Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series) (2 page)

His answer
slapped her in the face like a page out of her father’s book. Only a family man would choose nursery over closet.

The phrase
barefoot and pregnant
burned between her ears. How many times had those words tumbled from her father's mouth on the kind of laugh he saved for his cronies? Never mind that her mother and sisters were more likely to be found in the latest designer heels than barefoot. Then again they'd all played their domestic rolls perfectly in step with the old man, marrying and popping out babies. But not her. Subjugating herself to any man was not in her future. Especially not after her father had betrayed her as he had.

That's why, n
o matter how much Roman St. John tweaked her hormones, she'd vowed that day there would be no flirting with him. Just business.

Lot of good her self-control and his qualifications did her now that her house was a charred ruin.
When her father found out, he'd reel her in like one of his trophy game fish, bragging how right he'd been about a woman's inability to stand on her own. Never mind it wasn't her fault her one chance to prove her father wrong had gone up in smoke.

The
truck hit a pothole and Tess bounced against her seatbelt. If Roman St. John knew the extent of the damage he'd done her, he'd probably get an
I told you so
in there as well, even though the fire was his crew’s fault.

The truck bounded over another of the defects bad weather and poor maintenance had gouged into the country road.
She grabbed the dash to steady herself. St. John's eyes glittered in the low light off the instrument panel and he pressed his foot to the accelerator.

"Having second thoughts?" he
asked. "I'll gladly turn around and drive you back to town."

"You wish," she fired back at him, automatically contradicting anything this latest man
seemingly hell-bent on dictating to her suggested, even if what he suggested was more reasonable…and safer.

"You being used to five star accommodations, I wouldn't want you to be disappointed."
The near corner of his mouth twitched.

No doubt about it.
Roman St. John enjoyed tormenting her. But he was in for a surprise if he thought a little mocking would send her running, tail-tucked between her legs.
Take over
and
take care of the little woman
type men had mocked her all her twenty-nine years.

Granted, none with as manly a physique as Roman. Definitely not one she had to fight to resist.
Damn the man his amazing looks, smug comebacks, and ability to aggravate her with seemingly little effort. Though she had to admit, she'd often found sparring with Roman an entertaining exercise. The one perk to having taken on a defensive demeanor with him.

"Just keep driving, St. John."

He wheeled the truck hard off the county road onto a dirt driveway and hit the brakes. Tess lurched against her seatbelt.

"Is it necessary to take every turn as though we're trying to out-maneuver someone tailing us?"
she asked.

"My driving not five star enough for you, Princess?"

She scowled at the man slanting a self-satisfied smile her way. "I've told you before and I'll tell you again. No one calls me princess."

"I'd have bet everyone
did."

"That's a bet you'd have lost, St. John."

He shifted in his seat and draped an arm along the back of the seat, an arm that was bare below the rolled back cuff of a plaid cotton shirt. Damned if she couldn't feel the heat emanating from that almost naked limb sprawled across the seatback and the small space between them.

Safer to go to a motel.

Involuntarily, her head tilted toward that heat, her ponytail brushing his skin. In spite of his offending her, she wanted to know the cradle of that arm. She wanted to be possessed by its strength--wanted to be possessed by the strength of the whole man. And therein lie the real danger of Roman St. John. She shouldn't want to be possessed by any man.

Definitely safer
…a motel
.

"Here we are," he all but sang in his
smooth baritone, sweeping a broad hand toward the small structure caught in the arc of the truck's headlights. "Home sweet home."

That patronizing smugness
that reminded her too much of her father, that was the real reason she refused what her body craved. That's why she'd declared Roman St. John off limits the day she realized he'd have made The Castle his family home. Not that he was wrong to have seen a
home
in the mansion. She'd seen it, too. But her target client wanted old elegance with all the modern conveniences. That was the client with the money to pay for the showcase she'd created. Yet, a tiny part of her was saddened to have taken away some of the original intent from so grand a house.

She shook off the thought
because it was a sentiment she and Roman shared. Not that she'd ever admit such a thing to the man. She didn't even want to acknowledge it to herself. Such commonality only added another dimension to the chemical attraction she already had for a man. The last thing she needed was more reason to be drawn to a man who thought like her father. She was, above all, a woman who intended never to be subjugated by any man. Never to marry.

#

She was scowling. She was looking at his house and scowling. Roman should be glad. Surely now she'd admit she'd rather stay in a motel. But he resented her attitude. He'd built this house from the ground up. He was proud of it.

"Finding it a little small for your five star tastes?"
he asked.

"It's
smaller than my father's garage."

"It
's no castle," he growled, instantly regretting reminding her of the house that he was likely responsible for making uninhabitable, "But it's livable enough for us
common
folk."

Her eyes narrowed at him.
"You think I'm a spoiled rich girl, don't you?"

"If the glass slipper fits."

"Don't know your fairytales very well, either, do you?" she stated more than asked.

A man didn't grow up in a family of five kids and dote on a preschooler nephew without learning his fairytales.
The fact was the woman pushed his buttons, made him forget to use reason. Made him act like a Neanderthal. It was that ever-contradicting mouth of hers…and that lean, firm body. Even shaking a finger at him as she did now, nothing on her body jiggled.

"Cinderella wasn't rich," she
said. "She wasn't indulged and she wasn't a princess."

"Then make it a Gucci pump," he barked.
"Just let me drive you to the best motel in town."

She huffed.
"I have only the clothes on my back and no way to pay for anything."

"I'll pay for the room. I'll buy you a change of clothes."

"Not good enough."

"Why?"

"Because it's
your
crew's fault my house went up in flames tonight."

"Your house didn't
go up in flames
. Only the third floor burned."

"Because of the carelessness of
one of
your
workers."

She had him there
, if the Fire Marshal's investigation confirmed what the Fire Chief suspected.

"Look," he ventured, "we're both stressed out.
Maybe there's a condo available at the ski hill. It's off season."

"I'm staying in your house."

"Why?"

She folded her arms across her chest, as stubborn a pose as
she'd ever presented him. "Because you said if you didn't have my remodeling job done by the end of the week, I could move into your house. It's the end of the week, St. John, and my remodeling job isn't done. Not by a long shot. Now, are you a man of your word or not?"

Above all else,
he was a man of his word.

"Fine.
" he said, slumping into his seat. "I'll leave the headlights on until you get on the porch."

She
peered through the windshield and frowned. "You don't even have a paved walk up to the house?"

"D
irt path's good enough for us peasants," he muttered.

She craned her neck as though searching the
shadows beyond the reach of the headlights. "It is awfully dark out here."

Did he detect a hint of apprehension in her voice, an edge of uncertainty?
Could Her- City-Born-Highness be uncomfortable with the dark? His shoulders lifted with the hope she might yet give in to reason and let him take her back to town. Maybe a few chosen facts of rural living would help persuade her out of staying under his roof tonight.

"Yep
," he said in response to her comment about the darkness. "No pesky streetlights shining in our eyes and keeping us awake out here in God's country."

She scowled at him
. But, as her gaze slid past him toward the woods beyond the yard, apprehension pulled at her features. He should be kind. Ease up on her. But a knockout gorgeous harpy was the last thing he needed sleeping under his roof.

"With the extra overcast tonight," he
said, "it'll be especially nice and dark."

She shivered and Roman
felt a twinge of guilt. But he reminded himself who he was feeling guilty over and prodded, "Let me help you with your seatbelt."

Her hand clamped down on the belt buckle, her white knuckled fingers confirming that Little-Miss-Thinks-the-World-is-at-Her-Beck-and-Call wasn't as self-assured as she pretended.
Again, guilt niggled at him.

"I can manage on my own,
thank you," she retorted in the terse tone she'd used on him far too often as she released the seatbelt.

Hoping she was b
luffing, he offered, "Perhaps her Ladyship would like me to escort her to the door."

"On your own?"

"Yes," she snapped, opening the passenger side door.

"Of course," he returned, silently damning her stubborn
-to-the-core tenacity. Why else would a woman
accustomed to five star accommodations
hold him to a stupid boast made in the heat of an argument?

She swung her legs out the door and slid to the ground,
so petite she all but disappeared beyond the edge of the seat. He wished
she'd
disappear.

She peered across the broad seat at him, her eyes narrowed.
"I have your word you'll leave the lights on until I'm up to the house?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die," he
said.

"Hope to die, huh?"
A tiny smile twitched at the corners of her lips. "Is that a promise?"

Damn
, but the woman had a quick wit.

"If you still doubt my word at this point," he
said, "let me put it another way. I wouldn't want her Ladyship to trip on a rut and have another reason to sue me."

She arched
a shapely, dark eyebrow at him. "Sue you?"

Roman winced.
The last thing he'd meant to do was remind her about what course of action she could take against him over the fire. As if he bought for a moment she hadn't already thought of it. She probably had her lawyer's phone number on speed dial.

"Just keep in mind," he
said, "I offered to walk you to the door."

"What a gentleman."

Before he could retort that he
was
a gentleman, that she'd
know
it if she wasn't so quick with her razor-edged tongue, she shut the truck door. So much for scaring the mule-headed woman off with rough roads, dark woods, and bungalow-sized accommodations.

He watched her walk toward the house
, the sway of her gently rounded hips all too well defined by her form-fitting running shorts.

"
Ah, hell," he muttered. How could plain old physical attraction tie him up in such knots?

The
second Tess' foot came down on the top step, he flicked off the headlights and headed for the house, following the path he knew by heart. A twig snapped beneath his foot at the base of the steps.

"Is that you, St. John?"
she asked from the porch.

"No, it's the bogey man," he
said, focused on separating his house key from the rest on his key chain as he climbed the steps to the porch in the dark and…ran smack dab into his unwanted houseguest.

She screeched and tottered.
He caught her by the upper arm, his knuckles brushing the side of one firm, spandex-cupped breast. She swatted at him.

He let go
of her as if she were a hot potato. "Did it ever occur to you to move out of the way?"

Her fingers
snagged his sleeve and she groused and stumbled along at his side as he crossed the porch to the front door. "You turned off the lights too soon. I didn't have a chance to get my bearings."

"You're on my porch.
It has a railing." He slid the key into the lock and turned it. "You couldn't have fallen off or gotten lost if you'd tried."

H
er fingers bit into his sleeve, tugging the fabric over his arm. She really was unnerved. Another twinge of guilt nagged at him. He
should
reassure her. Maybe slip an arm around her and pull her close--protect her against whatever frightened her. But he needed to keep things professional. She’d clearly drawn that line between them the day they'd met face-to-face. If only she'd keep her mouth shut.

"There's a ramp off the end there
," she said, a whisper of movement suggesting she nodded toward the side of his porch. "I could have been dumped right back into the driveway."

"Then you could sue me over that, too," he growled as he opened the door, reached inside, and flicked on an interior light.

"I didn't say I was going to sue you over anything--"

He eyed
her hopefully, the edge of light wedging out from the open door softening her features, making her appear anything but the she-devil he knew her to be. And she
was
a she-devil even if the diffused light made her eyes glint more with amusement than vindictiveness as she finished her statement about suing him with a smug, "--yet."

#

Chin held high and shoulders squared, Tess released Roman’s shirtsleeve and stepped into his house. The entrance opened into a space between a kitchen with glistening, clutter free countertops and a front room with nary a magazine out of place. Apparently, St. John didn't spend much time here. No man was this neat.
Hell
, she wasn't this neat.

He crowded in behind her, a wall of rock hard muscle bumping against her shoulder blades.
Odd, how they tended to bump into each other more than two coordinated people ought. Aunt Honey would have called those encounters Freudian slips of the physical kind--Aunt Honey who had listened to her complaints about Roman's tendency to get in her way…and about how he wore his tool belt slung way too low on his hips.

Never mind that the belt was designed for a carpenter's convenience.
The way the hammer handle thumped against the man’s thigh with his every move, the smooth stroke of his hand in and out of the nail pocket center front, and the ready release of the clip-on tape measure got her thinking on something far removed from construction. Even now, just the thought of that belt and its dangling hammer handle…

"Unless you want to spend the night entertaining mosquitoes," he said, close enough that his breath
whispered against the back of her ear, "I'd suggest you move out of the way and let me close the door."

So much for fantasies.
Besides, she didn't need him or any other man to fulfill her dreams. She would build her own empire one refurbished house at a time…provided men like Roman St. John quit burning up her assets.

"How inconvenient of me to be in your way, St. John," she mewed, stepping into the front room--rubbing the tickle of his breath from her ear
and adding over her shoulder, "But then, I wouldn't be here at all if my house hadn't been set ablaze by one of your employees."

He grumbled something under his breath she no doubt didn't want to hear.
As if the opinion of any man who owned a plaid couch could be of importance to her.

A
photo on a table beside the couch of a woman with wildly curling strawberry-blond locks and a little boy with straight wheat-hued hair caught her eye. Tess picked up the picture and studied it closer, frowning as she compared the color of the child's hair to Roman St. John's. He'd never said anything about being a father…or being married…or having been married.

Not that she'd ever asked.
She hadn't. Nor did she have a reason to. And she never would. It didn’t concern her. A woman who had no intentions of marrying didn't need to know such things about a man.

But a man who never spoke of his child was no man she could respect.

"That's my sister and her son, Ben," he said.

So much for assumptions.
A smile pulled at her lips and she set the picture down. Not that she had any business being pleased that her contractor wasn't married. It was just her bad luck her heart lurched into her throat every time she looked into his Icelandic blue eyes.

E
ven if he
was
a spectacular specimen of manhood, he was too much like her father. At least he was whenever he espoused the merits of family life.

Then again, ma
ybe all she saw in those eyes was a man she dared not allow too close. Much as she hated to admit her father was right about anything, he'd pegged her when he said she always wanted what she couldn't have.

"Now what are you scowling at?" Roman demanded.

Tess blinked, and when the heavy dark lashes lifted once more, his uninvited houseguest's gaze fixed on his hand clamped over the edge of the still open door. "I thought the object of my getting out of your way was so you could close the door and keep out the mosquitoes."

He stepped into the room toward her, silently cursing her
pig-headedness as he slammed the door shut behind him. The object had been to crowd her--push her to realize she'd manipulated herself into being alone in the home of a man she barely knew…and to make her see the error of her actions. Instead, the inimitable Tess Abbott had pushed him into closing them in his house alone together.

Worse,
she strolled deeper into his house, her hips swaying. His palms could almost feel their perfect fit. On the brink of the hall that housed the stairway to the second level and split the rear of the house, her crisp voice trailed back at him.

"You going to give me the grand tour
, or shall I explore on my own?"

He should have known Tess was beyond reasoning with.
She'd proven that all too often in the past weeks while working on her house--a house he knew far better than she did. Yet, his every suggestion was met with argument.

Maybe that was the key to handling her, reverse psychology.

But, when he focused once more on her, she stood at the base of the steps just outside his bedroom. Tess Abbot in Spandex shorts and form-fitting tank top mere feet from the foot of his bed. Reverse psychology called for him to suggest she take his room--sleep in his bed. Hell, she and her trim runner's body were already
too close
to his bed for
his
piece of mind.

That wouldn’t work
. Not for him. Certainly not with her. She was flat out too clever to fall for reverse psychology. Her quick wit was proof enough of that. And she was smart. He liked that she'd known how to open up a supporting wall without dropping the roof into the front room--liked that he could use builders' lingo and she understood what he was talking about.

He liked way too much about Tess Abbot to let her into his bed
…whether or not he shared it with her.

"That's
my
bedroom," he said, sounding more territorial than he'd intended.

"
Is this the
one and only
bedroom in the house?"

"And if it is?"

She folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the doorframe, her eyes gleaming. "Then you better hope that plaid couch of yours is comfy, because that's where you'll be sleeping."

"You think you're entitled to the prime location,
huh?"

"When I've been rooted
out of my house due to no fault of my own, I expect the offending party to be gracious about living up to what he promised."

"I offered only that you could move into my house.
I said nothing about moving into my bedroom."

He advanced on her until he towered over her.
She didn't flinch. He'd give her points for hutzpah.

"St. John,
you should know by now you can't intimidate me."

H
e should have known such tactics wouldn't work considering how often she'd backed him down already during the remodeling of The Castle.

She nodded over her shoulder at the stairs climb
ing from outside his bedroom door. "What's up there?"

"My office is upstairs
…and a second bedroom."

"Second bedroom, huh?"
She straightened between the doorframe and him, peered up into the darkness above, and flicked the light switch on.

"Does it have a bed?" she asked
.

"Yes."

"Terrific. I'll take that room." She lifted her face at his, lifted it so close he could smell the minty sweetness of her breath through the clinging smokiness of the fire. "And you thought I couldn't be reasonable."

"
Uncle," he said, taking a step back.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm crying
uncle
. Anything to get you to let me drive you back to town and put you up in a nice room anywhere else but here."

A smile
slanted across her mouth, causing tiny dimples to dent the corners of her sinfully lush lips. "Just point me in the direction of your bathtub, St. John."

Bathtub?
Swell. Not only was he about to be stuck under the same roof with Tess Abbot for the night, she was about to get
naked.