Learnin' The Ropes (26 page)

“I’ll wake up Swede and we’ll let you get back to sleep.” Ty took a step toward the foreman.

“No, don’t go.” Lexi’s voice sounded pleading as she held out her hand to Ty. She knew what she asked was far beyond the call of duty, but it’s what she wanted all the same. “Will you hold me again, until I go to sleep?”

“I’ll hold you as long as you like.” Ty slid back onto the bed next to her and wrapped his arms around her. Lexi turned her head so it rested on his chest and relaxed against him.  Sinking down against the pillows, Ty released a contented sigh and closed his eyes.

He wanted to hold Lexi in his arms every night.

Lesson Twelve

Maintain Control at All Times

“If ya start to lose yer grip,

grab onto it with both hands

and hang on fer all yer worth.”

“Are you joking, girlie?” Bertie asked so loudly Lexi had to hold the phone away from her ear. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Nope, that is the honest truth.” Lexi smiled as she sat at the kitchen counter, sipping tea.

Tired of the confinement of spending the last three days in bed, Lexi got up and made her way to the kitchen. Although she figured one more day spent in the house probably wouldn’t hurt, she’d dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.

Briefly, she thought about going outside, but changed her mind. It was still cool and rainy out and the last thing she wanted to do was to make herself sick again. To entertain herself, she called Bertie to see what was going on in her world and told her aunt about being sick.

“I can’t believe that ol’ goat Swede and your handsome mechanic took such good care of you,” Bertie said.

“Believe it or not, it’s true.” Lexi dropped bread in the toaster and pushed down the lever. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had better care when I’ve been sick.”

“Then quit messing around and put your brand on Ty. Mark my words, baby, he’s a keeper.”

“Aunt Bertie…”

“Don’t ‘Aunt Bertie’ me, honey-pie. I know what I’m talking about and so do you. Think about what I said. Men like Ty are few and far between. Count yourself blessed to have happened upon such a great guy, especially one so fine-looking. Mercy, Lex, he could start wildfires all over the county if he runs around much in those Wranglers you made him buy.”

“Aunt Bertie!”

The woman laughed. “I’ve got to go, but call if you need anything. Love you, girlie.”

Lexi smiled. “Thanks, Aunt Bertie. Love you, too.”

While she buttered her toast and ate it, Lexi mused over her aunt’s words. The woman was crazy if she thought Lexi could just walk up to Ty and tell him she was branding him as hers. 

She liked Ty. The intense attraction she felt for him frightened her yet she was drawn to know more about him. In the depths of her being, she knew he was a good, solid man who would never willingly hurt her. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she fell a little bit more in love with him with every passing day.

The problem was that she didn’t trust herself or her feelings. Not after she thought she was in love with James. What she’d felt for the stuffy businessman was nothing compared to the wonderful, wild emotions that raged through her heart for the hardworking mechanic.

The care Ty had given her while she was sick had further illustrated his innate goodness and caring nature.

Both Ty and Swede had hovered around her like two fussy old women. They brought her tea and toast, fluffed her pillows, and made sure she had plenty of tissues. Swede read her dad’s copy of
The Virginian
aloud from start to finish, and Ty carried her down to the family room to watch movies.

It was while he was digging in the entertainment center where her dad had an assortment of movies that Ty discovered an old John Wayne movie called
Girls Demand Excitement
.

When he opened the case, a slip of paper fell out with yet another clue.

 Best Bucket

He and Lexi spent quite a bit of time speculating on what that meant before deciding to watch the movie.

While she loved Swede like an uncle, her feelings for Ty were something else entirely. She finally recovered from her initial humiliation of him undressing her, then seeing her with a red, runny nose and watery eyes.

It never crossed her mind that someone as big, strong, and as much of a loner as he was could be so tender and gentle in caring for a pathetically sick woman. If she hadn’t been half in love with him before she got sick, she was completely smitten with the man now. She just didn’t know what to do about that infatuation.

Lost in her thoughts, Lexi didn’t hear the kitchen door open and jumped when Baby pressed against her leg.

“Hey, Baby! I haven’t seen you forever.” Lexi rubbed the dog’s damp head. “Let’s get you dried off and you can hang out with me awhile.”

She grabbed a couple of towels from the laundry room and dried off the dog then mopped the floor where the canine tracked in water and mud. Lexi put an old sheet on the floor by the counter and Baby plopped down, watching her intently.

Lexi grinned. “Did you miss me, too, Baby?”

The dog barked and wagged her tail.

“I didn’t think you liked any human but Ty these days,” Lexi said to the dog as she finished her cup of tea.

Unable to sit still, she decided to make Swede and Ty a batch of cookies as a thank you for taking care of her. Both men, in possession of a love of sweets, would appreciate a treat.

Quickly creaming together butter and sugar, she stirred up a batch of sugar cookies. While the dough chilled, she turned up the radio and flipped through a clothing catalog that arrived in the previous day’s mail.

Once the dough was cool enough to handle, she rolled it out, using a glass to cut rounds. She place them on a baking sheet, sprinkled the tops with sugar, and then popped the butter circles into the oven.

As she waited for the cookies to bake, Lexi cranked up the volume on the radio when Luke Bryan’s
Country Girl (Shake It For Me)
started to play. She danced around the kitchen with abandon, unaware she had an audience.

Not expecting Lexi to be out of bed, Ty heard music blaring when he stepped onto the porch of the house. The past few days, he and Swede had been in and out of the house multiple times without knocking. However, if Lexi was up and about, it didn’t seem right to barge right in. The loud music blasting from the kitchen was a good sign her health had improved.

He knocked on the door and waited for Lexi to invite him in. As he waited for her to come to the door, he listened to the lyrics and found himself entertained by the song. Maybe Lexi’s country music had some merit. When he knocked again and got no response, he decided she must not be in the kitchen.

Quietly opening the door, he stuck his head inside. Baby rested on the floor while Lexi danced around the kitchen, shaking a posterior that should have been registered as an assault weapon on the male senses, especially in the jeans she wore.

Ty leaned against the counter and watched her move, rapidly losing his ability to think rationally. The more she danced, the hotter his blood ran and the tighter his insides twisted. 

The only thought registering in his head involved wrapping his arms around that beautiful body and kissing her until they both forgot everything but each other. And if she wanted to wiggle around the kitchen a little more, he wouldn’t object to that either.

Seriously doubting Lexi would be quite so uninhibited if she knew she had an audience, his theory proved accurate. The moment she spied Ty, Baby released a loud bark, drawing Lexi’s attention. Lexi spun around and stopped mid-shake in her dance. Cheeks and neck red from furiously blushing, she stared at him. Ty mentally lambasted the dog for announcing his presence.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he said, sticking his finger in the cookie dough and snitching a bite. He acted as though he didn’t have a care in the world, although he was surprised he could form coherent words with the way his senses sizzled on a Lexi overload.

“I… it was… you… Oh!” Lexi stuttered, embarrassed and flustered. How long had he been standing there, anyway?

“Feeling better today?” Ty stole another bite of dough, desperately wanting to hold Lexi in his arms.

“Yes, I am.” She turned off the radio and busied herself with a pan of cookies she took out of the oven. Carefully placing the cookies on a rack to cool, she put in another pan before looking at Ty.

Ty tossed her a teasing grin. “I might have to start listening to country music if the songs all make you move like that.” He took a step toward Lexi. She took a step back as he took another forward, until she bumped into the refrigerator. Focused entirely on her, he placed his muscled arms on either side of her, blocking her in, as he leaned against the refrigerator door. His hot blue eyes melded to hers and his voice dropped to an alluring rumble. “You want to shake it for me again, Lexi Jo?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t. In the first place, I didn’t shake anything for you.” Unable to pull her eyes from his, heat, tension, and desire pulsed between them. “Besides, I don’t make it a habit of dancing around the kitchen, just so you know.”

“Maybe you should,” Ty growled. His sweet sugar-laced breath blew warm against her face.

 “I… I was just…” Lexi stammered, unsettled by the intense light glowing in his eyes and the warmth of his big body so close to hers.

“Making it really, really hard for me to not do this...” While his lips trailed hot kisses along her neck, his hands slid down her hips and landed on her backside, nudging her flush against him.

Consumed by the wonder of Ty holding her so close with his kisses branding her skin, Lexi ran her hands up his arms and around his neck. As his lips tempted hers, she forgot everything except Ty — except for the glorious sensations he stirred in her. When his hands slid beneath her shirt and seared the soft skin of her sides, she gasped and shoved against his solid chest.

“Ty! You can’t…”

Abruptly tumbling back to reality, he sighed and dropped his hands. “Lexi, I’m sorry.” Genuinely remorseful, common sense flooded his head. “I didn’t mean to get carried away.”

Before she could say anything further, Ty ran his hands through his hair and released a frustrated breath. He was out of line. Way out of line. Repentant, he took another step back.

Still breathing hard, Lexi scrambled to find her mental footing. No longer surrounded by Ty’s warmth, she felt chilled to the bone and oddly bereft. “I shouldn’t have encouraged you. It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.” Aware of her discomfort, although not the reason for it, he worried over how she would react to him now that he’d kissed her so passionately. He didn’t come to the house intent on seducing her. He only thought to see if she felt better and offer to make her breakfast.

Lexi’s fanny-shaking dance, a sight that would quite likely be emblazoned in his brain for the remainder of his life on earth, wasn’t anything he planned on seeing this morning. It caught him by surprise. How else was a red-blooded man supposed to react? Despite his best intentions, Ty couldn’t keep from touching the body that constantly tempted him.

Men generally fell into like, lust, or love with a woman. Quite likely, what he felt was a lethal cocktail of all three. The more he tasted, the more his thirst grew.

 “I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” he said with sincerity. It would kill him if she feared him.

“I’m not.” Lexi looked at him with warmth in her gaze and placed a hand on his arm. “I’m a little afraid of this…um… thing between us, but not of you.”

The statement didn’t exactly reassure Ty, but at least she hadn’t told him to get out. Gently placing his hand over hers, he rubbed soft circles on the back of her hand with his thumb.

“I’m a little afraid of this thing too, Lexi. I’ve never…” Ty realized he was about to say more than he probably should, but plunged ahead. “I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Me either,” she whispered, staring at his chest, unable to meet his eyes. “Regardless of what we’re feeling, we can’t keep getting carried away. What are we going to do?”

“Take it slow and easy,” Ty said with one of the grins that made Lexi’s knees feel wobbly. “I’m not going anywhere. You aren’t going anywhere. We have all the time in the world to explore whatever this is.”

“Okay. Slow and easy,” she repeated as the smell of burning cookies reached her nose. “Oh! The cookies!”

Grabbing a potholder, she pulled a pan of overly-browned cookies from the oven and dropped it on the counter.

Baby had quietly observed the proceedings between her two favorite people. Suddenly, she grew excited and jumped between them, barking and wagging her tail. The dog nearly knocked Lexi off balance as she slid another pan of cookies in the oven.

“Guess you better not shake and bake anymore,” Ty teased with a wicked glint in his eye, picking up a handful of cookies from the cooling rack.

Lexi threw her potholder at him with a grin. “Get out of my kitchen, Ty Lewis! And take that blasted dog with you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ty said, sidestepped Lexi when she snapped a damp dishtowel at him. He rushed out the door with Baby hot on his heels.