“If I weren’t so sick, would you have still come, Rusty?”
“I …” she hesitated for a moment. “I’m not sure.”
He nodded, and a sad expression came over his face. “So, you’re only here because Luke told you I’m dying?”
“Don’t!” she said, putting a finger to his lips. “Let’s not talk about …” She couldn’t say the word. “Let’s just enjoy our time together.”
He stared at her, then took her hand and squeezed it in his. She thought he had a remarkable amount of strength for such a sick man. “Okay,” he agreed with a smile.
She smiled back at him, then leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek. “I think you should get some rest.”
“I wouldn’t mind a nap. Why don’t you get familiar with the house and the farm?” he suggested. “Get Luke to show you around.”
Rusty didn’t answer. She had no intention of having Luke Galloway escort her anywhere. “I think I’ll go upstairs and rest before dinner, if that’s okay.” Then realizing there wouldn’t be any dinner tonight unless she could throw something together, she frowned. She’d never had a reason to learn to cook, but her mind was made up. She would be doing the cooking from now on.
“Absolutely. Are you feeling all right?”
She smiled and nodded. “Just a headache.”
“Well, there should be some aspirin in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Is your room okay?”
“It’s lovely. And thank you for the roses. They’re beautiful.”
Sam smiled again and closed his eyes. “I’m glad you’re home, Rusty.”
Smiling, she tucked the sheet under Sam’s chin. “I’m glad to be home, too.”
Luke stretched out on his bed and waited for Rusty to finish in the bathroom. Since there was only one bath on the second floor, they had to share. And guest, or no guest, the woman was taking an awfully long time. She’d been in there at least forty-five minutes. What in hell could she be doing? he wondered.
He’d been about to go across the hall, knock on the door and ask her how much longer she’d be when he finally heard the bathroom door open. He then waited until he heard her bedroom door close before walking down the hall to the bath.
Flipping on the light, he surveyed the room. Rusty’s stockings, panties and bra decorated the shower rod and towel rack. And there were several toiletry items lining the small vanity. Dusting powder, body lotions, and bottles of fancy hair products with French names he couldn’t begin to pronounce.
He could smell her in the small, steamy room. Her expensive, spicy, floral scent. The same one he’d smelled in the motel room the night before when she’d slept cradled in his arms.
He felt himself growing hard, remembering her soft, round butt pressed against his groin for a good part of the night. Great. That’s all he needed. Since meeting her the day before, he’d been hard more times than not. And he didn’t even like the woman.
Trying to snap out of it, he decided to take a cold shower. There probably wasn’t any hot water left anyway, since she’d been in there for so long.
Annoyed, he shook his head then moved from the sink and stared at the damp lingerie items again. Apparently, she’d washed them by hand and hung them to dry. Luke’s hand moved on its own accord and fingered a pair of pale blue, silk panties which hung from the shower rod. In his clumsiness, he knocked them off the rod and caught them before they hit the floor. He was about to re-hang them when he heard a voice behind him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Rusty asked, peering at the scrap of blue silk in his hands. She shifted her gaze upward to his face and looked at him as if he were some kind of demented sexual pervert.
Her long, curly, red hair framed her face and cascaded over her shoulders, making her look sweet, innocent, flirtatious, instead of the high society woman she normally portrayed. She wore a midnight blue silk robe, belted at the waist. It hung open in a vee just above her small breasts and reached the middle of her creamy white thighs. Luke slowly ran his gaze down the front of her, wondering what she wore underneath the thin robe. Probably nothing, from what he could see. Arousal stirred beneath the fly of his jeans.
“Give me those, and stop ogling me.” She clasped the opening of her robe with one hand and held out the other, waiting for him to give her the panties. Which he did.
“If you don’t want to be ogled, maybe you shouldn’t wander around the halls dressed like you want to be …” Because of the chilling look she gave him, he let his words fade.
“And you,” she said, digging her index finger into his bare chest, “shouldn’t walk around without your shirt.” She pushed past him in the doorway, and made her way into the small bathroom, making a show of plucking her lingerie from the towel rack and shower rod. Obviously, she didn’t want her things to be in the same room with him.
“I hadn’t realized you’d noticed,” he teased, hoping to agitate her. He was dressed in blue jeans and nothing else. “I’m flattered, Rusty.”
She shot him a look over her shoulder that said she wasn’t amused with him.
He tried again. “So, what do you want? Did you come to scrub my back?”
“You wish.” Grabbing a bottle of lotion from the vanity, she turned around and came smack up against him.
Automatically his arms shot out to steady her. Her breasts pressed into his abdomen and the top of her head reached the bottom of his chin. He felt her warm breath expel against his chest as an erection sprouted in his jeans.
Luke didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. There was no way he wanted her to know that she’d turned him on.
Not that it meant anything. Men were turned on by women all the time. They didn’t have to like them. It was just their nature. Men weren’t very particular. A warm, receptive, female body, a nice pair of legs and breasts, and a small round butt—Hell, they were in love. At least for a short time.
But in this particular case, the female didn’t come across as being very receptive—and definitely not warm. In fact, she was more like a cold, arctic wind.
She tilted her head back and stared up into his face. Her tongue darted nervously out of her mouth and moistened her lips. There was a slight catch in her breath. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Mr. Galloway, but I’m not at all attracted to you.”
Licking her lips again, she said, “Since we’re going to be living here together, we’re going to have to find a way to get along.”
“I agree.” Her breasts were still touching his chest. He was getting along with her just fine. Then he noticed her eyes drift shut, and she let her head fall back slightly. She looked as if she wanted him to kiss her, which couldn’t have surprised him more than if she said she wanted to marry him. But, what the hell? One kiss certainly wouldn’t hurt. He’d been dying to taste her.
He pressed his mouth to hers and instantly felt her body go slack in his arms. A tiny moan escaped her lips and then they opened to him. His tongue snaked between her warm lips.
She moved in closer and he couldn’t help but press her body against his erection. She moaned again. Oh yeah, she wanted him, all right. But just as he slanted his head for a better angle, she clawed at him, covered her mouth with one hand and jerked away.
“Oh, God, I think I’m going to be sick.”
“DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO carry me around like a sack of potatoes?” Rusty asked, trying to push away from his bare chest. As if it weren’t embarrassing enough getting sick in front of him, now he refused to put her down, humiliating her even more. Her fingers clutched at her silk robe for fear it would gape open in certain places. Not that he hadn’t already seen her naked in the motel bathroom the night before.
“A sack of potatoes weighs more than you do,” Luke said. “When’s the last time you’ve eaten anything substantial?” He pushed open the door to her bedroom, crossed the room in three steps, and deposited her on the bed.
“Just a few hours ago. I had a cup of consommé.”
“You mean that brown water you tried to pass off as dinner?”
She scowled at him. What did he know? And it wasn’t as though she’d had much of a selection. Other than a freezer stocked with red meat, there hadn’t been much in the way of health foods. “It was quite tasty. Besides, Sam needs nourishment.”
“Exactly. You keep feeding him stuff like that, and he’s going to die of starvation.”
“That’s not funny, Mr. Galloway!” Sam was dying, and he was making jokes. “Tomorrow, I’m going to tell Sam I insist you move out of this house while I’m here.”
He grinned. “That’s not gonna happen, Princess, but it’ll be fun watching you try to get rid of me.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned over her. “What’s wrong, Rusty? Afraid you might lose control around me? You were all over me in that bed last night.” He deliberately raked his gaze over her. “Are you sure you don’t want a little company now? We could finish where we just left off.”
Her palm connected with his cheek all on its own accord. She tried not to look surprised that she’d slapped him, and she’d be damned if she’d let him know her hand stung so badly she could cry. Wanting desperately to escape his piercing look, she leaned back against the headboard. There was nowhere else to go.
She expected him to get angry with her, maybe even violent. But he didn’t so much as flinch. Perhaps that’s why she continued to empty her rage on him. “No wonder I got sick. I must have been temporarily insane to let you put your filthy hands on me.”
“Baby, you didn’t seem to mind it at the time. And all those little moans and groans coming from your throat told me you wanted even more.” He was ready this time when she swung her hand. Catching her by the wrist, he leveled his eyes on her. “Don’t ever hit me again, or you’re going to find yourself over my knee and my hand stinging your cute little ass.”
Rusty’s mouth flew open. She gathered the sheet around her legs and pulled it up high above her waist. “Don’t threaten me, Mr. Galloway.”
“Honey, that was no threat. That was a promise. And I think that after all we’ve been through, it’s about time you start calling me by my first name.” With that, he straightened to his full height and left the room, slamming the door behind him.
She’d let an ex-con kiss her. She wanted to scream. How could she have let something like that happen? Maybe the aspirin she’d found earlier in the medicine cabinet, and had taken for her headache, hadn’t been aspirin at all, but some kind of powerful drug that had relieved her of her senses. That had to be it.
Or maybe it was those hypnotic olive green eyes of his. Or his dark, dangerous reputation. She’d read stories about women who were attracted to bad-boy types. Maybe she was one of them. And now that she’d had a taste of what it’d be like with him, she could get him out of her system.
“Listen to me,” she said, picking up Brownie and clutching him to her chest. The man made her feel things she’d never felt before, and now she wanted to pretend that she wasn’t at all responsible for what had happened between them. That she’d somehow been drugged or forced to kiss him. From the very first time she’d met him there had been something in his eyes, something about the way he looked at her, that gave her just a tingle of excitement.
Rusty slapped her hand on the bed, then winced. She’d almost forgotten about her sore hand. If she were honest with herself, she’d admit that she liked him to look at her with lust in his eyes. It made her feel alive, and God knew, before tonight, she’d never felt like that before.
He was probably laughing at her right now. How pathetic he must think she was. A man like him had probably slept with hundreds of women. But regardless of how Luke Galloway made her feel, she vowed to stay completely away from him. She would never let him make a fool of her again.
“You’re sure Rusty didn’t see you?” Sam asked as he wolfed down the meat on his plate.
Luke had never seen the old man so hungry. The broth Rusty had fed him earlier hadn’t done the trick. Nor had the chunks of apples and bananas she’d offered him. Which is why Luke had broiled Sam a steak and micro-waved a couple baked potatoes.
“I’m sure,” Luke assured him. “She was sick, and went to bed early. I tucked her in myself.”
Sam’s fork hung in mid-air, several inches from his mouth. “I thought she had a headache. What do you mean she was sick? What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing that a good meal won’t cure. I know she’s your daughter, Sam, but that woman needs her ass whupped. She wouldn’t eat the dinner I bought her last night, and this morning she stuck her nose up at the food on the plane. She’s damned spoiled.
“And because she hadn’t eaten anything substantial for two days, she got a little light-headed and then threw up her consommé,” he said, emphasizing the French term. Luke didn’t bother to tell him about the kiss they’d shared, or that she’d slapped him after he’d provoked her.
“You’re sure it’s nothing serious?” Sam asked.
Luke nodded and lowered himself into a chair. “You know, I’ve been thinking about taking some time off. I haven’t had a vacation in quite a while. I was thinking maybe I’d go up to Canada, do some ice fishing before the lake thaws.”
“Now? You can’t go now,” Sam sputtered, and pushed his tray aside.
“Why the hell not? Garvey can take care of things while I’m gone.” Hank Garvey was their foreman. “And Rusty can take care of you.”
“You saw what she fixed me for dinner tonight. If that’s a sample of what I’m going to get to eat while she’s here, I’ll be dead in three days.”
Sam was right about that. “I’ll ask Garvey to sneak food you some food while I’m gone. Or better yet, tell your daughter the truth. That you’re not sick, and you’re not dying. Then you can eat the way you like.”
Shaking his head violently, Sam sat up and hung his bandaged feet over the edge of the bed. “I can’t do that. Not yet. Not until we’ve had a chance to get to know each other better. Once she trusts me—”
“Trusts you? How the hell do you think she’s going to feel when she finds out we’ve lied to her? She’ll be on the first plane out of here.” Luke liked that idea. They didn’t need Rusty here. Well, maybe Sam thought he did, but Luke didn’t. The woman was driving him crazy. All he could think about was her.
“Which is why I had to lie in the first place.” Sam hung his head, and sighed. “She wouldn’t have come, Luke. She as much as admitted it this afternoon.”