So Not a Cowgirl (6 page)

Annoyance always got her in trouble. She went crazy with tunnel vision when she set her mind on finding something. Her tunnel vision, this time, had resulted in the scattered piles of paper on nearly every surface in the room. File drawers hung open, emptied. Storage boxes sat all around her, emptied as well. If Drew walked in right now…

She sat down in the desk chair, huffing in disgust. The invoice was either non-existent, thrown away, or she’d overlooked it somehow. But she’d been thorough in her search, she was almost sure of that. Well, as soon as she calmed down, she’d start putting everything back. Hopefully she’d run across that elusive invoice in the clean up process. And, hopefully, she’d have the room as neat as Drew usually kept it before he drifted into the office later.

Jeez, it was hot in here. More likely all the searching work she’d done had made her work up a sweat. She puffed her bangs out of the way, and stood.

Without thinking it through, she tiptoed her way across the room to the fan switch. As she touched the switch, she heard the front door opening. Immediately flutters of anticipation swept through her. Drew. The gruff cowboy played havoc with her determination to lead a life of celibacy for a year or so, until she got over all the male jerks who’d treated her so poorly of late.

She remained perfectly still at the doorway, listening to him toe off his boots. She heard the soft thud as he set his hat on the hall table. Her heart pounded with awareness as he padded toward his bedroom. He probably intended to shower off, as she’d discovered that he did whenever he’d gotten overly sweaty or dirty doing whatever ranch chore. Each time he’d come the house to do that she’d sat in a fantasy state, longing to strip off her clothes and join him.

Idiot. She was such an idiot. He didn’t even like her. Okay, he reacted to her; that kiss he’d given her sure told her he wasn’t immune to her. Still…

She turned the fan’s control knob, grimly determined to put the rancher from her thoughts and get back to business. Only she turned the knob too much and the fan shifted into super high mode. Piles stacked by their original files or storage boxes blew up into an explosion of paper. She was in the midst of a paper tornado.

“
Oh shit!” Tanya yelped in horror, following up that comment with several additional less than lady-like phrases as she tried frantically to turn the knob the other direction. Instead the knob came off in her hand. She repeated her tirade, louder, with more force, more fury.

She stomped her feet a couple of times in a spurt of temper, and then headed toward the hallway. Drew. She needed his help, even if he’d probably have a tizzy fit when he saw his office.

She hadn’t gone a half dozen feet when she slammed nose first into a hard wall of man. Sweaty, dusty man. She sneezed as she stepped back in surprise.

“
What the hell were you cursing about? I heard you clear down the hall.” The expression on his dirt-dusted face was filled with disapproval.

“
Don’t get all huffy with me,” she snapped. “I haven’t had a very good day.”

His expression darkened. “Neither have I.”

Before she could one-up him on the “worst day” thing, he looked beyond her into the once carefully organized office. When he focused on her again, his eyes blazed with brown fire. “Damn, woman! What have you done?”

“
What have I done! This is so not my fault!” she protested, thrusting the fan knob at him. “It’s
yours
!”

Boy, could the man glower. She realized then exactly how crazed she’d acted. She’d be lucky to keep her job the rest of the day. Still, it took her a few seconds to calm down.

He took the knob from her hand, moved her aside, and went to put the knob back in place. It took him less than a second. Gaining control of his irritation with her looked like would take much longer.

A vein pulsed in his neck as he ran a hand through his thick, slightly long hair. “Explain,” he barked.

To her disgust, tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away. She would not cry in front of him. She absolutely would not. Then a tear trickled down her cheek.

He stared at that tear and heaved a sigh so deep it had to have come up from his toes. “Explain,” he said more calmly.

“
There was this missing invoice,” she began, getting upset all over again even as she blinked rapidly at the moisture still in her eyes. “I needed it. I became obsessed with finding it. I get that way sometimes. Obsessed. The idiot girl at the company I called only made me more frustrated and determined.”

“
Evidently you babble, too, when you’re frustrated.”

She pursed her lips and huffed. “I do
not
babble.”

“
Trust me, you babble.”

“
Anyway,” she said, tapping her toe in annoyance. “I did an extensive search for that darn invoice. But I was going to put all of this back, and you would never even have known about this minor problem. Except I got hot.”

“
And you turned on the fan, when you had a room full of loose papers.” His look told her what he thought of that brilliant decision.

“
Seemed like a good idea at the time.” She raised her chin indignantly. And then a second tear trickled down her cheek, which made her blush in embarrassment.

Before she could wipe it away with the back of her hand, Drew stepped forward and thumbed the tear away. He looked resigned, about what she wasn’t sure. Then he gripped her by the shoulders and hauled her closer.

He didn’t say a word.

She didn’t say a word.

His head lowered and those amazing lips of his found hers. She’d been kissed a lot over the years, but never anything like this cowboy could do. She’d been hot before, but now she was on fire. Even more, she ached for him.

He took his sweet time with the kiss, not that she minded. Then he stepped back, chest heaving, eyes narrowed in frustration. “You are a powerful lot of trouble.”

Annoyed that he’d ended the kiss so abruptly and with attitude, she glared right back at him. “Am not.”

He raised an eyebrow, but she noted a hint of amusement in his eyes now heavy with arousal. “That’s mature.”

“
Whatever!” Her shoulders slumped as she realized that he was right. Her conversational ability had slipped to elementary school level. She avoided his eyes and tugged on the hem of her lacy black crop top to straighten it. That’s when she saw how her nipples had hardened, and then she knew he had to be seeing that reaction.

She hazarded a glance at him. The intensity in his gaze made her nipples pebble even more. Darn him! She did
not
want to react to him like this. She was done with men! At least for now. They caused her nothing but problems.

“
Stop it!” she hissed and spun around to focus on picking up the mess she’d made.

“
Are you going to be able to put all of this back exactly like it had been? Remember how I told you I like order. My kind of order.” While his tone held a tinge of leftover huskiness, he had shifted into boss mode. Irritated boss mode.

“
Of course I can.” She tried her best to ignore him. But as she looked at the mess again, she wondered if she really could put everything back correctly. “Go away,” she grouched.

Naturally he didn’t. From the corner of her eye, she spotted him carefully picking up invoices and letters.

“
What part of
go away
didn’t you understand?” she grumbled, tiptoeing further away from him. His nearness—and her continued unwanted awareness of him—made her testy. “You’ve been making yourself scarce all week. Go back to doing that. It works for me.”

He’d been avoiding her ever since their strange talk in the middle of the night five days ago. Which had been good, she reminded herself. She didn’t want to be around him. She just wanted to do her job.

She bent down to snag an invoice that had slid under one of the chairs in front of the desk. She listened for his retreating footsteps, her heart pounding.

He didn’t retreat. He didn’t tiptoe. He practically stomped over to her and swatted her bottom with the flat of his hard, calloused hand. The loud WHACK! echoed around the room.

Tanya jerked upright. “What was that for?” One swat, but jeez it was a doozy.

Not looking the least repentant, he said, “For bratting.”

The heat of a blush crept up her neck and she darted her glance away from him. Bratting. Her dad had accused her of doing that same thing more times than she cared to remember. He’d dealt with the attitude in the same manner Drew had.

“
I wasn’t ‘bratting.’” she protested. “I just don’t need your help cleaning up the mess I made.”

“
Snapping, sassing, being bossy,” he began as if going over a list of her errors. “Cussing. Stomping your feet in a temper tantrum.”

“
I never—“

“
I told you that I heard you clear down the hall. On both matters.”

She finally had the good sense to not respond.

“
You know what I think?” he prodded, hooking her in so that she looked at him once more.

Cautiously she asked, “Do I want to know?”

“
Probably not.” He glimpsed her cleavage revealed by the too-low neckline, and then ground his teeth a second. “I think you need a trip across my knee.”

Her heart pounded. Her sensitive bud that had been awakened by his kiss, by the nearness of his very male body, now pulsed. Was she nuts? He was talking about… Darn heart, pounded even harder.

“
It would do us both good,” he stated calmly.

She drew in a shuddering breath and countered, “My lying across your knee…” She swallowed hard as she saw the heat return to his gaze. “You … You applying your hand to my bottom would do me good, how?”

He inched closer. “My taking you over my knee, my baring your bottom, my spanking your sweet butt… Well, I think we both need that right now.”

She shook her head, but didn’t move away. “I need to pick up this mess. I need to get back to work.”

“
Yes, you do. So do I, get back to work that is.” He took her hand and led her to the leather sofa on the side of the room.

As if spellbound, she trailed obediently after him. Never before had she gotten aroused by just the thought of a spanking. Okay, she had when they’d talked on their cell phones the other night. But that was different, a fantasy sort of. And they’d been far apart, in the dark. This was reality.

He sat down on the sofa, released her hand so that she stood in front of him. She should hightail it out of there. She was an adult. She didn’t have to put up with this from him, or any other man. Except her father, on occasion. She owed him that respect. She didn’t owe Drew. But she stood firm and waited.

“
Are you going to take those slacks down, or am I?” he asked, looking as if pulling her slacks down wouldn’t bother him at all.

Tanya hesitated. Go. Stay. Let him. Not let him. She stayed. “That’s not really necessary, is it?”

“
Absolutely.”

She could see that he wasn’t going to change his mind about that. Again, go? Stay?

She stayed, but she opted for lowering her slacks herself, trying not to look at him. Embarrassing. Totally embarrassing. Yet she did it.

Taking her hand, he helped her stretch across his lap and the sofa. He moved her forward until her quivering bottom lie directly over his hard right thigh. She felt the roughness of his jeans beneath her. She sensed the tenseness in him, the determination as well. He wasn’t certain about this either, but he intended to spank her, uncertain or not.

One of his fingers slid along the upper edge of her bikini panties and heat curled through her. He was about to spank her like a disobedient child. But she felt far from a child at just the sensation of his touch. She was woman. He was man. There was no denying that.

“
Lift up. This little slip of nothing is coming down.”

If she’d had to look at him now, she couldn’t have done it. Facing away, it was much easier to lift her body enough that he could pull the bit of lace down to mid-thigh. She settled into position again, face flaming.

She felt him tense beside her, and then he set his big right hand on her cool, bare bottom.

“
Ready?”

“
No.”

“
Yes you are. So let’s get this little job done.” That big hand lifted and came back down with a solid Swat! “You’ve got a mess to clean up” He swatted her again, harder. “And I’ve got chores to get back to.”

She balanced on her elbows. “I don’t mean to keep you from your ranch chores.”

“
You won’t keep me long.” He meant it too. Without another word he proved to her just how focused he could be on something. Proved just how skilled he was at lighting a fire on a wiggling bottom.

And she was wiggling and jerking side to side within a minute. “Okay, okay. I get the idea.” She hissed as his hand kept right on burning her buttocks. “You don’t like bratting.”

He shifted her back into position and took a couple of minutes to shift the fire lower, to her sit spot—as her father called it.

“
I don’t like bratting in a grown woman.” He reinforced that statement with a brisk rain of swats that had her wriggling even more.

“
I don’t like foot stomping. I don’t like women cursing.” The three or four dozen sound swats after that had her hissing and yelping a time or two.