Ramagos, Tonya - Strictly Accountable [Stud Service 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (12 page)

“I’ll come out to the ranch tomorrow after work,” she told him as he got to his feet.

He snagged his hat from the table where he’d placed it before sitting down on the sofa. “I’ll try to hold the surprises to a minimum.”

Sabrina’s gaze locked on his ass clad in his trademark Wranglers as he walked through her living room and out her front door, thinking the man was nothing but one surprise after another.

Chapter Six

Brody heard the barks a nanosecond before he caught the flash of fur streak past as the dogs hightailed it across the ranch. He looked up, locked gazes with his ranch foreman, and lifted a questioning brow.

A shit-eating grin spread across Pete’s age-worn face. “You might want to go after ‘em yourself, boss. Looks like that pretty lady you’ve been keepin’ company with lately is back, and I don’t think Roco and Hound plan on lettin’ her out of the car.”

Brody turned in his saddle and squinted as he brought the distant driveway into focus. Sure enough, he could just spot the back end of Sabrina’s Saturn ION. The barking hadn’t let up either.

“Damn dogs,” he muttered and pulled on his horse’s reins to steer him around. He guided the horse at a slow trot over the expanse of the open land, slowing when he rounded the house. He chuckled when he spotted Sabrina sitting calmly in the driver’s seat of her car, one wrist resting on the steering wheel, and an expression of part hilarity and part irritation on her beautiful face.

“Roco, Hound, ya’ll get your stupid asses over here.” His forceful bellow instantly calmed the dogs. They backed away from the car, gave another loud bark each, and hightailed it back the way they came.

“Do you have a big green tractor I can ride on, too?” Sabrina called out as she got out of her car and slammed the door. A wickedly amused smile spread over her tantalizing lips.

Her reference to the Jason Aldean song made Brody chuckle. “Sure thing. We can even sit on the back and watch the sun go down later if you want.” The sound of her giggle wrapped around his stiffening cock like a wet fist.

“You’re a quick one, Mr. Holt.”

Brody shrugged. “Aldean is a Georgia boy. That’s just over the state line. You, on the other hand, are a very slow girl. How many times and different ways do I have to tell you to call me Brody?” He dismounted, catching the horse’s reins and holding them tight as he walked toward her. “I thought you grew up on a ranch.”

“You know I did.” She rounded the front of the car, stopped, and leaned her delectable rear against the front grill.

“I wouldn’t have expected you to be afraid of a couple of dogs.”

“I’m not. As a matter of fact, my father has a dog identical to the black one that was yelping at my car door.”

“Roco doesn’t yelp. He barks.”

“He yelps,” she argued. “The other one,” she glanced around as if looking for the second dog in question, “was not a dog. I’m not quite sure what he is.”

“Neither are we. Let me tie up Silver, and I’ll show you inside.”

“I don’t want to take you away from your work. I can see my way to the office and get started on my own.”

“All right, how long will you be here?”

“At least a few hours. Things are a bit more complicated than they appeared on the surface.”

Brody groaned. “I don’t want to know just now. Stay for dinner.” He purposely phrased it as an order, not intending to leave her an inch of space to wiggle free. He didn’t wait for a response either. “I’ll let Carlotta know to set an extra place at the table tonight.”

* * * *

Sabrina propped her elbow on the desk, caught her forehead in her hand, and massaged her temples with her thumb and middle finger. The headache came on quick, a product of way too much deep thought and far too many hours in front of a computer screen. Though it hurt to move her eyes, she chanced the shooting pain the movement would bring and glanced at the time in the bottom right corner of the computer monitor.

“Damn,” she breathed quietly. Maybe the headache hadn’t come on as quick as she thought. Hadn’t it been only two fourteen the last time she looked? It sure didn’t feel like four full hours had passed. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

She pushed away from the desk and got to her feet. The stiffness in her muscles further substantiated that time had definitely gotten away from her.

“Got to remember to get up and move.” Too late, she gave herself the gentle coaching.

She left everything on the desk where it lay and wandered out of the office. A thick silence blanketed the hallway, but she didn’t get the eerie feeling she expected at finding herself alone in the approaching dark hours in a house not her own. Instead, she felt comfortable, cozy even.

She started to turn toward the front door, figuring she would step outside. Perhaps a bit of fresh air would do her good after hours spent in the office. Clattering noise from what she presumed to be the kitchen redirected her path.

“Well, hello there.” A plump, older woman with salt-and-pepper hair gathered at her nape and welcoming sea-green eyes greeted Sabrina when she stepped into the kitchen. “I wondered how long you could stay holed up in that office without coming up for air.”

Sabrina pointed in the direction she’d come from. “I was headed that way, for air, when I heard you in here. I lost track of time.”

“That happens to all of us when we get caught up in our heads.” The woman tsk-tsked and stirred something in a simmering pot on the stovetop.

Sabrina rubbed her forehead. “That explains why mine hurts then.”

“There’s aspirin in the cabinet on the end.” The woman indicated which end of the line of oak cabinets with a nod. “I’d get it for you, but I’ve got my hands full.”

“Oh, no, I can get it. Thank you.” Sabrina moved to the cabinet, found an extra-large bottle of aspirin right in front, and shook two into her palm.

“I’m Carlotta. Been the housekeeper here since Brody was in diapers.”

“I’m Sabrina. Been the tax accountant here since a week ago Saturday.”

Carlotta’s wrinkled lips quirked. “Quick one, too, aren’t you?”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Sabrina drew her bottom lip between her teeth. “Umm, where are the glasses?”

“Next cabinet over,” Carlotta answered, nodding again. “I hear Mr. Holt left a real mess behind.”

Sabrina retrieved a glass from the cabinet and filled it half way with water from the dispenser on the outside of the double-sided refrigerator. She used the time it took her to swallow the aspirin to gauge how to respond to the woman’s statement. How much of the Holt family affairs did Brody share with the housekeeper? In the Gibson home, the hired help were more like family than employees. She considered Carlotta for a moment and went with her gut, guessing the same applied here, too.

“It’s certainly a larger mess than Brody realized.” She drank the rest of the water, rinsed the glass in the sink, and held it up. “In the dishwasher?”

“Please.” Another nod. “He believes you’ll straighten it out.”

Back to Brody
, Sabrina thought and pushed out a hard breath. “I’m sure doing my best to.”

“He needs someone like you.” Carlotta turned her back on Sabrina, shuffling to the opposite counter where she set to preparing an unidentifiable dish of chicken and cheese. From the scents starting to fill the air, Sabrina guessed it to be some kind of chicken casserole. “All the girls have been gone a long time. Oh, they stop by from time to time, but he gets lonely around here.”

Sabrina made a noncommittal sound. She couldn’t help but think if Brody Holt ever got lonely, it was by choice. A man like him could, and likely did, get any woman he wanted with very little effort at all. Hadn’t he managed to get her barely forty-eight hours after showing up at her kiosk?

“He’s got you.” Her gut instinct about Carlotta being more than a mere housekeeper to the Holts was obviously right on.

“Always has, always will.” Carlotta steadied the dish on one hand as she pulled open the oven with the other. “I take care of the house, most meals, and general chores. I don’t know a thing about finances and all that tax stuff you’re doing.”

“It’s not as complicated as people think.”

“To you, I suppose that’s true. Point is, he needs a woman around, one his age who’ll stick. It’s good to see him with someone besides that floozy, Mary-Beth. She ain’t out for nothing but what’s in his pants and wallet. Keep telling him that, and he still goes out with her just like he did the other night.”

Sabrina bit her tongue so hard a dart of pain shot through her mouth. So he went out with another woman, probably mere days before showing up at her apartment and asking her to marry him.

What difference did it make to her? It wasn’t like his proposal had been real. The marriage, if she decided to agree to his cockamamie plan, wouldn’t be either.

That didn’t stop her from wishing for different facts. It didn’t help her in her efforts to guard her heart from the man either. Said heart skipped a beat at the distant sound of the front door opening.

“That’ll be him now.” Carlotta confirmed what Sabrina already knew. “He’ll go upstairs and shower before coming in here to see about dinner.”

Sabrina rubbed her hands together, nervousness warring with an anticipation of seeing him that she tried to ignore. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You can make the salad. The fixings are in the fridge.” Carlotta shot her a toothy grin. “Fair warning, too, Brody hates his veggies. You just might end up feeding them to him before dinner is over.”

* * * *

Brody’s mother drilled proper manners into his head from the day he started to understand the English language. Determined he would grow up to be a gentleman, she instructed him on how to treat a lady. Everything from holding open a door to talking to her right fell under his mother’s tutelage. He improvised the part of leaning in to catch a whiff of Sabrina’s scent as he pulled out the chair for her at the dining room table and doubted his mother would mind.

Sabrina always smelled of fruits and flowers to him, an intoxicating mix that made his head spin. Touching her only added more fuel to his desire. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from letting his fingertips dance along her back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade when she took her seat. The almost imperceptible shiver that resulted from his touch pleased him and only heightened his need to sink his teeth into her tender flesh as he fucked her from behind.

“Does it count as a romantic dinner for two if the housekeeper prepared the meal and set the table?”

Sabrina tilted her head back to meet his gaze, her attention following him as he moved to the chair across from her. “I set the table. Carlotta did all the cooking. You came in, showered, and sat down to eat.”

Brody rested his forearms on the edge of the table and grimaced. “Guess that means I don’t get any points, huh?” God, he enjoyed making her laugh. The sweet sound did wondrous things to his system.

She shook her head. “Points don’t come free around here.”

“You really know how to make a man work, don’t you?”

Her expression glinted with mischief. “I was raised on a working ranch with a full crew of men. I know how to make a man earn his keep.”

“I’m getting that.” What would it take to earn her? He didn’t yet know for sure, but he aimed to find out.

“Speaking of work,” she went on as she picked up her fork and took a bite of the chicken casserole, “I managed to get through the 2005 tax year today.”

Brody’s concentration locked on the fork, on the way her lips closed around the tines, and his cock flexed in his jeans. He wanted those lips wrapped around his shaft, wanted his hand buried in the back of her hair, fisting the satiny strands to control her head movement as he fucked her mouth.