Can't Hurry Love (18 page)

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she cried, turning to face him, her eyes dark with pleasure, her lips wet. Water slid down over her white breasts, gathered at her pink nipples.

For a moment he was struck dumb by his luck.

Taking advantage, her fingers curled around the rigid length of him, the water an electric lubricant as she pumped her fist. And then, because apparently after years of ignoring him God had decided to make him the luckiest man on earth, Victoria began to drop to her knees, in front of him.

“No. No.” He pulled her back up, shaking his head.

“Now I know you’re kidding,” she murmured, leaning forward to kiss his neck. “I may not know much about sex, but even my husband liked this.”

“I like it,” he told her, and shifted her around so that the water hit his back and she was pressed up against the far wall. “But I gotta make up for disappointing you in the truck.”

“Eli, that … you didn’t …”

He gave her a little push against the tiled wall, which he knew she liked because underneath that prim exterior lay a total deviant, and then he fell to his knees in front of her. Which he would pay for in the morning, but the scent of her perfumed the steam around his head and right now he would kneel on rocks for this woman. His hands slid from her knees to her hips, finding the muscles and riding the edges with his thumbs as he slowly pressed them open. Farther, until the sable cloud between her legs parted and he saw the delicate pink of her sex.

She was panting, her rib cage lifting and falling in tiny increments, the skin of her belly and neck turning red. Her breasts trembled, those nipples so pink and hard.

But still he waited, gathering the tattered edges of his control.

“What?” she breathed and licked her lips, staring up at the ceiling. “Is … is there a problem?”

For the first time in his life, the answer was unequivocally no.

“Shush,” he whispered. Kissing the skin of her belly, licking the small rise of her hip bone, he settled himself at the lush, perfumed heart of her. “Let me redeem myself.”

chapter

13

Eli stared at
the moonlight stretching across the floor of his room and listened to Victoria scurrying around, gathering her things.

There was a thump and a squeak. She swore like a sailor, and he could feel her eyes on him, gauging his stillness to see if she’d woken him up with her noise.

He sighed and shifted, pretending to still be in a sex-induced coma. But the truth was he’d been awake since the moment she’d toppled off his body and curled up along his side.

For an hour she’d dozed against him, her little snores fanning his chest, giving him goose bumps in the cool darkness, and he’d stared up at the ceiling and counted the minutes until the regrets crept back, like hungry dogs around his back door, bringing with them the long, slow suffocation that came from being with another person.

It hadn’t taken very long. His arm fell asleep under her head. And his stomach growled. For a second she’d stirred, and he’d panicked at the thought of having to make some food for them. The image of her in his kitchen wearing one of his T-shirts made his blood run cold.

What would they talk about? Cows? Sex? The weather?

They had nothing in common. She was from the city, wore silly shirts, and had a son. He was a cowboy with a penchant for do-it-yourself home repairs and horses.

This was why dates ended in his truck. Or at some girl’s house.

Because he hated having people in his home. He hated their eyes on his things. Making assumptions and answering questions about him they had no business even asking.

Women in particular seemed to like to make a game of him. Reading things into his silences that just weren’t there. Practically guaranteeing their own disappointment.

But then Victoria had snuffled awake and her panic had filled the room with an icy chill. After a long moment, she’d snuck out of his bed, and that suited him just fine.

And now it looked like she was going to sneak out of his house too, and that was like a dream come true. The warm sheets curled around him and he let his fake sleep melt into something real.

Crap. She walked here
.

His eyes popped open and he stared up at the ceiling. There was no way he could let her walk home. In the dark. At ten o’clock at night.

Could he?

Of course not. There were coyotes out there. She’d freak out and get lost, and then that would be on his conscience, too.

The toilet in the bathroom flushed and he heard her slip into the bedroom. In the shadows, she clutched her tennis shoes to her chest. It was painfully obvious in the bend of her shoulders that she’d never done this before, the walk of shame, and he didn’t know how to take the sting out.

“I’ll take you home.” She jumped at the sound of his voice, too loud in the silence. He dragged a clean shirt and pair of jeans from his dresser and pulled them on over his tired and sore body.

She was small in the corner, her tiny white face peeking out of the cloud of black hair.

“Thanks,” she murmured. He nodded as he walked past her, unable to control his discomfort. “This the part where you blindfold me?”

He stared at her, memorizing the messy details of her.

How do I tell you I don’t know how to do this? How do I tell you how much I regret having you here and how much I want to do it again?

But saying that would be all kinds of stupid.

And that smile on her face, it slowly faded away. Faded to pained self-awareness.

And he couldn’t make that right either.

So he walked past her, putting the night behind him.

Once they were in the truck, bouncing up the road to the ranch house, he didn’t try to make it easier. Didn’t bother to fill the silence with inane chatter, and he appreciated that she didn’t either.

For two people who had engaged in wild monkey sex, the silence was very uncomfortable, just as God intended.

At the top of the last rise, the house appeared, all lit up like part of the Statue of Liberty’s crown smashed on top of a box with two strange, snaky arms.

Victoria was delusional. No amount of money was going to make that place look good.

“It sure is ugly, isn’t it?” she said.

“I hope you have a good architect.”

She watched him for a moment, the glow from the house cutting patchwork across her face. Her blue eyes were unreadable.

“Me too,” she finally said, looking away.

He parked in the shadows at the edge of the light in the parking area.

“Hey, Eli?”

The longing to bang his head against the steering wheel was profound.

“Do you know where your mother is?”

His head jerked sideways. “What? Why?”

“I’m just … wondering.”

“No. God. She left when I was eight. I haven’t heard from her since.”

She nodded and the silence was so thick, so terrible, that he wanted to open her door and push her out.
This was the punishment he deserved for bringing her into his home. This shit was what happened when you let a woman sleep in your bed
.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “For the ride.”

He nodded, and his neck burned and his throat ached.

Her swallow was audible and he stared out the front window, wishing he knew how to be casual about this. Wishing he knew how to be relaxed.

“This … this is it?” she asked.

“What else do you want?” He sounded harsh. Mean, even, cruel after everything that had happened in the truck and shower and finally in his bedroom. But in a way, he was asking. If she told him, he might have a shot at giving it to her.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

His shoulders slumped and he reached for a well-worn classic. “I had a good time.”

She practically lunged across the seat, her lips a dry little punch to his cheek. “Me too. Thanks for the dirty stuff,” she whispered, and then was gone.

He watched her bound up the stairs to the front door without once looking back, which suited him fine, because he was sitting there with a dumb-ass grin on his face that no one needed to see.

Victoria leaned against the door, her heart hammering in her chest. It had been hammering for hours. She felt like she’d run a marathon. A sex marathon.

There could be no question that Eli Turnbull was a jerk. Emotionally stunted wasn’t even the half of it. He was wound so tight it was amazing his head hadn’t popped off.

Good in the sack, though. Very, very good in the sack. And shower. And truck.

She giggled, lifting a hand to her lips to hold in the sound.

His cool dismissal, the casual cruelty of his goodbye, was stinging and awful in one light, but a blessing in another.

She didn’t have any guilt about hiring his mother. She was right back to owing him nothing.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Ruby stepped into the hallway, carrying a Spanish romance novel and wearing a pair of turquoise rhinestone reading glasses that made her look like a cartoon cat.

“Jacob—”

“Celeste started reading him
Harry Potter
and they both fell asleep in his room.”

Victoria blinked. “Celeste?”

“Said she’d been wanting to read it to him for a while.”

“Jacob?”

“Am I not speaking English?”

“Sorry. That’s just … surprising.”

“Not really; the woman is crazy for the boy.”

“Celeste?”

“You,” she waved her hands around her head. “You are too busy lusting after Eli to notice.”

Well, that did seem familiar. She was going to have to pay better attention. Now that the lust had been dealt with.

In fact, now that the lust had been dealt with, a lot of things were clearer.

“Did the fax come in?” she asked and Ruby nodded, pulling a piece of paper off the hall table against the wall.

It was the quote, broken down but not any different from what they’d expected. Even with the money that would come in from selling Eli the land across the river, they were still short. Celeste was going to have to call Luc. She wouldn’t like it, but she’d do it.

“I’m going to call Amy Turnbull tomorrow to tell her to start demolition as soon as possible,” Victoria said, the decision made with the kind of surety and rightness that she needed at this moment.

The kind of surety and rightness she’d never really experienced before. For a moment she wondered if this was how other people felt—because it wasn’t just confidence. It was ownership. She was rooted in her life, in control of all the things she normally left to other people.

And it felt good.

Very, very good.

Two days later Amy, Gavin, and the crew descended on Crooked Creek Ranch. Celeste took Gavin and his demolition guys out to the farthest corner of the west wing, where the demolition was going to start, leaving Victoria and Amy to go over the schedule.

“We’re going to do good work for you,” Amy said, shaking Victoria’s hand. For two days since that night with Eli, Victoria had been living on some kind of high. She’d felt invincible. But at Amy’s touch, that invincibility popped and she felt a sudden wave of doubt, the cold chill of misgivings.

Who am I to be doing this?
she thought, as if the old her, with all that baggage filled with insecurity, had suddenly shown up with the crew.
What do I really know about building a spa?

“Are you having second thoughts?” Amy asked, and Victoria felt compelled to lie. To laugh and shake her head as though tearing down her family ranch was absolutely no big deal, but Amy’s cool green eyes stopped her and her throat tied itself into a knot.

I’m totally freaking out
, she thought.

“Sometimes,” Amy said, sitting down on one of the stools at the kitchen counter, “the only thing to do is close your eyes and jump.”

“I’ve never been very good at that,” Victoria whispered, dropping onto the stool next to Amy. She ran her hands over the cool tiles, looking for comfort or distraction—she wasn’t sure which.

“Well, then you’ve done the smart thing and surrounded yourself with people who are.” Amy pulled her notebook from the briefcase at her feet and slapped it down on the counter.

Is that how a woman walks away from a child?
Victoria thought.
She just closes her eyes and hopes for the best?

“I was talking about Celeste,” Amy said, her voice cool, as if she could hear Victoria’s thoughts. “She always knew her own mind. And Ruby …” Amy smiled slightly and flipped open her notebook, got out her calculator. “No one can derail Ruby. Now, let’s talk about our schedule.”

“When are you going to tell Eli? Is that on your schedule?”

Amy slipped on the little half-glasses she wore, magnifying the spidery veins in the corners of her green eyes.

Funny, how when Victoria first met Amy, she couldn’t see any resemblance between her and Eli. The more time
she spent with both of them, the more she realized the similarities between the two had nothing to do with hair color and everything to do with temperament. Lone wolves, the two of them.