The World is a Stage (13 page)

They had a good relationship, he and Jennings, built on a mutual desire to keep out of each other’s shit as much as possible, but the man loved this farm like it was his own child.

He kept his comments to a minimum, but even then, she didn’t hear very many of them. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was having too much fun to notice his occasional remark on hitting the throttle harder or faster or like she was making sweet, passionate love to it.

“Hey, nice turn,” Michael said as she veered sharply and let the wheel spin loosely through her hands. “You’re kind of a natural at this.”

“Of course I am. But am I killing all your crops?” Despite her apparent concern, she sped up, leaning forward in her seat.

“Nah. We don’t plant for a few more weeks. And as long as you stay to the right of the field, you should be fine. You know, when I was a teenager, we used to have tractor races. I was kind of the local celebrity, actually.”

For the first time, she turned, something like actual joy sparking in her eye. She allowed the tractor to come to a stop. “Tractor races?”

“Yeah. Not on these ones, obviously. Jennings would’ve cut off my legs before he’d let me drive any of the good stuff. But the smaller ones, sure.”

“And do these tractors still exist?”

Michael grinned. This woman had a hell of a lot of faults, but lack of spirit wasn’t one of them. “Why, Ms. Hewitt. Are you challenging me to a duel?”

She jumped to her feet, smacking her head on the roof in the process. It didn’t faze her. With one hand pressed to the top of her hair, her lips spread, so slow it was hard to tell it was a smile.

But it was good, that smile. It had meaning. It had promise. And it made him feel like he was accomplishing something worthwhile—something that had nothing to do with Peterson or Molly or the stage.

“You’re on, Mr. O’Leary,” Rachel said, that smile still in place. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me yet. But one thing you should jot down—I never, ever lose.”

Rachel had her shoes kicked off and her linen slacks rolled up to the knee. Mud splattered over every inch of her calves and even spread up her sides so that her cream-colored blouse looked more like leopard skin than a solid color.

But if she looked bad, Michael was five times worse. He had mud reaching up to his knees, and his shirt was damp enough that she could make out each line that chiseled along his back, his muscles moving and dancing to a beat she could almost hear inside her head.

The racing tractors they steered around the mud pit were tiny compared to the giant piece of farming equipment she’d driven earlier—these were more like riding lawn mowers than anything else. Hers was a rusted red with a white stripe along the side. Michael’s was predictably green and sported a leaping yellow deer.

They’d lost track of how many laps they were on about half an hour ago, and were now going head-to-head, trying to force each other off the main stretch of mud and into the stubby weeds on either side. Her hair whipped around in a tangled mess, and she was pretty sure this was how people lost their legs.
 

But she was having fun.

She swerved into Michael’s tractor, nudging him away to cross the finish line just as that thought really hit her.
Fun.
That’s what this was.

Rachel turned the tractor off and hopped down, her toes squishing into the mud. It was oddly warm and probably ruining every pedicure she’d had over the past five years.

“Winner makes lunch. I mentioned that before, right?”

She turned to find Michael smiling at her and immediately broke out into a laugh. He had one muddy handprint on each of his pecs, one more placed very obviously and robustly over the crotch of his khaki shorts.

“I have never met a man so blatantly nonchalant about his…assets,” Rachel said, rolling her eyes. “And no, the lunch caveat is new. But since I kicked your ass so royally—”

A huge glob of mud, wet and grainy and no longer warm, landed right in the middle of her cheek. She wiped it away, leaving a few diagonal tracks along her cheekbone and toward her brow. Warpaint 101. She hadn’t minored in costume makeup for nothing.

“You did not just do that,” she said.

Another glob hit the opposite side. The man had impeccable aim. Instead of wiping this one off, she reached down and picked up a mud ball of her own. But she should have known better than to go up against an athlete, because his reflexes were about three times faster and a heck of a lot more accurate than hers. Before she even stood up with the ball in her hand, she felt the shock of solid muscle against her midsection.

She shot backward like one of those tackling thingies football players used. But it didn’t hurt, and she let out a squeal, feeling like a lion cub must when it was hard at play. The teeth were out, the paws were batting, but there was gentleness to the impact that did much more to rob her of breath than the hit itself.

“I let you win,” Michael said, his voice very near her ear. He had her lifted entirely off the ground, and for one electric moment, she was weightless—she was flying.

They landed with a weighty squelch. Michael settled on top of her, bracing himself on his arms to prevent the air from being crushed out of her lungs.

Still, she couldn’t breathe, and her head felt light and hazy.

It should have made her furious, being manhandled, pushed to the mud, the loamy smell of the earth filling her hair and her nostrils. But as Michael reached one hand up to wipe away a strand of hair that had stuck to her cheek, she only felt as though she could remain trapped in this moment forever, if only she knew how to hold on.

“Somehow, I get the feeling you’re the type of guy who won’t admit defeat even when it’s staring you directly in the face,” she said the moment her breathing resumed a normal pattern. Michael still hadn’t shifted, but her body was growing accustomed to the heavy, delicious weight of him. It had been too long since she’d participated in this sort of sport, wrestling a man with words while he wrestled her with his body.

“Is that what’s staring at me right now?” His finger moved along her cheek, not exactly a caress, but not
not
one either. “Defeat?”

She struggled against him, wiggling her legs and hips until she rested on her elbows, face-to-face with him. Oh, geez. If she thought she missed the weight of a man, she certainly wasn’t going to think about how nice it felt to be rubbing against one.
Focus on the words.
They’d never let her down before.

“Does this look like defeat?” She even managed a nicely quirked eyebrow for good effect.

“It looks damn good, I’ll give it that.” He leaned in, seemingly unaware that she was inching away, slowly but most definitely surely. “It also looks like it’s in desperate need of this.”

Rachel knew what was coming. It was in the shift in his weight, still held suspended so near her. It was in the hitch of breath—hers or his, she couldn’t really tell and didn’t really care. The whole day, all fun and lighthearted and full of Michael’s blatant innuendos, had been heading this direction.

What could it hurt? Why, for one delicious moment in the mud, couldn’t she enjoy being a hot-blooded woman pinned underneath an attractive and incredibly hot-blooded man?

The kiss was surprisingly tender and resolve-shatteringly soft.

In her experience, a man like Michael, who drew attention to his male parts like a baboon, was the kind who treated a woman like she was a piece of spaghetti being thrown at a wall. Attack with tongue, mouth, hands and dick all at once. Eventually, one of them would stick.

But his lips on hers were as much a question as they were an answer, and one of those oh, God, so big hands wound up to the back of her head, gripping her hair but not pulling it. There was that lion cub coming out to play again, capable of so much power but restraining it just for her.

She wondered if he knew how much that bothered and turned her on all at once. She opened her mouth and deepened the kiss, but still he held back, giving her only a small taste of what he was really capable of. Letting out a low growl of irritation, she pushed him away, hoping she could read something in his face other than the bovine satisfaction he was sure to be wearing.

Surprisingly, there was a tenderness in his eyes on top of the satisfaction.

But it didn’t last long. As soon as he saw her searching glance, he broke out into that aggravating smile.

“You,” he said, licking his lips as if tasting what remained of her there. “Are an incredibly gracious loser. Is that what they call a booby prize?”

A short bark of a laugh escaped her, and she relaxed. Michael wouldn’t force any sort of soul searching or meaning out of that kiss, and he wasn’t going to go all weird and start touching her every second he got the chance. He was simple and easy, the type of man who took what pleasures were offered him, or, if they were denied, shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
 

How wonderful it must be to care so little, to see everything through a pair of frat-boy beer goggles.

“I didn’t lose. I distinctly remember passing the finish line a complete five seconds before you.”

“Fine. I’m an incredibly gracious loser, then. Lucky for you.” He grinned and jerked his head toward the top of the hill, where the Airstreams were parked. “I’ll even make lunch. You can get cleaned up over at my place, if you want.”

“Uh…” She imagined the tiny aluminum can and cringed. “I’m okay.”

“Me have shower. Me have electricity.” He laughed and pounded on his chest. “I might even have something you can change into. I promise—it’s not as bad as you think.”

She didn’t know how to gracefully bow out without ruining whatever sort of happy time they were having, so she went along.

She was pleasantly surprised by what she found. No piles of dirty clothes smelling of rancid man littered the floor. No dishes and garbage and other paraphernalia that usually provided the nesting materials for beasts of his nature were scattered about. It was smaller, certainly, than her mother’s house, but the narrow length of it was clean and simple, and shelves all over the walls provided a way for him to store a few movies and personal items with something approaching organization. At one end, a small kitchenette stood, empty and inviting. At the other, a queen-size bed took up quite a bit of space, but the bedding looked clean, if slightly pimped out in black satin. In the center, a couch and a table provided a serviceable living space.

“Bathroom’s through there. The shower’s small, but it works.” Michael moved through the space easily, not the least bit ashamed of the place he called home. He reached into a drawer underneath the bed and pulled out a T-shirt and pair of sweatpants. At this, at least, he had the good grace to change his grin from beaming to sheepish. “It’s not as nice as what you normally wear, but it’ll get you home. I’ll be over at Jennings’s if you need anything.”

She murmured her thanks and waited a full twenty seconds after the door shut behind him to start poking through his stuff.

She was doomed to disappointment, though. Other than an alarming number of farming equipment user manuals and energy bars bought in bulk, there was nothing personal about the space.

Few needs, even fewer possessions. Michael was like a hermit. The Happy Troglodyte, a children’s picture book waiting to happen.

Rachel suddenly felt over-everything. Over-dressed, over-analytical, over-judgmental of everything and everyone. Eric and her sister’s problems seemed miles away, and that distance was flooded with doubt and uneasiness and the sinking suspicion that Michael and his friend weren’t all that bad.

She kicked the shower door.

How dare he?
How dare he take away some of her confidence, strip her of the certainty that made it so much easier to do what she knew to be right?

And more importantly—how dare he stop that kiss just as it was getting to the good part?

Chapter Nine

Frailty

Women were changeable. Michael knew that. Accepted it. Played with it, especially when the woman in question was Rachel Hewitt, whose personality was tempestuous and temptress in one increasingly attractive package.

In the few weeks he’d known Rachel, he was starting to get a feel for the way she worked. He wasn’t crass enough to compare her to a piece of machinery that he could break down into its individual parts and rebuild from memory, but he could definitely see the parallels.

She liked control and power. She liked winning and having the upper hand. The moment any of those were taken away from her, she panicked, lashing out at whatever—or whoever—happened to be standing in the immediate vicinity. Lately, that had been Michael, and he doubted anyone else had put himself so much in the way of her wrath before.

Because it was obvious that once her energy was spent, she was soft and pliable and funny and pretty damn great.

It was a cycle: fight and fun. Frolic and flail. At some point, he imagined they could introduce fuck into that equation and find a whole new level of entertainment.

He sure as hell wanted to. If Rachel fought half as hard in the bedroom as she did in her everyday life, he could die happy. And if her response to him out in the racing field was anything to go by, she was willing.