Brendon (8 page)

Based on the way she was eyeing him, she could read every single one of his thoughts, too. Reaching for the door handle, he opened the passenger-side door and waited for Cheyenne to climb in, doing his damnedest not to gawk at her cute little ass while she did. Once he had the door closed behind her, he maneuvered around the truck, taking a deep breath before he joined her inside.

“Where to now?” he asked.

“My place?”

He was shocked at the immediate request. Almost as though she’d been thinking about it before he asked.

“What’s there to do there?” he questioned, realizing after it was too late what he’d actually said.

Cheyenne’s soft laughter had him glancing over as he pulled out of the parking lot and hit the road that would take them back to Coyote Ridge.

“I was thinkin’ you could help me sand a few chairs,” she said.

“I could do that.” He didn’t have anything better to do, and honestly, he was hoping to spend some more time with her. He wasn’t quite ready for the day to be over. Once he left her, he’d go back home and sit in front of the television until it was time for bed.

Speaking of home . . .

“You mind if we stop and pick up Scrap? He’s gonna be pissed if I leave him all day by himself.”

“Don’t mind at all.”

And with that, they were on their way.

chapter
NINE

C
heyenne wiped her forehead with the sleeve of the old, tattered denim shirt she’d pulled on over her tank top when they started working outside. Her less-than-fashionable selection hadn’t been due to the mild May temperature, but rather to keep some of the stain off her skin.

Buying a house and working on it were two very different things, Cheyenne had come to see. Cleaning didn’t prove to be much of an issue; however, handiwork really wasn’t her thing. Not that she wasn’t having a good time giving it a whirl. But, as with most things that required a steady hand, she’d learned in recent days that she wasn’t the tidiest person when it came to getting her assortment of dining room chairs back to their original glory. Her shirt now reflected the proof of that statement with the dark brown splotches scattered along the arms and down the front.

“You want somethin’ to drink?” Cheyenne offered Brendon as she pushed to her feet, stretching her sore back muscles.

He was in the process of sanding the last chair. His brilliant idea to grab his power sander had helped them move the project along quite nicely and she had managed to get at least one coat of stain on each of the chairs as he completed sanding them.

“Sure,” he answered, turning off the sander and setting it on a makeshift table he’d set up.

The guy was pretty damned handy to have around, there was no doubt about that.

“Lemonade? Tea? What’s your poison?” she asked as she pulled off her work gloves and headed for the door.

“Whatever’s easiest,” he answered, his gaze trailing down her legs.

Throughout the afternoon, Cheyenne had noticed his attention had continuously strayed to her. How could she not notice? The way his eyes smoldered when he took in the sight of her was some pretty powerful stuff. Granted, she’d been doing the same to him, ogling the way his back muscles flexed and bunched as he worked, admiring the way his tight ass looked in those dark blue jeans. Yep, working in these conditions hadn’t been a hardship at all.

“I’ll be right back,” she told him.

Cheyenne disappeared inside and made quick work of preparing their drinks. When she returned to the porch, she found Brendon—ball cap on backward—in the yard with Scrap. He’d found a stick and was tossing it for the sweet little dog who would retrieve it, scamper back, and leave it at Brendon’s feet, yapping until Brendon threw it again.

A weird sensation filled Cheyenne’s chest as she watched the two of them.

The scene wasn’t unusual, just a man playing with his dog, but it was so domestic, so natural, Cheyenne felt a flicker of longing ignite in her chest. She wanted this. This feeling of family, of normalcy. It wasn’t something she’d ever had. Her parents had never been big on making a home, or even being parents, for that matter. Which was why Cheyenne had lived with her grandparents most of her life.

“What’re you thinkin’ about?”

Cheyenne broke herself from her thoughts to see that Brendon was standing on the steps in front of her. Even with him two steps down, she still wasn’t as tall as he was. Smiling, she handed over his iced tea and took a sip of her own.

“It’s nothin’,” she muttered as she watched Scrap sniff around the porch. She had no desire to freak Brendon out by telling him where her thoughts had drifted to.

“It didn’t look like nothin’,” he told her. “Sit.”

When he pointed to the porch, Cheyenne moved down one step and then lowered herself to the wood floor. He joined her, sitting one step below.

“Now, let’s try again. What were you thinkin’ about?”

Cheyenne peered over at him. He wasn’t looking at her but was instead staring out at the acres of grass spread before them, and maybe that was the reason she felt a little stronger about sharing her thoughts. “I was thinkin’ how I’d never had this before. It’s kinda nice just sittin’ at home, doin’ mundane things.”

“By
this
, I take it you aren’t referrin’ to the house and the yard.”

“No. When I lived with my grandparents, we had that.”

“Tell me what it was like growin’ up at your house,” he said.

Figuring she would have to open up to him sooner or later if she wanted this relationship to go anywhere—and she really did—Cheyenne gave it some thought. Taking a deep breath and losing herself in her memories, Cheyenne began. “My parents were around until I was eight, I think. Maybe nine. Third grade, I know that much. I remember so many nights my grandmother would come over and stay at our apartment, sleeping on the couch so she could keep an eye on me while my parents went out. They had a lot of friends—most traipsed in and out of our house whenever they felt like it.

“I loved the nights my grandmother would come over. For one, it meant my parents weren’t there and neither were their scheming friends. We would spend hours playing board games, or we would sit on the couch and read. Grams wasn’t big on watching television, so rarely did we do that. Her reasoning was that I had enough TV time as it was because that’s how my parents allowed me to stay preoccupied. I don’t know what changed, or why my grandmother made the suggestion that I come live with her, but when she did, I think my parents were grateful. They were never home anyway. Starting in the first grade, I had walked home from school by myself, sometimes with a friend from the neighboring complex. Always coming home to an empty house.”

“Did your parents work?”

“My dad was a mechanic, but he never seemed to hold a job down well. My mother would hop from job to job on purpose, doing whatever suited her at the moment. I know she’d worked as a receptionist once but hated answering phones; she tried working with a maid service, but she didn’t even keep our house clean. So it was no wonder that neither of those worked out.

“Anyway, I moved in with my grandparents and I rarely saw my mom and dad. My grandfather managed a grocery store and my grandmother was a first-grade teacher. We lived in the same old house they’d moved to when they left here. It was a beautiful place, similar to this one in many ways.”

“Why’d they leave Coyote Ridge?” he asked.

“From what my grandmother told me, my dad was a hellion. And not just the mischievous sort. He was in trouble with the law by the time he was in junior high. It was around that time that they moved back to the area where my grandfather had grown up.”

“Is that why you bought this house? Because it reminded you of your grandparents?”

“I guess. This house, just like the one my grandparents owned, has so many memories. Unfortunately, when my grandfather passed away and my grandmother’s mind started to rapidly deteriorate, my parents wiped them out. Sold the house, the cars, anything of value. They took it all and left my grandmother with nothin’.”

“You said she’s in a nursin’ home?” Brendon questioned, peering over his shoulder at her.

“She is. Back in Abilene.”

“West Texas Princess,” Brendon muttered.

Cheyenne chuckled. “Not quite so fitting now that you know the real story, huh?” She had no idea why the media had taken to calling her that, but it was a name that stuck. If people only knew that she’d been as far from living a fairy tale as one could possibly be, she sometimes wondered how they’d look at her.

Brendon didn’t say anything, so Cheyenne continued.

“That’s why I want to get this done,” she said, motioning toward the house. “I need to bring Grams here with me so I can take care of her.”

“Where’re your parents now?”

“No idea. I haven’t talked to them for almost a year.”

Brendon’s head snapped around, his eyes studying her momentarily.

“They’re what you could consider . . . freeloaders. My mom has always thought that people owed her. It also didn’t help that she married the world’s most selfish man. My father has always taken money from my grandparents, and he didn’t have any qualms about taking it without asking, either. Now that he’s wiped Grams out completely, I want to get her away from them.”

“What about your mom’s parents?”

“She’s estranged from her entire family, her brother included. I haven’t spent much time with any of them, with the exception of visiting my cousin’s ranch a few times when I was younger. My parents really are difficult to get along with. They have a distinct ability to wear even the strongest person down. They’re another part of the reason I’ve been hidin’ out. I don’t want them to know where I am.”

“Do they want something from you, too?” Brendon asked, his attention once again on the rolling green landscape in front of them.

“They want anything and everything. They burn through money, spending it on frivolous crap. That and alcohol. They’ve told me that I owe them, that I should be sharin’ the wealth. It’s not that I wouldn’t do it, but I can’t trust them. Buying them a house and a car would be easy. Money’s not an issue. Knowin’ them, they’d sell it in a heartbeat, use the money for whatever, and be right back on my doorstep for more.”

The ice rattled in Brendon’s glass and Cheyenne realized he was finished. Perfect timing, too. She was suddenly tired of talking about herself.

WHEN CHEYENNE TOOK
his empty glass, Brendon got to his feet and went back to work, everything she’d told him still spinning in his head. Admittedly, he felt more like an asshole than he ever had. Hearing her story had given him insight into Cheyenne’s world: a picture of what it was like for her growing up. And the truth was, he hadn’t expected it. It didn’t fit at all with the assumptions he’d been making about her all along.

Just more proof that Cheyenne Montgomery was too damn good for the likes of him. Hell, he’d figured her for the type to have been given everything she wanted growing up. Difficult to hear that she’d lived quite the opposite.

Flipping on the sander, he finished with the flat surfaces on the last chair and when that was complete, he moved on to manually sanding the spindles with a sandpaper block. When he was done, he put the chair on the ground and watched as Cheyenne jumped into work mode, wiping the dust from the chair and then applying the stain.

Removing his protective glasses, he watched her while he leaned against one of the posts that held up the porch roof, and he wondered briefly what had ever given him such an inaccurate impression of this woman. It certainly wasn’t something she’d shared with him, because until now, he’d never asked about her history. And honestly, she’d never given him any reason to believe she was all flash and glitter, but that was exactly how he’d categorized her from the minute he met her. Well, more like the minute she turned him down.

And therein lay the problem. Brendon had made up his own version of Cheyenne because he hadn’t been happy with the fact that she had turned him down. All the while he’d missed out on this. Spending time with her, talking, working. Normal things that normal people did.

“What’s runnin’ through that head of yours?” Cheyenne asked.

Brendon glanced down at her, noticing she wasn’t looking at him. She was working diligently on the chair, slapping on a coat of stain and getting more on herself than on the chair. He grinned.

“Nothin’,” he told her, throwing back her reply from earlier. He’d been surprised that Cheyenne had opened up to him so easily. Surprised, but definitely not disappointed.

“Nice try, camo boy.”

Brendon laughed.
Camo boy?
“I can guaran-
damn
-tee I haven’t been a boy for a long time.”

“I believe it,” she muttered, still focused on that chair, her face hidden beneath the ball cap—the old one she’d insisted on putting back on so that the new ones didn’t get messed up.

The silence descended once again and Brendon settled on watching Cheyenne work. The way she paid so much attention to detail only enlightened him more. Here was a woman who could’ve spent an arm and a leg on furnishing this old house, yet she was out here fixing up an old set of mismatched chairs herself. It made his respect for her multiply.

As he stood there admiring Cheyenne, Brendon remembered something his mother had mentioned. “Oh, hey, there’s a birthday party for Sawyer next Saturday at the resort. Come with me?”

Cheyenne’s head lifted, her green eyes sliding up to meet his as a smile curved the corners of her mouth. “Did you just ask me on a date, camo boy?”

“Keep it up and I’m gonna show you that I ain’t no damn boy,” he teased, his voice raw with the lust that coursed through him at the thought of doing just that.

When an answering heat flared in her gaze, Brendon’s cock thickened and he shifted, praying like hell she didn’t see that he was now hard.

Surprisingly, Cheyenne got to her feet after she set the paintbrush on the small can of stain. Her eyes remained locked with his as she approached, and when her body pressed up against his, Brendon knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of her not noticing.

“How do you propose to do that?” she asked.

Brendon’s eyebrows lifted in question. He had no fucking clue what she was talking about. In fact, he couldn’t think if he wanted to. Every ounce of his brain power was now focused on the way she was practically flush against him, her breasts crushed against his abdomen.