“I never thought I’d leave this place,” he finally said.
“Maybe you should have thought of that before sticking your tongue down my throat.”
His laugh was a dry gust of air from his chest. “I should have.”
“And you can apologize all you want, but—”
“I haven’t apologized,” he said, stunning her into silence.
“Well … you should.”
“I don’t apologize for kissing you.” He stepped closer and she didn’t step away. She knew with uncomfortable certainty that it was this morning’s lurid fantasy that shackled her in place.
He kept walking toward her, his green eyes bright, and she just stood there like a dummy, because her inner horndog wanted to be stroked.
“That’s not very … nice of you.” She cringed.
Nice? Oh Lord, help me
.
“No one’s accused me of being nice.”
He was right next to her, so close she could see that his green eyes were actually hazel. The golden brown rim at
the center around his iris was swallowed up by the brilliance of the green.
“But I am sorry I pushed you.” His breath smelled like coffee and mints and the barn was tiny again, suffocating. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. I’m sorry I scared you.”
“Because you were scared.” It was an accusation. She put the words in his mouth because she didn’t want to hear some lie about how badly he wanted her.
He nodded, and her breath hitched in her chest. Seven buttons. Seven breaths, the plastic cool under her hot fingers.
“You wanted to hurt me. Get back at me.” It shocked her how much she needed her words to be true, so she could just climb back into her shell. So she could negate everything she felt for this man. The ice age her body was used to waited with open arms if she could just push that kiss out of her mind.
How the hell had this happened?
For a second Eli wondered if this was maybe a joke. He was supposed to apologize for one of the most foul things he’d ever done in his life, the last in a long line of increasingly foul things, gather his horses, and walk off the ranch.
But instead, he was getting the distinct impression that he should kiss her again.
He should have seen this coming. Of course Victoria would take herself right out of the equation of that kiss. He’d put money on the fact that Victoria took herself right out of most equations. She dressed like wallpaper. Acted as though she couldn’t remember what a good time felt like.
And he’d taken advantage of all of that.
Which he felt bad about, he really did. He remembered when he was a good guy.
But right now, the knowledge in her eyes shamed him in a different way. Because she wanted to be a part of that kiss, but she doubted his motives. Who could blame her, really?
It wasn’t as if he’d taken the time to show her that despite how it might seem, he hadn’t faked his desire for her.
She practically pulsed with wounded pride and touching her might get him punched in the nose, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Much to his relief and surprise, she didn’t dodge his touch and when his callused fingers stroked her palm, he heard her soft exhale, as if she was trying to hide how ruffled she was.
If he hadn’t botched everything already, he might have put her hand to his chest so she could feel the pounding of his heart. Showing her how she affected him would be easier than telling her.
But he’d already been an ass. It was time to try being a gentleman.
“I kissed you because I was scared. But I kept kissing you because I wanted to.”
Her head jerked back as if he’d slapped her and she narrowed her eyes. “You can’t have your job back.”
“I don’t want it back. I don’t …” He shook his head once, as if arguing with himself. Silencing his uncle’s voice in his head. “I don’t want it back. I know I can’t convince you otherwise, but that man in the arena who pushed when he should have let go, that guy’s not me.”
She shook her head and he touched her cheek, shocking her into stillness. “And I will never forgive myself for bullying you.”
“Stop.” It was a whisper and a lame one, but he’d promised himself he would listen, so he dropped her hand and stepped away.
“And I’ll never forget how good you felt in my arms.” He smiled, filled with remorse and fondness. “Little Victoria Baker, all grown up.”
Her mouth fell open, her pink lips damp and full, the shadows of her mouth an invitation he couldn’t believe he had to resist. But he did. He had to. He was going to. Maybe.
“Victoria!” Celeste’s voice took a hammer to the moment and Victoria jumped away, wrapping that sweater around her chest like a suit of armor. Her arms were so stiff, she might as well have been holding swords.
“Goodbye, Victoria, and good luck.”
“You … you too,” she whispered just as Celeste cleared the far stall. He turned away and walked down the aisle of the barn for the last time.
chapter
10
Victoria shielded her
eyes from the sun and the dust as she stood on the porch and watched Eli’s truck and trailer drive away.
She was like a frontierswoman. A gritty, aproned widow getting rid of the bandit who had threatened her home and her life. All she needed was a shotgun and a bonnet. Perhaps a trusty hound.
Instead she had Celeste, who in Gucci sunglasses and a turquoise head scarf that fluttered in the breeze could never be mistaken for a frontierswoman. Or a hound.
But right now Victoria could feel Celeste vibrating, no doubt dying to read her some kind of riot act for the scene she’d walked in on in the barn.
Victoria didn’t owe her any explanations, though, so she kept silent and tried to ignore the vibrations.
Celeste whipped her glasses off and glared at the side of Victoria’s face. Victoria studied the flight pattern of a passing bird.
“I made a promise to myself a long time ago that I wouldn’t change my life because some man hurt me or pissed me off. I spent a lot of years before that turning myself inside out for a man who didn’t give a shit. I need to know you’re not going into this spa idea because of your power struggle with Eli.”
“I’m not.”
“I suppose you had a good reason to fire him.”
Victoria nodded, though the edges of her righteousness had slightly wilted under the heat of his eyes. The power of his regret.
“Did he ask for his job back?”
“No. In fact, he said he didn’t want it back. That it was okay.”
“Which is why it looked like you were about to kiss him when I walked in? You felt bad?”
“I didn’t … I don’t feel bad. And I wasn’t about to kiss him.” Celeste snorted and Victoria smiled, cradling the bizarre turn of events in her hands like a firefly. “He was about to kiss me.”
“There’s a difference?”
Victoria turned to look at one of the most beautiful women ever put on this earth. Everything about Celeste—her skin, her lips, the clear blue of her eyes, the taut curves of her body—was fine-tuned to inspire lust and envy. She would have no idea what it felt like to be plain and forgotten. Not that Victoria was using that as an excuse for having almost
let
him kiss her.
No
. In fact, she was going to have a very stern discussion with herself later today and then she was going to surgically remove the memory of his face, all taut with lustful indecision, from her brain.
“In my life, yes.”
“Do you think he was sincere? Or was he angling to get his job back?”
That was a very real possibility that Victoria wasn’t interested in exploring, so she said nothing. After a moment Celeste turned away, and both of them stared off into the rolling green distance, waiting for the future to arrive.
Celeste checked her watch just as a shiny black pickup truck approached, kicking up dust into the robin’s-egg blue sky.
“Amy Turnbull,” Celeste said. “Right on time. Do you remember her?”
“Barely,” Victoria replied. She vaguely recalled someone with red hair, an unsmiling face, and the urgent air of a woman looking for an exit.
“This is going to be a disaster.”
Yet bright sunlight rained down on the land, turning it into a postcard, something so lovely it actually seemed like a crime that she hadn’t thought of turning it into a spa earlier.
“Let’s see what she has to say,” Celeste said.
The second Amy Turnbull stepped out of the truck Celeste knew two things: she was going to be perfect for the job, and Amy was still exactly the kind of woman she hated.
The kind who never panicked like a gerbil over the skin of her neck.
Just from looking at the fifty-five-year-old woman, Celeste knew Amy had never even thought of Botox. Certainly never whitened her teeth, or considered plastic surgery.
Amy still wore her red hair in a long braid down her back like a donkey’s tail. Her heavily freckled skin was as fine-grained as porcelain and practically wrinkle-free. Celeste would lay down money that Amy didn’t have a wand of mascara to her name.
Amy was plain, bordering on ugly, but
she didn’t care
.
Every step across the gravel and grass from her truck to the front porch was loaded with authority. With ownership.
Confidence that had nothing to do with her looks.
Celeste put her sunglasses back on just so she could roll her eyes. Faking superiority always made her feel better.
“Hello, Celeste,” Amy said, coming to stand at the foot of the porch steps.
“Amy.” Celeste smiled and walked down the steps to shake her hand. “It’s good to see you. You remember …” She stumbled slightly, as she always did when it came to introducing Victoria.
My husband’s bastard child
just didn’t roll off the tongue like it should, but neither did
my friend
.
“Hi,” Victoria said, practically levitating off the steps to greet the architect. “I’m Victoria Schulman.”
“Of course, I remember you running around here as a kid.” Amy’s stern face split quickly into a smile. “It’s good to see you, Victoria.”
Ruby hurtled out the front door and down the steps to wrap the redhead in a hug. Amy looked strangled, hugely uncomfortable with the affection. Celeste could sympathize. Ruby could be likened to an untrained dog in her enthusiastic greetings. Celeste was barely kind to Ruby, yet the woman still hugged her every morning. It was disconcerting.
“It’s so good to see you, Amy,” Ruby said, stepping back. Amy was all kinds of awkward, running a hand down the front of her blue button-down shirt, as if wiping away Ruby’s enthusiasm.
This was the woman Celeste remembered. Reserved to the point of chilly.
“You too, Ruby,” Amy said, unable to make eye contact. She glanced up toward the front door as if expecting someone else to come out.
Perhaps Victoria was right—hiring Amy was going to be a nightmare. Because she wasn’t just here for the work. She was here for her son.
Amy cleared her throat. “Is … ah … is Eli—”
“He’s not here,” Victoria said. “And he doesn’t know that you’re here.”
“He doesn’t know?” Amy trailed off, the skin beneath
her freckles growing even paler. “Then how did you find me? How did you know about me being an architect?”
Ruby raised her hand.
“Of course.” Amy sagged. “I sent you my graduation announcement. I had totally forgotten about that.”
“I left it in the barn for Eli to see,” Ruby said. “But he never said anything.”
“No. I don’t suppose he did.”
Amy turned slightly, staring off in the direction of Eli’s house. “I thought …” She stopped, then shook her head once, a rueful smile on her thin lips. It was painfully obvious that she’d thought Eli was behind her invitation to Crooked Creek.
As a mother deeply and profoundly in love with her own son, Celeste felt her heart twitch in sympathy.
“So why did you ask me here?” Amy looked like the Tin Man in
The Wizard of Oz
, rusted and unable to move.
“Because … you’re a woman,” Victoria said. “And you’re a smart woman. And I think probably very good at your job.”
“I am. But … he didn’t tell you about me?”
“He hasn’t said anything about you. Ever.”
“Of course not,” she whispered, revealing a bone-deep ache and a surprising anger.
“We’ll understand if you want to leave,” Victoria said.
“I already did that once, didn’t I?” Amy said. Her eyes were razor sharp when she turned back to look at them. Committed.
Celeste liked that. Respected that. Perhaps Amy was here to make things right, a sentiment she understood.
She glanced quickly at Victoria, the girl she’d treated so poorly.
A car door slammed shut and Celeste turned back to Amy’s truck in time to watch a tall man, wiry and lean,
dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt, hitch up his pants. A simple gesture, men getting out of trucks did it all the time, but for some reason her mouth went dry at the flash of a muscled stomach and thick, veiny wrists.
He slipped a pair of sunglasses off his tousled blond hair and put them over his blue eyes, which was a crime, because those eyes were staggering. Light blue like the heart of a glacier or a flame.
And then he smiled, a heartbreaker’s smile.
Her heart, spellbound by his beauty, by the earthiness of his allure, missed a beat and then scrambled to catch up.
“This is Gavin Svenson, my contractor,” Amy said, and Celeste, feeling like a dirty old woman, was grateful for her sunglasses, because her cheeks were aflame.
“Hello,” he said, and his voice slipped through her clothes, stroked her skin, ruffled her feathers. “Nice to meet you.”
More handshakes. She tried not to look directly at him, using her sunglasses and her natural aloofness to keep her distance. But her skin registered the rough calluses at the base of all his fingers, the warmth of his palm, and her body shook itself awake like a dog from a decade-long nap.
There was an awkward pause, the kind of quiet knit together from secrets and unsaid truths and awkward denials.
What
, she wondered briefly, as they all seemed to take one another’s measure,
are we getting ourselves into?