Stripped Down (8 page)

“It’s not caveman day,” she announces. See, her problem is that she thinks I
care
. I lean down, until my mouth is by her ear. She shoves at my chest, and I gather her wrists in my free hand. Carefully. The last thing I want to do is break her.

I’m about to say something that will push her, something that will give her a hint about my plan to fuck the ever-living daylights out of her (on my schedule not hers, although making her wait for it sounds like a plan too) when I get a good look at her face. I don’t know where she spent the night, but the skin beneath her eyes is kind of lilac-colored, bruised and tired. She’s still the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen, but I suspect she once again failed to plan ahead. I didn’t ask if she had a place to stay when she came to Lonesome, and I should have. Should have made it clear that there’s always room for her on my ranch. She’s had me off-balance, though, from the moment she surfaced in my swimming hole six months ago. The whole naked thing hadn’t helped my focus then.

Apparently it leads to impulsive comments now, because I promptly say the wrong thing. “Where did you spend the night?”

What I mean is
You look tired. Is everything okay?
What comes out, though, sounds like an accusation. Everything would be so much simpler if I could simply pick her up and carry her off to bed with me. Plus, she looks as if she could use the sleep.

Naturally, she glares harder and shoves at my chest as if she can actually make me move. I outweigh her by at least a hundred pounds, so there’s no way she forces me to do anything.

“Are you saying I look like shit?” Since I’m immoveable, she settles for stepping forward, her body slamming into mine. This can’t possibly have the effect she planned. She’s way too tiny to actually hurt me, and I enjoy every second her boobs are pressed against my chest.

“I like your dress,” I tell her. “Especially this ribbon thing.”

The skinny ribbons of her sundress crisscross her shoulders and tie in bows. The dress makes her look fragile and more than a little sweet, which is completely deceptive. Rose is many things, but she’s got a backbone of steel. She’s also devious, more than a bit mean, and resilient. These are all good things.

She backs up, removing her boobs from my chest. Too bad. “You’re into women’s fashions?”

Given the way her eyes skip my face and go straight to my arms caging her in place, she’s contemplating step two in her prison break.

“I’m into you.” She sucks in a breath at my words, and maybe not because I drag my thumb over the some of the ribbon in question. Which happens to be decorating the front of her dress in the best kind of X-marks-the-spot over her cleavage.

Since I like having her off-balance, I step back and motion her to the chair. I can’t sit while she’s standing.

Mitch promptly launches into a hasty reading of the will. Either he thinks we might kill each other, or he wants to finish up here so he can share the news of our attraction with the rest of Lonesome. I already know the contents, but they’re gonna surprise the hell out of Rose because Auntie Dee’s made sure Rose can’t get rid of me.

Auntie Dee left her ranch to Rose and I in a fifty-fifty split.

Rose is still gaping at Mitch, when the lawyer produces a handwritten addendum. It’s more of a note really, in which Auntie Dee mentions that she knows how much Rose loved the house and that she hopes this means that Rose knows she’ll always have a home now. She adds a totally unnecessary message for me, asking me to look after Rose and keep everything safe. I’m not gonna let Rose get hurt and she should have known that. Or maybe she thought Rose needed the reminder. It’s hard to ask a dead woman what she meant. Rose starts blinking fast, holding back tears.
Fuck
. It’s not like I carry Kleenex on me.

I cut Mitch off when he starts listing the outstanding debts the estate needs to settle before we can claim free title to the place. There’s always a chance that Rose is reasonable and sells out without a fight, but those tears suck. Home. House. Obstacle standing in the way of my new well.

Yeah. Making those three labels work together will take a miracle.

Before Rose can break out into audible sobs or fire off the million questions she’s clearly itching to ask, I lean down and make my offer. Money makes everything easier, and I don’t mind paying. “You don’t want the place, Rose. It’ll just be a giant headache for you. Tell me what you want for it, and I’ll write you a check and buy you out.”

She twists her head and meets my gaze. Shit. Naturally, she’s gonna take the hard way. If she had the choice of driving a herd of cattle to market over a nice, easy plain or taking them through a snow-choked mountain pass, she’d be climbing the slope already.

“Don’t tell me what I want. You have no business even being here today.” She points to her suitcase. “I’ve brought my papers and my business plan. I’m ready to move in and get started today.”

Business plan?
I decide to ignore that for the moment.

“On the contrary, darling.” I can’t keep the satisfaction out of my smile. “I’m just as necessary here as you are. I’m your new partner.”

She crosses her arms over her breasts, which she wouldn’t do if she knew what it did to the top of her sundress. Her breasts are pretty little mounds peeking over the band of ribbon, and part of me insists I trace that naughty line, first with my fingers and then with my mouth. I almost don’t care that Mitch is staring at us, his head whipping back and forth like he’s at a goddamned tennis match. This has to be the most excitement his office has seen in years.

She makes a give-it-up gesture at me. “I’m waiting for an explanation.”

Rose has never been patient. I wonder if she rushes toward orgasm with the same pell-mell enthusiasm.

“I own half. You own half.”

“Half makes us even,” she snaps.

“Maybe I’m the
better
half,” I growl right back, because fact number one? “I’m the executor, darling, and it’s up to me to settle Auntie Dee’s estate.”

“So you’re in charge. As always.” Her expression turns mutinous as she faces off with me.

Yeah, my Rose is gonna be trouble.

Just like always.

ROSE

Angel thinks he’s in charge, but he’s wrong. No cowboy gets to run my show. He doesn’t get to take away my home or my chance at a tattoo parlor of my own.

I may not have the money for renovations, property taxes, or even the damn electric hookup, but being back in Lonesome puts me one step closer to realizing my dream. I’m going to belong here, even if it kills me.

So no way I sell out to Angel.

Of course, words are easy—the bigger-than-life problem is slouched against the wall behind my chair, his jeans-covered thighs brushing me in too many places. I hate that I tingle where our bodies meet. He doesn’t say another word after I reject his latest offer, though. Instead, he settles back against the wall, watching. That’s Angel for you. Slow. Thorough. Immovable. He’s a fucking wall and a roadblock. Somehow, I need to get through him. Around him.

Under
him, a traitorous voice in my head (or maybe it’s my pussy) suggests.

Would he be that intense in bed?

His need to dominate is a major turn-on, but I shouldn’t let it be. When I have sex, I’m in charge. That’s how it has to be. Angel’s will is like fucking steel and there’s every chance he cages me with it.

Oblivious to my inner horniness, Angel holds out a hand, and the lawyer forks over the will. It must be nice to command respect like that, but Angel doesn’t even seem to notice the lawyer’s insta-obedience. Ten minutes later, we’re still waiting while Angel silently reviews the will’s contents. I itch to get going. I hate sitting still, and I need to see the inside of Auntie Dee’s house again.

My
place.

Of half of it at any rate. I don’t know why she set things up this way, but she didn’t owe me anything and she’s not wrong about my loving the place. It’s my home.

I make a second attempt at taking charge. “Look,” I say. Calmly. Reasonably. As if there’s no reason at all why Angel shouldn’t agree with me and make both our lives easier. “I just want to go over to my house. Take a look around.”

“Half a house,” he growls. “You want the first floor or the second?”

I’m sure Angel has read the will before, so there’s no obvious reason for him to reread the document right now. Probably, he’s simply enjoying making me wait. After all, I made him wait—and Angel’s big on balancing the scales. I kind of shiver thinking about that. He’s always specialized in swift-and equal-retaliation. Maybe it’s all those years as a SEAL.

“All you have to do is give me the key to the house,” I press. “And I’ll be on my way.”

The lawyer looks at Angel, and I suck in a breath, reminding myself I’m not sixteen any more. “The key?” I prompt.

Angel finally looks up. You’d think that will was the
National Enquirer
and the Gettysburg Address rolled into one. It can’t possibly be that interesting. “She wants the key, Mitch. Give it to her.”

Pulling open a drawer, the lawyer rummages around as if he’s glad to be busy. When he finally slides a little manila envelope across the desk to me, I tear the sealed flap open impatiently, dumping the familiar key chain into my palm. The key is attached to the little pink rabbit’s foot I bought Auntie Dee one year. The fur has worn away on one side, where Auntie Dee rubbed it religiously before she got onto the bus that took her on senior trips to the local Indian casino. The fur tip is also permanently matted from a run-in with a diet soda, and that’s just one of many injuries. The little pink token somehow became a road map of precious moments of Auntie Dee’s life. Wrapping my fingers around the rabbit’s foot, I fight back tears.

All I have left of Auntie Dee is this worn-out rabbit’s foot, too many regrets, and a house. I’ve lost my one true family, I realize in a rush. My mother’s out there somewhere, working on stepdad six or seven (I lost count after the fourth guy), but to say we’re not close is an understatement. I hadn’t fully acknowledged just how strong the connection was between me and Auntie Dee until it was too late. Now Auntie Dee is gone, too.

Mitch follows up the key with a little plastic-wrapped package of tissues, as if sufficient Kleenex can fix the enormous, insurmountable problem of Auntie Dee’s death.

“I miss her,” I say out loud.

Angel sets the stack of papers back on the desk. “We all do. Auntie Dee was a good woman.”

Bending over the desk, he signs his name on the last page of the will and then slides the stack of legal documents toward me. Points to the empty blank where my name goes and hands me a pen.

“She was proud of you,” he says quietly. “Real proud. She talked all the time about how you were learning to be a tattoo artist in San Francisco. She didn’t get the chance to go to school herself, so it meant the world to her that you went. When you were on TV for that reality show, she made the entire town watch.”

Great. Everyone watched me lose. Worse, while Auntie Dee stayed, I
went
. Almost clear to the other end of the state. As far away from this man as I could get because he was just the last in a long line of little failures on my part. Lost in the memories, I almost miss his next words.

“We’ll get an appraisal,” he tells me, because God forbid he actually ask me to do anything. “Find out what the house is worth, and I’ll write you a check.”

Like hell he will.
“I’m going to live in my house.”

“We’ll talk about it,” he says, and his tone warns me that he thinks there’s no negotiating room.

I let him grab my suitcase and steer me outside and toward his truck. Just like that, he’s taking over my life. Deciding what’s best for me. I’m hyperaware of his large, warm body beside me. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Angel is just doing the right thing, looking out for me. Being protective. Words of interest aside, when he looks at me, he doesn’t see Rose Jordan. Instead, he sees a problem needing fixing—and I’m done with being an item on his to-do list.

“We’ll get the place appraised right away, and I’ll write you a check,” he repeats, and a slow burn starts in the pit of my stomach. I stand on my own two feet now. I look down at my new sandals. Even if my feet are killing me.

“No.” One word, but it covers everything.

Angel pushes his Stetson back on his head and looks me over. “You sure about that answer? Because I’m willing and able to write a check, Rose.”

I don’t want a check—I want a house. A place to open my tattoo shop and ink to my heart’s content. A
home,
said heart whispers because it’s a dumbass, and another chance to get things right.

“I want to see my house, Angel.”

“Fine.” He shakes his head, as if my agreeing to his terms is just a matter of time. “You want to see the place, I’ll take you there.”

“I have a car,” I point out, but he just shakes his head again and opens the passenger door of his pickup. Since this is one battle I’m not winning, I get in. Carefully closing the door behind me, Angel goes around the pickup and slides into the driver’s seat. It’s going to be a really silent ride out to Auntie Dee’s. Angel never does chitchat, but now he appears to have given up on talking altogether. His hands on the wheel shout “capable and fully in control.” He knows where he’s going and why, just like he always has.