Untouched (11 page)

“It looks like the kind of place you would live,” she said.

“You think?” he asked.

He was still shirtless. And it was all distracting.

“Well, yeah. It’s rugged and . . . outdoorsy.”

His lips quirked up into a half smile. “You think I’m rugged and outdoorsy?”

“It’s not a compliment, it’s an observation. Stop looking so thrilled with yourself.”

“I took it as a compliment. It’s a positive observation, so it seems like it counts.”

“Doesn’t.”

“Well, I’m going to go and move the tractor.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“Wait in the warmth,” he said, walking out the front door, shirtless still, leaving her standing there in the entry by herself.

She paced from there into the living area and looked out the windows, mainly seeing her reflection in the glass. She was still feeling weirdly buzzed, like she’d started feeling when she’d knocked on the door.

Or, if she was honest, like she’d been feeling since he kissed her yesterday.

It was just a whole bunch of hard-up virgin nonsense. She’d left it too long. But there was seriously no guy in town she wanted to get freaky with. There had been Tyler. She’d thought she had a chance with him, not for marriage and babies, but at least for sex. And then he’d gone and gotten his stupid head married to another woman.

This was all Tyler’s fault.

Okay, kind of a stretch to blame yesterday’s ill-advised make-out session on a guy who didn’t even live in town anymore, but whatever. It was so much easier than blaming herself.

The front door opened again and Quinn came in. “Won’t start.”

“What?”

“It won’t start. Actually, per the note on the dash, that’s why it’s there. It needs to be serviced. Sorry.”

She flung her hands into the air. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Call your brother to have him come and pick you up?”

“No,” she said. “No.”

“Have me drop you off?”

She pictured Cade or Cole walking out and catching her with Quinn. “Probably not.”

“Your brothers still don’t know I’m your boss, do they?”

“No.”

“How about this, I’ll drop you off, but I’ll do it far from the house. Will that work?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“As much as I would love to be there when your brother finds out you’re working for me, I’m not in the mood to get punched in the face.”

Quinn honestly didn’t know how he was going to play this. She was trapped. Which made him feel the urge to twirl a mustache he didn’t have. He could drive her home and make sure her brother saw them. But that would shatter things a little bit earlier than he intended.

Because she wasn’t seduced yet.

And then there was the option of getting her to stay here. But there was no way to pose that scenario without sounding completely lascivious and generally untrustworthy.

He was both, which also made it difficult to sound like anything else.

“Figure it out, baby. It’s either bunking down with me or taking a ride.” She lifted her thumb to her lips and started gnawing on the nail. “Third option, you can hitchhike and hope you don’t get eaten by wolves,” he added, his tone dry.

“Oh . . . wow. The wolves are tempting.”

“Oh really?”

“Less dangerous.”

“They have big teeth,” he said.

“So do you.”

He looked at her, at the slow blush spreading over her pale skin. “All the better to eat you with.”

And he pictured it. Tasting her. Spreading her thighs and savoring her flavor, delving deep. He took a step toward her, and he was sure every one of his graphic fantasies was written on his face.

She gasped, which turned into a choke, and gave some validity to that thought. “Yes. The wolves. I think I’ll hitchhike. If I get eaten, tell everyone I fought valiantly and kept my dignity.”

“You are not hitchhiking,” he said. The image of her, out there in the dark all by herself, made him nervous and edgy. It surprised him. Surprised him that it made him feel anything. That he cared at all. But he did. “I’ll take you back to your brother’s house, and I’ll drop you off and make sure he doesn’t know it’s me. Okay?”

“And how will I get to work in the morning?”

“I can pick you up in the same spot I drop you off at.”

“And what will I say happened to my car?”

“The truth. Hillbilly sandwich. Coworkers who are so busy screwing each other they don’t realize when they do things like leave their trucks somewhere they might be blocking people in.”

“Fine,” she said. “But he’s going to think it’s weird if you don’t come in to talk to him, won’t he?”

“No, I think it’s weird he would need me to. You’re a grown woman.”

She looked down, then back up. “Yeah, I know.”

“You don’t have to ask his permission, and you don’t need him to meet your employer, right?”

“Right.”

“Trust me, he’ll like it better than you getting eaten by wolves.”

She held up her hand and made a small measurement with her thumb and forefinger. “Marginally, if he knew who was driving me. All right. Let’s go. And put a shirt on, for heaven’s sake.”

“You don’t want me to drive you home shirtless?” he asked.

Lark rolled her eyes. “Could you be more redneck?”

“I reckon.”

“Oh, go put a shirt on.”

Her gaze drifted to his chest. He liked that. She was not very subtle when it came to checking him out, and that made him hot. All over. He was used to women who gave coy glances and looked at him with hooded eyes. All very much a game.

But Lark wasn’t playing a game. She didn’t want to look at him, but she did. She didn’t want him to notice, and yet she was so obvious, so unpracticed, he couldn’t help but notice that she was.

He walked into the kitchen and grabbed his black t-shirt from the bar stool and shrugged it over his head. When he looked back at her, she was watching him again. And she whipped her head away quickly, as if that would somehow make him think she’d been staring at the front door the whole time.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.” He grabbed his keys from the wall and opened the door, following her outside and leading the way down to where his truck was parked.

Lark didn’t wait for him to open the door for her, she just jerked it open herself and climbed in, buckling and staring straight ahead, her hands in her lap, her jaw set.

He got in the driver’s side and started the engine. The close confines of the truck affected him a lot more than he’d imagined. He was used to picking up women. At rodeos, bars, whatever. And often he drove them to the hotels where they had their one-night stand, but he didn’t remember the cab of his truck ever feeling like this.

Like all the air had been sucked out of it.

The truck was the kind that had a bench seat. He used it for ranch work, and it was older, not like the newer truck he had back in Texas. Until now, he’d missed his more plush ride with its leather interior and engine that didn’t growl like a feral beast. Right now he didn’t miss it so much, because right now he was fantasizing about all kinds of ways a bench seat could be used.

It made his palms sweat. Made him hard. Make him shake. What was it about Lark Mitchell that turned him into the horny, insecure high school boy he’d never been?

He’d never been the kind of guy to sweat over a woman. He’d attracted them from the time he’d first started growing facial hair. Women who were older. Who liked a bad attitude and a dirty mouth. Never a woman like Lark, with her air of innocence and sweetness.

Not that she was all sweet. Hell no. She was sweet and tart, which made her way more enticing.

She wasn’t pure innocence either. There was an edge of earthiness to her. One that he badly wanted to see more of. He wondered how much of it she’d discovered? Wondered if a man had ever really taken the time to awaken all the passion he knew she had simmering under the surface.

Immediately, he hated any man who’d ever tried and left her unsatisfied. But then, if he’d found out there’d been a man who’d satisfied her completely, he would have hated him too.

He would have cheerfully wrapped his hands around that man’s neck and squeezed.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel in response and maneuvered the truck onto the road.

“So . . . things going well?” she asked. “Things getting . . . set up and stuff?”

“Yes. This is terrible small talk. It’s small talk we’ve already had, in fact,” he said.

“Oh. Well, should I say something else?”

“Yeah, why don’t you say something real?”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged his shoulders, his hands still on the wheel. “I don’t know. You don’t like me, right?” He thought he might check in case it had changed.

“Right.”

“So, how about this. There’s nothing you could say that would ruin our relationship. Because you already know I won’t fire you. You don’t like me, you don’t care if I like you. Seems like we’re in a good position to have some honesty between us.”

The irony of that statement, considering his plans, wasn’t lost on him. And he wasn’t sure why he even wanted her to tell him something. To build closeness? As part of the seduction? Maybe, but that wasn’t why he’d asked. He had no idea why he’d asked. He just had.

“So what? This is like a cone of silence?”

“Yeah, why not? Who would I tell?”

“And why are we doing this?”

“Because it’s better than this meaningless, bland garbage. I’ve had my tongue in your mouth. It seems stupid with that considered.”

“What, so I somehow owe you honesty because I acted like an idiot and kissed you?”

“Just thought you might like a chance to say something.”

She hesitated. “Fine. I love my brothers. I love my life at Elk Haven and I’m not ready to leave it. Because the world scares me. With that in mind, I know a lot of what I’m going to say next seems hypocritical and ungrateful, but we don’t like each other already, so who cares if you know?” She tapped her fingers on the window. “I feel like I’m suffocating there sometimes. There are too many ghosts. Cade and Cole mean well, but I can’t do anything without them butting in. It’s a lot of work trying to keep them happy. I spend so much time trying to keep them happy that I’m not exactly sure what might make me happy. I do stuff on the computer, and that’s all me. It’s secret and it’s mine. But that’s the only place I don’t . . . I don’t worry about what they think.”

He chuckled. “That’s funny. I spent a long time trying so hard to piss my family off that I didn’t know what I liked either. I just did things to make them mad, because I wanted the result. A lot more than I wanted what I was doing specifically. Either way, doing things for other people is stupid.”

“Life advice, Quinn? Really?”

“Why not? Cone of silence, right? And I’m older than you. I’ve done more than you. Probably made a hell of a lot more mistakes than you, so trust me, living for other people, no matter the reasoning, isn’t the way to live.”

“But you did all that because you were mad at them. I do it because I love them. Because I’m grateful.”

“So your entire life has to be one big thank-you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know . . . I don’t know how to want something else, but I’m not totally happy with what I’m doing. So how’s that for stupid?”

“Sounds about right.”

“What? Stupid?”

“No, just what you said, it sounds like life to me.”

“Turn left,” she said, and he steered the truck onto a long dirt driveway. “You make me feel almost normal.”

“Well, I don’t know how you got that out of the conversation, woman, you’re weird as hell.”

She laughed so hard she snorted, and that made him laugh too. Which was the strangest thing of all. The way that she affected him. That she affected him at all. He wasn’t used to a woman affecting much more than his dick.

He didn’t have a lot of friends. He didn’t really have any, apart from Sam, who was paid to stick with him. People in general made him feel very little. Except anger.

But Lark Mitchell made him laugh.

“Can you pull over up here?” she asked.

“Sure.” He put his truck in park and left the engine running. “You’re sure you can walk from here?”

“It’s not far.”

“I really would rather if you weren’t eaten by wolves.”

Lark looked at Quinn in the dark, at the lines of his face, highlighted by the moon, and she tried to stop her heart from speeding up. But it was impossible. She felt . . . she didn’t know what she felt. He was now the only man she’d thoroughly kissed. And he was the only person on earth who knew how she felt about life. About her brothers. About what she wanted, or rather, the depth to which she was confused about what she wanted.

It made her feel like a bond was slowly forming between them. More than chemistry. More than anger. And it was unsettling, to say the least.

“Well, unsurprisingly, I don’t want me to get eaten by them either.”

“All right. I’ll pick you up here tomorrow.”

“Great.”

Except she didn’t get out of the truck. Because that bond-thing seemed to be holding her there. Seemed to be compelling her to stay. And more than that, it seemed to be compelling her to move closer to him, rather than scrambling for the door.

Her heart was beating so fast and hard she could hear it echoing in her head, the only sound in the truck cab besides the dim rumble of the engine and their breathing, which she didn’t think she was imagining was getting heavier with each passing second.

Even as she leaned in closer to him, she questioned her sanity. She asked herself what she was doing. But she kept hearing her own words, over and over again, and they were louder than the warnings.

I spend so much time trying to keep them happy that I’m not exactly sure what might make me happy.

Right now, she was wondering if Quinn’s lips against hers might make her happy. And right now, it seemed like that might be more important than anything else. It was so dark in the truck, its engine keeping out the normal night sounds. It felt like something different. Something out of time and reality.

It seemed safe. And incredibly dangerous.