Can't Buy Me Love (15 page)

But then he thought of his team and the Stanley Cup. He thought of having a drink out of the championship cup by his father’s graveside.

That would be almost as good as the speech.

And he thought of spending days locked inside this ranch with his memories and somehow, every morning, he’d find his way into his workout gear and out onto that road where the miles seemed longer than usual.

A barn cat hissed and ran past him for the open doors leading to the short covered walkway that connected to the barn, a good fifty feet away on the other side of the building. Dust motes sparkled in the air between the dirt floor and the vaulted ceilings. Barn swallows darted down from their nests in the rafters, buzzing his head in
warning.
Try it
, he thought to the birds, his mood so poisonous he was ready to take on wildlife.

“Uh-oh,” said a smooth, sexy voice, and his pulse leapt with sudden dark excitement. He turned to see Tara, looking like a cross between a biker babe and a … well, porn star. Even in loose white pants, she looked like sex. “Eli’s not going to like you messing with his arena.”

“Well,” Luc said, heaving another bale of hay onto the pile. “It’s not his arena anymore, now is it?”

She pursed her shiny pink lips and his core temperature spiked. Lust and anger coiled through him, a dangerous and unpredictable mixture.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to make a gym in here,” he said. “Bring in some workout equipment.”

“You’re supposed to be training, aren’t you? That’s what all the running is about?”

“Why, Ms. Sweet, have you been watching me, too?”

Her breasts pressed against her black leather vest, not straining the tiny black buttons, but giving them a good workout, and something about the barely harnessed nature of her outfit turned him on harder and faster than he’d been turned on in a long time.

All he wanted was to press on one of those tiny black buttons with his dirty, sweaty fingers, ease it from its hole, and give them all a little relief.

“Not as much as Ruby,” she said, her perfect full lips kicking up into a naughty smile. “You’re her new hobby. She’s given up crocheting.”

He wanted to lick her from the curve of that naughty smile to her toes. And back again.

“You know, you were all over the radio this morning.” When she stepped farther into the arena, he could see the tips of her bright pink toenails in her shoes, another tease, another glimpse at the ordinary that on this
woman seemed painfully, erotically extraordinary. “Melanie in the Morning has been following the trade rumors very diligently. She has quite a crush on you. I’d worry about a stalker if you do end up down here.”

“I’m not playing down here.”

“Melanie will be heartbroken.”

“I’m so glad you find this funny.” The bale of hay he threw flew past the pile, exploding against the wall. “But this is my life. And the fact is, I need to be on some ice!” She blinked at him, all empty headlight eyes.

“So go get on some ice. What’s the big deal?”

“The big deal?” There was a tide rising in him, lifting boats of anger and resentment, a whole fleet of frustration. “I’m a hockey player, one of the best, in case you’ve been living in a cave for the last ten years. And my doctor has told me to rest for the next few months, but right now there are thirty other men, fifteen years younger than me, all working their asses off to take my place. I’ve got one year left, and I am stuck—here!” He heaved the hay over his shoulder, feeling every muscle and sinew burn with the effort. “I can’t sneeze near an ice rink around here without every sports journalist in the world up my ass asking questions about a trade, or the Cup, or my goddamned head!”

He’d said too much and he forced himself to breathe. To center himself in the cool confines of his control.

He turned and found her leaning against a hay bale, wiping a smudge of dirt off her white pants.

She glanced up, as if she was just now noticing his silence. Her eyes opened wide, playing dumb better than any blonde he’d ever seen. Or maybe she just
was
dumb. Yet conniving.

All he really knew about her was that he wanted to get naked and sink as deep as he could into her.

“That sucks,” she said.

“Perfect assessment.” He marched another bale of
hay across the arena. Sun flooded in the open doors, palpable heat stretching across the dirt floor.

Sweat ran down his back, past the waistband of his shorts. And he could feel her eyes on him, moving across his shoulders and over his legs. His ass.

His body was a product of his game, chiseled and honed by rivers of sweat and blood, and he fully appreciated that women liked how he looked. Wasn’t, at times, above using what his looks brought him. The women who fell into his bed like overripe fruit.

But there was something in the way this woman looked at him. Surreptitiously. While his back was turned. As if she wasn’t just hiding her interest from him, but from herself as well. It was in direct contrast with her sex goddess looks, and the contradiction made him crazy.

It made him want to flex his muscles, throw her over his shoulder, and show her what he could do with this body.

There was not a single part of him that didn’t want to touch her. But some modicum of sense in him knew it wouldn’t be a good idea.

He wanted to wipe the floor with his good sense.

“How about you?” he asked. “Prostitutes R Us doing a booming business?”

“I will have you know Baker Leather cleared 1.5 million last year. And the Texas First Lady is one of our most loyal customers.”

“Five years ago Dad told me Baker Leather was going bankrupt,” he said. “That’s why he needed me to wear those boots. You’re telling me that’s changed in five years?”

“Five years ago, your father didn’t have me.”

“So, you’re responsible for turning it around?”

“Li’l old me,” she said, somehow managing to be both sarcastic and proud.

“Well, now, go figure.” His sarcasm was a slap shot right back at her righteous defense of herself.

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t be an ass.”

The fact that he was taking his evil mood out on her wasn’t missed by either of them. “Sorry.” But not very. “Did you have something to say, or did you just come in here to stare?”

“I’m not staring.”

“Don’t be a liar,” he said, mocking her.

“Fine.” She stood in front of the bales of hay still to be moved, a delectable, five-foot-three roadblock. “I came in here to talk.”

She crossed her arms, and her breasts crowded her chest as if searching for high ground. They were natural, those breasts. Perfect and round. They’d be soft to the touch, womanly and full. Her skin would give, her nipples would harden against his lips, firming in his mouth.

His dick got harder. And he grit his teeth against the pleasure.

“About what?” She was a magnet, and he stepped closer so that he could smell her—lip gloss and sugar.

“I … ah …” She swallowed, and he grinned at her. But Tara only lifted her chin, not ready to stop pretending.

Fine
, he thought. But if she wanted to play like there wasn’t any heat between them, he didn’t have to play along.

Somehow the idea of getting her to admit to her desire turned him on even more. It suddenly became a goal.

And he liked goals. Part of his job description.

She was silent, panting slightly when he didn’t move.

Slowly, like a cowboy in every bad late-night skin flick he’d ever seen, he reached past her and picked up another bale of hay and walked through the sunlight to toss it onto the pile.

She cleared her throat, and he smiled.

“I need you to take a ride with me. To Dallas, to see Randy Jenkins.”

Iron suffused his muscles and his anger. The smile turned into a smirk.

“Really?” That it was her, asking him for something, gave him an evil delight. A sick glee.

“You need to sign some papers so I can do my job.”

“Well, as you can see, I’m busy.”

“I understand moving hay is pressing business, but if you don’t sign those papers, my hands are tied. And so are Eli’s.”

He stepped toward her like he was going to grab another bale of hay but stopped right in front of her instead. All those little black buttons on her vest screamed and begged to be released.

Something wicked and hot brewed in the space between them, taking up oxygen, filling his head with treacherous ideas about running his hands over that tiny leather-restrained waist, palming the perfect round globes of her ass. She would feel so good in his hands, against his body; those curves were meant to be touched, palmed, and kissed.

Bitten.

Sucked.

God, he wanted her.

“Frankly, I’m pretty sick of everyone needing something from me.”

Her blue eyes darkened and he knew it wasn’t sympathy, not from Tara Jean. So he braced himself for her anger. Looked forward to it, even.

“Yeah, poor you,” she spat and his body sizzled, his fingers burned. “I didn’t write that will, Luc. None of us did, so stop punishing us for what your father did.”

“You know, that would be a very noble thing to do.”

“And you’re not noble.”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Okay, fine, what do you want?”

Restlessness and anger cheered. Lust sharpened itself into a knife buried in his gut.

“What do I want?” he murmured, his eyes on her shiny pink lips.

Her skin broke out in goose bumps and her shoulders went back. Her nipples were hard points against the black leather. “I’m not for sale.” Her voice was a hot, hard whisper of anger. “Not anymore.”

“We’re all for sale, Tara Jean Sweet.” His eyes traveled down her body, taking breaks at her hips, her breasts, the long length of her legs.

Watching that naughty little tongue of hers, he realized what he wanted from her. More than he wanted to slip that vest off her beautiful skin. More than he wanted to fill his hands with her breasts.

He wanted a kiss.

Her lips, perfect and pouting against his. A little tongue. Perhaps a lot of tongue.

And he wanted her to admit that she might not like him, but she wanted him.

That would make him feel less like taking an axe to everything on the ranch.

“And if you want me to sign those papers, I’m going to need a kiss.”

He took off his gloves and tossed them on the ground, all the while watching her wrestle with her pride. The right thing to do, he was well aware, was to let this go. To tell her he’d go to Dallas and sign those papers and she didn’t have to do anything. But he was sick to death of doing the right thing. Choking on self-sacrifice.

“Just a kiss. That’s it.” Her hands twitched into fists, and he wondered if she knew what she revealed in that unconscious gesture.

Oh, Tara Jean, what have you had to sell to get here?

He nodded, hating himself a little, but far too turned on and curious to stop.

“Fine.” She tossed back her hair, her eyes hard and flat like blue mirrors, giving away nothing, and since he wasn’t totally fond of his reflection at this low moment, he looked away. “But I’m warning you, neither one of us is going to enjoy this.”

“You gonna bite me?” He tried not to sound excited by the idea. “Because that would pretty much nullify the agreement.”

“I’m not going to bite you. But I’m cold, sweetheart—frozen, all the way through. It’ll be like kissing an icicle.”

“Is that supposed to dissuade me?”

“Nope, just making it clear that enjoyment isn’t part of the deal.”

He laughed; he couldn’t help it. “I don’t think enjoyment will be a problem.”

A bead of sweat slid out from behind her thick blond curls and traveled across the smooth skin of her neck, over the ridge of her collarbone to the inward slope of her breast, where it gained speed and vanished beneath the black leather.

“Cold?” he murmured. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know me,” she said, her voice as frozen as her body was hot.

No, he didn’t, but that didn’t matter.

Right now, all that mattered was getting his mouth on her. Her body against his.

His fingers grazed her shoulder, his thumb sliding under the thick, creamy seam of the leather vest. Goose bumps rippled over her skin and her breath escaped in a long, slow sigh.

“You feel that?”

She didn’t say anything, her eyes over his shoulder as though this was something she had to endure.

Endure
, he thought, shame creeping up alongside his lust. She wasn’t something to punish. The skin, soft and damp between her arm and the leather, was the most perfect skin he’d ever touched.

And he might have bullied his way into this kiss, but he wasn’t going to punish her.

Her eyes flicked to his, big and round, blue as the sky outside the arena doors. It was, for a moment, as if he were seeing her for the first time. Her beauty punched him in the gut, left him reeling. He couldn’t do this; he wasn’t this man. He lifted his hand from her shoulder, stepped back. “You really are beautiful—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she muttered and leaned into him, pressing her lips to his with all the finesse of his first girlfriend in eighth grade.

His finger hooked into the leather of the vest and his other hand cupped her face, the silk of her hair tangling in his fingers. The bones of her chin, the curve of her ear, were like glass under his fingers.

She waited, every muscle tensed, like a bird in the palm of his hand. He pressed soft kisses against the corner of her lips, the velvet skin of her cheek. He breathed a kiss against her ear and felt her curl against herself, like ribbon on a present. Her heartbeat began to pound against his palm.

But she didn’t step away.

He tasted the strong feminine tendons of her neck and found them delicious. She even tasted like candy.

“If you don’t want this, step away,” he breathed across her skin and heard her swallowed moan.

“Walk away, Tara,” he said. “Right now, or—”

“Or what?” Her challenge was heady, the heat in her eyes—all of it called to the wicked and base parts of himself.

She wasn’t walking away, so he kissed her. Really kissed her. Her lips, soft and pouty, were firmer than
he’d thought, and he carefully licked the corner seam. When she didn’t jerk away, he ran his tongue along the closed crease, a beggar at her door.