Stripped Down

Rose’s face closes right up. “I see,” she says, and I’ll bet she does. The contractor must smell trouble brewing, because he beats a retreat to his pickup. Rose just watches him go.

“Rose,” I say, and I want to say this carefully.

“Your offer to buy me out isn’t just a be-nice favor, is it, Angel?”

“This house is sitting on an aquifer. Blackhawk Ranch is running dry on its southern border. I drill here, that problem goes away.”

She looks horrified. “You want to turn my home into a cattle yard.”

“Hell, Rose.” I scrub a hand over my head, then jam the Stetson back on. “I want what’s best for both of us. My ranch needs the water. You need a chance to start over. Take the check, and you’ve got that chance. What’s so hard about doing that?”

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.” She’s standing chest to chest with me now, eyes snapping. She’s furious, and she still doesn’t know the half of it. Goddamn it, why can’t she admit I might be right? Maybe I do know what’s best for her. “You have no right.”

“Actually, I do, darling,” I drawl, watching her eyes narrow. “I can take you to court and force the sale.”

ROSE

Angel is big, tough, and sexy. Part of me wants to get my hands on his belt buckle and undo him the way he’s undone me. He’s gorgeous—I try the word out mentally, and it fits—but he’s put that distance between us again. He stands there on my porch, leaning against the pillar, while I sit lower down on the steps. Well, screw him. Screw his well-intentioned plans for my life.

“Nope,” I counter. The problem with Angel is that the man doesn’t move until he’s good and ready to move. “You have no rights here at all. Just because we had sex once doesn’t mean you can come in here today and tell me what’s what.”

Our one afternoon affair—over before it even got dark out—wasn’t just sex, though, and that’s the problem, isn’t it? He took me, made me his, and for a few hours I was impossibly happy. Emphasis on impossibly. Angel is a sensual, dominating lover, and, for the first time, I knew he saw me. Not his brothers’ friend or his dad’s girlfriend’s daughter and way too close to a stepsister for comfort. Me. Rose Jordan, the woman. I’m not sure where we’d been headed, but someplace special, even if feelings and words aren’t something Angel expresses easily. And then I’d over shared, he’d left, and I’d woken up alone with a pile of my clothes. It’s pretty easy to spot the connection between those three events.

“Let me buy you out,” he growls. “It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid, right? There’s a sting, but it’s over quick, and you move on. One way or another, this place is mine.”

Am I supposed to be the one moving on in this scenario? Time seems to slow down. That icy-hot sensation hits me, the feeling you get when you know there’s bad news coming and don’t have a way to stop it.

“You can’t afford this house,” he tells me.

I fight the temptation to close my eyes. I can’t hide from this.

“Three hundred thousand dollars,” he says. “That’s my offer. It’s more than fair market value and it’s a good deal.”

I don’t want money—I want my home and you can’t put a price tag on that. Do hearts make a sound when they break? Goddamn it, he doesn’t get to see how this tears me up inside.

His face is unreadable, because he’s not into that whole “showing emotions” thing and even if he was, I’ve never been any good at reading Angel. Grabbing the tube of plans I brought with me for the contractor to review, I settle for putting some space between us and let my feet take me out into the yard. Of course he follows me. Of course he won’t let me go or do this my way.

“Was having sex with me your way of sweetening the deal? Give me what my stupid, sixteen-year-old self wanted?”

Honestly? I don’t think the sex was part of his master plan, but only because he’s the one who holds all the cards.

“You wanted me,” he says in a calm, logical voice that fills me with the urge to shriek. “This house doesn’t change that, Rose. You kissed me. You let me put my fingers and my tongue in that your sweet pussy, and you liked it. Money owing doesn’t change that.”

I heard he was ruthless. He had the hard, predatory gaze of a man who knows what he wants and takes it. So that makes the math here way too easy. He wanted me, and I made it very easy for him to take me. I’m an idiot.