Getting Lucky (20 page)

He shoved a hand through his hair. “I was starting to think the crazy thing was mostly an act,” he said, almost as if he was talking to himself.

“You need to have fun, hot sex with a girl who likes you. Who really just
likes
you and wants you to feel good.”

He frowned. “I like it hard and dirty.”

Her entire body went soft and hot at that. “It can be hard and dirty. You can put me up against the wall. You can say wonderful, naughty things to me. But the whole time, you’ll be having fun, and you’ll know I’m there just because I
want
to be. No agenda. And you’ll know that
you’re
there because you like me and want me to feel good. Nothing more complicated than that.”

He stepped close, looking down at her intently. He put a fingertip against her cheek and stroked back and forth. “I’m not sleeping with you the very first day we meet, Sunshine,” he said softly

God, she really liked that Sunshine thing. And the gentle touch. And that intense look in his eyes.

“Okay then, tomorrow is good for me.”

He stood just looking at her for another moment. Then he stepped back. “You can take the room at the top of the stairs.”

He turned and was gone a second later.

O-kay.

Hope thought about that as she went to the camper and gathered what she’d need for the night.

He hadn’t said
no
about the sleeping together entirely.

And he thought she was beautiful and sweet and smelled good.

And he called her Sunshine.

So far her trip to Sapphire Falls had been full of surprises. Good surprises.

Exactly like her mother’s trip had been twenty-six years ago.

Chapter Seven

TJ was pissed the next morning.

For the first time in months, his shoulder hadn’t bothered him during the night.

He should have been able to sleep the sleep of the dead and should have awakened refreshed and happy.

Should have.

He’d still slept like shit. Because of a throbbing body part.

Just because it wasn’t his shoulder didn’t mean it was any less bothersome. It might have been
more
bothersome. There was no one to really blame for his shoulder pain. The surgeon had done what he could.

But there was a colorful, pixie-ish hippie girl to blame for the other throbbing.

TJ threw the empty plastic bucket against the side of the barn with exaggerated force.

The ankle bracelets and the earrings and the tattoo weren’t enough—she had to be sweet to Delaney and she had to kiss him like it was her sole purpose in life and she had to want to take care of
him
.

Fuck.

That should
not
be appealing. When his mother and sister-in-law and friends hovered and fussed, it made him cranky. When Hope said she was going to focus on him… Well, it wasn’t just his cock that responded.

Of course, her straddling his lap and looking at him with those big green eyes and smelling like something he’d like to stick his nose into for a good long time had made his cock very responsive as well.

She was a
vegetarian
. That alone should make him steer clear. And she had pink hair, and claimed that she could
read
him, and mixed up strange concoctions from a big wooden apothecary box in the back of her teeny tiny trailer with the Arizona license plate.

She should be the last woman he wanted anything to do with.

Instead, he’d lain awake most of the night thinking about her proposal to basically have a fun, hot fling this summer.

TJ stomped up toward the house. He needed to get things moving with her meeting up with Dan. Whether or not she told Dan who she really was, he didn’t care. He just needed her to meet Dan and have that over with. Surely once she actually met her father she would be thinking more about him and their relationship than she would be paying attention to
him
.

TJ approached the front of the house with some trepidation.

That he was wary of a woman who was almost a foot shorter than him and weighed less than half of his body weight should have been funny. TJ, however, preferred to think of it as a gut feeling he should give a lot of respect.

He climbed the porch steps at half speed and took a deep breath before he pulled the door open. He’d left the house at daybreak, as usual, and hadn’t seen or heard Hope in the house. Maybe she was the sleep-’til-noon type. That would also make her
not
his type. He was a farmer. There was no sleeping in. Or time off. Or snow days. No matter what was going on, his farm, especially his animals, needed him.

The house was quiet and he tread carefully across the floors that tended to creak in the middle of the hallway and just to the left of the couch.

He was practically tiptoeing. In his own house. Because of a girl who he was going to eventually have to face. And what was he so afraid of anyway? That he’d grab her and lift her up against the wall like she’d given him permission to do last night? While he talked dirty. He couldn’t forget that part. Literally. He could
not
forget that part, no matter how hard he tried.

Disgusted with himself—his lack of self-control and the fact that he was feeling anxious about being in his own damn house—TJ frowned and started stomping again.

He stomped through the living room and into the kitchen.

But the noise didn’t bring Hope running.

And as he stomped across the kitchen to the refrigerator, he saw why.

The back window in the kitchen looked out over his backyard.

Where Hope was sitting cross-legged on a purple yoga mat next to his flower garden.

And she was naked.

She was facing away from the window, but she was definitely naked.

There was a silky pool of multicolored material around her, as if she’d shed her clothes sitting right there. But her back was bare from the tops of her shoulders to the dimples at the flare of her hips.

TJ gripped the glass in his hand and was grateful it was plastic. He could have cut himself on the shards from crushing anything made of glass in his fist. As it was, the plastic bent with the pressure he applied and he almost cracked it anyway.

What the fuck was she doing sitting in his backyard naked?

It looked as if she was sitting in a yoga position. He’d dated another girl who was into yoga and he’d seen enough to recognize the mat and the pose. But Hope wasn’t just doing yoga. He was pretty sure she was also trying to make him nuts.

And, yes, he did think it was at least partially intentional.

He could easily conjure the exact shape of her breasts and the color of her nipples from the day before, and his tongue tingled with the urge to lick every inch.

He supposed he could turn around and find something else to do until she was done out there. Then again, there was a beautiful naked woman in his backyard. Turning away from the window seemed silly. If not impossible.

TJ forced his hand to relax and unbend the plastic cup before filling it with water. He drank. Refilled it and drank again. Without ever taking his eyes from the woman by his flowers.

She really did something for him.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been with beautiful women. He had as much female attention as he wanted. Her beauty and even her sweetness weren’t what called to him. Sapphire Falls and the surrounding area—hell, the entire state of Nebraska, in his opinion—was full of beautiful, sweet women. They grew them right here.

Hope shifted to cross one leg over the other and twisted her trunk the opposite direction. The position brought the side of her breast into view, and he couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate how very, very nice that view was.

He cleared his throat and filled the glass again.

It also wasn’t Hope’s independence that called to him, though that was certainly appealing. He liked a girl who could take care of herself. He really did. No, his history did not support that theory. Michelle’s dependence on him for everything from car care to assuring her she was attractive and loved had gotten to him from minute one. But he was older and wiser now. That was not the way to sustain a long-term relationship. He knew that a healthy, solid relationship was about
both
people. Theirs had always been all about Michelle. He’d made her feel safe, desired, worthy and loved. But it had never been a two-way street with Michelle. It had never been a partnership. And Hope had been completely accurate last night when she’d said that Michelle had made it all up to him with sex.

The sex had been good. Really good. From a physical perspective anyway. Michelle had been willing to do anything and was as wild and adventurous in bed as she was in every other aspect of her life. For a young guy, she’d been a dream come true. There wasn’t much they hadn’t done.

Of course, looking back now, he definitely saw that sex was the only thing she’d given him. It was the only thing she
could
give him. She hadn’t loved him. Maybe hadn’t even cared about him all that much—at least not as much as she’d cared about herself.

So Hope’s independence was attractive. As was her confidence. She seemed to know exactly who she was, what she needed and what she wanted. He liked that. A lot. Michelle had never been sure about anything—except for
him
. With him as a sure thing, she didn’t
have
to know anything else for certain.

Hope shifted again, twisting her body in the other direction, and he got to check out that breast as well. Yes, very nice.

Okay, so naked yoga in his backyard wasn’t a
terrible
idea. If he treated it like a spectator sport, he’d be fine. He watched football but didn’t actually get on the field and get sweaty. This could be the same.

He immediately felt sleazy. He was watching a woman without her knowledge. Yes, she was in
his
backyard and she had to know that he was here somewhere. Plus, she’d been happily topless in front of him yesterday with no encouragement.

Still, he should probably say something.

She moved so that her legs were straight out in front of her and then bent forward until her head touched her knees.

And TJ simply couldn’t help but take another moment to note how flexible she was.

He shook his head. He needed to get away from the window. He also needed to set up the first meeting between her and Dan.

But then she moved again. She stood, lifting her hands to the sky, elongating her spine. He could imagine how that looked from the front as well. Her breasts high and proud, thrusting forward, the tight nipples begging for his hands…and mouth.

TJ shifted and set the glass down. He
really
needed to move. Or go out there. To tell her that he was here, of course. Not to join her. Not to run his hands and tongue all over that smooth, golden skin and those tight muscles. Her body would be warm from the sun and her skin would have that sweet, flowery smell he already associated with her, accented by the fresh air and actual flowers around her.
His
fresh air and flowers.

And he could not deny that the idea of something of
his
scenting her body was damn erotic and too fucking tempting.

He tossed the cup into his sink and started for the back door. Why had he thought he could resist her? The minute he’d seen her on the hood of her little yellow car, he’d been a goner.

He stepped off the back step as she shifted her pose again, this time drawing one foot up to rest against the opposite knee. Her arms were still over her head and the position of her leg opened her thighs.

TJ’s whole body reacted. He knew yoga was an incredibly healthy practice. It was a way of stretching and toning the whole body. But the poses were also very sexual. Hands down. He was not the only person who thought so. He knew he could poll a million people and a million people would agree that yoga poses were sexual.

And what had Hope said last night? Sex should be fun and should make you feel good and happy?

He was in.

She shifted again as he crossed the grass. She moved to pull her leg up behind her, balancing on the other leg and reaching back with one hand to grasp her ankle and extending her other arm out in front.

TJ almost swallowed his tongue.

He couldn’t see
everything
, but he could see enough. More than enough.

He stopped several feet from her. If he got any closer, she was going to have grass stains on all that gorgeous skin.

“Hope.”

She held the pose but looked back at him. “Morning.”

So him watching her didn’t seem to bother her. That didn’t surprise him.

A lot of things about Hope
had
surprised him since she’d blown into his life, but he was starting to figure her out, it seemed. She was the most comfortable-in-her-skin person he’d ever met. It wasn’t that the people in Sapphire Falls were uptight—okay, some of them were uptight, definitely—but mostly they were simply…conservative. And in Sapphire Falls, the people you met and the things you experienced were wonderful, but they were…not particularly diverse.

There had been some new people coming to town over the past few years. Mason Riley, a hometown guy, had moved back and brought his world-renowned agricultural engineering company and most of its employees with him. His partner, Lauren, had come to town from the big city and married TJ’s younger brother Travis. Joe Spencer, a millionaire playboy who’d grown up in and around the nightlife in Vegas, had come to Sapphire Falls and fallen for a local girl, Phoebe. And then Joe’s brother had come from Vegas and met and fallen for another out-of-towner, Kate.