She looked as though she wanted to be offended, opened her mouth as if to give him the gears, but he arched an eyebrow at her.
“Fine, but you can have it tomorrow, if you want it. That has to count for something.”
It did. And he had stuck his tongue down her throat, so he figured he owed her an extra thousand for that.
“Fine. Nine. And I’ll pick it up in a couple weeks. I need to make some space in the barn.”
She nodded, her hair blowing off her face, and he realized the pink of her cheeks wasn’t just from the heat. She had a sunburn. It made her look young. Slightly irresponsible.
Weird how exciting that was to him.
“And the horses you left behind. I’m wondering if you want them? Two thousand a head.”
He tilted his head back, smelling something fishy in the air. She was underselling those horses—not by much, but by enough to let him know she needed to sell. “I don’t want them,” he said, and then quickly reconsidered. “No, I’ll take Lucky, for half that.”
“Lucky?” she asked. “She’s deaf. Those others are good horses.”
“Geldings. Mares past their good bearing years. No good to me.”
“Crap,” she muttered. She braced her hands against the fence and hung her head for a second, the beer bottle dangling between her fingers.
Covered in dirt and sweat, looking slightly beaten by circumstance, he couldn’t believe it, but she looked like a rancher. Like her father’s daughter.
She looked, actually, like that fifteen-year-old who hadn’t been able to jump a horse over a fence to save her life, but hell if she didn’t always get right back up in the saddle.
He never should have doubted her.
“Tori—?”
“What’s this ‘Tori’ business?”
“You need a nickname. Whose clothes are you wearing?”
She glanced down at her shirt and jeans as if surprised to see them on her body. “Mine. Why?”
“I’ve never seen you in jeans.”
“My husband hated jeans.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Her lips, so pink and damp from the beer, were surprisingly erotic. Particularly under those eyes that pierced right through his skin. The combination was deadly.
“Yes.”
“Then I guess what he hated doesn’t matter much anymore.”
Her smile was all kinds of sad. “It’s not that easy; the past has a way of sticking around. You know that.”
That truth had driven him right up until Victoria had fired his ass. His past had slept with him and eaten with him. It had pushed him into being a man he couldn’t stand to look at in the mirror—and that she somehow not only understood that, but had experienced it herself, made him light-headed.
Made him wonder if he was looking at a mirage, because this person beside him—in dusty clothes, sweat cooling on the pale skin of her neck and throat, her body relaxed against the fence he had built—this seemed to be the real her.
Or maybe he just wanted it to be.
“Besides, I couldn’t walk over here in a skirt, could I?”
“No, you couldn’t. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious. I need money.”
“You’ve got those cattle. Fifty head will get you about fifty thousand dollars, give or take.”
“That’s not enough.”
His eyes opened wide and he lifted his beer for another sip to hide his surprise, then swore when he remembered it was empty. “Fifty thousand is enough for a lot of things.”
“I need five hundred thousand.”
He whistled long and low. “Is this … is this about what your husband did? The Ponzi thing?”
She shook her head, staring up past the cottonwoods where the sky was turning blue with shadows. “I keep getting surprised when people know about that.”
“Even we get the news way out here.”
“It’s not that …” She went back to fiddling with the label on her bottle. He remembered an old girlfriend telling him that peeling labels off beers was a sign of sexual frustration. He’d let her relieve that sexual tension back at her apartment in a very satisfying, gymnastically inclined way.
Maybe it was true, because he’d never seen a more sexually frustrated person in his life than Victoria Schulman. It would be fun … it would be a fucking privilege to relieve that frustration.
But that is not the point, Turnbull
, he reminded himself, watching the woman wrestle with bigger demons than unrelieved horniness.
“After the initial storm wore off—the media left us alone and people no longer showed up on my doorstep to scream at me … actually, after we no longer had a doorstep anymore,” she laughed sadly, “Jacob and I got out of New York, and everything—Joel, the Ponzi scheme, the suicide—all of it became so personal. It was just me. Alone. Trying to deal with it. Trying to protect Jacob from it. From all the things our friends were saying. Trying … trying to make it right.”
“Friends?”
“Trust me, I use the term loosely.”
“You shouldn’t have had to take all that on alone. Your brother—”
“Was wonderful to us. He took us in. He came down here with me even though he hated the idea. I couldn’t ask him to take on any more than that.”
“But that’s what family does.”
“You really believe that?”
He thought of his parents, his Uncle John, who supported him only when he did what Uncle John wanted.
“I don’t know,” he said truthfully.
He wished he could touch her, ease some of that load she carried on the thin bones of her shoulders. But he didn’t know how to do that, how to touch a woman without it being about sex. So he kept his hands to himself and listened as hard as he could. Ignoring his instincts.
“So if it’s not about the Ponzi thing, what do you need that money for?”
She laughed. “I’ll tell you, but … you’re not going to like it.”
“You’re an authority on me?”
“I don’t have to be an authority to know this is going to piss you off. Royally.”
Not bothered in the slightest by her predictions, he grinned and leaned back against the fence. “I don’t know, I’m in a pretty good mood these days. You better tell me and let me be the judge.”
Victoria tilted her beer to her lips and took two big swallows, draining the bottle. She held it up so the amber glass caught the light.
“I’m going to need another one of these.”
Eli was quite a host. He came back with two more beers, a hard-backed chair, a folded aluminum lounge chair, and a square packet wrapped in tinfoil. He set down the wooden chair, worn smooth from generations of bottoms, and kicked open the lounge chair, revealing three vinyl strips across the bottom that were torn through and a dead mouse carcass.
“I’m not sitting there,” she told him.
He kicked the dead mouse away with his boot and settled himself down carefully into the chair’s broken embrace.
They both held their breath, and when it didn’t collapse, he grinned and handed her a beer, and then opened the tinfoil to reveal a gooey peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He tore it into two and handed her half. The larger half.
“What a sweetheart,” Victoria laughed, sitting down in the wooden chair and stretching out her legs, sandwich and beer in hand.
The flash of his smile kick-started her heart and she had to look away, setting the sandwich down on her leg so she could open her beer.
She felt like a glutton, taking this hospitality while she
could, because he’d yank it all away if he knew she was thinking about hiring Amy. Hell, he’d probably yank it all away the second she told him about turning the ranch into a spa.
But she couldn’t quite stop herself. It was as if Eli were someone else—not quite a stranger, but definitely not the man he’d been at the ranch these last few months.
Eli’s half of the sandwich disappeared in two bites and as he chewed he tipped his hat back off his forehead and crossed his dirty boots at the ankle. In this big cowboy on a broken lawn lounger, she could finally see that boy she’d known. She could see his shyness and his valor.
“You seem … happy, Eli.” She handed him her half of the sandwich and he accepted it with a nod, a grin that made her heart pound.
“You can’t distract me, Tori. Tell me what’s going on.”
Victoria wished she didn’t have to tell him what she was doing with the ranch. She wished this moment could just keep going, this camaraderie between them. The smile on his face that was warmer than the breeze rustling through the grasses past the paddock.
Ah well
, she thought.
Might as well get it over with
.
“I’m turning the ranch into a luxury resort and spa.”
He stared blank-faced at her and then howled with laughter. The chair listed sideways in the sand and he jerked his feet down onto the dirt to keep himself upright while he laughed his ass off.
“All right, all right,” she muttered when he took off his hat and slapped his leg with it. “It’s not that funny.”
“A luxury
what
?”
“Spa and resort.”
“Like massages?”
“Among other things.”
“Then it is that funny. Have you lost your mind? That place is the ugliest …”
“The money is for the remodel.”
He blinked at her. His smile faded into a thin-lipped frown and she watched as it all sunk in, his handsome face going dark.
“You’re not joking.”
She shook her head and braced herself for some name-calling. Some vicious finger-pointing. Part of her hoped for another brutal kiss, but she slipped a muzzle on that part.
Instead he stood. Paced for a moment, as if looking for a place to curl up and give birth to his fit. But then he braced his hands against the splintered wood of the fence and hung his head between them.
Staring at his ass was inappropriate. She totally knew that. But part of her wanted to write a letter of appreciation to the Wrangler Denim Company, because
honestly …
Swearing, he kicked at the dirt, pushing up clouds of dust that blew back into her face.
Her back felt like it would break under the pressure. She wasn’t going to change her mind, but she fully realized how much this had to hurt him. What a bitter pill this had to be to swallow.
“Eli—”
“I want to buy that land across the river,” he said, gesturing toward the fields across the creek two hundred yards away.
“It’s leased—”
“I’ll hold the lease.”
“That’s not worth five hundred thousand dollars.”
Finally, he turned, everything about him level. Straight. He wasn’t going to lose his temper or call her names. Apparently, he was going to do business with her.
“I’m not offering you five hundred thousand. I’m offering you ten grand for the land across the river.”
“I’ll sell you more land.”
“I don’t want more land.”
She gaped at him. “I thought … I thought getting back all the land was the whole point of your life.”
“Not anymore. The acres across the river will do. I can grow my own hay crop after the lease runs out.” He looked suddenly puzzled. “What are you thinking, Tori? A luxury resort and spa at the Crooked Creek does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of being a success.”
Her instinct was to stiffen. To cross her arms over her chest and sniff with disdain, to walk away with her head held high, to let him know that not only was he horribly misguided, but she also didn’t care what he thought about her. And then, of course, she would stay awake all night wondering if maybe he was right.
Maybe it was the beer. Or the tight and foreign caress of her old blue jeans on her legs, or just possibly that she knew exactly how right she was and no man, particularly not this one, was going to convince her, even for a moment, otherwise. So, instead of getting affronted, she laughed. At him.
He bristled right up like a porcupine.
“I never pegged you for a resort and spa authority,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because it’s a ranch!”
“Not anymore. Remember? You took care of that.”
Victoria had never been in touch with her feminine power. She wasn’t one for wiles. Had no idea how to be provocative. But a hot electrical power filled her, from her feet through her legs and belly, centering in her breast.
Slowly, she stood and as if he could see the change in her, the power she was generating, his Adam’s apple bobbed, and his arms flexed under the rolled-up sleeves of his gray shirt as he made fists with his hands.
The muscles in his forearms corded up, the veins standing out against the skin, and there was a small explosion in her belly at the sight. He was such a man. Big and dirty. Strong. Raw. And he spoke to the untapped domain of her womanhood. Fireworks of desire shimmered through her body as she stepped toward him.
“I happen to be an authority, Eli. And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that this resort will be a success. As long as I can get the money to have it done right.”
“Why?” he asked as currents ran between them, slowly building speed and strength until the world fell away and it was just them in the twilight with this unreasonable connection. “Convince me.”
“This land is beautiful. Wild and raw. Dynamic. Virile, in a way.” She was close, too close probably, but she’d been pushed here by a wind she didn’t want to fight. And she could see his heart pounding hard under a quarter-sized bit of skin in his brown neck. She wanted to lick him. Taste the skin over his blood.
“And women like that sort of thing, but from a safe distance. Behind glass. Under control.” Yes. Oh Lord, yes. She wanted to control this wild, virile man in front of her. “They want to experience something unpredictable, while being cared for. While being petted and stroked and made to feel beautiful and womanly.”
He blinked. “You’re … you’re talking about a spa, right?”
No!
she wanted to scream.
I’m talking about sex! Wild, crazy sex. With you!
“The Crooked Creek Ranch will offer the best of both
worlds. The luxurious and the rustic, in one beautiful place. Celeste is on board. Ruby will be the chef. We’re interviewing architects. It’s going to be a success.”
His smile was crooked and charming. “Sounds like you’ve got yourself a vision. A crazy one, but a vision nonetheless.” She nodded, oddly proud of herself. It was a new emotion for her, and it threw her off balance. “Good for you, Tori. I mean it.”