The Barn-Dance (3 page)

“I got a job offer, Leo.” She stopped folding but kept her eyes on the batter. Mindy had been afraid to meet his gaze for so long. Now it seemed like such a small thing, but she was afraid of the judgment.

She judged herself enough.

She’d known he was over the moon for her back then. Everyone had. He turned down date after date, he stayed home from college, and made himself completely available to her. And when she finally took her head out of the sand long enough to see it, her time had run out.

They’d had one night of beautiful, naïve sex. Her first, his first. But after all those years of pursuing her, he got her in the sack, and that was it. Like a stupid romantic, she’d said the magic words.
I love you
. And what had he said? Nothing. Just stared at her.

And that was it. She wasn’t keeping her heart open anymore.

But she’d been avoiding him for too long. His soft eyes always asked, but she never let them be alone together. Never gave him the chance to explain. But it was time. She needed to stop pretending she didn’t care. She was down on her luck. No skills, no job prospects in a bad economy, and the only job to call her back happened to be where Leo was. If she wanted to keep eating, she needed to keep this job. And if this unfinished business was going to keep coming up, she’d have to face it some time.

Mindy finally looked up at him. He stood with an empty measuring cup, watching her. Waiting. Had he always been waiting? “I got a call the next morning, and they offered me this job that was…well, at the time, I thought it was my dream job. It wasn’t about you at all.”

Leo poured the next cup of flour into the batter. The only sound in the kitchen was the plop of that flour. “You may not have left because of me.” He watched as she folded the flour in, the look on his face, indistinguishable. “But you didn’t stay because of me, either.”

Chapter Three

Those words hurt to say. Leo had been holding them in a long time. All six years since she left, and then this whole last week, not to mention the minutes that seemed like hours that they’d been having this conversation.

Suddenly, it wasn’t as important for him to know as he’d thought. He wished she hadn’t come back at all.

Indifference was worse than hatred, for sure.

She kept stirring that bowl, just like he’d taught her, and kept a good steady pace. He put the last cup of flour in. “We slept together one night, Leo. It’s not like we were in a relationship.”

But it had been a relationship for him. For Leo, it hadn’t been one night. It had been the first night of what he hoped were many nights. At the time, anyway. Now, it was all different. Completely. Totally. Different.

“I get it. You weren’t in it for the long haul. Not a big deal.”

“It’s not that I didn’t like you, Leo.”

A tiny whisper of hope threatened his resolve. She did like him once. No, she loved him once but didn’t love him anymore. She’d made that painfully obvious when she left without a word. “Min, I got my answer. Let’s just not go there.”

She lifted her elbow into his personal space as she stirred the last of the dough, the tough part. The silence built between them while she huffed against the dough, and he was grateful for it. She pulled it out of the bowl and onto the counter he’d floured.

The sticky white ball clung to her fingers a bit, and he sprinkled a little flour over her hands while she worked it. Once it looked perfect, he put his hand on her arm.

Now that the floodgate had opened between them, the heat of her skin felt at once welcoming and rejecting. She didn’t push him away this time.

“It’s good there.” Leo grabbed a paper towel and cleaned the remnants of wet and dry ingredients out of the bowl. “Put the dough in here and we’ll cover it.”

They put the bowl on the windowsill to rest in the sun, and Leo looked down at Mindy’s hands. She wore no rings, but the dough was starting to harden around her fingers, making it look like a crusted fistful of jewelry.

He turned the water temperature to lukewarm and pulled her hand under the stream. “Can you still tell the difference?”

She blushed. “You’re a good teacher.”

“Think you’ll be able to do this on your own from now on?” Leo released her hand, the heat increasing under the pressure of her fingers. “I won’t be around anymore.”

“We don’t have to avoid each other now, Leo. Now that we’ve talked about this.”

Easy for her to say. She obviously never really cared, unlike Leo, who’d spent all six of these last years trying to forget Melinda Edwards. It felt like someone placed a stone on his chest. “I suppose now that we’ve talked.” Like that solved anything.

“You don’t feel anything for me anymore.”

“Okay.”

“And I don’t feel anything for you.”

“Okay.” The stone was back, pressing down on his chest cavity like it might suffocate his heart.

“So we can be…y’know, whatever we want to be. And it won’t matter.”

Leo’s voice dropped. “Whatever we want?”

Her face colored again, from the base of her neck where the crimson disappeared into her shirt, all the way to the sharp angles of her cheeks, and back into her hairline.

“Well, not that.”

Leo took a moment to just stare at her. He was amazed at how little she’d changed. Other than the clothes, the hair, and the shoes—those idiotic shoes all the time—she was the same girl who’d left him all those years ago.

Beautiful, graceful, and sexy as hell. She still made his heart jump into his throat whenever he looked at her. Only now, she made him hard, too. The memory of her flesh on his. So hard.
So much for not feeling anything.

How in the world he was gonna get through this afternoon without sporting wood again, he wasn’t quite sure.

***

Leo had left after she washed her hands, promising to come back after the dough rose for an hour, and his eyes had been dark—almost black—as he stared at her.

The heat radiating from his gaze made something curl up tight in her stomach. Mindy hadn’t felt this way about a guy in a long time. Like she wanted to lick him from head to toe, and then punch him straight in the nose.

If he touched her hand one more time, she might forget that she didn’t date cowboys. She didn’t want to get stuck here, after all, and cowboys always wanted to stay where the cows were. She preferred to be where the leather was.

But she knew this place, and if there was anywhere she could rebuild her life and re-launch, it was here. Thank God Cal Fortiss had given her a chance. This was just a stepping stone. Wasn’t it?

While waiting for the bread to rise, she checked email, started laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and put away all the ingredients from their bread-making. But something felt undone, like she had an itch she couldn’t scratch somewhere.

With the hour still not over, Mindy picked up her phone and dialed her best friend. When Hannah didn’t answer, she left a long, rambly voicemail that ended with, “You can call me back if you want. Or don’t. I mean, it’s no big deal. Just need to talk. Or not. Y’know, whatever. Love you.”

“That was vague.” Leo leaned against the kitchen door, the stretch making his body look even more appetizing, as it lengthened his tight abdomen and drew her attention to the position of his hips.

“It was a private call.”

He crossed the kitchen, pausing at the sink to wash his hands. “You sound like a woman who doesn’t know what she wants.”

“I know exactly what I want.”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

Leo smoothed his hands on his jeans in slow, languid movements. His mouth twitched into a smile when she met his eyes after watching those hands skirt dangerously close to the crotch of his Wranglers.
Shit
. He liked that this bothered her, maybe a little too much. “Let’s get this bread into rolls.”

He reached just over her shoulder for the bowl they’d put in the window. His body crowded hers against the counter. The long, hard length of him covering her made her gasp. Leo froze.

The bowl was in midair; she was half-pressed between him and the warm sun, and she could feel that warm something unfurling between her legs.

And he wanted her. He’d gotten hard practically as soon as the air rushed past her lips. Just the thought that she could make him hard made her dizzy. The muscles deep inside her actually squeezed.

Leo backed away, the bowl in his hands. “I’m sorry, Min. I just…I can’t control the…I’m sorry.”

The outline of his erection strained against his tight pants. Part of her wanted to drop to her knees and worship it with her mouth. To wrap her legs around him and plunge it inside her.

Just sex.

That was the only way she could think about it. They were like animals, in their lust, and they needed to slake it. Otherwise, if they got into feelings and hearts and futures, it was just too complicated. And Mindy didn’t do complicated anymore.

He glanced at the front of his pants and colored. She’d never seen Leo blush before, but it was really beautiful—a deep, dark mahogany color that spiraled through his face in patches.

“It’s okay, Leo. I want you, too. You just can’t see it.”

His eyes traveled down her body and rested on her chest. “I can see it.”

Self-consciously, she grabbed her breasts and felt the pebbles underneath her bra and shirt. Leo hissed and closed his eyes.

“Do not do that, Min. Please, God, don’t do that.”

She looked down at her hands, cupping her small-ish breasts, pressing them up into her ribcage. It wasn’t a sexual movement, but obviously, Leo wasn’t being discriminating at this moment. So she released them.

His gaze didn’t move from her breasts, and they tightened under his watchful eyes. The charge in the air left her without breath. All she could do was picture Leo stretching across the counter, and her jockeying his hips like a bronco rider at the rodeo.

If he was having similar fantasies, he didn’t let on. “Can we just make these rolls so they can rise? Then I’ll get out of your hair, and we can both walk this off?”

“Do you have to be here while I do it?”

He laughed. “No, you’re right, I don’t. I’ll just…let me do one, and then you can do the rest by yourself.”

Leo walked around the edge of the kitchen, careful to keep his distance from her. He pulled one of the flat cookie sheets from under the counter and took a paper towel from the roller next to the sink.

“You want to make sure to grease these pans. Dad probably would prefer butter, but I think lard works the best.”

Mindy resisted the urge to ask if his mother taught him that. Last time, he’d shut down so quickly after she mentioned May. And she was secretly hoping that his lust wouldn’t abate, and he’d just throw her up against the counter and pound into her.

She could use a good pounding.

“Wait! Pounding. Aren’t we supposed to pound them down first?”

“Who said…pounding?” Leo’s eyes almost glazed over.

“No one…I just. Never mind, I thought we were supposed to pound them.”

“You mean ‘knead’ them?”

“Sure, Leo, I mean knead. Isn’t it all the same?”

He narrowed his eyes on her, then turned so that his erection was hidden by the angle of his body against the counter. But hiding it didn’t help her forget it. “You know it’s not the same, Mindy. Are you trying to blue-ball me?”

She laughed. If he could see inside her mind right now, he would know what she was trying to do to him. And he might not like it.

But she was pretty sure she would.

Chapter Four

“Dad just radioed in. Said he wants dinner brought out to them.”

Mindy finally looked at him. His dark eyes shot desire straight through her, but the wrinkled frustration on his face made his choice as evident as if he’d spoken it.

The last time he’d been in close proximity, she’d felt how much he wanted her. And how much she wanted him. But rules were rules, and as much as it frustrated both of them, this was the best decision.

“What’s he expecting for dinner then?” Conscious of every move she made, Mindy attempted an arm-cross that covered her small breasts instead of accentuating them. But Leo wasn’t looking anyway.

“Something that doesn’t suck would be my guess. Sandwiches?”

She eyed the stove, where the beginnings of a stew had been cooking since Leo left her to mold the rolls. “I’d started dinner already.” Mindy gestured to the covered cookie sheets strewn around the kitchen. “And it’ll take another hour for me to finish all this.”

Leo turned for the door, rubbing a big, thick hand across his jaw. “Well, I can go out and find something to do until you’re ready. I’m sure Dad will be fine.”

“Actually, if you don’t mind…” She took a few steps toward him, thinking of grabbing his retreating arm, then stopped. Touching wouldn’t lead to any thing productive. “I mean, I could use the help if you could stay.”

His shoulders rolled and he expelled a deep breath. “I thought we decided—”

“You decided.” She lowered her eyelids and peered at him, pointedly. “I always wanted you to stay.”

“My dad never makes rules without intending to enforce them.”

“I just need help making the stew, Leo. I’m not going to take my clothes off.”

His generous lips rolled into a smile. “How can I help, then?”