Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series) (13 page)

"Do I frustrate you, St. John?" Tess goaded,
stopping in front of him, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

"You could frustrate a curse out of monk, Princess?"

"Princess?" Brody asked, approaching them from the side. "Is that official?"

"Only in Roman's mind," she
said.

"Ms. Abbot," Roman expanded, "comes from a privileged background.
She thinks the world is at her beck and call and us common folk are meant to serve her."

"Another fabrication of his feeble mind," she
said and wrinkled her nose at Roman.

"Must be this country air fogging up my head," Roman said.
"No, wait, it's smog that chokes out oxygen; smog in the cities."

Brody paused
beside Roman and motioned Tess ahead of them through the open door. "Ladies first."

"Stick it in your ear, St. John," Tess lobbed at Roman as she strode past the two men.

Tess disappeared into the house and Roman realized he wasn't the only man on the porch checking out how the bicycle shorts molded to her backside. The hairs on Roman's arms bristled. But before he could say anything about it, Tess trumpeted from inside.

"
You baking to feed an army, St. John? There must be half a dozen loaves of bread in here rising or cooling."

Brody grinned up at Roman as he rolled across the threshold. "I'm beginning to understand your baking binge."

Roman stepped in behind his friend, shut the front door, and grabbed the back of Brody’s chair, stopping it with a suddenness that almost left skid marks on the linoleum. He'd gone to Brody in the middle of the night for those damn condoms because he was his best friend, his only unmarried friend, and because he had thought Brody could be discreet. He gave Brody a glare that said all that and more.

"You going to make like a good host and feed me?"
Brody asked with mock innocence, his eyes on Tess who stood in profile between them and the kitchen table, slim, firm, fetching. "Or just hold me captive inches from heaven?"

"
Brodyyyy."

Brody grinned up at him.
"Can't wait to sink my teeth into--"

Roman let out a low warning growl.

"--Some of that fresh baked bread," Brody finished.

"It does smell heavenly in here," Tess murmured, nose in the air sniffing
.

Roman's growl turned moan-like.
She was heaven.

…
And hell.

Life was not fair.

She smiled an inscrutable little half smile in his direction. "That's a lot of bread you
kneaded
there, St. John."

"I've got an unwanted houseguest who's frustratingly stubborn
and kneading is a great way to burn off my frustration."

"Stubborn?" she returned, planting her hands on her hips.

Brody opened his mouth, but Roman jabbed a silencing finger at his friend. "You just get the butter."

Brody winked and wheeled around the table toward the fridge.

To Tess he said, "I'd ask you to slice one of those loaves of bread, but we don't have all day to argue the point."

"Slicing bread is hardly an issue," she snapped as he strode past her toward the knife block on the countertop beside the stove.

"And I do not argue every point with you," she continued, following him, crowding him.

Roman drew a knife from the block and turned to Tess.
She had her hands on her hips and her chin tilting that infuriating challenging angle he'd grown accustomed to. "
This
isn't arguing?"

"
Dammit
, St. John. I can slice bread."

"See what I've had to put up with," Roman
said in Brody's direction.

Brody grinned around the refrigerator door at them, waving a
shrink wrapped package in the air. "This the only cheese you got?"

"I haven't had a lot of time to stock my cupboards."
Roman looked at Tess. "And with an extra mouth to feed these days, supplies don't seem to last as long."

Tess wrinkled her nose at him.
"Oh yeah. I eat so much."

He
pointed the tip of the serrated knife at her. "You eat plenty for someone who doesn't cook."

"I cook."

He snatched one of the baked loaves of bread off the counter and snorted. "That's why your garbage was always full of fast food containers."

"You snooped in my garbage?"

"I wrapped it up, as per your orders, then hauled it out to the curb for you."

"I never ordered you to wrap up my garbage.
I
asked
you to do it once. As for taking it out to the curb, that was only once a week."

"You hauled out her garbage?" Brody asked
with obvious interest, wheeling up to the table with his lap full of condiments, spreads, and cheese.

"I did a lot of things for her that weren't part of the renovating."

Brody grunted. "Don't I know it."

Both Tess and Roman gaped at Brody
, and Roman got the distinct impression that Tess had figured out Brody was the guy he'd gotten the condoms from. She was sharp and Brody was playing it unusually obvious today.

Brody dumped his cache of foodstuffs onto the table and nodded at the knife Roman held between him and Tess.
"Why don't you let her slice the bread before you wind up doing something that could be construed as assault?"

"Fine," Roman muttered, dumping the loaf of bread and the knife into Tess' hands.
"I hope you can handle a knife without hurting yourself."

Tess' right shoulder came up, the one the coat rack had jabbed.
"As long as you don't sneak up behind me and startle me, I'll be just fine."

"When did you sneak up on her?" Brody asked.

"I didn't sneak up on her," Roman insisted.

"
Yesterday at The Castle," Tess said, cutting him off almost simultaneously.

"All I did was come up to the attic to tell you I was leaving.
Maybe if you weren't someplace you weren't
supposed
to be, you wouldn't have been so jumpy."

She dropped the loaf of bread onto the table.
"I had every right to see what damage had been done to my house."

He slapped a cutting board down next to the bread.
"The Fire Chief told you to stay out of the attic."

"I was just looking," she countered, driving the knife into the bread, the escaping tendrils of steam remind
ing Roman how hot she'd been two nights ago and how eager he'd been.

"You disturbed the fire scene," he growled.

"Only because you startled me," she argued, sawing at the bread, "making me trip and fall into that rack so it tipped over on me, skewering me where I couldn't reach!"

An image of her bare flanks and creamy shoulders flashed across the backs of Roman's eyes.
Why'd she have to bring up that business that led to her removing her shirt? She slapped a steaming slab of bread into his hand, which all but scalded him.

"See what I've had to put up with all these weeks?" he howled in Brody's direction.

"And you still moved her into your house?"

"
She
moved herself into my house."

Tess threw the knife onto the table and jabbed Roman in the chest with her finger.
"You'd said that if you didn't have the remodeling job done on time, I could move into your house."

"Does somebody here need a lawyer?" Brody interjected.

"No," Roman said.

"Maybe," Tess said,
at the same time.

"I have some experience arbitrating," Brody supplied.

Tess and Roman both turned on him, but Tess was quicker to speak. "Tell him a verbal agreement is as binding as a written contract."

"You actually told her she could move into your house if the job wasn't done on time?"

"The job would have been done on schedule if not for the fire."

"Which was his fault," she argued.

"Do I smell a lawsuit pending?" Brody quipped.

"Here's your chance, Princess.
You, me, and a lawyer all in the same room."

She nodded at Brody.
"Is that why you invited him here?"

"I didn't invite him.
He showed up on his own."

"Uh
huh." She planted her hands on her hips and raised her chin. "Does he do that a lot, show up at opportune times?" She didn't give him time to answer before charging on. "How convenient for you that your best friend is a lawyer. Does he litigate all your lawsuits?"

"I've never had to go to court for a lawsuit."

"Of course not. Your personal lawyer shows up and scares the opposition into settling, right?"

"That's not--"

"Maybe you think this is the way to get me to leave."

"I'm not--"

"Damn right, you're not going to force me out."

She looked so damn smug with her chin thrust out at him, her pupils filling her eyes, and her chest all puffed up.
He poked her in the breastbone, the way she always did to him. "If you weren't so damned stubborn, you would have seen how ridiculous your moving in here was in the first place."

"Ridiculous?"
Her neck stretched, giving the illusion that she'd grown another inch. "Ridiculous is my being burned out of my house by my contractor."

She jabbed a finger back at him.
"Ridiculous is you thinking you're more inconvenienced by this than I am."

He closed his hand around her finger, held it against his chest as he gazed into her
eyes. What would she do if he leaned forward right now and kissed those taught lips? Would they go slack? Would their tight line part to admit his tongue? Would she close her eyes, tilt her mouth to the fit of his, and slump against him?

More likely she'd knee him in the groin.

"What's ridiculous is you staying in my house when you can afford the best accommodations any city could offer. In fact, why don't you go back to the city? Given all your complaints about Pine Mountain and its air, you'd be happier."

"You'd like me to disappear, wouldn't you?"

"It's my fondest wish."

She leaned into him, thigh brushing thigh, breast bumping chest.
Only the anger sparking from her eyes, the jutting angle of her chin, and click of her teeth gnashing together kept him from enveloping her in his arms and rolling her to the floor beneath him. And Brody’s presence. The woman needed to be made love to, and badly.

"Too damned bad," she said, her words squeezing out from between
clenched teeth. "Because I'm not going to disappear. I'm not going to leave. I'm going to be a thorn in your side until my house is repaired."

Why had she vowed to stay until her house was fixed when she'd had it all settled in her mind that she was leaving?

Because Roman St. John aggravated her and the oaf didn't deserve a break. Never mind that nagging notion in the back of her mind that there was something else driving her change of mind.

And now, after their lunch of bread and cheese, she was even joining
him to inspect a property Brody was considering converting into a sports camp for handicapped kids. She simply couldn't turn down Brody's invitation, especially when smoke had all but spewed from Roman's ears.

But she was having second thoughts now that she was seated between the two men in Brody's truck.
The truck hit a bump in the road. Even with its super absorbent shocks, Tess was jostled into Roman.

"Maybe if you belted yourself in
, you would stay put," Roman grumbled.

"I am belted in," she fired back at him.
"Maybe if your arm wasn't in the way, I wouldn't bump into it."

"It's attached to me.
I don't have a lot of options of where to put it."

"I know where I'd like to put it," she muttered, folding her arms across her chest in an effort to create more space between them.

Brody chuckled.

Roman grumbled something about betting he could guess where that would be and
placed his arm along the back of the seat. The move reminded her of the night of the fire when Roman had driven her to his house. He'd slung his arm across the back of the seat then, too. Only this time, it was the crook of his arm close to the nape of her neck instead of his fingers. This time,
he
was closer to her.

The truck hit a pothole and Roman's arm bumped her shoulder.
Tess' whole body went on alert. She'd had a taste of how thoroughly Roman could touch a woman. He, on the other hand, seemed to be experiencing a different reaction. Judging by the crunch of leather in her ear, Roman had gripped the back of the seat to avoid touching her.

Aggravating him was one thing.
Tormenting herself was another. She should have taken her own car, or stayed at his house.

"Do you ski?" Brody asked her as they lumbered down the blacktopped country road.

She nodded, distracted by the lingering yeasty scent of bread that clung to Roman’s clothes and the notion all that bread kneading had been because of her.

"The property we'll be looking at is adjacent to the local ski hill," Brody went on.
"That way we can use the resort facilities for our downhill ski program."

"Sounds like you've thought this out pretty well," she
said, distracted by that strong, hairy arm behind her head that had cradled her from the hard floor at the foot of her bed and held her when she'd confessed her greatest fears.

"I may even have Roman talked into being my ski instructor."

Tess gave Roman a sidelong look. "I didn't know you skied."

"There's a lot about me you don't know."

That was true. She knew little about Roman other than that he was a reliable and excellent contractor, a diehard family man with a bunch of siblings, a pretty good cook who baked great bread, a nice guy, and hot.

"He's a world class ski instructor," Brody supplied.

"World class? Really?" she questioned, openly studying Roman.

Roman
stared out the front windshield, muttering, "She doesn't want to know about my past."

"What's the matter, St. John, got something to hide?" she goaded.

He regarded her through narrowed eyes. "My past is an open book. How about yours, Princess? I've never heard you talk about your life in the big city, though you've said plenty about how Pine Mountain lacks in comparison to Chicago."

"Maybe if you'd ever lived in a city, you'd understand my frustration with repair services that don't work nights or weekends, taxicab companies that have only one vehicle, and mosquitoes that suck the lifeblood out of a person."

"As opposed to high-priced repair services, parking shortages that make a person dependent on taxis, and roaches big enough to carry off your first born?" Roman countered.

"You have no Chinese takeout, no sushi bars, no Starbucks
--"

"No winos, muggers, or graffiti, either," Roman leveled back at her.

"You have no night life," she retorted. "No all-night restaurants. No singles bars. No live entertainment."

"Sometimes--"

"The city hums with life."

"Small towns are safe and quiet," he grumbled.

"Oh, yes. All that quiet you can't shut off."

"Many people like quiet, Princess," he muttered.

She rolled her eyes. "There's only one thing worse than the silence. That blasted bird that sings me awake before dawn every morning."

"That's a whippoorwill."
Roman said.

"I don't care if it's the goose that lays the golden egg.
If I get my hands on it, I'm going to wring its scrawny neck."

"And there's the local ski hill," Brody interjected, as though she and Roman weren't about to wring
each other's necks.

"And those are the condos I told you about," Roman said, pointing at a cluster of buildings at the base of the forested hill striped with wide vertical clearings.
"Probably no whippoorwills around here."

"Is that a hint?" she asked
.

"Looks like the parking area is well lit," he said.

"I'm not moving out," she said.

"And that towering structure visible above the tree line ahead,"
Brody supplied like some single-minded tour guide, "is our world famous ski jump."

"Just to aggravate me, you'd rather suffer whippoorwills and mosquitoes," Roman countered, ignoring Brody's travelogue.

And a contractor who wears happy face pajama bottoms
. Just the memory of what she'd found beneath those happy faces made her stomach pinch with desire. What was wrong with her, wanting a man who insulted her at every turn?

What was wrong with her that she stayed just to spite him?

"Dammit, St. John," she snapped in frustration. "The fire was your responsibility. I'm staying."

"I've never known a woman as stubborn as you."
Roman said.

"That ski jump," Brody went on as though she and Roman weren't waging their own personal war, "hosts an annual world class event right here in little old Pine
Mountain."

"You just don't like that I'm holding you to your word," she huffed at Roman.

"I used to ski jump," Brody continued. "So did Roman."

In unison, Roman and Tess looked at Brody.

"That's how Roman and I met." Brody said.

Tess looked up at the scaffold-like structure looming into view at the top
of a very steep hill. "Roman used to jump off that?"

Roman let out a low, warning growl.
Clearly, Brody wasn't listening to him as he continued with, "Once or twice. Though Pine Mountain wasn't exactly our old stomping grounds."

The last thing Roman needed was for Brody to give Tess more ammunition to use against him.
"She doesn't want to hear about my ski jumping days, Brody."

"The hell I don't," she
said. "This is an entirely unexpected side of you."

"It's not a side of me.
It was just something I tried when I was young and foolish."

"Foolish, huh?"
She studied him with a smugness he didn't like. Then she turned to Brody. "Continue."

Brody grinned over Tess' head at him.
He didn't like Brody’s smugness, either.

"I'd just finished a jump by skidding face first down a hill almost as big as the one we have here."

"Ouch," Tess intoned.

Roman groaned and turned his face to the side window.

"I rode the gondola back to the top with Roman. The whole way, he tried to talk me out of taking my second jump. You'd have thought he was my father, the way he carried on."

Tess snorted.
"Roman patronizing. Who'd a thunk it?"

"You were dazed," Roman muttered.
"You should have pulled out for the rest of the day. You could have had a concussion."

"I thought he was trying to get me to quit because I was
his toughest competition." Brody snorted. "He just wanted to keep me from scrambling my brains."

"Are you sure that was his motive?" Tess asked.

"Always quick to doubt me, huh, Princess?" Roman countered.

Brody accelerated around a long sweeping curve, the centrifugal force pressing Tess into Roman's side.
Every muscle in Roman's body tightened against the assault of her body on his, and he glared at Brody.

Brody went on as though Roman and Tess hadn't been on the verge of starting World War III and he'd just maneuvered them into
no-man's land. "I was a hotshot nineteen year old riding the testosterone bullet. I was sure I could win that competition because I wasn't afraid to ride the hill out."

"You mean you were foolish enough to think you could ride the hill to the bottom," Roman argued, trying to shame Brody into silence.

"You see, if you ride the hill too far," Brody explained for Tess' benefit, "if you land where the angle of the hill begins to break, the impact is harder. A sSkier's injury risk rises dramatically."

"And Roman didn't want you to out ski him, right?"

Roman cursed under his breath.

"Not exactly
," Brody said.

"Leave it be, Brody," Roman muttered.

"When he saw that he couldn't talk me out of riding the hill beyond its limit, he gave me some advice about how to handle landing close to the break."

"And?"

"I followed his advice. I didn't fall even though I out-rode the hill."

"So you won the tournament?"

Brody turned off the main road, chuckling. "No, I didn't win. Roman took first place."

"But you out-rode the hill," she insisted.

"So did Roman."

She sn
iffed. "Didn't I say he wanted you out of the competition?"

"I wasn't trying to eliminate him from the competition.
I just didn't want him to break his fool neck," Roman said.

"But
you
pushed the limit of the hill."

Roman slumped against the door.
"I caught a tail wind. I rode it further than I should have."

He met Tess' steady gaze.
She seemed to be measuring him. Oddly, he didn't want to be found lacking. "I had myself a few wild and rowdy days. So shoot me."

The truck jerked to a halt in front of a squat, two-story house with peeling paint and wide wrap around porches.

"This is it," Brody announced.
"North Point. A camp where handicapped kids can come and be with other kids like them." Brody grinned at Roman and Tess. "Providing the two of you agree she's sound enough to renovate."

"Agree?
Us?" Roman wrenched open the passenger side door and jumped out. "You've got to be kidding."

Brody leaned over the steering wheel and grinned at Roman.
"And here I thought you two would make a great team. A carpenter and an architect."

Roman
slapped the truck door and headed toward the house, trying to outdistance Tess’ and Brody’s voices but failing miserably.

"What is
his
problem?" Tess demanded.

Brody's grin twitched.
"Not enough bread."

#

Roman was at the door before he realized he didn't have the key. He cursed. He cursed Tess for accepting Brody's invitation. He cursed Brody for his big mouth. But most of all, he cursed himself for agreeing to work with her in the first place when he still found Tess Abbot so distracting.

 
Muscles low in his groin tightened. His fingers flexed around the flashlight he'd brought from home and he glowered back at the truck where Tess lingered in the cab with Brody--Brody with his damnable smirk and big mouth. He was probably filling her in on some of their rowdy exploits of those early years. Or maybe he was telling her about how they reconnected years later when Brody needed his house made wheelchair friendly. He didn't need Tess Abbot hearing Brody's Saint Roman speech, either.

"Are you two coming or not?" he yelled.

Tess slid across the seat and out of the truck. Brody leaned through his window and called back, "You two will understand if I wait for you here."

Him and Tess, alone again.
What had he done to deserve this kind of aggravation?

She stopped in front of him and dangled the house key in his face.

"Be my guest," he said, stepping aside.