Authors: Lori Foster
His sincerity held her in place as surely as if her feet were nailed to the floor. “I suppose.” She couldn’t believe this. Buck Boswell, a hulking bachelor with a score of women at his beck and call, was trying to sell her on the idea of him spending more time with her.
Or was it that he wanted to spend time with Tish? Sadie frowned, more than a little confused.
“If I’m here enough,” Buck continued, “she’ll start to trust me. And if she trusts one human, she’ll trust another, right?”
Sadie nodded. “That sounds, uh, reasonable.”
“And then maybe…” He smoothed his big hand over her hair, once again tucking it into place. “You’ll start to trust me a little, too.”
No one, except her mother, had ever felt free to touch her so casually. To keep from falling over, Sadie took two deep breaths. She had no idea what was going on.
His voice dropped when he murmured, “Your hair is really soft.” His thumb grazed her jawline. “Your skin, too.”
Sadie’s insides started a slow burn. She was about to melt when the toast popped up, making her jump a foot.
Buck reached for the toast before she could. “So tell me, you seriously involved with anyone right now?”
She was seriously involved in a
fantasy.
“No.”
He took a second to absorb her fast reply. “Casually dating anyone?”
Sadie shook her head.
He stared at her, brows slightly drawn, expression probing. “Dating at all?”
Why did she have to be so fair-skinned? Her blushes didn’t make her look pretty. They just made her look scalded. “No.”
“Why not?” Buck slathered an obscene amount of butter onto the toast while awaiting her answer.
What to tell him? The truth? She actually shuddered. No, some humiliations should be kept private forever. Like being stood up on prom night. Her blush intensified with the awful memory of standing there in her fancy dress with her fancy hairdo, feeling so giddy and anxious—and two hours later, finally accepting the reality that her date wouldn’t show. Being the sophomore joke had been enough to last her through the rest of high school.
She locked her knees. “There hasn’t been much time.” Her eyes sank shut at that awful fabrication. She had all the time in the world and he probably knew it.
“So you used to date, but don’t much anymore?”
She refused to bare her soul, to totally expose herself and her lacks. She was a grown woman, not a wounded child. Her chin lifted. “Are we going to eat this morning, or keep talking?”
“Let’s do both.” He turned to carry the toast to the table, and almost tripped over the dogs. Butch knew better than to think he’d get table food, but Tish apparently had no manners. She jumped, barked, begged.
“So now you like me?” Buck inquired of the little dog with a smile.
“Sorry.” Sadie hurried to the cabinet and got out the box of doggie treats. “When we first got her, she was so thin that everyone hand-fed her, just to make sure she’d eat. Now she thinks any food near a hand is hers for the taking.”
“It fattened her up, so I’d say it worked.”
Sadie couldn’t take offense at that comment; Tish was as plump as a little penguin. She dug out a small bone-shaped treat, then thought to ask, “Is it okay if I give Butch one, too?”
“Sure.” Buck set the food on the table and again crouched down to pet Tish. She lurched away with a yelp, making him sigh. “That’s okay, baby. I understand.”
The way he knelt left his towel wide open over his spread knees. Sadie leaned forward to peek, but could only see his upper thighs. Nice, muscular thighs.
Buck turned to smile up at her. Either he didn’t notice what she was doing, or he chose to ignore it.
“I
really
want to hold that little dog.”
“I know. Me, too. Eventually she’ll let us.”
He turned back to the dog. “I’m always patient when I want something.”
His tone of voice was sweet and gentle. Tish watched him, creeping closer, inching toward the table.
“Good girl,” Buck crooned softly.
Slowly, he reached out to her. He was almost touching her when Tish snatched his colorful boxers off the back of the chair and ran off.
Startled, Buck shot back to his feet. “Hey!”
Sadie watched her run around the corner and into the living room. “Uh…”
Butch ran after Tish, and Buck was next in line. Sadie followed. The dogs had gone under her couch. When Buck knelt down to look underneath, both dogs barked at him, trying to warn him off.
“What the hell is she doing with my underwear?”
Sadie stared at the picture he made, on his knees peering under her furniture. “I don’t know.” And as Buck stood to face her, she said, “I can get them for you later, when she comes back out.”
Buck hesitated, then, amazingly enough, stood, slung his thick arm around her shoulders and led her back to the kitchen.
“I suppose that’ll be okay.”
Awareness made Sadie so stiff she could barely walk. Buck’s arm was heavy and warm, his embrace casual. He kept her tucked in close to his side. When they reached the kitchen, he pulled her chair out for her, waited until she got seated, then joined her at the table.
“So tell me what you do. I know you work at the shelter, but what’s your job there?”
He began eating, not paying her much mind, and that made it easier to converse with him. “I work as a vet’s assistant.”
He nodded. “I sort of figured it’d be something like that.”
“I’ve always loved animals.”
“It shows.”
He was so open and friendly, he made it easy to talk. “I’d always wanted to be a vet, but I never got my schooling finished for it.”
“How far did you get?” In two large bites, he finished off a piece of toast.
Watching him eat amazed Sadie. Without looking like a glutton, he polished off the food in short order. She pulled her gaze away from him to taste her own eggs. Delicious.
“I got accepted to a veterinary college,” she admitted, and hoped she didn’t sound boastful.
“Yeah? You have to have a really high GPA for that, right?”
She remembered how thrilled and proud her mother had been. Buck sounded almost as admiring. “Yes. Admission was selective, but I’d already completed a pre-veterinary curriculum with a strong focus on the sciences. Anatomy, physiology, chemistry, microbiology and some clinical sciences.”
“Wow. Heavy subjects. So what happened?”
Sadie toyed with her fork. “My mother needed me at home.” So that he wouldn’t misunderstand and think her mother selfish, she rushed through the rest of the explanation. “She’d raised me on her own. For as long as I can remember, it was just the two of us. She did a great job, but she was sick for years.”
“Sick how?”
“Cancer.” Just saying the word made Sadie relive the hurt. “She’d go into remission, feel a little better, then go downhill again. Each time it got worse and worse, and her recovery from treatment took longer. The cancer began to spread.” Her voice started to shake. It hadn’t been that long since she lost her mother, and talking about it still hurt. “I didn’t want her to be alone.”
Buck pushed his empty plate away. His brows were drawn with concern and sympathy. “You took care of her?”
“Me and a nurse who visited three times a week.”
“How old were you when she first got diagnosed with cancer?”
Looking back, it seemed her mother had always been ill, but Sadie knew that wasn’t true. It was just that when most young women were breaking away from home, striving for independence, she’d had to stay close to her mom. “We first found out she had breast cancer when I was almost fifteen. She had surgery, and things seemed okay for a year or so. Then they found more cancer. Lung. Bone.” She swallowed and pushed her plate away. She couldn’t eat another bite. “Eventually brain cancer.”
Buck reached across the table and took her hand. “Must’ve been really rough.”
Watching her mother weaken over time had been a living hell. But she’d borne it all alone. There’d been no one, other than peripheral strangers—doctors, nurses and a variety of legal people—to offer her any support or assistance.
For years, she’d been hungry for human contact, and to compensate for that lack, she’d turned to the animals she’d understood best. But now Buck held her hand as if he really cared. Sadie was amazed, and very grateful.
“Toward the end, she had very few good days.”
Buck turned her hand over and rubbed her palm with his thumb while looking into her eyes. Sadie felt touched everywhere. Not just on her skin, but in her heart, too. For once, the icy memories didn’t linger. They got soothed away by the intrusion of other, warmer emotions.
It was the oddest feeling, like falling into a deep, heated pool. Silence stretched out between them. She saw Buck’s eyes narrow marginally, saw his shoulders tense.
He said, “Finish your breakfast, okay?”
“I am finished.” Her upset was over, but now she was too excited and anxious to eat.
The dogs came back into the kitchen, distracting them both. Tish crept, keeping her eyes on the humans. Butch just pranced beside her, waiting as Tish dragged the colorful cotton boxers to a sunny spot in front of the sliding doors. She laid them down, used her nose to push them this way and that, digging, tugging with her teeth, before circling three times and dropping into the middle of the material with a grunt.
Butch, openly confused but unwilling to be left out, glanced at Sadie and Buck, back at Tish, then curled into her side.
A slow grin came over Buck’s face. “I think she likes me.”
Sadie actually giggled. “If she’s willing to sleep in your underwear, then she must.”
He turned to face her, still holding her hand captive. “And what about you?”
“I don’t want to sleep in your underwear.”
Buck accepted the joke with a laugh. He tugged her closer, leaning toward her at the same time. “But do you like me, Sadie? Because I like you. A lot.”
And to Sadie’s utter shock and excitement, he kissed her.
CHAPTER THREE
BUCK FELT AS THOUGH SOMEONE had just knocked him onto his terry-cloth-covered ass. It was a simple kiss, a featherlight brush of his mouth on hers. No tongues. No real heat.
And his whole body was buzzing.
He pulled back just a little to take in Sadie’s expression. Her eyes were closed, her feathery lashes leaving shadows on the smooth texture of her flushed cheeks. She swayed a little toward him.
Damn.
When he’d started all this, he’d meant to go slow, to get to know her better, figure out why she didn’t seem to like him.
Given her expression now, she liked him all right. But Sadie had more burdens than any single woman should have to bear. She was shy and sweet and so damn generous.
He leaned in again, but this time he let his nose graze her throat, inhaling the sweet female scent of her. You’d think a woman who played with animals from sunup to sundown wouldn’t smell so nice. But she did. He felt…intoxicated.
And if his friends knew his thoughts, they’d laugh themselves silly.
Ethan and Riley and Harris, his best buddies for some time now, all considered him too goofy to ever settle down. Their wives probably agreed. He’d once heard Rosie call him a “goober.” And then Clair, Harris’s wife, had qualified that he was a “big lovable goober.” Whatever the hell that meant. It didn’t sound very complimentary, but the women had said it with affection, not insult, so Buck hadn’t taken offense.
He knew he wasn’t intense like Riley, and he sure as hell wasn’t heroic like Ethan and Harris, who were both firefighters. He was just himself, easygoing, ready to laugh. He loved his lumberyard, his family and his friends. He loved women, and he especially loved sex. He was fortunate in that he’d inherited some good genes, resulting in a body that was tall and strong and well-muscled. All the men in his family were big—and plenty of women appreciated that.
He enjoyed good health and business success, so he’d never needed to take life too seriously. But bless her heart, Sadie hadn’t been given that choice.
As he’d told her, she was a sweetheart. Petite and shy and loving. Determined and smart, but so withdrawn. He wanted to bring her out of her shell. He wanted to watch her laugh.
He wanted to get her naked and feel her softness everywhere, and he wanted to hear her scream with a mind-blowing orgasm.
Yeah, he wanted that most of all.
“Buck?” Her voice was tentative, confused.
He sniffed his way up to her ear, brushed his nose across the downy hair at her temple. “Yeah?” he whispered, feeling more aroused by the second.
She cleared her throat, very stiff and still. “What are you doing?”
“Smelling you.” He leaned back to see her face. “You smell good enough to eat.”
A rush of scarlet filled her cheeks. “I, uh…”
“I don’t mean right this second. We’ll save that for later.”
She looked ready to faint, prompting him to chuckle. He fingered the high neckline of her cardigan. “Aren’t you too warm in this?”
“No.”
She clutched the neck together in a protective gesture.
“You sure?” Slowly, using the same care he’d shown with Tish, Buck pried her fingers loose. “It’s comfortable in here, Sadie.” Her top two buttons were undone, so he let his fingers drop to the third button, right above her breasts. It slid free. “I’m only wearing a towel and I’m not cold.” Just the opposite, in fact.
Her eyes were wide and slightly dazed, her breath low and uneven.
When he finished undoing all the buttons, he urged her to her feet and carefully pried the sweater off her shoulders. She was so fine-boned and fragile, he took extra care with her. Standing by her made him feel like a great ox.
She stared at him with wary apprehension and what he could have sworn was hopefulness.
He dropped her sweater over the back of her chair. “Okay?”
Practically panting, she licked her lips, blinked twice and nodded. Her breasts rose and fell beneath the pink blouse.
So damn sweet. He cupped her face. “Can I ask you something really personal?”
She stared at his mouth. “What?”
“When was the last time someone kissed you silly?” He waited, wondering if it’d been a week, a month, or longer. She seemed very unsure of herself and what he had planned.