Ribs hurting?" When he only shrugged, she shook her head. "Let me take a look."
"She barely caught me."
"Oh,for heaven's sake." Impatient, Keeley did what she would have done with one of her brothers: She tugged Brian's T-shirt out of his jeans.
"Well,darling,if I'd known you were so anxious to get me undressed,I'd have cooperated fully,and in private."
"Shut up.God, Brian, you said it was nothing."
"It's not much."
His definition of not much was a softball-size bruise the ribs in a burst of ugly red and black. "Macho is tedious, so just shut up."
He started to grin,then yelped when she pressed her fingers to the bruise. "Hell, woman,if that's your idea of tender mercies, keep them."
"You could have a cracked rib. You need an X ray."
"I don't need a damned-ouch! Bollocks and bloody hell, stop poking." He tried to pull his shirt down, but she simply yanked it up again.
"Stand still,and don't be a baby."
"A minute ago it was don't be macho, now it's don't be a baby. What do you want?"
"For you to behave sensibly."
"It's difficult for a man to behave sensibly when a woman's taking his clothes off in broad daylight. If you're going to kiss it and make it better, I've several other bruises. I've a dandy one on my ass as it happens."
"I'm sure that's terribly amusing.One of the men can drive you to the emergency room"
"No one's driving me anywhere. I'd know if my ribs are cracked as I've had a few in my time.It's a bruise, and it's throbbing like a bitch now that you've been playing with it."
She spotted another, riding high on his hip,and gave that a poke. This time he groaned.
"Keeley,you're torturing me here."
"Im just trying..." She trailed off as she lifted her head and saw his eyes. It wasn't pain or annoyance in them now. It was heat,and it was frustration. And it was surprisingly gratifying. "Really?"
It was wrong,and it was foolish, but a sip of power was a heady thing.She trailed her fingers along his hip, up his ribs and down again, and felt his mucles quiver. "Why don't you stop me?"
His throat hurt. "You make my head swim. And you know it."
"Maybe I do.Now.Maybe I like it." She'd never been deliberately provocative before. Had never wanted to be. And she'd never known the thrill of having a strong man turn to putty under her hands. "Maybe I've thought about you, Brian,the way you said I would."
"You pick a fine time to tell me when there's people everywhere, and your father one of them.
You'd think the man could have called her once, she thought, scowling at her boots. Sent a telegram, a damn smoke signal.
Nora RobertsYou're a killer, Keeley.You'd tease a man to death."
He didn't mean it as a compliment, but to her it was a revelation. "I've never tried it before. Now one's ever attracted me enough.You do,and I dont even know why."
When she dropped her hand,he took her wrist. It surprised him to feel the gallop of her pulse there, when her eyes, her voice had been so cool, so steady. "Then you're a quick learner."
"I'd like to think so.If I come to you, you'd be the first."
"The first what?" Temper wanted to stir, especially when she laughed. THen his mind cleared and the meaning flashed through like a thunderbolt. His hand tightened on her wrist, then dropped it as though she had turned to fire.
"That scared you enough to shut you up," she observed. "I'm surprised anything could render you speechless."
"I've..." But he couldn't think.
"No,don't fumble around for words. You'll spoil your image." She couldn't think just why his dazed expression struck her as so funny,or why the shock in his eyes was endearing somehow.
"We'll just say that,under these circumstances, we both have a lot to consider.And now,I'm way behind in my work, and have to get ready for my afternoon class."
She walked away,as easily, as casually, Brian thought numbly, as she might have if they'd just finished discussing the proper treatment for windgalls. She left him reeling.
he'd gone and fallen in love with the gentry,and the gentry was his boss's daughter. And his boss's daughter was innocent.
He'd have to be mad to lay a hand on her after this.
He began to wish Betty had just kicked him in the head and gotten it all over with.
There was nothing like an extra helping of guilt to cool a man's blood.And it was guilt as much as the hot food and the glass of good wine that got Brian through the evening in the Grant kitchen. The size of it left little room for lust, considering.
There was Adelia Grant giving him a warm greeting as if he was welcome to swing in for dinner anytime he had the whim, and Travis getting out an extra plate himself-as if he waited on employees five days a week-and saying that there was plenty to go around as Brendon had other plans for dinner.
Before he knew it, he was sitting down, having food heaped in front of him and being asked how his day had been.And not in a way that expected a report.
He didn't know what to do about it. He liked these people, genuinely liked them. And there he was lusting after their daughter. An alley mutt after a registered purebred.
Moving on was always the end plan.
New York,he remembered, was a fair distance away.It should be far enough. As for tonight, he was going to have a shot of whiskey in his tea to help smooth out the edges. Then by God, he was going to sleep if he had to bash himself over the head to accpmplish it.
And he wasn't going to give Keeley another thought.
The knock on the door had him cursing under his breath.Though she'd been doing well,his first worry was that the mare with bronchitis had taken a bad turn.He was already reaching for the boots he'd shed when he called out.
"Come in,it's open.Is it Lucy then?"
"No,it's Keeley." One brow lifted, she stood framed in the door. "But if you're expecting Lucy,I can go."
The boots dangled from his fingertips, and those fingertips had gone numb. "Lucy's a horse," he managed to say. "She doesn't often come knocking on my door.
I haven't been with a man before."
"I know it." Adelia's smile was soft, almost wistful. "Do you think I wouldn't know if that had changed for you? You think too much of yourself to give what you are to something unless it matters.No one's mattered before.
It was amazing,really,how two people could live and work in basically the same place,and one could completely avoid the other.It just took setting your mind to it.
Brian set his mind to it for several days.There was plenty of work to keep him occupied and more than enough reason for him to spend time away from the farm and on the tracks.But he found avoidance scared his pride. It was too close a kin to cowardice.
Added to that,he'd told Keeley he wanted to help her at the school and had done nothing abuot it.He asn't a man to break his word, no matter what it cost him.And, he reminded himself as he walked to Keeley's stables, he was also a man of some self-control. He had no intention of seducing or taking the advantage of innocence.
He'd made up his mind on it.
Then he stepped into the stables and saw her.He wouldn't have said his mouth watered, but it was a very close thing.
She was wearing one of those fancy rigs again-jodhpurs the color of dark chocolate and a cream sort of blouse that looked somehow fluid.her hair was down, all tumbled and wild as if she'd just pulled the pins from it. And indeed,as he watched she flipped it back and looped it through a wide elastic band.
He decided the best place in the universe for his hands to be were in his pockets.
"Lessons over?"
She glanced back, her hands still up in her hair.Ah,she thought.She'd wondered how long it would take him to wander her way again. "Why? Did you want one?
If it was my job to clean the kitchen after dinner,then that damn kitchen was going to sparkle so bright you'd need sunglasses for your midnight snack."
"That's frightening."
Responding to the humor in his eyes, she nodded.
It was like watching magic take wing, Brian thought.The muscular black horse soared over the ground with the woman on his back.They streaked over another rise,moving west,into the dying sun. The sky was a riot of color, a painting slashed with reds and golds. It seemed to him she would ride straight into it, through it.
And he'd have no choice but to follow her.
When she pulled up,turned to wait for him, her face flushed with pleasure, her eyes gleaming with it,he knew he'd never seen the like.
And wanting her was apt to kill him.
She'd gone and let her hair loose, he thought. Why did she have to do that? It made his hands hurt, actually hurt with wanting to slide into it.
"That's good." She stepped in, shut the door. And because it seemed too perfect not to, audibly flipped the lock. Seeing a muscle twitch in his jaw was incredibly satisfying.
He was a drowning man, and had just gone under the first time. "Keeley, I've had a long day here.I was just about to-"
"Have a nightcap," she finished. She'd spotted the teapot and the bottle of whiskey on the kitchen counter. "I wouldn't mind one myself." She breezed past him to flip off the burner under the now sputtering kettle.
She'd put on different perfume, he thought viciously. Put it on fresh, too, just to torment him. He was damn sure of it.It snagged his libido like a fish-hook.
"I'm not really fixed for company just now."
"I don't think I qualify as company." Competently she warmed the pot, measured out the tea and poured the boiling water in. "I certainly won't be after we're lovers."
He went under the second time without even the chance to gulp in air. "We're not lovers."
"That's about to change." She set the lid on the pot, turned. "How long do you like it to steep?"
"I like it strong, so it'll take some time. You should go on home now."
"I like it strong, too." Amazing, she thought,she didn't feel nervous at all. "And if it's going to take some time, we can have it afterward."
"This isn't the way for this." He said it more to himself than her. "This is backward, or twisted.I can't get my mind around it. no,just stay back over there and let me think a minute."
But she was already moving toward him, a siren's smile on her lips. "If you'd rather seduce me, go ahead."
"That's exactly what I'm not going to do." Thought the night was cool and his windows were open to it, he felt sweat slither down his back. "If I'd known the way things were, I'd never have started this."
That mouth of his, she thought. She really had to have that mouth. "Now we both know the way things are, and I intend to finish it.It's my choice."
His blood was already swimming. Hot and fast. "You don't know anything, which is the whole flaming problem."
"Are you afraid of innocence?"
"Damn right."
"It doesn't stop you from wanting me. Put your hands on me,Brian." She took his wrist,pressed his hand to her breast. "I want your hands on me."
The boots clattered to the floor as he went under for the third time.
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