Wrangling the Redhead (8 page)

He dug a handful of carrot chunks out of his pocket and held one out. Miss Molly nuzzled his palm, then took it. Once she’d daintily chewed that piece, she nudged him for more. He gave her a couple, then put the rest back in his pocket.

“Okay, beggar, that’s enough. I know Lauren’s been sneaking carrots to you, too. She said that’s how she paid you off for your cooperation today. Next time, though, she might not be so generous.”

Miss Molly whinnied, then pulled her head back into the stall and turned away from him. Clearly, without the bribe of carrots, she wanted no part of him.

Thoroughly frustrated by the horse’s lackluster attitude, Wade stepped back, muttering another heartfelt curse.

“Strong words just because you didn’t get your way,” Lauren noted calmly.

“It’s not about getting my way,” he protested. “It’s about seeing a terrific animal losing her spirit like this. It’s like something sucked all the life out of her.” When Lauren seemed about to say something, he frowned. “Don’t start on that homesick nonsense again.”

“Is it really such a crazy idea?” she asked. “Horses have emotions, too. They get attached to people and other horses. Think about it. Was there anyone at the old ranch who spent a lot of time with her? Did she have a stablemate that was always turned out to pasture with her?”

“No,” Wade retorted, unable to conceal his impatience. “Maybe I should get the vet out here again.”

“That’s up to you,” Lauren said with a shrug. “But I think you’re wasting your money.”

Wade wasn’t going to stand here and discuss her ridiculous idea another minute, not when he couldn’t seem to drag his gaze away from the streak of dirt on her pale cheek or the strands of straw stuck in her hair.

“Come here,” he murmured.

She blinked and stared. “Why?”

He grinned and hoisted himself onto the gate of an empty stall. “I’m not going to bite. Come over here.”

She took a cautious step closer, and then another. “What is it?”

Grinning now, Wade beckoned her closer. Once she was standing right in front of him, he tugged a clean handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the smudge from her cheek. He noted with satisfaction that her amazing eyes went wide at the gesture. Cupping her chin in his hand, he reached for the straw, then brushed the wayward curls away from her face. He felt her tremble when his knuckles grazed her soft skin.

“That’s better,” he said when he was done. She started to back away, but he placed his hands on her shoulders and kept her right smack between his splayed thighs. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Okay?” she whispered, her expression dazed.

“All those spills didn’t bruise you, did they?”

“Oh,” she murmured, then gave him a rueful grin. “I am a little sore, but I haven’t checked out the part I landed on in a mirror yet.”

He managed a perfectly serious expression. “I could check it for you,” he offered with what he hoped was just the right touch of magnanimity.

She laughed then. “You wish.”

He returned her gaze solemnly. “Yeah, I do.”

She seemed totally taken aback by his honesty. “What are you saying, Wade?”

He swallowed hard and forced himself to say it. “I want you. God knows I don’t want to, but I do.”

The reply made her frown. “If it makes you this uncomfortable, maybe you should keep fighting the urge.”

“Probably should,” he agreed, allowing his thumbs
to begin a slow massage of the petal-soft skin along her collarbone. He caught the pulse jumping at his touch, the quick rise of heat in her cheeks. “But then I ask myself why we should deny ourselves something that promises to be so incredible.”

He dared a bolder caress, a skimming touch that traced the curve of her breast, flicking across the peak in a way that left it pebble-hard against her blouse. He heard the hitch of her breath, caught the unmistakable flare of desire in her eyes. His own body was rock-hard with anticipation, the bulge in his jeans unmistakable. He watched her eyes go even darker when she caught sight of it.

“Wade?”

He wasn’t entirely certain if it was a question or a plea. He smoothed her hair back, then rubbed his thumb across her lower lip. His own pulse began to pound when she stunned him by drawing his thumb into her mouth and sucking on it.

The game had started out of a sense of yearning he didn’t quite know how to handle. Now it had turned serious, and while he knew the rules of this particular game, knew the moves that brought pleasure and the dangerous pitfalls of playing, he couldn’t predict which of them would win. Maybe both of them would. Maybe it didn’t even matter. Maybe, for now, it was just about the game itself.

He drew her closer, tighter, until she was pressed against the heat of his arousal. For an instant that was enough. But then an agony of wanting tore through him, even as she reached up and dragged his head down until his mouth met hers in a crushing kiss.

From the moment they’d met, from the first fiery exchange of words, he’d known that Lauren was a pas
sionate woman, but he hadn’t expected both of them to go up in flames so fast, so furiously. She was tugging frantically at his shirt, at the buckle on his belt, skimming nails over bare skin. He peeled off her blouse and bra in a single move that sent buttons flying and left the clothes in a tangled heap somewhere in the barn.

They were committed to the game now, no question about that. Her soft little moans were enough to heat a statue and bring it to life. Her caresses were brazen, catching him off guard and stealing his breath and any last lingering shred of sanity.

He slid down from his perch on the stall door, scooped her up and carried her inside to the bed of clean straw. He stripped off his shirt and laid it down, then slowly lowered her. She never hesitated at the makeshift bed, earning his respect and his undying gratitude. He wasn’t sure he could have made it all the way to his house without exploding with this neediness she stirred in him. Thank heaven for the condom tucked in his wallet. Hopefully it hadn’t dry-rotted from old age.

Lauren was already wriggling out of her jeans, no easy task since they got hung up on her boots. Wade refrained from chuckling at the ungraceful effort.

“Hey,” he said, drawing her attention. “What say we slow this down?”

“No,” she said tersely, tugging impatiently at a boot.

Something in her voice set off an alarm. The urgency of desire was one thing. Panic was quite another.

“Lauren, what’s the hurry?”

She did hesitate then. The confusion in her eyes came close to breaking his heart, to say nothing of its effect on his libido.

“You afraid of changing your mind?” he asked.

She closed her eyes and went limp, then sighed and looked straight into his eyes. “Maybe.”

“Then we don’t do this,” he said, managing a calm note despite the protest raging through his blood. “It’s as simple as that.”

“But I want you,” she insisted.

“I know. That’s plain enough,” he said, caressing her cheek. “Just not as much as I want you. I can wait.”

She moaned and fell back against the straw. “I’m going to be up all night because you’re being so damn noble,” she muttered.

He grinned at the evident frustration in her voice. “Join the club. How about we do dinner instead? Maybe a nice bottle of wine or a couple of beers will settle us both down.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Who’s cooking?”

“I will.”

“You cook?”

“I can, if you’re not too particular about what you eat. How does a western omelette sound?”

“Heavenly,” she said at once.

He lifted himself up and went in search of her blouse and bra before he could act on the wicked ideas still raging through him. “Sorry about the blouse,” he said when he handed it to her. “I’ll buy you a replacement.”

“You will,” she agreed, then grinned. “Something with snaps.”

Wade laughed. “Good idea.” He held out a hand and helped her up. “Now scoot, before these noble intentions of mine lose out to my hormones.”

“Your place in a half hour?” she asked.

“Perfect,” he agreed.

Okay, maybe not so perfect, he thought as he headed home. How the hell was he supposed to keep his hands to himself all evening long, now that he knew exactly how Lauren felt beneath his touch?

L
auren spent ten of the precious thirty minutes Wade had granted her down in the barn trying to make herself presentable in case she ran into Grady or Karen up at the house. She didn’t want either of them to take one look at her and conclude that she and Wade had been rolling around in the hay. Which, of course, they had been. Unfortunately—from her perspective—they had stopped short of making love.

Okay, maybe it
wasn’t
unfortunate. Wade had seen what she hadn’t been willing to admit. She wasn’t ready to make the kind of commitment that would go along with that kind of intimacy. More important, she wasn’t sure Wade was ready for any kind of commitment at all.

If she were a different person, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. They could have spent a few wonderfully wicked hours in each other’s arms, then gone
right along as if nothing momentous had happened. Sadly, though, Lauren had learned that she was really lousy at casual sex. Come to think of it, she wasn’t much better with committed relationships, either, she reminded herself. She had two divorces to attest to that.

Of course, maybe the reason she’d jumped into those marriages had been the belief that commitment and sex went hand in hand, an anti-free-love morality, as it were. Maybe this time she should try to separate the two and not assume that just because she and Wade had all this delicious chemistry between them, they were suited to making a lifetime commitment.

“Well, hell,” she muttered as she tried to make sense of it and couldn’t.

She tied the ends of her blouse together in a knot that would at least give the illusion it was meant to be worn without buttons. As long as she didn’t make any sudden movements or quick turns, it should get her past any inquisitive gazes.

En route to the house, Lauren went back over her quandary. If she wasn’t any good at casual sex and was no better at marriage, what was left? She had a feeling she’d better figure that out in a hurry, since the heat between her and Wade wasn’t something she could ignore forever. They were going to land in bed together. The only question left was on what terms? It was one thing to have a relationship end messily in Hollywood, quite another to stir up talk in Winding River.

As she neared the house, she could hear Grady and Karen in the kitchen, so she slipped around to the front door and fled up the steps. Once she’d washed her face, put on a light dusting of fresh makeup and brushed her hair, she felt marginally better. Clean clothes accomplished the rest. By the time she went downstairs, she
was prepared to make a quick dash right back out the front door.

She’d almost made it, too, when Karen planted herself squarely in her path.

“Going somewhere, Lauren?” her friend inquired cheerfully, a glint in her eyes. “Don’t think for a second that I didn’t see you sneaking around the house and creeping upstairs hoping that we wouldn’t see you. Now, here you go again, trying to slip out the front door undetected.” She glanced toward Grady, who was watching the entire scene with amusement. “I think she’s trying to keep something from us, don’t you?”

“Looks that way,” he agreed.

“If I had to guess, I’d say she has a hot date,” Karen noted, surveying Lauren intently.

“I’m wearing old jeans and a T-shirt. Why would you think that?” Lauren demanded, totally perplexed by the assumption. “There is nothing remotely ‘hot’ about this outfit.”

“Maybe not on the average woman, but on you?” Grady said. “I’ve got to go with Karen on this one.”

Lauren frowned at him. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’m running over to grab a quick bite with Wade. That’s it. No mystery. No big romance. Just dinner.”

Grady’s eyebrows rose. “At his place?”

“Yes, why not? Is that some sort of big deal?”

Karen grinned and rolled her eyes. “She’s going to a man’s place and he’s cooking, and she wants to know if it’s a big deal? Girl, you have been out of circulation too long. It is a very big deal.”

“He’s fixing an omelette, not serving caviar and champagne,” Lauren retorted irritably.

Grady suddenly looked worried. “Lauren, is that
what it’s going to take to impress you? Caviar and champagne? I don’t think Wade’s that kind of guy.”

“He’s not, thank heavens,” she agreed fervently. “Now if you two will stop hovering, I can go over there before dinner’s ruined.”

“Seems anxious,” Karen teased.

“Very anxious,” Grady agreed.

“You know, as two people who spend every spare second sneaking off to their bedroom, you may not have the best qualifications to act like a couple of nosy chaperons,” Lauren pointed out. “If you’re not careful, Wade and I might decide to keep you company every single evening from here on out.”

Grady wrapped his arms around Karen’s waist from behind. “Let her go,” he said at once.

Karen laughed. “By all means.”

Lauren darted out the front door, pretending that she didn’t hear the hoots of laughter that followed her. That was the trouble with two people knowing her as well as Grady and Karen did—they thought they could get away with anything. After all, she had popped up repeatedly during their courtship. One of these days, though, Lauren was going to get even with them for tonight. She just had to come up with a plan diabolical enough. Maybe the rest of the Calamity Janes would help—although more than likely they’d be on Karen and Grady’s side. They were all born meddlers. Heck, she’d been one herself up till now.

As Lauren neared Wade’s house, her footsteps slowed. Memories of the heat she and Wade had generated earlier in the barn flushed her skin. Was she expecting a repeat of that tonight? Hoping for it?

“Dinner’s going to be burned if you stand out there too much longer.”

Wade’s voice carried on the still night air, startling her. She could barely see him in the shadows, his feet propped on the porch railing.

“Sorry, I got sidetracked by Grady and Karen,” she muttered as she joined him.

“Which doesn’t explain why you were just standing out here,” he teased. “Scared to come inside?”

The accurate accusation grated. A flash of temper came and went in a heartbeat. “That just makes me smart,” she said.

“Oh? How so?”

She forced herself to meet his gaze without blinking. “Because of what happened in the barn a little while ago. We agreed we were going a little too fast. Now here we are alone together again, with all that energy still charging around in the atmosphere.”

He grinned. “Then it
is
still charging around for you, too? I was afraid it was just me. I took the coldest shower I’ve ever taken in my life, and then you waltz across the yard and I’m so hot I could haul you straight off to bed right now.”

Lauren swallowed hard at the temptation that shot through her. “We had a deal,” she reminded him.

He sighed heavily. “I was afraid you were going to bring that up. Leave it to you to test a man’s honor. Oh, well, come on inside and let’s eat. We’ll have a pleasant, quiet dinner and then discuss the rest.”

She grinned despite herself. “You, a man of action, intend to discuss whether or not we have sex?”

“Hey, I’m a reasonable guy. I’m willing to look at all sides of the issue.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

When he led the way inside, carefully keeping his hands to himself, Lauren looked around curiously. It
was a typical, simply decorated ranch outbuilding—a cottage, really—with masculine colors and a few oversize pieces of furniture suited to big men. The only personal touch she could see was a small framed picture of a woman, her arms wrapped around the waist of a grinning boy. There was no mistaking that the boy was a younger version of Wade.

“Is this your mother?” she asked him.

He glanced at the picture, then nodded.

“She’s beautiful.”

The comment seemed to startle him. “Yeah, I suppose she is.”

“What about your father?” she asked, then saw at once that it was the wrong thing to bring up. His jaw clenched visibly at the mention of his father, and his hands bunched into fists.

“Never knew him,” he said tersely. “It was just my mother and me.” He turned away and began cooking the diced onions and peppers in the omelette pan on the stove. He focused so hard on his actions, Lauren was surprised all the circuits in his brain didn’t burn up.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hoping to smooth things over.

“Nothing to be sorry for. It’s just the way it was,” he said, his grim expression belying the casual tone. “We did okay.”

“Where is your mother now?”

“Still working at the same bar in Billings.”

Lauren debated her next question, then decided to ask anyway. She needed to know what made Wade tick, and the only way to get to the truth was to push the boundaries, even when the topic clearly made him uncomfortable. “Is that where she met your father?”

He turned and scowled at her. “Why do you care about this?”

“Because you’re not as blasé about it as you want me to believe. What do you know about him?”

“I know that he was a no-good son of a bitch who used my mother, then paid her off, rather than deal with the consequences. She wasn’t the first woman Blake Travis used and discarded, and she likely wasn’t the last. That’s what his kind do.”

Wade’s bitterness cut straight through her. “His kind?”

“The rich and powerful. They take whatever they want. They’re users. Give me someone who does an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay any time.”

Lauren felt her gut tighten at the depth of his anger toward an entire category of people. Worse, in his eyes, she was probably a part of that very category. He just didn’t know it. How would he feel about her once he learned the obscene amount of money she made for what must seem like play to the uninitiated?

“Grady’s rich, but he’s not like that,” she pointed out, testing the waters with an example less risky than herself.

“No,” he agreed. “Grady seems to be a decent guy. I have no complaints where he’s concerned, but I also have no illusions. He’s got money and he’s got power. His grandfather’s a politician and a Native American activist. I’m an employee here, not Grady’s pal.”

She stared at him in shock. “You’ve got to be kidding. Grady respects you. He likes you. What would ever give you the idea that he doesn’t consider you his equal in every way?”

“That’s just the way it is,” he said, his mouth set
in a tight line. “We get along fine as long as I don’t cross that invisible line between us.”

“If Grady was like that, do you think he’d approve of me being here with you tonight?”

He hesitated, then shrugged, dismissing the question. “It’s not up to him. He probably knows he can’t control you.”

“Talk about being prejudiced,” she accused. “That’s the worst case of reverse snobbery I’ve ever heard.”

He shrugged off the accusation. “Well, that’s who I am. Take me or leave me.”

“What if I were to tell you that I’m rich?”

He laughed as if it were the most ludicrous idea he’d ever heard. “For starters, I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Why not?” she probed, curious about exactly how he’d reached the conclusion that she didn’t belong to a class of people he despised.

“Because you’re living off the kindness of the Blackhawks, for one thing. And you work as hard as anybody else, no matter how filthy or demanding the job.”

“Thank you,” she said, even though he was only half-right. She did work hard. What was he going to do, though, when he found out the rest was wrong, that she was as rich as Grady and then some? She should tell him, right here and now. Get the truth out in the open and force him to deal with it. Or not.

It was the latter that made her hesitate. Wade was the best man to come into her life in a long time. She didn’t want to risk losing him over something as trivial to her as the amount of money in her bank account. In time, when and if their relationship was on solid
ground, she would tell him everything—about her career, her money, her marriages.

“You went quiet all of a sudden,” he said as he set a plate in front of her. “Something you want to say?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I could debate you all night on the absurdity of your bias, but I can see I’d be wasting my breath.”

He nodded. “You certainly would.” He held up a bottle of white wine and a beer. “What’s your pleasure?”

“Beer,” she said at once, then realized she’d done it in some mistaken attempt to prove that she wasn’t some sort of elitist who only sipped wine with her meals. She refused to be somebody she wasn’t just to avoid a conflict with his prejudice. “No, actually, I’d prefer the wine.”

“No problem,” he said easily, opening the bottle and pouring a glass for her. He popped the top on the beer for himself and drank it from the bottle.

Maybe he hadn’t intended it that way, but Lauren saw it as a defiant gesture, an attempt to prove just how down-to-earth—how different from the rich and powerful—he was. Maybe it was even an unconscious attempt to put some distance between them. She stared at him over the rim of her glass.

“It’s not going to work, you know.”

His startled gaze met hers. “What?” he asked.

“The attempt to remind me what a badass kind of guy you are.”

His lips twitched. “Is that what I’m doing? How?”

“The tough talk. Swigging your beer down straight from the bottle. Grady does the same thing. So do most of the men around here, rich or poor. I’m used to it. As you’ve already learned, character and money don’t
necessarily go hand in hand. You can be poor and still be an honorable, decent guy. Or you can be rich as Midas and be a creep, like your father.”

She studied him intently. “Or is it really your contention that
only
the poor, struggling working man can be decent? And that
all
the rich must be jerks?”

“When you put it that way, it does sound like a gross generalization,” he admitted grudgingly. “Still, I’ve learned the hard way to watch my step around anyone with the big bucks. It’s better to steer clear than to be taken advantage of. If you don’t give them the opportunity, they can’t use you.”

Now it was Lauren’s turn to sigh. “You’re not going to give an inch on this, are you?”