Page 13 of Score to Settle (Oakwood Ranch #1)

I usually don’t care what people think, so why does the disbelief in her tone annoy the hell out of me?

I make my way barefoot to the kitchen, being careful to avoid the creaking floorboards engrained in my memory from an adolescence of sneaking around this house without Mama knowing.

I smirk to myself at the thought. Without fail, any time I snuck out to a party or a hookup, Mama would yank me out of bed early the next morning with a list of chores as long as my arm. Of course she knew.

But as soon as I step through the doorway into the kitchen, I see Harper at one end of the table, the glow of her laptop illuminating her face in the dim room. She looks up, eyes widening in surprise.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t think anyone else would be up,” she says. “I can go to my room.”

“Don’t leave on my account,” I reply, moving to the fridge to grab some water, aware of her watching me.

I’m suddenly conscious I’m shirtless and wearing only a pair of basketball shorts low on my hips.

Based on the glimpse I caught before I turned away, she’s wearing a tee and not much else. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither,” Harper says.

I lean against the counter and take a sip of water, watching her over the lip of my glass.

Her hair is pulled up in a messy bun, strands falling loose to frame her face.

The oversized tee she’s wearing slips off one shoulder, exposing a delicate collarbone.

From the way her breasts swell against the fabric, she’s not wearing a bra.

I feel my dick harden and snap my eyes up to her face instead, but the way she’s biting her lip in concentration as she stares at her laptop doesn’t help the straining I can feel starting to happen against my shorts.

This is clearly the side effect of not dating anyone for so long.

Harper might be sexy as hell and scantily dressed in the middle of the night in my house, but she also looks like she’s one step away from throwing me under a bus.

Something my head isn’t going to forget, even if my dick has.

I take a seat on the bench opposite before she can see the raging hard-on about to make a tent out of my shorts.

“Are you writing the feature about me already?” I ask, uneasy at the thought.

She shakes her head and shoots me a look. “I’d need to actually know something about you to start writing.”

Ouch. She’s got a point, although I notice she doesn’t expand her answer to tell me what she is working on. I lean across the table to take a peek but she closes the laptop quickly.

“Working on your master plan?” I quip.

She frowns. “Master plan?”

“You know… a grand plan for how you’re going to take over the world. You seem like the type.”

Harper smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You think I’ve got my life together? You think I’ve got a plan?”

“You don’t?”

She shakes her head. “I did once, but it sort of crashed and burned earlier this year.”

I raise an eyebrow and she pulls in a deep breath that draws my eyes back down to her tee and the place where her nipples are pushing against the fabric. I force my gaze up. What the hell, Sullivan! This woman will eat you alive if you give her half a chance.

“Earlier this year I landed a dream job. It was an internship for a features writer at Insight . I thought I’d made it.

I found a New York apartment I could barely afford and signed a one-year lease.

I blew the last of my money on a pair of designer shoes and walked into that office with my grand plan to take over the world. ”

“What happened?” I ask.

“I wasn’t cut out for it,” she replies. There’s more to the story, but she pushes on before I can ask. “So yeah, this isn’t the dream for me either, you know? Following you around like some kind of groupie. But if I don’t do a good job on this feature, I’ll be fired again.”

Her honesty takes me by surprise. “Seems like we’ve both got a lot to lose if this doesn’t go well then,” I say.

She shoots me another hard look. “So maybe we need to find a way to work together.”

“Hey,” I shoot back. “You’re the one who’s already made up your mind about me. Do you even care what I have to say?”

She scoops a stray lock of chestnut hair behind her ear. “Of course I do. It’s my job to care.”

“Yeah, right.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snaps.

“It means, I heard what you said about me.”

“And what did I say?” She folds her arms. The movement pulls the fabric of her tee tighter around her breasts. It’s a fight to keep my eyes from dragging down.

“Last night before dinner. You were on the phone,” I reply.

“I would guess you were talking to your friend Mia. Something about me thinking I’m God’s gift to the world and you looking forward to finding out if there’s anything more to me.

It’s pretty obvious you think every one of those stories about me is true and you can’t wait to destroy me. ”

If I didn’t know better I’d think Harper looks almost sheepish. “You’re right, I did say that. I didn’t mean for you to hear it and I’m sorry. But in my defense, you were an hour late to our first meeting.”

She’s got a point, but no way am I giving up the high ground.

Harper sighs. “We’re not on the same team, Jake. I’ve been sent to write an in-depth feature on you. My job is to write the truth. If you want what I write to be positive, then you need to let me in and show me you’re a good guy.”

Her words hang in the silence. Anger hums beneath my skin, even if a part of me can see her point.

I grit my teeth. Storming out seems like a pretty good option right now, but I’ll be damned if I’m being chased from my own kitchen.

However much I might hate this situation, I’m stuck with this woman for the next five weeks. Something’s got to give.

I push a hand through my hair. “This is getting us nowhere,” I sigh. “You’re right, we’re not on the same team, and we do need to find a way to work together.”

“What do you suggest?” she asks, and even though I can’t be sure, I think something in her softens too.

“We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. How about we set some ground rules?” I reply.

“Like what?”

I think for a moment. “Like, I don’t want to feel like I’m constantly being interviewed. You can ask me two questions a day.”

“Four,” she fires back.

“Three.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine, but you have to answer them. No jokes or evasion.”

I nod my agreement. “And I get to ask you questions back.”

Her eyes narrow on me. “Why?”

I shrug, not really sure myself. “Because it won’t feel so one-way then.”

She nods slowly. “OK, but no more scowling at me.”

I laugh in disbelief. “I’ll stop scowling if you stop shooting me dagger eyes.”

Her lips tighten and she looks like she’s about to narrow her eyes, but stops herself. “Fine.”

A silence settles over our tentative truce.

“I’m starting now,” she says.

“Of course you are.” I start to frown but stop and she laughs. It’s a nice sound. Light and delicate.

Harper tilts her head to one side as she looks at me. “Have you ever dated Flic?”

I laugh. “That’s your question? No, I haven’t ever dated Flic.”

“Why not?”

I smile, thinking of my best friend. “Before Flic took over the bar, it belonged to her parents. But her dad was a useless drunk and left her mom to run the place on her own. Flic would hang around the bar all hours, collecting glasses and getting under people’s feet.

It was no way for a kid to grow up. One day my dad came home and announced that from then on, Flic would come home after school with us on Fridays and stay for the weekend.

Chase got put in with me and Flic got Chase’s bedroom, which is why my little brother said it was like old times sleeping on the pullout.

And why none of us have ever dated Flic.

She stayed with us pretty much every weekend through part of elementary school, all of middle school and most of high school, even after my dad died. She’s like my little sister.”

Harper seems to think about this for a while. “I can see that. She seems really nice.”

“She is,” I say. “My turn. Why were you really fired from your job in New York?”

“Hey,” she frowns. “I started easy on you.”

I smirk. “I never promised I’d do the same.”

She runs a hand through her hair, hurt radiating from her body. “It’s the biggest cliché in the book. I was working late on a story one night and the editor I was working with made a pass at me. I turned him down. The next thing I know, I was told I wasn’t cut out for journalism and was fired.”

A heat burns beneath my skin. The same protectiveness I felt in the bar watching Gordon make a pass floods back through me, taking me by surprise. “They can’t do that.”

“It happened,” she says with a shrug. “I’m over it.”

It’s pretty clear she isn’t, but I don’t push it. I still have a feeling there’s more she’s not saying, but it’s none of my business and it’s not like I even care.

She’s quiet a while before she speaks again. “Is the story about you and the three cheerleaders in the parking lot true?”

My jaw tightens at the mention of last September. But at least Harper is considering the possibility there might be more to me than the headlines and that fucking photo.

“Not even a little bit,” I reply.

“What happened?” she asks.

A tension pulls across my shoulders. It was the lowest point in my career and no one will let me forget it. “Sorry, sweetheart, that’s your questions done for today.”

Harper rolls her eyes and gets to her feet, tucking her laptop under one arm. I catch a glimpse of a pair of tiny shorts beneath her tee and the smooth skin of her thighs. “No more sweethearts, either,” she says when she reaches the doorway.

“Goodnight, Cassidy,” I reply, watching her disappear.

As I slip beneath my covers ten minutes later, I find myself thinking about the perfect ass I tried to stop myself from watching walk out of the kitchen.

I push the image aside. A 2 a.m. business truce in the kitchen doesn’t change the fact that Harper thinks I’m a player, and she sure as hell is still a giant pain in my ass.