Chapter Nine
Could she look more beautiful? After watching her sleep last night in a flood of blue moonlight through his open curtains, turned on his side and wanting to caress her bare shoulder where her nightshirt had ridden up to bunch around her neck, but not wanting to wake her, he’d contemplated the profoundness of the stranger in his bed and all the damned rules he was breaking. After years of being a pillar, this woman was turning him to dust. He hadn’t thought it was possible for a woman to look prettier as he’d drifted to sleep, oddly comforted by her presence, gazing at her porcelain face, plump, delicious lips so kissable and slightly parted, and her hair splashed across his favorite pillow and poking endearingly around her face. Good Lord, it had been sweet. She’d looked angelic, and she’d been in his space.
Today? Now? In snug, worn denim and scuffed-up Ariats and a threadbare tank top beneath that same hiking shirt with her pile of hair knotted and once again, stabbed in place by random pencils and pens? A cowboy’s dream. And that tank top? He furrowed his brow and suppressed a grin. A dinosaur wearing glasses and reading a book with the word “Thesaurus” next to it. There was a lot more to Heather Carvalho, PhD than a single party girl who didn’t like being asked whether or not she had kids.
She was already everywhere, too, her footprint stamped all over his house. Face creams, soaps, and that vanilla-almond shampoo had exploded across his bathroom counter. A lacy bra was hung on his towel hook. Her bangly earrings and random pocket items were strewn on his dresser. And her goddamned shoes kicked into his bin with no regard for neatness? Infuriating. Now this: butterflies and scrunched noses that belied the seductress who took life by the horns and him by his prick and didn’t exist in a box.
She gestured wide around her. “This place is beautiful.”
If she said beautiful one more time with that smile twisting her lips, he was going to stride to her and let out the beast he’d long since learned to keep at bay. He didn’t chase tail anymore, and he sure as hell shouldn’t chase hers, says the guy who was going crazy not having seen her yet today, so chased her out here…
She strode to him instead as he pushed shut the door. “You were up late last night.”
He exhaled. “Yeah—”
She pushed up on her toes and planted a kiss to his cheek as if she always did this when he visited her in the field. Did she do this with her other hookups? He didn’t want to think about the other guys who’d experienced this side of her. “What are you doing here?”
His skin erupted in boyish tingling. Pathetic. “Lookin’ for you.” And why was he toeing the earth with his boot? He straightened and folded his arms, wedging his hands beneath each bicep, relishing how her gaze flitted to them.
“Hadn’t seen you today and wondered if you’d had lunch.” Needed some eye candy. The messages forwarded to his cell phone were for her, too. “See if you have enough water. Need anything. I cooked breakfast but you didn’t have any.”
“You have about a million other things to worry about beside me,” she scolded, crossing the road toward the pump-jacks, toward her equipment still erected in the field. “And you do not have to cook for me. What happened to ‘you do your thing and I do mine’?”
“I said you were my responsibility and I meant it.” He furrowed his brow and followed her, watched her rear sway, how her shirt was wedged atop her work gloves shoved in her pocket. Hot. What part of that did she not understand? “You got everything you need? Phone charged? You left the cable on the counter.”
“I’m super prepared. Clif Bars, a jug of water. You do know I do this all the time, right?”
“You got stuck in a deadly storm with a dead cell phone. You’re lucky you wrecked here where I could help you. Had you been alone on that stretch, you’d have had no way to contact anyone, so you can’t blame me for worrying.” He grinned, shrugging.
She glared at him over her shoulder. His eyes popped up from her rear to her face. “Worrying sounds a lot like making attachments, Counselor,” she scolded playfully, biting that lip.
Naw, this wasn’t personal. Was it? “I’m a lawyer, Tie-Dye. Worrying is just me tallying up liabilities.”
She raised her eyes to the sky and huffed, blowing a wisp of hair off her lips. “You don’t have to be logical.”
His mouth tilted up in the corner. “I don’t know how not to be. Also wanted to tell you that your auto insurance called the house. And some dealership left a voice message. Something about your delivery today?”
“My cell…” She patted her pockets, her brow knitting. “Is it in my backpack?”
How the hell did this woman function? He shook his head as they arrived at her equipment, ignoring the looming shadow of the pump-jack. Yeah, he should have listened to Harold Dixon when his old man had told him this farm was nothing but a clusterfuck, even if the best moments of his childhood had been spent here, just being a kid. Sometimes the battle to save this family legacy didn’t feel worth it.
“My phone was still dead yesterday when I called about insurance, so I gave them the house number. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I said make yourself at home,” he replied as Heather gently shooed a bee away from her backpack.
She found her cell after checking the third zipper pouch, pulled it out, and bit that lip that he wanted to bite again, grinning to herself.
“What?” he asked.
Her lips twisted and she waved the screen at him and waggled her brows. “It’s down to thirteen percent battery, Dad.”
“Dammit, woman, how do you live like that? You one of those monsters who rides the empty gas tank needle, too?”
“You need to live a little, Ty.” Heart grinned. “People survived without cell phones for centuries and never once missed them.”
He snorted. “Yeah, except the statistics who died before they could get help. Y’all only ever hear the stories of the ones who lived.”
She rolled her eyes this time, but then squealed as she checked her messaged. “My new truck!”