The SEAL's Secret Heirs (8 page)

Kyle planned to use that slick consistency to his advantage.

“Slim,” he called down. “You okay for another few minutes? I have to run back to the barn to get a couple of things, and then we're gonna haul her out.”

Slim eyed Kyle and then the cow. “
Haul
her out? That's a dumb idea. And not what Danny Spencer would have done.”

Too bad. Wade Ranch was stuck with Kyle, not the former ranch manager. “Yep.”

Not much else to say. It wasn't as if he planned to blubber all over Slim and ask for a chance to prove he could be as good as Spencer. He firmed his mouth and kept the rest inside. Like always.

The ranch hand nodded, but his expression had that I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it
vibe.

Kyle galloped back to the barn and found exactly what he was looking for—the pair of hundred-foot fire hoses Calvin had always kept on hand in case of emergency. They'd been retrofitted with a mechanism that screwed into the water reservoir standing next to the barn. The stock was too valuable to wait on the city fire brigade in the event of a barn fire, so a smart rancher developed his own firefighting strategy.

Today, the hoses were going to lift a cow out of a creek bed.

Kyle jumped into the Wade Ranch Chevy parked near the barn and drove across the pasture, dodging cows and the stretches of grass that served as their grazing ground as best he could. Fortunately, Johnny and the other hands hadn't fixed the fence yet, so Kyle drove right through the break to the edge of the creek.

By the time he skidded to a halt, the hands had gathered around to watch the show. There was no time to have a conversation about this idea, nor did Kyle need anyone else's approval, so if they didn't like it, they could keep it to themselves. Grimly, Kyle pulled the hoses from the truck bed and motioned to Johnny.

“I'm going to tie these to the trailer hitch and then throw them down to Slim. I'll rappel down and back up again once we have the hoses secured around the cow. You drive while I watch the operation. We'll haul her out with good old-fashioned brute strength.”

Johnny and the other hands looked dubious but Kyle ignored them and got to work on tying the hoses, looping one end around the trailer hitch into a figure-eight follow-through knot. It was the best knot to avoid slipping and his go-to, but he'd never used it on a fire hose. Hopefully it would hold, especially given that he was the one who would be doing the rappelling without a safety harness.

When the hoses were as secure as a former SEAL could get them, Kyle tossed the ends down to Slim and repeated the plan. Slim, thankfully, just nodded and didn't bother to express his opinion about the chances of success, likely because he figured it was obvious.

Kyle waited for Slim to drop the hoses, and then grabbed on to one. His work gloves gripped better than he was expecting, a plus, given the width of the line. Definitely not the kind of rappelling he was used to, but he probably had more experience at this kind of rescue than anyone there. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd led an extraction in hostile conditions with few materials at his disposal. And usually he was doing it with a loaded pack and weapons strapped to his back. Going down into a ravine after a cow was a piece of cake in comparison.

Until his boot slipped.

His bad leg slammed into the ground and he bit back a curse as a white-hot blade of pain arced through his leg.
Idiot
. He should have counterbalanced differently to compensate for his cowboy boots, which were great for riding, but not so much for slick mud.

Sweat streamed down his back and beaded up on his forehead, instantly draining down into his eyes, blinding him. Now his hell was complete. And he was only halfway down.

Muttering the lyrics to a Taylor Swift song that had always been his battle cry, he focused on the words instead of the pain. The happy tune reminded him there was still good in the world, reminded him of the innocent teenagers sitting at home in their bright, colorful rooms listening to the same song. They depended on men like Kyle to keep them safe. He'd vowed with his very life that he would. And he'd carried that promise into the darkest places on the planet while singing that song.

Finally, he reached the bottom and took a quarter of a second to catch his breath as he surveyed the area. Cow still standing. Hoses still holding. He nodded to Slim and they got to work leading the cow as close to the slope as possible, which wasn't easy, considering she was in labor, scared and had the brain of a—well, a cow.

The next few minutes blurred as Kyle worked alongside Slim, but eventually they got the makeshift harness in place. Kyle hefted the heavy hoses over his shoulder and climbed back up the way he'd come. The men had shuffled to the edge of the ravine to watch, backing up the closer Kyle got to the top. He hit the dirt at the edge and rolled onto the hoses to keep them from sliding back to the bottom.

He was not making that climb again.

Johnny grabbed hold of the hoses so Kyle could stand, and then made short work of tying them to the trailer hitch next to the other ends. He waved at Johnny to get in the truck. It was do-or-die time.

Johnny gunned the engine.

“Slow,” Kyle barked.

The truck inched forward, pulling up all the slack in the hoses. And then the tires bit into the ground as the truck strained against the load. The cow balked but the hoses held her in place. So far so good.

The hoses gradually pulled the cow onto her side and inched her up the slope as the truck revved forward a bit more. It was working. The mud helped her slide, though she mooed something fierce the whole time.

Miraculously, after ten nail-biting minutes, the cow stood on solid ground at the top of the ravine. Kyle's arms ached and his gloves had rubbed raw places on his fingers, but it was done.

Johnny jumped from the truck and rushed over to clap him on the back, breaking the invisible barrier around Kyle. The other ranch hands swarmed around as well, smiling and giving their own version of a verbal high-five. Even Slim offered a somewhat solemn, “Good job.”

Kyle took it all with good humor and few words because what was he supposed to say?
Told you so? That's okay, boys. I'm the boss for a reason?

The ranch hands wandered off, presumably to finish the job of fixing the fence. Eventually, Kyle stood there, alone. Which was par for the course.

Was it so bad to have hoped this would become his new team?

No. The bad part was that if a successful bovine extraction couldn't solidify his place, he suspected nothing would. Because everyone was still waiting around for him to either fail or leave. Except Kyle.

Even Grace didn't fully believe in him yet, or she wouldn't have qualified her recommendations with a “We'll see,” and the threat that she wasn't closing the case.

What more did he have to do to prove that honor, integrity and loyalty were in his very fiber?

* * *

Grace stood at the wide double door of the barn and watched horses spill into the yard as the hands returned from the cow emergency. They dismounted and loudly recounted the rescue with their own versions of the story. Seems as if Kyle had used fire hoses to drag the animal out of the ravine, which the hands alternately thought was ingenious or crazy depending on who was doing the talking.

Apparently it had worked, since one of the ranch hands had the cow in question on a short lead.

She should have left. She'd told Kyle what she'd come to say, witnessed an exchange between Kyle and another woman that she hadn't been meant to see, and now she was done. But you could have cut the tension in the barn with a chain saw, and she'd been a little bit worried about Kyle. Sure, he'd grown up on the ranch, but that didn't automatically make him accident-proof.

No one mentioned anything about Kyle, so he must be okay. But she wanted to see him for herself. Once she'd assured herself of it—strictly in her capacity as his daughters' caseworker, of course, no other reason—then she'd leave.

Finally, the truck he'd taken off in rolled into the yard and he swung out of the cab, muddy and looking so worn, she almost flew to his side. Except the little blonde bearskin rug beat her to it. Emma Jane. Or as Grace privately liked to call her—The Tart.

Like a hummingbird auditioning for the part of the town harlot, Emma Jane fluttered over to Kyle, expertly sashaying across the uneven ground in her high-heeled boots, which drew the attention of nearly every male still milling around the yard, except the one she was after.

Kyle pulled long lines of flat, muddy hoses out of the bed of the truck, dragged them to the spigot on the water tower beside the barn and attached one, using it to hose off the other.

Which was also pretty ingenious in her opinion.

Emma Jane crowded Kyle at the water tower, smiling and gesturing. Grace was too far away to hear what she was saying, but she probably didn't need to hear it to know it was along the lines of
Oh, Kyle, you're a hero
or the even more inane
Oh, Kyle, you're so strong and brave!

Please
. Well, yes, he was all of those things, no question, but Grace didn't see the point in shoving half-exposed breasts in a man's face when you said them.

The strong and brave hero in question glanced up at Emma Jane as he performed his task. And smiled. It was his slow, slightly naughty smile that he'd flashed Grace right after kissing her senseless, the one that had nearly enticed her back into his arms because it was so sexy.

It was a smile that told a woman he liked what he saw, that he had a few thoughts about what he planned to do with her. And there he was, aiming it at another woman!

That...
dog
.

Breathe, Grace.
He was just smiling.

She crossed her arms, leaning forward involuntarily though there was no way she would be able to pick up the conversation from this distance, not with the clatter going on in the yard, all the hands still chattering and watering their horses at the trough running between the water tower and the barn.

Then Emma Jane placed her talons on Kyle's arm and he leaned into it. Something hot bloomed in Grace's chest as she imagined him kissing Emma Jane the way he'd kissed her. He said something to Emma Jane over his shoulder and she laughed. Grace didn't have to hear what was being said. He was enjoying Emma Jane's attention, obviously.

Or he was just washing a hose and having a conversation with his employee, which was none of her business, she reminded herself. She didn't own Kyle, and he'd certainly had female companions over the years who weren't Grace, or he wouldn't currently have two daughters.

She'd just never had that shoved in her face so blatantly before.

Now would be a great time to leave. Except as she started back to her car, Kyle stood and walked straight toward her, calling to one of the hands to lay the hoses out to dry before putting them away. Emma Jane trailed him, still chattering.

He was coming to talk to Grace. With Emma Jane in tow.

Or Kyle could be walking toward the barn. Grace
was
standing in the doorway.

But then his gaze met hers and the rest of the activity in the yard fell away as something wholly encompassing washed through her.

Seven

“M
s. Haines.” Kyle nodded.

And then walked right past her!

Had she just been dismissed? Grace scowled and pivoted to view the interior of the barn. Kyle squeezed Emma Jane's shoulder at the door of the office and The Tart disappeared beyond the glass, presumably to go sharpen her claws.

Then he strolled across the wide center of the barn and disappeared around a corner.

Without a single ounce of forethought, Grace charged after him. She'd waited around, half-crazy with worry to assure herself he was okay, and he couldn't bother to stop and talk to her? How dare he? Emma Jane had certainly gotten more than a perfunctory nod and a platitude.

She skidded around the corner, an admonishment already forming in her mouth.

It vanished as she rounded the corner into a small, enclosed area. Kyle stood at a long washbasin.
Wet. Shirtless. Oh, my.

Obviously she should have thought this through a little better.

Speechless, she stared unashamedly at his bare, rippling torso as he dumped another cupful of water down it. Water streamed along the cut muscles, running in rivulets through the channels to disappear into the fabric of his jeans.

Some of it splashed on her. She was too close. And way too far.

Every ounce of saliva fled from her mouth, and she couldn't have torn her gaze from his gorgeous body for a million dollars. She'd have
paid
a million dollars, if she'd had it, to stand in this spot for an eternity.

“Something else you wanted, Ms. Haines?”

She blinked and glanced up into his diamond-hard green eyes, which were currently fastened on her as he glanced over his shoulder. Busted. Again. There was no way to spin this into anything other than it was. “I didn't know you were washing up. Sorry.”

Casually, he turned and leaned back against the long sink, arms at his side, which left that delicious panorama of naked chest right there on display. “That really didn't answer my question, now, did it?”

He was turning her brain mushy again, because she surely would have remembered if there had been talking. “Did you ask me a question?”

His soft laugh crawled under her skin. “Well, I'm trying to figure out what it is that you're after, Grace. Maybe I should ask a different way. Are you here to watch, or join in? Because either is fine with me.”

Her ire rushed back all at once, melding uncomfortably with the heat curling through her midsection at the suggestion. “That's a fine way to talk after flirting with Ms. Cattle Queen.”

Kyle just raised an eyebrow. “Careful, or a man might start to think you cared whether he flirted with another woman. That's not the case. Right?”

She crossed her arms, but those diamond-hard eyes drilled through her anyway. “Oh, you're right. I don't care.” Loftily, she waved off his question. “It just seems disingenuous to make time with one woman mere minutes before inviting another one to
wash up
.”

All at once, she had a very clear image of him dumping a cup of water over her chest and licking it off. The heat in her core snaked outward, engulfing her whole body. And that just made her even madder. Kyle was a big flirt who could get Grace hot with merely a glance. It wasn't fair.

She didn't remember him affecting her that way before. And she would have. This was all new and exciting and frustrating and scary.

“Maybe.” That slow smile spilled onto his face. “But you're the one standing here. I'm not offering to
wash up
with Emma Jane.”

“Yeah. Only because she didn't have the foresight to follow you.”

“You did.” He watched her without blinking and spread his arms. “Here I am. Whatever are you going to do with me?”

That tripped off a whole chain reaction inside as she thought long and hard about the answer to that question. But she hadn't followed him for
that
. Not that she knew for sure he even meant
that
. But regardless, he had a lot of nerve.

Hands firmly on her hips—just in case they developed a mind of their own and started wandering along the ridges and valleys of that twelve-pack of abs, which she was ashamed to admit she'd counted four times—she glared at him. “This is not you, Kyle. Liam? Yeah. He's a playboy and a half, but you've never been like that, just looking for the next notch in your bedpost.”

There. That was the point she was trying to make.

He laughed with genuine mirth. “Is that what you think this is? Kyle Wade, playboy in training. It has a nice ring. But that ain't what's going on.”

“Then by all means. Tell me what's going on,” she allowed primly.

“Emma Jane is my employee. That's it.” He sliced the air with his hand. “You, on the other hand, are something else.”

“Oh, yeah? What?”

He swept her with a once-over that should not have been so affecting, but goodness, even the bottoms of her feet heated up. “A woman I'd like to kiss. A lot.”

As in he wanted to kiss her several times or he just wanted to really badly?

She shook her head. Didn't matter.

“Well, be that as it may.” She tossed her head, scrambling to come up with a response, and poked him in the chest for emphasis. He glanced down at her finger and back up at her, his eyelids shuttered slightly. “You wanted to kiss Emma Jane a minute ago. Pardon me for not getting in line.”

“Grace.” Her name came out so garbled, she hardly recognized it. “I do not want to kiss Emma Jane.”

“Could have fooled me. And her. She definitely had the impression you were into her. Maybe because you were telling her jokes and letting her put her hands all over you.”

“And maybe I let her because I knew you were watching.”

“I— What?” All the air vanished from her lungs instantly. And then she found it again. “It was on purpose? Flirting with Emma Jane. You did that on
purpose
?” She was screeching. Dang near high enough to call dogs from another county. “Oh, that's...”

She couldn't think of a filthy enough word to describe it.
He'd been playing her.
Kyle Wade had picked her up and played her like a violin. Of course he had. She might as well have Bad Judge of Character tattooed on her forehead so people could get busy right away with pulling one over on her. And she'd waltzed to his tune with nary a peep.

And speaking of no peeps, Kyle was standing there watching her without saying a word, the big jerk.

“It was all a lie?” she asked rhetorically, because he'd just said it was, though why he'd done it, she couldn't fathom. “What were you trying to accomplish, anyway?”

His grin slipped as he pinned her in place with nothing more than his gaze. He swayed forward, just a bit, but his heat reached out and slid along her skin as if he'd actually brushed her torso with his.

She couldn't move. Didn't want to move. The play of expression across his face fascinated her. The heat called to her.

“No lies. See this,” he murmured and wagged a finger between them, drawing her eye as he nearly touched her but didn't. “Just what you ordered. Space. Anytime you feel inclined to make it disappear, I'll be the one over here minding my own business.”

Oh! Of all the sneaky, underhanded, completely accurate things to say.

Mute, she stared at him and he stared right back. He'd been giving her exactly what she asked for. Never mind that she'd rather drink paint thinner than admit he might have a point. And the solution was rather well spelled out, too.

She didn't want him to flirt with other women? Then close the gap.

There was no more running, no more hiding. This was it, right here. He wanted her. But he wasn't going to act on it.

They shared a fierce attraction and the past was in the past. She'd held him at bay in order to get her feet under her, to make sure he wasn't going to hurt her again. It was the same tactic she employed with her cases. If she wanted to be sure she wasn't letting her emotions get the best of her, wanted to be sure she was making an unbiased decision, she stepped back. Assessed from afar with impersonal attention.

This wasn't one of her cases. This was Kyle. As personal as it got. And the only way she could fully assess what they could have now was to dive into that pool. Wading in an inch at a time wasn't working.

Rock solid, not moving a muscle, he watched her. This was her show and he was subtly telling her he'd let her run it. Except he was also saying she couldn't keep talking out of both sides of her mouth.

Either she could act like a full-grown woman and do something about the man she wanted or keep letting their interaction devolve into an amateurish high school game.

She picked doing something.

Going on instinct alone, she reached out with both hands and pressed them to Kyle's bare chest, her gaze on his as she did it, gauging his reaction. His eyes darkened as her fingers spread and she flattened both palms across his pectoral muscles. Damp. Hot. Hard.

One muscle flexed under her touch and she almost yanked her hands back. But she didn't. He hadn't felt like this before. He was all man and it was a serious turn-on, especially because it was still Kyle underneath. When he was looking at her the way he was right then, as if the center of the universe had been deposited in his palm, it was easy to remember why she'd fallen for him. All the emotion of being in love with this man rushed back.

“There you go,” she said breathlessly. “No more space.”

“Grace,” he growled, and she felt the vibrations under her fingers. “You better mean it. I'm only human.”

Her touch was affecting him.
She
was affecting
him
. It was something she hadn't fully contemplated, but she did get that it wasn't fair to lead him on and keep dancing back and forth between yes and no.

“I mean it. If you want to kiss me, it's fine.”

“
Fine
.” There came that slow smile. “That's almost as bad a word as
nice
. I think it's time to fix your vocabulary.”

All at once, Kyle's arms snaked around her, yanking her tight against his hard body. But before she could fully register the contact, his mouth claimed hers.

The crash of lips startled her. And then she couldn't think at all as his hands slid down her back, touching her, trailing heat along her spine, sliding oh, so slowly against her bottom to finally grip her hips and hold them firmly, pulling her taut against his body.

His very aroused body. The length of him pressed into her soft flesh as he kissed her. It was a whole-body experience, and nothing like the front porch kiss that she'd thought was so memorable that she couldn't shake it. That kiss had been wonderful, but tame.

This was a grown-up kiss.

The difference was unfathomable.

This kiss was hungry, questing, begging for more even as he took it.

Kyle changed the angle, diving deeper into her mouth, thrilling her with the intensity. His tongue swirled out, and instinctively, she met him with her own. He groaned and she felt it to her toes.

Kyle
. She'd missed the feel of him in her arms. Missed the scent of him in her nose.

Except this Kyle wasn't like the warm coat she'd envisioned sliding into, wholly familiar and so comforting. No, this Kyle was like opening a book expecting a nice story with an interesting plot and instead falling into an immersive world full of dark secrets and darker passions.

His hands were everywhere, along her sides, thumbs circling and sliding higher until he found her breasts beneath her clothes. The contact shot through her as he touched her, and then he shoved a leg between hers, tilting his hips to rub against her intimately.

This was not a kiss—it was a seduction.

And she had just enough functioning brain cells to be aware that they were not only in a barn, but she hadn't fully figured out what was supposed to come next. She didn't know what had changed that might mean things would work between them this time. She didn't fully trust that he was here for good, and even if he was, that he was going to meet her standards any better today than he had ten years ago.

Oh, he was certainly earning a ten in the Sweeping Her Off Her Feet category. But Happily Ever After carried just as much weight as Expressing His Feelings. And neither of those were on the board yet.

Breaking off the kiss—and nearly kicking herself at the same time—she pushed back and mumbled, “Wait.”

His torso shuddered as he dragged in a ragged breath. “Because?”

“You know why.” Her Professional Single Girl status was in jeopardy and she had to make sure he was worth the price of relinquishing it. Sure, he was hot and a really great kisser, but she didn't sleep around. An interlude in the barn didn't change that.

“I did not develop ESP at any point in the last ten years,” he rasped, his expression going blank as he stared at her.

“Because of what happened before, Kyle.” Exasperated, she stared at the wall over his head so his delicious chest wasn't right in her field of vision. “There's a lot of leftover emotion and scrambled-up stuff to sort out. I have to take it slow this time.”

“Then you should leave,” he said curtly. “Because I'm definitely not in the mood for slow right now.”

She took his advice and fled. It wasn't until she'd reached her car and slid into the driver's seat that she realized leaving was the one surefire way to
never
figure out what they could have together.

Maybe slow wasn't any better an idea than space.

And at this moment, the only
s
word she seemed capable of thinking about ended in
ex
, which was the crux of the problem. She and Kyle had a former relationship and it muddied everything, especially her feelings.

* * *

Kyle stabbed his hands through his shirt, nearly ripping the sleeve off in the process.