Can't Hurry Love (7 page)

And that really pissed him off.

Wallowing in his anger and misery, he didn’t hear the commotion out in the stalls until he heard the laughter.

Jacob was out with the horses. Again.

Usually he ignored the kid when he snuck into the barn early before school, but today Eli was so frustrated, he stood up from his desk and stepped out of the tack room. Lucky, the sweetest mare he’d ever worked with, was gumming the boy’s hand. Jacob fished in his pocket and grabbed another slice of apple, which Lucky hoovered up quick as a wink, and the boy chortled with delight.

The sound was so foreign in this barn, among the animals and the silence, that everyone came out to investigate.
The cats were roaming the long hallway, the horses hung their heads over their doors. Jerry stood in the entrance to the riding arena.

“Does your mom know you’re in here?” Eli asked, shattering the mood. Jacob jerked away from the horse, dropping the rest of the apple slices into the dirt.

“Ah … no.”

Eli nodded but didn’t tell the kid to leave. He pointed to the horse sniffing Jacob’s hair for more apples. “You like Lucky?”

“That’s her name?”

“Yep.” Eli stepped forward and patted the horse’s soft muzzle. “When she was just a foal she got struck by lightning—”

“Noooo.”

“Yep. And see here?” He pulled on Lucky’s bridle and the horse turned her head, showing off the gray hair in her mane. “She’s been gray ever since.”

“Are you telling the truth?” Jacob’s eyes were narrowed as if he could see a lie if he just looked hard enough.

“Swear to God.” He crossed his fingers over his chest for good measure. “She got hurt not too long ago, stepped in a groundhog hole and twisted her ankle.”

“You gonna shoot her?”

Eli started and Lucky spooked at the motion. He whistled low and soft and curled his hand over her ears as if to prevent her from hearing.

“Why would you think that?”

“My dad told me you have to kill animals that are hurt.”

“Well, not here,” Eli said, thinking that the man’s suicide suddenly made more sense. “Here we make sure they get better.”

“That’s good. Are you like a hospital?”

“No. I just really like Lucky.”

The boy’s smile was like a lightbulb in the dim barn, and Eli found himself smiling in kind. “Me too.”

“Well, you should meet her properly.” Eli had a pretty good gut feeling that Victoria would hate him showing Jacob the barn and the animals. Doing it to spite her made the sourness of losing to a Baker every damn time he tried to get his life started very sweet.

Lucky’s stall door creaked open and he led her out into the hallway. “Careful,” he murmured, and the boy leapt back.

Jacob dug around in his pocket again and Eli thought he was going to pull out another apple, but instead it was an inhaler. The boy shook it and then took a puff. Waited a second and took another puff.

“Are you sure you should be in here?” he asked, watching the kid’s thin little rib cage lift and expand.

“I’m okay,” he said. “I have some allergies, but it’s no big deal.”

He wondered if Victoria thought it was no big deal. The boy had been through a lot lately. That night two months ago when Tara Jean’s old boyfriend had shown up drunk and with a gun, he’d scared the bejesus out of everyone when he’d tried to hold Jacob hostage.

Victoria tended to watch over her son like a hawk. And he hadn’t known the kid had asthma and allergies.

“Can I ride her?” Jacob asked, which wasn’t unexpected.

“Have you ever ridden before?”

“No.” Points to the kid for telling the truth.

“Would your mom be mad?”

He could see the boy wrestling with his instincts and finally his shoulders slumped. “Yeah. She’d be really mad.”

Perfect.

“You can’t ride Lucky,” he said, and the kid nodded
as if he’d expected that. “On account of her leg. But you can ride Patience.”

“Really?” The boy was all hope and eagerness. A youthful mix of everything Eli hadn’t felt in a long, long time. The boy was in no danger, not with Patience, and Eli would be walking right beside him. And suddenly it wasn’t just about pissing Victoria off, though that was a bonus.

Jacob was a seven-year-old boy on a Texas ranch. He should ride a horse. In fact, the more Eli thought about it, all he was doing was righting a very big wrong.

“Really.”

He shuffled Lucky back into her stall and brought Patience out, then led her and the boy—who leapt and jumped beside him—into the riding arena, where the rain pattered against the roof and the swallows made their homes in the rafters, and his fight with Victoria got personal.

Victoria stood on the back verandah and watched the rain drip off the roof. She blamed Celeste and the constant rain for the fact that she couldn’t stop thinking about a mud bath.

If Crooked Creek were a spa, she’d put the baths right here. She’d dig them right into the cement floor of this porch, in the open air, but protected by the roof. The view of the rolling green and beige hills, the poplars down there by the creek—it would be dramatic and different.

Perfect.

She took another bite of the yogurt and grapes Celeste had pushed into her hands this morning. Ruby had stirred lime zest and honey into the yogurt and it was so freaking delicious. Like candy.

She started to take another bite but stopped herself.
She was looking for Jacob so she could give it to him, but the boy was nowhere to be found.

“Have you seen Jacob?” she asked Ruby, back in the kitchen, where it smelled like coffee and toast.

“No,” she said. “He’s probably in the barn again.”

The bowl screeched across the tiles of the countertop.

“How many times do I have to tell him to not go in there by himself?”

“He’s a boy.” Ruby shrugged. “And there are horses in there.”

“That’s the problem!” Horses with giant hooves that could crush his little bones with no trouble at all. Dust that could clog his compromised lungs.

“Eli’s in there,” Ruby said, and that did not allay her fears one bit.

In fact, the memory of all that anger on his face quickened her steps. When she reached the front door, she threw on a slicker and the cracked black rain boots she’d claimed as her own.

Leaping over puddles, her head bent to better deflect the rain from her eyes, she ran across the lawn to the closest door—to the riding arena—which was connected to the barn.

Using both hands and all her strength she threw open the door and hopped inside, shaking the rain from her jacket and hair. Wiping her eyes she looked up, and her heart stopped.

Past her brother’s workout equipment, which had been shoved toward the sloping walls of the building, was a big black beast and on top of that big black beast, looking so tiny, looking as fragile as a tender green seedling pushing out of black dirt, sat her son.

His eyes wide in terrified wonder.

And beside him, clucking softly at the horse, smiling up at her son, was the devil.

Eli Turnbull.

She ran across the dirt floor, the sound of the rain pounding on the roof camouflaging her steps until she was right next to them, and the horse shied away at her sudden movement. Eli lunged forward, following the horse’s skitter. Jacob gasped and clutched tighter to the saddle in front of him.

“Christ, Victoria, don’t you know better than to sneak up on a horse?” Eli’s eyebrows knit together as if she were the one making a mistake.

“Get. Him. Down.”

Eli stared at her for a moment as if to argue, and because anger was making her wild, she wanted him to argue, so she could smack him.

“Mom,” Jacob said as Eli lifted him from the horse. “It was my idea.”

“I’m sure it was.” Her mother’s gaze ran over him, her hands following, checking for injuries, seen and unseen.

All she saw was fear, hers and her son’s. She turned back to Eli, because while she knew she was scaring Jacob, this was all Eli’s fault, and he stared back at her as if he had his doubts about that. “Go inside, I’ll talk to you later,” she ordered her son.

“Mom, it was fun. I’m fine. Patience is—”

“Go. Inside.” She didn’t even look at him.

“The hospital was practically a year ago—”

“Hospital?” Eli asked.

“Jacob.” It was her lethal-mommy voice. The one that meant business, that might—if pushed—lead to a grounding, the taking away of his toys. If he didn’t leave now, she was scared down to her core that she might spank him, out of fear and worry and anger. “Please go.”

He ran away and she turned herself into a blade, pointed right at Eli Turnbull. His strength, his virility, the beauty of his lips and eyes only sharpened her rage. What did he know of worry? What did he know of sickness and hospitals? What did he know of bedside vigils?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“He wanted to ride.” The shrug made her crazy. Insane with anger. “I didn’t see the harm in it.”

Of course he didn’t.

“He was never in any danger,” he said. “I was here the whole time. You’re on a ranch, for crying out loud, Victoria.”

“My son has allergies, asthma. Eight months ago he was in the hospital with pneumonia from H1N1.”

He blinked, stunned into silence. “I didn’t know.”

“They thought he was going to die. They told me that. To prepare for the worst.” Tears burned in her eyes at the memory of that night, of hugging him close, whispering in his ear not to leave her. Eli’s face blurred and doubled.

“I … I didn’t know.” He had the good grace to sound ashamed, but it was too late.

“You knew I wouldn’t like it, didn’t you? You put him on that horse because it would make me mad. To get back at me for leasing that land?”

After a long moment, he nodded, his eyes never leaving hers, and she didn’t bother to hide the pain. The gasp of shock that this was how low he’d go.

She blinked and the tears ran down her cheeks, clearing her vision, and she saw suddenly what needed to happen.

“You’re fired, Eli.”

chapter

6

Eli couldn’t believe
her. Didn’t believe her. But that hard look in her eyes, unearthed by the two tears making tracks down her face, brooked no argument. Panic was a cold snake down his spine.

“Come on, Victoria, don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“About Jacob on that horse? Maybe. But you involved my son in this …” she waved her hand between them, her lips curled in distaste, “thing between us. And I can’t … I can’t forgive that, Eli.”

“Victoria.” He caught her hand, panic making him reckless. His instincts told him to stop, but this was too much to lose; he needed the barn. The ultrasounds and chute were equipment he couldn’t start his business without.

Her hand shook in his. He pressed his thumb to the center of her palm and reflexively her fingers spread out wide. Her soft skin felt like velvet and he traced the lines of her palm from finger to wrist.

Time was nailed to the floor and he absorbed the pleasure of touching her. The shock of her softness, her stunned compliance.

She watched dumbstruck and he held his breath, waiting. Wondering.

Her eyes were wide, her pink lips open, a blush burned onto her cheeks. She was so beautiful in her surprise and his body reacted, his heart pounding.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. Whether he was sorry for what he’d done, or what he was about to do, he couldn’t say. Without thinking, he leaned forward to taste those pink lips, the sweetness of her amazement.

The smack never came; it was as if she were a fly in a web and he was the terrible spider who had caught her. He pressed his lips to hers. She jumped as if shocked, her mouth opening, and he fought himself not to take advantage. Not to push this strange moment into shattering. He kept the kiss tender, her chapped lips all but breaking his heart.

Carefully, as if she were a horse that might spook, he touched her cheek with his fingertips, and when she didn’t shy away he slid those fingers around her neck, cupping the heat of her skin, the pounding of her heartbeat in his palm.

There was a vibration in her throat and he felt it in his mouth, in his hand, and he knew she was moaning. Crying slightly, because she hated herself right now, hated that she couldn’t resist him. And the devil in him loved that. Lived for that.

He should have done this earlier, cut through all the bullshit negotiation and bullshit communication, and gotten right to this.

Because sex he understood. A woman’s soft groan reverberating against his tongue was all the communication he needed.

He stepped closer, caution be damned. She wanted him, he’d known that about her for a while, and if he couldn’t win the honest way, he’d win like this.

Now he took advantage of those parted lips and his tongue swept inside as he pulled her closer, flush against him. His body, hard and tense and tortured by his own stupidity, cheered at her nearness. Those hard edges he’d expected weren’t that hard and she melted against him with a sigh, revealing curves and sweetness that he would
never have expected from her tiny, rigid body. It was as if his touch had transformed her.

Her hand clutched at his wrist, her fingernails biting into the skin, and lust coiled in his gut.

That messy knot of hair on top of her head toppled without much convincing, and the silk of it ran through his fingers as he clutched it in his hands.

She was panting in his arms like a quarter horse coming off the track and he stroked her, tried to gentle her, calm her into obedience. But the more he touched her, the more his kisses coaxed her into kissing him back, the more agitated she got. She wanted him and hated him at the same time and the combination was a terrible turn-on, an evil aphrodisiac. His pulse pounded beneath his zipper, and he wanted to strip off that ugly cardigan sweater and that ridiculous frilly shirt and find the woman behind the old-lady clothes.

His hands, the calluses catching on the silk, ran up from her waist to her small breasts and she jerked against him, crying low in her throat.

But then he realized that jerk was actually her pushing against him.