CHAPTER TWO
Amber
My hands were shaking.
I stared at the laptop screen, watching the cursor blink, and tried to get them to stop. They wouldn’t. I pressed my palms against my cheeks. They felt hot. Had he noticed?
God, I hoped not. The last thing I needed was for Dalton King to know that when he’d leaned over me, caging me in with that massive body, I’d forgotten how to breathe.
That for one insane moment, I’d wondered what it would feel like if he’d touched me.
If those big, work-roughened hands had slid from the keyboard to my shoulder. My neck.
I pressed my thighs together, horrified at the flutter low in my belly.
No. Absolutely not. I was not doing this.
Dalton King was my boss. A cold-hearted bastard who’d made it crystal clear he thought I was some kind of gold-digger looking to trap him or his brother. A man who saw my curves and instantly dismissed me.
And I’d sworn off men. Especially men like him—gorgeous, confident, the kind who could have any woman they wanted and knew it. The kind who made promises with their eyes but never followed through with anything real.
Through the window, I could see Dalton striding toward the barn, shoulders broad and purposeful, like a man who’d already forgotten I existed. Which was fine. Good, even. That’s exactly what I needed—to be forgotten. To be invisible. Just another employee doing a job.
Except I wasn’t just another employee like the ranch hands he employed.
I was living in his house.
I’d be seeing him every single day. Sharing meals. Sharing space. And apparently losing my damn mind if the way my body had reacted to him was any indication.
I pulled my hands back and forced myself to breathe.
In through my nose, out through my mouth.
This was temporary. A few weeks. Maybe a month.
Month and a half at most. I was good at my job—I could fix this mess faster than most people.
And the pay Rhett had negotiated would cover a sizable portion of my mother’s medical bills. Enough to make a real dent.
Enough to matter.
My Aunt Carol had agreed to check on Mom while I was gone. Make sure she got to her physical therapy appointments. Help with groceries. The things I’d been doing for the past year while trying to work full-time and keep us afloat.
I could do this. I had to do this.
I caught my reflection in the window. Round face. Soft body that no amount of body positivity articles could make me feel okay about some days. I’d stopped dating six months ago after the last guy had suggested I might want to hit the gym together as a fun couples’ activity.
Translation—lose weight so he wouldn’t be embarrassed introducing me to his friends. I’d told him where he could shove his gym membership.
But it still stung. The words always stung.
The sideways glances. The surprised tone when men found out I was smart—like curves and brains couldn’t coexist. The ones who fetishized my body type but wouldn’t be caught dead with me in public.
The ones who thought a curvy girl should be grateful for any attention at all.
I was done. Done trying to mold myself to fit someone else’s ideal. Done pretending I didn’t hear the comments. Done hoping some man would see past my size to the person underneath.
And I was definitely done getting flustered over cowboys who looked like sin incarnate but had ice water running through their veins.
I’d known exactly how he’d felt about Valentine’s Day. Another day for me to feel inadequate when it came to the opposite sex. My heart had been bruised before, and I certainly didn’t want another red slash across it now.
I opened the first file and forced myself to focus. Numbers. I could do numbers. Numbers didn’t judge. Numbers didn’t ask questions about why a twenty-six-year-old woman was still living at home taking care of her mother instead of building her own life.
Numbers were safe.
The first spreadsheet was a disaster. Expenses categorized incorrectly. Duplicate entries. Payments that didn’t match up with invoices. Whoever had been doing Dalton’s books had either been spectacularly incompetent or deliberately hiding something.
Probably both.
I made notes. Cross-referenced bank statements. Built a timeline of discrepancies. Lost myself in the work the way I always did when the weight of everything else got too heavy.
Mom’s medical bills. The mortgage on a house that was too big for just the two of us but that she refused to sell because Dad had built it. The physical therapy that insurance only partially covered. The medications. The fear that one more setback would bury us completely.
I shook my head and pulled up another file. I wasn’t going to think about that. Not now. Not when I finally had a solution that might actually work.
One month here. One month of good pay. One month to make a real difference.
I could do this.
Even if my new boss was the antithesis of Valentine’s Day but looked like he’d walked straight out of a cowboy fantasy.
Because let’s be honest—Dalton King was gorgeous.
Brutally, unfairly, distractingly gorgeous.
Those broad shoulders that stretched his flannel shirt tight across his back.
The way his jeans hung low on narrow hips.
Arms that looked like they could toss hay bales—or women—around without breaking a sweat.
And his hands. God, those hands. Big enough to palm a basketball. Calloused. Strong. The kind of hands that would know exactly how to—
Stop it.
I shook my head hard enough that my ponytail whipped against my cheek.
This was exactly the kind of thinking that got women in trouble.
He was not interested. He’d made that abundantly clear with his little speech about not being up for grabs. Like I was some desperate woman who’d throw herself at the first hot guy she encountered.
Although, to be fair, my body clearly hadn’t gotten the memo. It had very much noticed when he’d stood behind me at that desk. When his breath had blown across my neck. When his voice had rumbled through me like distant thunder.
My nipples had tightened. My core had clenched. And for one mortifying second, I’d wanted to lean back into all that heat and muscle and see what happened.
Thank God I hadn’t.
Because Dalton King didn’t want me. Men like him never did. They wanted the willowy blondes with flat stomachs and thigh gaps. Not short, curvy brunettes who’d been told more than once they had such a pretty face—the universal code for—shame about the rest of you.
I sighed and got back to work.
The morning passed in a blur of numbers and notes and the slow, methodical work of untangling financial chaos. I was so engrossed that I didn’t hear him come in.
“Did you eat?”
I jumped at the sound of his voice, my hand flying to my chest. “Do you practice being quiet?”
Dalton was standing in the doorway, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read. My heart kicked hard against my ribs. He was too big for the doorway, too big for this room, too big for the space he was taking up in my brain when I should have been thinking about invoice discrepancies.
Stop it. Stop noticing him. Stop cataloging every damn detail like you’re a teenager with a crush. He’s here to yell at you for something, not sweep you off your feet.
“You eat?” he asked again.
“I—no. I got caught up in the files.”
His jaw tightened. “It’s after two.”
“Is it?” I glanced at the clock. He was right. “I didn’t realize.”
“Kitchen. Now.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Kitchen. You’re going to eat.”
“I’m fine. I’ll grab something later—”
“Amber.” My name was an order and damn if that didn’t send a shiver down my spine. “Kitchen. Now.”
I should have argued. I was an adult perfectly capable of deciding when to eat. But there was something in his tone—not quite concern, not quite command—that made me stand and follow him down the hall.
Besides, arguing would mean prolonging the conversation. Looking at him longer. Risking him seeing the flush I could feel creeping up my neck.
The kitchen was bigger, and much more modern, than I’d expected. All stainless steel and granite counters and windows that let in the weak February sunlight. Dalton moved through it with the ease of someone who knew exactly where everything was.
He pulled bread from a cabinet. Deli meat and cheese from the fridge. Mustard. Lettuce. Tomatoes.
“Sit,” he said, nodding toward the table.
I sat. Because apparently, when Dalton King gave orders in that rough voice, my body decided to obey before my brain could object.
He made two sandwiches. Efficient. Economical. No wasted motion.
I tried not to watch the flex of his forearms as he worked. He’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and I could see the corded muscle beneath tanned skin. The scatter of dark hair. A thin white scar running along the inside of his left wrist.
I wondered what he’d be like in bed. Efficient there too? Or would all that control finally crack? Would those big hands be gentle or rough? Would he—
Wow, Amber. Get a grip.
I was having inappropriate thoughts about a man who’d basically accused me of being a con artist that morning. A man who’d circled Valentine’s Day on his calendar like it was a death sentence. A man who clearly wanted nothing to do with women in general and me specifically.
A man who was making me lunch.
That thought caught me off guard. When was the last time a man had done something like this for me? Something simple and thoughtful and completely unprompted?
Never. The answer was never.
My ex had taken me to restaurants, sure. But cook for me? Take care of me when I was working too hard?
No. That required actually caring.
And Dalton King didn’t care. He couldn’t. He’d made that perfectly clear.
So why was he making me a sandwich?
He set one plate in front of me and sat down across from me with the other.
“Eat.”
I picked up the sandwich but hesitated before taking a bite. “Thank you.”
He grunted and took a bite of his own sandwich.