The Love Ranch (BWWM Romance) (8 page)

She smiled to herself as she looked around the kitchen; it looked nothing like the chaos she had walked into a month ago. Fewer quarrels broke out among the kitchen staff because everyone knew exactly what they had to do each day. The only fly in her ointment at this point, was this constant feeling of being watched. She had been unable to shake it for weeks, which was why she tended to become a permanent fixture in the kitchen these days it was the one place where she didn’t get that prickly sensation of being watched.

Lately, Christian had become an almost permanent fixture in the kitchen too, showing up at odd times unannounced, often to steal a scone or cupcake. One time, he even stole a kiss before ducking out of the kitchen. She loved not knowing just when he was going to show up. She also loved the way everyone seemed to treat him with affectionate respect and never fear, even though he was the boss of them all. She would never admit it but she was starting to look forward to the way he appeared without warning each day in the kitchen.

This was one such day. She had been preparing a duty roster for the twenty kitchen assistants when she heard his deep voice right behind her. A glow of warmth spread through her immediately but she had deliberately schooled her features into one of resignation as she looked up into his grinning ruggedly handsome face.

“The fire department did rule the fire arson,” he told her as he chewed an apple. “Now there will be hell to pay with the insurance investigators. They’re still trying to ascertain who was where, when. Of course I’m a prime suspect.”

“You?” she gasped.

“Well I stand to gain the most from the insurance thingy,” he said cheerfully as he bit into his apple once more.

His breezy unconcern gave her pause, and then she breathed, “Oh my God, you’re rich!”

“Huh?”

“That’s why you’re so unconcerned because one look at your bank account would tell anyone that whatever the insurance company pays you is a mere drop in the ocean.”

“Very good, Tiana,” he said approvingly. “I love the way you think.”

She shook her head, returning her gaze to her chore.

“Not to mention,” he added in a coldly furious voice, “I lost Roan in that fire and I can’t wait to get my hands on whoever set the damn thing. I could never have tried to hurt Roan.”

Tiana’s breath hitched in her throat as she looked at him, “Roan?”

Had someone died in the fire?

“My very first horse. My Dad gave him to me when I was a teenager and now he’s dead. He was too old to run as fast as the other horses.”

“Oh, Christian, I’m so sorry,” she said, covering his hand with hers.

He nodded sadly, accepting her sympathy. His gray eyes flicked up to hers and then looked back down at their joined hands. Just like that, heat kindled in his eyes and Tiana suddenly remembered that the fire that night had interrupted something. They had been about to make love when the blast had interrupted them and in the two weeks since then, heat continued to flare every time their paths crossed but they had both continued to ignore it.

Christian’s lips were slightly parted, his eyes darkened as he watched her and she knew at once that he too was thinking of the same thing.

Slowly, she pulled her hand from his and picked up her roster. As she pinned it to the tiny board, Christian’s eyes followed her every movement. She was wearing a gypsy skirt that flowed to the ground and a small tank top. There was nothing sexy about the attire but somehow, it made her look fetching, feminine and sexy as hell. The skirt emphasized rather than hid the soft swell of her buttocks and his imagination drove him wild, reminding him of just how soft the flesh had felt when he had cupped it that night in the bunkhouse.

It was all he could do to keep his hands off of her.

In frustration, he looked around the kitchen; everyone was busy. But the fat Frenchman met his gaze with an annoying arch look of his own that said he had noticed the direction of Christian’s gaze. Then he too directed his own gaze to the soft swell of Tiana’s bottom.

Christian ground his teeth, almost tempted to fire the man on the spot for his insubordination.

“Get back to work,” he spat.

Tiana spun around, her face shocked at his tone. When she saw he was talking to the Frenchman, she glared at him, “Christian! You can’t talk to people like that! You can’t talk to anyone like that! What has come over you?”

The Frenchman’s arch look intensified as he merrily sliced some onions on a cutting board. He was apparently amused by Christian’s dilemma.

Christian looked over at the temptress breathing fire as she looked at him, her chest rising and falling with anger. He couldn’t very well tell her that he had been checking out her ass and had caught the Frenchman looking too. In her current mood, she would probably twist both their ears!

“Dammit!” he swore, and then turned on one well-shod heel and strode from the kitchen.

Tiana looked around in confusion, uncertain what had driven him out of the kitchen and then with a sigh, she returned to her chores.

***

Christian was in a foul mood as he baled hay with some of his men. He kept remembering the fat Frenchman’s eyes roving over Tiana’s ass as well as the Frenchman’s smug look when she had lit into him for chewing out the other man. His fists tightened into balls of fury as he pictured the man’s face and he wished heartily again that he could punch the smile right off his face.

“You seem a little tense. Everything all right?” someone asked.

Christian looked up; it was Rick, one of the newest hands on his ranch. He had reservations about the man but since the baling season was at hand, he had agreed with his foreman to take him on temporarily. The man proved to be a good hand, but there was just something about him that didn’t sit too well with Christian.

“Fine,” he mumbled.

“That little piece of ass in the kitchen’s been tying the boss up in knots eh?” Rick said, nudging one of the ranch hands beside him as he snorted with laughter.

Christian saw red. In seconds, he was flying across the field and knocking the other man right into the ground. Chaos erupted as all the ranch hands began to converge on the two men rolling around on the ground.

Christian rolled on top and threw a punch, his fist slamming into the other man’s face and breaking his nose instantly. Rick was no slouch in the brawling department either; he retaliated with a right hook to Christian’s eye.

“Watch. Your.  Language!” Christian yelled, punctuating each word with a punch.

Several hands intervened, dragging the warring men apart. Christian spat onto the ground, unable to believe he had lost control like that. He had not been involved in a brawl since he was a teenager. Even now, he could feel the collective surprise of his men because they had never seen him so much as raise his voice.

“You’re fired!” he told the other man.

“No kidding! Tell your whore for me that she will be hearing from me soon!” the man yelled, a fine spray of saliva flying from his mouth.

Christian sprung again, hitting out so violently at Rick that he had knocked the other man out cold before the other men could even so much as intervene.

Sweat rolled down his face and body and his jaw and eye were beginning to throb where Rick had got in a few licks of his own. A slight pain in his ribs also told him Rick’s knee had struck home.

“I think I’ve done enough baling for one day. I’ll be at the ranch if anyone needs me,” he said, striding off and clambering into the nearest truck he could find.

Silence reigned in the field until he was gone and then the men erupted into excited conversations. It wasn’t long before they were betting on the odds that Christian had fallen in love with and would marry the new sexy cook.

Christian parked the truck haphazardly on the lawn in front of the kitchen door and stumbled out of the truck. He needed an icepack, he thought as he gingerly opened the door to the kitchen and walked in.

Tiana was at the sink, singing under her breath as she rinsed a plate; other than her, there was no one else around, which was a first.

“Where’s everyone?” he asked as he collapsed onto the nearest seat.

“I gave them the rest of the day off to make up for your thoughtless comment earlier,” she said with a sniff that told him he was still very much in the doghouse.

She picked up another plate and turned to glare meaningfully at him, but she caught sight of his swollen face for the first time and screamed, the plate sliding from her suddenly nerveless fingers to break into a million pieces on the floor.

“What happened to you?” Tiana cried, rushing over to kneel beside his seat as she carefully examined his jaw and eye.

“I ran into a wall?” It was intended as a statement but came out as a question for good reason; she wasn’t buying it.

“Christian!”

“Alright I punched someone’s lights out. He totally deserved it too! But he punched back.”

“Christian! What the hell has gotten into you? First you yelled at my entire staff for no good reason then you go out onto the fields and start punching people left and right! Again, what the hell?”

“You wanna know what has gotten into me? You! You wanna know why I’m scolding and punching people? You!”

She leaned back as she stared up at him, “What?”

“You've been driving me steadily out of my mind, Tiana, and I know exactly why! I need you. I need to be inside you!”

Raw heat spiraled through her and she swallowed, unsure of what else to say.

Christian’s hands shot out and grabbed her face in a surprisingly gentle grasp, his silver-gray eyes locked hungrily on hers. “Kiss me, Tiana,” he ordered.

She needed no further urging. She sat on his lap immediately and opened her mouth over his, their tongues immediately tangling in a passionate, fiery kiss.

Tiana lost all sense of time and place as she buried her hands in Christian’s thick dark hair. His hands trailed to her breasts, squeezing and kneading and just as he made to lift the hem of her shirt, the kitchen door burst open, startling them. Tiana jumped off his lap and they turned in unison to stare at the person who had just opened the door. It was Rose, and she barely spared them a glance as she marched to the sink to drop her load of tray and tea cups.

When she had, she turned to them with a decidedly smug grin and said, “You have visitors, Christian.”

A sense of dread filled him from head to toe and just as he made to ask who she meant, a tall willowy red-headed woman clad in a very expensive silk shirt tucked into a skirt and impossibly high heels stepped into the kitchen followed by another woman clad in an attire so similar they might have been twins. They even had identical facial expressions; their mouths were pinched in the universal expression of displeasure and their noses were thrust up into the air as though they had smelled spoiled milk.

Tiana mentally rolled her eyes; she knew demanding, hard-to-please guests when she saw them.

“Hello,” she ventured airily.

They didn’t even spare her a glance; she might have been an ant for all the attention they gave her.

“Mother,” Christian breathed, rising to give the first woman a kiss on both cheeks that brushed the air beside her but didn’t quite touch her.

Mother? When it rained it poured.

“Yes dear, and look who I’ve brought; your fiancée Lauren!” she said. Indicating that the younger woman with her, with a satisfied smile,was intended for him. Rose looked as pleased with herself as if she had invented Lauren single-handedly without any help from the Creator.

It took a minute to sink in; Christian had a fiancée?

Tiana gasped, unable to stifle the sound this time. Christian’s gaze met hers and she was shocked; the truth was in his gaze. The Lauren woman was his fiancée!

He was a cheating bastard, she realized as her heart splintered into a million pieces in her chest.

CHAPTER NINE

“Come on, Jamal, back up a little,” Tiana called as she tossed the ball to Jamal in a wide arc across the park.

Jamal tried to catch the ball, his small hands meeting each other in an audible clap over his head as the ball sailed right through.

With a laugh, Tiana sank onto the park bench as she watched him race after the ball. He picked it up and ran back to deposit it in her hands. His attention was caught by a group of kids on swings and he looked back at Tiana with a hopeful expression on his face.

“Alright, you can go,” she said exasperatedly.

He took off at his usual made dash and Tiana reclined against the park bench with a sigh.

She contemplated her nails sadly as thoughts of yesterday’s incident flashed through her mind. She had seen Christian in a whole new light and even though she had convinced herself that she was fine, she couldn’t help the way she felt. She had been in such a foul mood after that that she had burned all the scones for dinner. The lamb was half-cooked and the broth was watery.

Jamal whooped with delight as the swing swung high and she smiled involuntarily; whatever else was wrong with her, her baby was turning out great and that was more than enough for her.