Hers to Choose (Cannon Cousins) (27 page)

It thrilled her to see
the pleasure on his face. He seemed truly flattered that she liked the
drawings. That took her by surprise. Why her opinion mattered to him escaped
her. Surely he had flocks of clients who paid tens of thousands of dollars for
his work. The investment he had made in this shocked her.

“I don’t know what to
say,” she managed. “You must have spent a lot of time on this, Alex. Why did
you do that? You didn’t know if I would agree.”

He drained his glass and
kept his view on the drawing. His jaw pulsed. “I remembered what you said,
about paying money to the bank. Bryn, it’s pretty clear you’re under some
financial stress, and now that I know about your ex, I understand why. It
seemed like we had all the elements here for a great little development and the
opportunity for you to get your head above water. Was I right? Can you work
with Cannon Company on this?”

She shuddered, and her
eyes closed halfway as she turned to her drink. Could she work with him? In
every instant of the time she had known him, from the very first sound of his
voice on the phone, in spite of all her vows and determination, she would have
given anything to work with him. On anything he wanted. Now, she honestly
didn’t know if she could work with him at all. She didn’t know what to say.

“Another drink?” she
asked in an overly cheery tone. “And yes,” she added quickly before she changed
her mind. She could hate herself later. “I’d love to work with you on this.
It’s probably the nearest thing I could think of to the perfect solution to my
problems. Seriously, Alex,” she said, pausing halfway to the kitchen. “It’s so
generous, so
wonderful,
I’ll never be able to thank
you enough.”

He smiled, that slow lazy
smile she loved to see crossing his face, and again her body pulled toward him
in such a visceral response that she had to physically wrest herself around and
command her feet to shove those house shoes into the kitchen.

Through the course of the
next two hours, as she served him another gimlet and turned on the television
for him to watch while she finished preparing Christmas dinner and then as she
sat across from him dressed in her red silk blouse, with the table laden with
delicious food and the white tablecloth with red candles flickering in the
dusky room, her body yearned and cried. She sipped from her glass of wine and
forced her thoughts to the land, the drawings, the tasks she would need to do
to please him, to make his idea a success for both their benefit, and that
alone made it possible for her to keep breathing.

“Here’s to a devilishly
successful development,” he said, raising his wine glass.

She leaned over the table
toward him with her glass. “Devilishly,” she laughed.

“Merry Christmas, Bryn,”
he said suddenly, standing up and going to the tree. She sat on the couch while
he delivered his gifts to her and then waited to open his own while she tore at
the shiny paper. She chose the slimmer gift first, suspiciously shaped like a
calendar, and sure enough, she laughed as the wrappings fell away; it was a
calendar. Only unlike hers, his was a work calendar with big empty blocks under
each date.

“For writing notes,
deadlines, appointments,” he explained. “I keep one for every
project,
it’s the only way to keep up.”

“Well, then you’ll have
me organized from the start,” she said, smiling.

“Now,” he urged, “the
other one.”

It was a medium sized box,
not very heavy. Whatever it was, she hoped it didn’t make her basket of food
seem too miserly in comparison. Her imagination took off in twenty directions
as the tape finally ripped loose and she lifted the lid. Inside, folded tissue
paper hid the contents. She probed with her fingers before managing to shove
aside the layers and get to the item itself. A shiny bright blue surface
appeared, curved like some kind of bowl. She lifted it. It was a hard hat.

“I wanted to make sure
you were equipped for the job,” he laughed. “See if it fits.”

She swallowed her
disappointment at this further evidence of his impersonal approach. She settled
the hat over her head, but the ponytail got in the way. She released the band
and then settled the hat back on her head, snugging it down.

His nostrils flared as he
inhaled and looked angry again. “You can’t wear it like that,” he said gruffly.
“Not with your hair loose.”

She frowned. “It won’t
fit over the ponytail.”

“The men won’t get any work
done if you go on the job site like that. Hell,” he said, leaning back
abruptly, “they probably won’t get any work done even with your hair tucked
completely inside.”

Her frown deepened. “I
could braid it. It would stay out of the way better like that. Is that what you
mean?”

He sighed. “Yes, that’s
probably best. Jesus, this is going to be a bigger challenge than I had
imagined.”

“What? Do you think I
can’t do this?” She felt quivery. “I promise, Alex, I can do more than cook and
submit.”

“No, that’s not what I
mean.” He shook his head. He sipped more of the wine still in his glass.

She broke into the
awkward silence. “Now, open
your
presents!”

“I know what this is,” he
laughed, ripping the paper off his calendar. “Oh, this is nice, really nice.”
His hand smoothed over the January image of cliffs with big icicles.

“There’s a new scene
every month. Look…”

“No.” He held the
calendar closed. “I don’t want to look until that month comes up. I like the
surprise.”

She laughed.
A little boy again.
“Okay, that’s fun.”

He turned to the other
gift, obvious also with the paper clumped around the awkward basket handle.

“Oh, this is perfect.” He
took out the jams and wrapped breads, and examined each one with compliments
and thanks enough to convince her that he did sincerely appreciate it.

She drained her wine
glass and went to the kitchen to clean up. The wood stove door scraped as he
refueled the fire for the night. She paused at her bedroom door to thank him
for a wonderful Christmas. He said they would develop a work list in the
morning.

She closed the door while
she slipped into a nightgown and then opened it with the lights off to give him
free access to the bathroom for the night. The long hike had brought a new kind
of tiredness to her. She only woke one time, thinking he was standing beside
her bed. But when she opened her eyes, he wasn’t there.

The list of things to do for the
project lay on the dining room table. She thought she understood all of them,
but Alex gave her their cell numbers just in case.

“I’ve got a couple of
clients pressing,” he said as he stuffed his things into his valise. “I have to
put in serious work time, now that I’ve got you squared away.” He glanced up.
“Let me know as soon as you talk with the water people and the health
department.”

“Yes, first thing Monday
I’ll go down there. I’ll send an email about what I find out.”

He stood at the door. She
wanted to touch his face, run her finger over his lips, crush her body against
him and let the magic flow. She didn’t.
Couldn’t.
Whatever she felt, it was hers alone to feel, and if she focused, maybe she
could make it stop.
Soon.

“Thanks for everything,”
he said. His eyes glinted with an indecipherable expression.

“Oh, Alex,
thank
you, and thank Dan for me. Giving me this incredible
opportunity with the land, it’s so wonderful. I’ll work hard, really. You can
count on me.” She followed him
out,
part of her
connected to him so strongly that it felt like a cord had fastened around her
heart and pulled her along as he walked to the car. She forced herself to stop
on the porch steps.

It had quit raining
sometime during the night and misty fog hung in the valleys and in cottony
shreds along the mountainsides.

“I’ll be back to stake
out the sites as soon as the surveys are done,” he said. His lined denim jacket
stood open, revealing the old white pullover he had worn all morning. His
jawline brushed the upturned jacket collar as he turned his head.

She ate him up with her
eyes, devouring every last morsel of his energy, his skin, his muscle. Whatever
else happened, however desolate her life became, she had her memories—Alex in
the shower with the curtain pulled back, his blue-eyed smile, his magnificent
cock inside her filling her up with pleasure greater than any she had ever known.
She watched the car door close and the loss of his body from her view took away
half of her. When the last bumper of the BMW vanished down the road, it was a
cratered shell of Bryn McClure that she carried back inside.

***

Alex drove slowly along the narrow
highway, conceding to the wet pavement and his inability to think about driving
or anything else except Bryn. The sight of her had been almost more than he
could stand. Every detail from her luminous eyes to her tremulous lips set him
on fire, worse than he had even remembered. It had taken every bit of control
he could muster not to take her in his arms the minute he walked through the
door.

But he’d made himself a
promise not to distract her with his desire until he had presented his plans
for her land. He knew she loved the place, but he also knew enough about her
desperate financial situation to feel an urgent need to offer a solution. He
didn’t want her to think he’d manipulated her into any agreement to parcel out
her inheritance for Cannon Company profits.

His hope had been that
once the land development idea had been discussed, he would let her know how
much she intrigued him, how much he admired her. He had tried, when she asked
about a woman in his life, to hint about how he felt. He searched for some
signal of interest in him, something to let him know she wanted him instead of
Dan.

Her
decision to have Dan that last morning still turned in him like a knife.
That she had dressed up for Dan, “a
siren in black silk,” as Dan said, dug the knife deeper. He had believed there
was something between them, something he felt viscerally and hoped she did too.
But were her flares of sexual reaction caused by how she felt about him, or was
that how she reacted to all men? He waited for a signal, some glimmer. Until
the last possible moment, he waited, until it came with blankets for sleeping
on the couch. That made things totally clear. A light had gone out inside him.

Images of her kept
scrolling through his mind— radiant in candlelight in the red blouse at dinner
with her mouth curved in a smile, in the rain against the gray backdrop of wet
trees and the scent of earth in his nose, in her bed sleeping like an angel,
perfection in every possible way. And none of it would be his.

Whatever might have been,
he had to let it go. What he had to do now was follow up on his plan. Even if
she didn’t feel anything for him, he couldn’t stop what he felt for her. He
literally could not sleep at night for worry about her there alone, prey to
some random bastard with nothing but evil in mind. If he couldn’t have her, at
least he could provide something toward her security.

With income from the
development, she wouldn’t have to invite strange men to the land. He tried not
to let his mind go down that path, but as the miles passed on the highway, he
couldn’t stop the thoughts. Did she allow other men such liberties? Was what
happened with Dan, with him, a normal occurrence for her? He couldn’t believe
it, had to think that the arrangement he made with her had been a new thing.
She had admitted to him that this was her first hunting party.

Much as he wanted to
protect her, wrap his arms around her and keep her away from everything else in
the world, of course he couldn’t. His duty waited in St. Louis. Even if the
impossible happened, if she opened herself to him, if she declared her undying
love, he couldn’t abandon everything else. Work had piled up. Cannon Company
had a reputation to uphold, not only for careful execution of its contractual obligations,
but also for the innovative and focused design work they offered. That would be
him on the design work part. It had always thrilled him before. Now the work
stretched out before him in an endless tiring stream. He hardly cared about it
at all.

All he thought about, all
he
wanted,
was Bryn. 

***

Some of the information she needed
about the water line she was able to obtain over the phone, at least what it
would take to tie on more connections. But for the county planning office, she
had to drive to the county courthouse, where she wandered through the hallways.
She rounded a corner and stared into the dark leer of Brent Thompson.

“McClure,” he said, a
slim smile twisting his mouth as he raked her up and down. “Been thinking about
you. I hear you’ve been entertaining men at your house.”

Her lips felt numb.
“What?”

“Surely you didn’t think
you could keep something like that a secret. Word gets out.”

“That’s the stupidest
thing I’ve ever heard,” she managed. A flush burned her cheeks. What did he know?
What did anyone know? How did they know?