Can't Buy Me Love (30 page)

The kisses were long and slow, open-mouthed and consuming. As if they had all the time in the world to just stand here and kiss. It was somehow both innocent and the best kind of sinful.

He stepped forward, pushing her against the wall, his fingers cupping her head as if he was holding her still so he could just taste her. Just eat her. One kiss rolled into the next.

It was the sexiest thing she’d ever been a part of, this endless kiss. Her skin opened up to his and it was as if their clothes had melted and she felt him along her bones, in her blood.

Her fingers traced the rigid muscles of his back, marveling at the strength that made him so different. So delicious. She wanted to lay him out and taste every inch of him, every muscle and sinew.

She wanted to lay him down and make snow angels on all that skin.

“What’s so funny?” he asked against her lips, and she shook her head.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Is it dirty? Because if it’s dirty, I’d really like to hear it.”

Standing on tiptoe, she whispered some choice filth in his ear and he groaned, pulling her closer into the bow of his body, and she wished she could just stay there. Stay there forever, caught in this web of lust and affection.

But as the kisses became less languorous and more consuming, lust outweighed affection and soon she was pushing herself into him, grinding the hottest of her hot spots against his body, searching for the relief she knew he could so spectacularly give her.

Her fingers found the soft, sensitive skin just under the
hem of his shirt, the muscles that flexed and jumped at her touch, and she curved her hands under his belt, over the hard curves of his professional-athlete ass.

A muffled curse split the darkness just before the overhead lights flipped on, and Tara leapt away from Luc as if he were suddenly made of bees.

Eli, his hand frozen on the light switch, stood in the opposite doorway, the formal dining room table dressed to the nines between them.

“Eli … ah, what are you doing?” To her great embarrassment, her voice squeaked.

Luc didn’t help matters by laughing.

“Ruby called my cell, said there was an extra steak.”

“There is!” she cried. “Isn’t that great?”

“Calm down, Tara,” Luc said. “He just caught us kissing. We weren’t robbing the place.”

Eli’s eyes, full of accusation, sliced through Tara, right to Luc. Luc’s laughter stopped on a dime, and the room exploded with tension.

“If you have a problem, Eli—” Luc pushed away from Tara, stepping toward Eli, and Tara put a hand on his chest, felt his heart thunder under her palm.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

It took a moment but finally he smiled, lifted her hand from his chest, and kissed the palm.

“I’d better go check on those steaks.”

The hush that settled over the dining room as Luc left was weighty, but she shook it off.

“It was just a kiss—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Tara.”

“All right, I had my hands down his pants.”

His eyes shamed her, because he was just worried. When so many people didn’t think of her twice, Eli was worried.

“I’m okay, Eli. Honestly.”

“He’s a Baker—”

“Not all of them are bad, Eli. Luc … Luc is a good guy.”

“He’s going to leave. Once this farce of a will is done, he’s out of here.”

“And you think that bothers me?” she asked, surprised at the way he must think of her. “You think I’ve got plans past next week?”

He blew a long breath out of his nose, sounding like one of the Anguses. “I’m just worried about you, Tara.”

Her heart melted a little. “And that is about the sweetest thing, Eli. But I don’t need worrying.”

He grunted, and she didn’t know if that grunt meant agreement or that he thought she was full of shit, but he stepped around the table and headed toward the kitchen, where the scent of grilling meat was beginning to waft in from the patio grill.

Falling in step behind him, she had to marvel at the strange turn her life had taken. After a lifetime of taking care of herself, of fending off the wolves on her own, she suddenly had a hockey player and a cowboy standing up to defend her long-gone honor.

It was enough to make a girl giddy.

“Jacob!” Luc yelled, walking through the barn into the empty arena. It had been a long night, and he’d spent most of it staring up at the ceiling telling himself that Tara had to come to him. He’d chased her enough.

But she never came.

“Come on, buddy, it’s time to go!”

He paused, waiting for movement, waiting for the kid to sneeze, but there was nothing but silence and the cry of barn swallows.

Frustrated and running late, he headed back through the barn.

From the corner of his eye, Luc saw Eli step into the
barn and stop, staring at him down the long middle aisle.

In the back of his head, the spaghetti western music started up.

“Hey, Eli.” Luc walked down the hallway, ready to bite this particular problem off at the root. He didn’t need an overprotective cowboy with a grudge against the Bakers messing up his sex life.

“Luc.” Eli brusquely dropped the saddlebag he carried over the low open door of the stable.

“About last night—”

“Tara’s a big girl. She made it clear it was none of my business.”

Oh
. Luc felt like he’d shaken off his gloves for nothing. “Good.”

“But this ranch
is
my business.” Eli’s smile held no affection, and very little humor. It was the anti-smile. “I’m holding an auction for the Angus herd.”

“You’re selling it?” Luc asked, startled.

“I am. Beginning of September.”

Eli stood there, shoulders squared, as if daring Luc to oppose him. “All right,” he said with a shrug.

“And I want to buy back my family’s land.” The guy was carrying a hundred-year-old generational grudge, as if the wounds were fresh. The bitterness was poisonous and Luc wanted nothing to do with it.

“Look, Eli, I have no interest in keeping your land.”

“Really? Then you’ll have no problem selling it to me.”

All the land. Some of it. He didn’t care. “It’s yours.” Luc shook his head. “I think with the exception of the house and Tara’s studio—”

“I want it all.”

Now, Luc could give a shit about the ranch, but the tone in Eli’s voice put every single battle instinct on edge
and he found himself wanting to fight for the sake of fighting.

“This land was my family’s,” Eli said. “From the very beginning.”

“And your family lost it or sold it for nothing—from the very beginning.”

“And I’m going to get it back. I’ll take care of Tara. And the ranch. All of it. When you go back to your life, there’s no reason for you to come back here.”

“Is this about Tara?” Luc had no idea where this animosity was coming from, because it felt jealous and protective.

“No, Luc, it’s about the damn ranch. Once this land is rid of all of you I can start again. Fresh.”

Luc gaped at the man in front of him. The man who had worked year after year for Lyle Baker, playing the part of loyal employee. Practically a family member.

“All these years, I always thought my dad would have been happier with you as a son. But you were just biding your time until you could get back the land?”

“I didn’t like him, Luc. Maybe not as much as you didn’t like him, but not by much. The man took advantage of my father at the worst time of his life.”

“That sounds like Lyle.”

Suddenly, Luc wanted nothing more than to be free of the past, of his father’s machinations, of this man’s bitterness. Other than Tara, there was nothing here for him. And Eli knew it—was counting on it.

“Look, there’s nothing I can do for a few more months,” Luc said. “My hands are tied by that will.”

“When they are untied I want the land.”

“My sister is planning on staying at the ranch—”

“She can pay rent.”

Luc laughed. “Honestly, Eli, you can’t be serious. Pay rent?”

“Those are my terms.”

“I haven’t even sold you the damn land yet.”

“Your family has no interest in this place. If your sister is looking for a quiet place to hide out, she’s welcome to do it here. For a small fee, probably much smaller than she’d pay anywhere else. I’ve been paying rent on my family’s home for twenty years.”

Luc did the quick math. “Since your mom left?”

“Since Dad started drinking and had to sell the land to Lyle in order to pay his debts.”

“Oh Christ, Eli, I had no idea—”

“Why would you? You had a life of your own. A career. The old man drove you away. Just like he drove off everyone else.”

“Except you.”

“And Tara Jean.”

There it was, the wellspring of Eli’s protectiveness toward Tara; Eli didn’t think Luc deserved her.

He clearly didn’t know the whole truth about the woman he was defending. As soon as the ugly thought entered his head, his stomach twisted. That wasn’t how he saw her.

Was it?

“You’re going to leave, Luc,” Eli said as if reading Luc’s mind. “Don’t hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt.”

“What do you think?” Jacob asked, lifting up the page of sketch paper he’d been drawing on.

“Is it a dog?” Tara asked.

“A horse!”

Tara winced. “Horses have longer legs.” Reaching over his shoulder to grab one of her wax pencils, she accidentally knocked over the cup. Pencils spilled across the drafting table and he scurried to pick them up.

“I’ll get them,” he cried and carefully, as if defusing a
bomb, she reached out and touched his shoulder, the fragile bird bones of his shoulder.

“It’s all right.”

He’d been coming to her studio every day since last Tuesday, and as hard as she thought it might be to hang out with this kid—any kid—after years of thinking of them as one step up from nuclear waste, it wasn’t.

It was a joy.

“So? Are you a good artist?” he asked, as they chased pencils across the floor.

“I like art.” She shrugged, not quite sure how to answer such a question. “I always liked to draw.”

He nodded like a puppy, his hair flopping like ears, his eyes shining with the most pure and simple affection. It was addicting, that affection. Better than candy. “I’d love to draw all day.”

“That part is fun.”

“Then you’re lucky, aren’t you?” he asked, blinking his big, wide eyes at her.

Lucky?
The word was like ancient Arabic. Something she needed translated to understand.

“I think you’re lucky,” he said, handing her the wax pencils like a bouquet of flowers.

“Jacob?”

Tara nearly dropped the pencils and stepped away from the boy, as if she’d been caught doing something wrong.

“Hey, Uncle Luc,” Jacob called in greeting, spinning around on his stool to face Luc where he stood in the doorway to her studio, backlit by bright sunshine.

Watching Luc walk toward Jacob, his body so lean and powerful, a work of art underneath a gray T-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts, she wished they were alone.

First she’d strip him, exorcise this lust that had been eating her brain since he’d stepped onto the ranch, and
then … then she’d draw him. All those curves and planes, the strength and grace.

She’d never done that before—sketched someone—but she wanted to sketch him.

Maybe she was more of an artist than she thought.

Or maybe she just needed to get laid.

Luc’s eyes blazed as if he could read her mind.

“You ready to go?” Luc asked, and Jacob shook his head.

“Uncle Luc,” the boy whined, “I hate Saturday morning craft club.”

“Sorry, kiddo, but your mom signed you up—”

“Mom’s at the lawyers, she won’t know if I don’t go. I can stay here and hang out with Tara!”

Tara blushed at his enthusiasm, suffused with pleasure, like a sugar rush that didn’t crash.

“It’s fine with me,” she said. “He’s drawing, that’s all. It’s sort of like craft club. I can get out the glue gun and the bedazzler.”

“Bedazzler?”

“Just one of the tricks of my trade.”

“Well, as enticing as a bedazzler might be, my sister will have my head if she comes back and finds Jacob here.”

“But Uncle Luc—”

“How about we go to the arena. You can skate with the peewees.”

“The peewees?” Jacob gasped as if Luc had offered to let him suit up with the Olympic team.

“Sure thing. Head on inside and get cleaned up—we’re leaving in ten.”

Jacob was a blur running out the door, all thoughts of Tara and the bedazzler clearly stomped into the dirt by the prospect of a hockey arena.

“I can’t believe something called peewees beats bedazzling.”

“I can’t believe there’s something called bedazzling.”

He touched her ponytail where it sat, a fat curl on her shoulder. “I waited for you last night,” he said.

“I waited for you!” she laughed, and he smiled.

“You know what we need?” he asked, leaning against her drafting table, as if it were normal. As if standing here and flirting was something they’d done a thousand times. His hands in her hair felt so good and she tilted her head up to get more. More of his touch. More of him.

“Ten minutes and a flat surface?”

He choked on a laugh. “A date.”

And just like that, her delight in the moment crashed and burned. Dates, in her experience, felt like a business transaction. Dinner for sex. The better the dinner, the better the show she had to put on. “I don’t like dates.”

“That,” he kissed her nose, “is because you’ve never been on one with me.”

“That good, huh?”

“I’ve been known to show a girl a good time. You like horror movies?”

“No.”

“Mini-golf?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Go-carts?”

“Are you sixteen?”

“All-you-can-eat buffets? We can go dutch.” This man in front of her, with the smile and the warmth, the twinkle in his beautiful eyes, was an utter departure from the Ice Man. A different man. And she felt, oddly—and perhaps that was his goal—like she was the only woman to ever see him like this.

Jacob was right—she was lucky.

“How about dinner at The Ritz?” he asked.