deep inside him to see her standing, relaxed, soaking in the views. They didn’t need to rush inside. He settled against the porch railing, happy to allow her as long as she wanted. She leaned against him and sighed. “What are you thinking?”
“I wish I had my camera,” she said wistfully. “The pictures I could take here. It wouldn’t even matter if nobody ever got to see them. They would speak to my soul, and knowing I had captured them would be enough.”
“We’ll make that happen.” He would make it happen. In fact, he’d make it a priority to see that it happened fast. “Once your camera is cleared, I’ll have it shipped here, or I’ll go buy you one to replace it.”
“It can’t be replaced. It was from my grandmother. Her last gift to me. It’s the one thing I have never left behind.”
Now he knew for sure why the asshole had tagged it. He knew she’d never leave it behind. “We’ll figure it out, I promise.”
“I’d love that, thank you.”
After a few more minutes, he could see the guys’ trucks coming up the ranch road. “Shall we go in? We can come back out later.”
“I’d like that.” She followed him into the house and up the stairs. He came to a stop in front of his place. After scanning his palm, he punched in the code to unlock it. “I’ll ask Trev, our tech guy, about getting your hand scanned,” he said. He didn’t want her trapped in the house if—when he had to do stuff—she wouldn’t have access to it. “That way, you can come and go as you like without getting locked out.”
“Not being locked in would be awesome.”
He shut the door behind them and watched her wander around his living room. It was weird for him to have her here in his space. He’d rarely brought anyone to his place in Riverton, and he’d certainly never brought anyone here, especially not a woman. He wasn’t sure if Dalton had assumed he’d balk when he’d insisted if Caleb was bringing Rose to the ranch; he was responsible for her, and she had to stay with him.
As if that was a hardship .
The corners of his lips curved; Dalton must be losing his touch. He’d underestimated what Rose was coming to mean to him. “Come on. Let me show you around.” He gestured with his arm. “As you can see, this is the living room, and that,” he spun around, “is the kitchen. Small, but it does the job.”
“It’s homey. I like it.”
He did, too. He wasn’t built for fancy. He preferred his leather recliner couch and his battered poof, which doubled as a coffee table when he needed one. That damn box held everything from a spare weapon to the remote. If he didn’t have a place to put them, he’d lose everything. “Main bath.” He pointed it out to her. “This room will be yours.” He pushed open to the spare room. “Unless you’d prefer to sleep on the couch or sleep in my room if you’re worried about nightmares.”
Her cheeks pinkened. “Umm.”
“Just sleeping.” He wanted to do so much more, but there was no way he’d step over that line without an invitation. “If you are worried about having nightmares, then the offer is there.”
He kicked his go-bag into his room and pulled the door almost shut. She had plenty of time to decide what she wanted to do. His doorbell chimed, and he went to answer it. “Hey, Kace.”
“You forgot to bring her stuff,” Kacey grumbled. “It’s been checked.” As fast as he arrived, his brother disappeared again. He was probably going to check that his kitchen hadn’t been destroyed while he and Willow were gone. He winced, because if the kitchen was a mess, Rexar would have his ass handed to him, no matter what Lily said. Now that it was finally just the two of them, and he’d shown her the place, there was an awkwardness between them as if neither knew what to do. Inspiration struck… baby animals. She seemed to like baby animals. “Do you want to go for a walk around? We might be able to go to the barn and meet some of the animals.”
“Yes. Please. I’d love that.”
From their conversation outside, he knew she’d regret not having a camera again. He couldn’t do anything about that yet, but maybe he could do something. He went to rummage in the poof box and pulled out a spare throwaway phone. She sat on the edge of the couch, watching him curiously as he set it up. He held it out to her.
“What’s this?”
“It’s not a camera, but at least the camera function works on it.” Maybe this was a mistake. He was stupid for offering the photographer a camera phone. “I figured with it, at least you could save some kind of photos…” He trailed off lamely.
“Are you serious?” Her eyes widened. “For me?”
He was a fucking idiot, but he had no choice but to reply. “Yes.” He barely had time to brace himself to catch her as she launched herself at his chest and took a step back to keep them both from ending up on the floor. He froze when she smushed her lips to his.
“Thank you,” she whispered against his mouth. “I love that you thought of it.”
She leaned back and smiled at him.
His breathing hitched. Did she know what she’d done? He figured yes, she was a grown-ass woman and not stupid. She definitely knew she’d kissed him. He tilted his head slightly and brushed his mouth across hers. It took her a second; he almost pulled away, but then she sighed, a sound that went straight to his balls, and kissed him back.
Heaven.
Hell.
Somewhere in between.
His hand cupped the back of her head, and hers fisted into the shirt on his back. The kiss deepened, and the wall around his heart cracked just a little bit more, allowing her room to wriggle inside and claim a corner of it for herself.
I’m fucked. So fucked.
He knew it by the time he broke the kiss and stepped back. His whole world had tipped on its axis; north was now south, and east was now west.
“I—ugh?—”
He held up his hand. “If you apologize, I’m telling you right now, baby girl, I’m gonna be pissed.”
“I kinda attacked you…”
“You can attack me like that any damn time you please,” he reassured her. “But in the interest of both of our peace of minds and before we launch into something neither of us is ready for, we should make tracks for the barn.”
“Okay.”
“Most of the animals are around the barn.” He knew he was babbling, and he just couldn’t bring himself to care. When had a kiss ever knocked him on his ass before? Never that he could remember, at least not since he was about fifteen. “I think there might be an early foal, too.” He regretted mentioning the foal as soon as the words were out of his mouth, and he saw her eyes sparkle because what if he was wrong? He knew for sure there were kittens as he heard Rory bitching that Dalton refused to allow him to give one to his son. The boss didn’t want cats in the house as Buddha might have his prey drive turned on and chase it, or at least he thought that was the explanation given. He grabbed some coats from the hall closet and handed her his sheep-lined denim one. “It’s cold out there at this time of night.”
“Thanks.” She put it on and stuffed the phone into a pocket. “Ready when you are. Lead the way, kind sir.”
What was I thinking?
Her grandmother would have called her ‘one of them harlots’ for sure. Not only was she staying in a strange man’s house for the second night in a row, but after kissing him, she was more than a little considering spending the night in his bed for the second night, too. Except this time, she wouldn’t object to it being for more than the nightmare protection services he’d offered. Yes, her grandmother would have been correct; harlot was an apt description.
She’d meant to thank him for the phone. It wasn’t supposed to be a melt-your-panties-off kiss… but it had certainly turned into one, and was she upset about it? No. No, she wasn’t. She’d even have cheerfully stood in front of her grandmother, confessed her sins, and asked for a name badge with the title of harlot on it, but she still wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to regret it.