The Wild One (8 page)

He didn’t answer, but their destination was soon revealed when he opened the door to the master bedroom. This bedroom was much larger than the one he’d given her, with furniture made out of the same material as the old-fashioned barn, which Jeb had told her was used to store hay for the horses and feed for the cows.

“I was like you when I first got here, after leaving my wife,” Andrew said, after indicating she should go into the room ahead of him. “I knew our marriage wasn’t working, but I couldn’t get to sleep at first because I was used to having somebody else in bed with me.”

“That is definitely not why I can’t get to sleep,” Roxxy assured him. If only he knew how long it had been since she’d had anyone in her bed overnight.

“Just lay down,” he said. “I’ll stay on my side, you can stay on yours. If you’re not asleep within an hour, then feel free to go downstairs, make more tea, and resume your pacing.”

Roxxy frowned. “Just an hour? Then no more complaining if I need a few more cups of teas to fall asleep?”

“If you’re not asleep within an hour, I’ll escort you to the liquor cabinet and pour you a glass of scotch myself. That’s how I eventually started getting to sleep on my own.”

“I don’t really drink. Two nights ago was fluke,” Roxxy said.

But she tentatively climbed into the left side of the bed, getting as close to the edge as she could before she let the sheet settle over her.

“But if this means I can go back to making my tea in peace…” she said. Then she closed her eyes so Andrew wouldn’t be able to accuse her of not at least giving it the old college try.

She never got her fourth cup of tea. And the next thing she knew, she was having some kind of weird sex dream. In it, she was lying on her side and grinding her naked hips against someone’s very large erection.

“Let me in, Layla.”

“Take off your pants,” she gasped out, barely able to contain herself.

But he didn’t, just kept grinding his hips against hers, until she thought she might go crazy with lust.

“Layla, wake up.”

“Please,” she cried. “I want you inside of me. I’m going to come if you don’t take off your pants.”

“Layla…stop.”

But she couldn’t stop her hips from seeking out what they so desperately wanted, and soon she felt herself shatter against his cloth-covered erection. She moaned as her dream orgasm rippled through her, riding her body in waves.

The sensations were so intense they jerked her awake with a loud gasp. And that was when she discovered it hadn’t been a dream. She was in Andrew’s arms, and his gray eyes were open, boring into hers with unbridled anger. And from what she could feel, she had just come all over the crotch of his pajama pants.

CHAPTER 9

ANDREW
had never had a dream like this. In it, he and Layla were laying sideways in his bed, kissing, and everything else had fallen away: the ranch, Nathan, Amy—nothing else mattered but their joining together.

He ground his hips against hers, but though they were both completely naked, some invisible force was keeping him from what he wanted the most. To be balls deep inside of her, fucking her the way that sweet body of hers had been tempting him to ever since she showed up in Sinclair Township.

“Let me in, Layla,” he groaned.

“Take off your pants,” she answered back, even though he wasn’t wearing any.

Andrew came awake in a blaze of hot confusion, only to find an even hotter sight in front of him: Layla, her guest robe open to reveal her tight brown body, was grinding against him in the wild throes of a sex dream.

Even as his dick rejoiced and demanded he do exactly what she’d asked, his conscience let him know no matter how unbelievably sexy she was at the moment, he couldn’t plunge himself into somebody who wasn’t awake, somebody who wasn’t his girlfriend.

“Layla, wake up,” he said, hating the reluctance he heard in his own voice.

Please,” she cried, still writhing against him with her eyes closed. “I want you inside of me. I’m going to come if you don’t take off your pants.”

His dick was thrumming, he wanted her so bad. “Layla . . . stop,” he said, but he was barely able to get out the words, his voice was so clogged with lust.

Then she came, so hard her climax soaked through the crotch of his pants. And that was what finally woke her up in the end.

Her big eyes flew open, and she looked six different kinds of stricken as she realized what had happened.

Andrew’s heart iced over. “You thought I was Nathan, didn’t you?”

“No!” But still she scrambled away from him, sitting up in the bed and closing her robe as if something horrific had just happened. “I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I thought—I thought it was a dream, but I definitely thought it was you in the dream. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—“

“Stop fucking apologizing to me,” he said angrily, unable to bear the contrition in her voice, as if doing anything intimate with him was the worst thing on earth.

That’s when it occurred to him. “You didn’t come here because of me, did you? You came here because you knew this would be the last place on earth anyone, including Nathan, would look for you. That’s why you took the bus into town as opposed to a plane, because you could pay in cash. You’re hiding out here.”

Her eyes flashed with guilt before she looked away and that told him all he needed to know.

“Say something,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.

“Like what?” she shouted back. She stood up and firmly tied the robe’s belt around her waist. “You told me to stop fucking apologizing to you.”

For a moment, Andrew was taken aback. He’d never heard Layla curse, even in the heat of anger. Then the moment passed and she was suddenly on the move.

“You don’t want me to say I’m sorry, but I am. I really am. I shouldn’t have done that, and I shouldn’t have come here. You don’t understand, I’m not who you think.”

“I know you’re not. The Layla I knew would never use one brother to hide from another. You know, I’ve always thought you were the innocent victim where Nathan and I were concerned. He came after you because you were dating me. I was to blame for letting him believe you didn’t want to be with him after your accident. And after what Diana tried to do to you, I was eaten alive with guilt. It would have killed me if something had happened to you because of what I’d done. But right now, the way you’re acting, like you’re as hot for me as you used to be for Nathan? I’m seriously wondering if you haven’t been playing us against each other from day one.”

Her eyes widened with the insult and she opened her mouth to say something back. But then at the last moment, she clapped her hand over her mouth and ran out the room.

Andrew cursed silently as he watched her go.

AFTER THE ARGUMENT WITH ANDREW, Roxxy ran straight out of the house. Didn’t even bother to get her shoes. Just grabbed the same clothes she had been wearing for three days straight off the line and walked down the ranch’s main dirt road until she came upon the old gray barn where they stored the hay and other feed. She pulled open one of its double doors, grateful for the refuge. She then put on her clothes before putting the robe back on and curling up in a fetal position on a hay bale.

She’d once had a nip slip on the red carpet that made the front covers of several European gossip mags. She’d flubbed the American national anthem in front of millions of World Series viewers. There was even a viral video going around of her falling on her butt at a concert, an animated gif of which had been turned into a popular meme people liked to leave in the comment sections of articles about people saying or doing stupid things.

But she had never been as embarrassed as she was after sleep humping Andrew. How the hell did she let that happen? She’d been called frigid by more than one guy who hadn’t been able to bust through her reserve and get into her pants. How did she go from that to creaming all over some dude in her sleep? What was wrong with her?

She had to get out of here, she decided. She couldn’t take living in that house with Andrew Sinclair one more minute. She didn’t care what it took, she needed to get off this ranch. Like right now, before she went crazy with lust and confusion. She’d call the D.A.’s office first thing, as soon as she worked up the courage to go back to the house.

Eventually, the adrenaline from what happened that morning faded, and sleep overtook her. But the next thing she knew, someone was shaking her awake.

“Shirelle?” she said, blinking against the sunlight now flooding through the open barn door.

But no, it wasn’t her mother, it was Andrew, looking even grimmer than usual. He had the straps of her heels looped under the first two fingers of his left hand.

“Who’s Shirelle?” he asked.

“Nobody,” she answered, sitting up on the bale of hay. “What are you doing here?”

“One of the hands called the house, asking if there was a reason you were in the barn,” he answered. “C’mon.”

He tossed her shoes at her.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Into Buellton. Jeb’s already there, picking up feed for the horses, but one of our generators just went out, so I’m driving it in,” he answered. He gave her an up and down look. “Plus, I’m sick of watching you flounce around here in that mini skirt. It’s distracting the hands, and it’s not the kind the look the Sinclair Ranch is going for, especially if you’re going to be working with the children’s program. You need some decent shoes, too.”

Her cheeks burned, not only because he thought she had been purposely flaunting herself, but also because— “I don’t have any money on me. Not even a credit card.”

“Let me guess, you’re afraid to use your credit cards because you don’t want Nathan to track you down here?”

She looked away. She didn’t know this Nathan guy, but she was already sick of hearing his name. “Something like that,” she mumbled.

“You know he’s on vacation, right?” Andrew asked. “That’s what Nathan does when he gets hurt. He runs away. He never even looked for you all those years you spent recovering and getting your degrees. Why do you think he’d look for you now?”

The bombs Andrew kept dropping about his and Layla’s back story were excruciating. Seriously, the most excruciating thing she had ever endured, including her thirty days of mandatory house arrest. She vowed to look the whole story up as soon as she got reassigned to another place to lay low.

But now she just answered. “I really don’t want to talk about Nathan anymore.” Totally true.

He gave her a thin smile. “Of course you don’t. C’mon anyway. I’ll buy you whatever you need.”

Wondering if she’d ever be able to go more than five minutes without feeling completely humiliated by this man, she said through gritted teeth, “I’ll pay you back as soon as I can. And when we get back from town, I’ll figure out some other living arrangement and get out of your hair. I promise.”

He stared at her for a long, hard time, but didn’t say anything. In the end, he turned and walked out the door, apparently trusting her to follow, which she did as soon as she got her stilettos back on.

Pride be damned. She was willing to do anything to get out of wearing these heels everywhere she went. Even spend more time with a man who really seemed to out-and-out hate her.

CHAPTER 10

Roxxy thought she’d do anything to get out of her stilettos, but that was before she was informed she’d have to squeeze in next to Andrew in his old candy-red pickup truck, since the generator was already sitting in the window seat. Apparently it had broken down while the ranch hands had been mending fences, so now the back of the truck was filled with new posts and barbwire, making it so the generator had to sit up front with them.

“How far is it to Buellton?” she asked him when he got in next to her, the side of his body flush with hers.

“About an hour,” he answered.

Roxxy clasped her hands tight in her lap, hoping that would be enough to mask the shiver that went through her entire body, right before she bit back against a rising panic attack.

She eventually managed to breathe her way back to normal and calm herself down, but then without warning. Andrew’s hand brushed her knee. She jumped in her seat, letting out a yelp of scared surprise.

Andrew raised his hand up. “Sorry, I was just trying to turn on the radio. It’s quiet in here.”

“Oh,” she said, her cheeks hot with embarrassment. “Let me.”

She pushed the on/off button on the old-fashioned radio and a country song poured out.

“You can change it if you want,” he said.

“No,” she answered, going back to her tightly-folded hands position. “I like country music.”

“Really,” he said. “Because I remember you not caring for it much when we were in college.”

“Maybe it’s an acquired taste,” she answered carefully. “I started liking it later on.”

“Seriously?” he said.

“Yes, seriously,” she answered. “Are people not allowed to change their music tastes?”

Andrew threw her a skeptical look. “If you like country music so much, who’s this singing?” he asked.

“Colin Fairgood,” she answered. “Best songwriter in the country business, and he’s one of my favorite singers right now, period.”

Andrew nodded. “Mine, too. I like all his stuff, even that one duet he did with whatshername was okay. You know, that one singer who wears all the crazy outfits and make up?”

“Roxxy RoxX?” she supplied, trying to keep her voice as level as possible.

“Yeah, that one,” he said. “She has a pretty good voice. Too bad she went right back to the bubblegum. I liked when she was actually singing about things that mattered.”

“Well, you can’t make a career singing songs about the disenfranchised. She took a big chance, even recording that song with Colin. And I bet she’s still sort of surprised it did so well on the charts.”

“I wonder why he decided to do a duet with her of all people?” Andrew said.

“I don’t know,” Roxxy answered, because she’d wondered the same thing after she got the call from his people. “He’s kind of a strange guy. I think I read in an interview or something that he just ‘knew’ she’d be right for the song.”