Chapter Four #3
She paced around the room, and he could see that she was placing everything mentally where she wanted it to go.
“You’re right,” she said, turning to face him. “This is better than a new build. Lets us get open faster, has history to it.
I like it.”
“Well, you can see why I’m a little reluctant to have a whole construction team I don’t know working on the place.”
“Manny will listen to you. He’s not macho like that.”
“Macho like what?”
“Like you. You’re that guy, right? You gotta be in charge.”
“I don’t gotta be in charge, Sheena, I am in charge. And that is a different thing.”
She looked at him, her green eyes flashing, and something electric crackled between them.
“I’m not going to sleep with you,” she said.
The words were so blunt, so direct, that they put him on his back foot.
“I don’t believe I asked you to.”
“You ask me to every time you look at me, Denver King. Even if you were all set on that cutie last night, if I had invited
you home, you would’ve gone.”
The words were like a gut punch, mostly because there was truth to them. Like the spark it took to make a flame. But he had
more self-control than that, whatever she thought.
“You think so?” he asked.
“I do. I’ve seen the way you look at me. It’s the way all men look at me.”
“Well darlin’, recognizing that a woman is beautiful is hardly an invitation for her to join me in bed.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Is that how you’re going to play it?”
“I’ve seen the way you look at me too. I think you felt like you needed to say something because you’re warning your own self off. I don’t sleep with women I have an association with.”
“Great. Because I don’t sleep with men that I have an association with.”
“Look at that. We both don’t want to sleep with each other.”
His body felt hot and prickly, and the heaviness in his groin called that a lie. Because he kind of did want to sleep with
her. But not really her. If she was simple, uncomplicated, no strings attached. If she was a woman that he had come across
in a bar, maybe. A stranger. Hell yeah. A stacked brunette with ink on her arm like that . . . Yeah. He would’ve been all
over it. But she was Sheena. So he had never even thought about going there. Well. That was a lie. He had never indulged the
vague thoughts he had about going there. How about that?
No. He was smarter than that; he was safer than that. He wasn’t going there.
“Good, because just so you’re clear, you’re not my type.” She moved over to the window and dragged her finger along the sill.
“I don’t like bossy men.”
“I don’t like mouthy brats. So guess the same goes.”
“Because unlike you, Denver. I don’t have to be in charge. I am in charge.”
“Not here you’re not.”
She squared up toward him, her green eyes unreadable. “This is going to be my place. I’m going to manage it.”
“And it’s on my land.”
This was why it was so much easier to just give people money. Because then he didn’t have to actually deal with them. This
was the problem. He actually didn’t share his turf all that well. Not only that, but the way she looked at him got his blood
pumping hot and fast and made a liar out of him.
She was stunning. And she was interesting. She made him think things he shouldn’t.
She was a pain in the ass, and she was beautiful.
She was . . . she was derailing him. She could bring her crew out here, and they could renovate. With some oversight from
him, but he didn’t need to get involved. He had the whole Christmas thing to plan, the whole event space to get looking good,
and he still had his damned ranch to run. They had the beer to keep producing; everything was busier than it had ever been.
The truth was, he couldn’t afford to go micromanaging Sheena. He had jumped into this endeavor with both feet, partly out
of guilt, and now she was sucking him in because . . . It was because she was challenging him. And he wasn’t good at backing
out from challenges. That was the beginning and end of it.
“All right. You can bring Manny out here, and y’all can get started tomorrow.”
“Great. So what, we have . . . a month to get the place finished?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, I think it’s doable.”
And he was happy to let that verbal foreplay that had been going on a moment ago fade into the background. Happy to forget
it had happened.
He wasn’t going to sleep with her. Didn’t mean he didn’t want to. And he could see the way that she was appraising him now
that she wasn’t entirely neutral either.
They would . . . they would wreck the bed. He was confident in that. They were far too much alike, and the power struggle
would be . . .
Lord. He had to stop thinking like that. Because he didn’t want to sleep with her. Well. He didn’t want to want to.
She was a complication. And that was one thing he didn’t need.
“I’ll be by to check on it every day. And if you have any big decisions to make, you need to run them by me.”
“Sure thing, boss,” she said, her voice waspy. “Guess we’ll start when my time ends at the bar.”
“You say that like I might be offended by it. Like I don’t think it’s my due.”
“You really are a hardheaded asshole, aren’t you?”
“Let me ask you something. Did you ever think that maybe there was a reason why I left the money without talking to you?”
“I assumed it was because you didn’t have a need to make four tragic girls into your pet project.”
“What I didn’t have the need to do was taint four said girls with any more of the King family. I know who I am. I know where
I come from. I’ve done an all-right job putting some of that behind me. I’ve done an all-right job of taking some of the family
bullshit and scraping it off my boot. But at the end of the day, blood his blood.”
“Do you think the same is true for me?”
“No. You’re clearly not your father’s daughter. Because you survived.”
And then she did something he really didn’t expect. She smiled. Big and bright. Then she laughed.
“That’s funny as hell,” she said, between great gulps of air. “Yeah. I’m not weak like my dad. One bullet wouldn’t down me.”
“All right. I guess I’ll see you sometime tomorrow. We’ll meet to discuss your progress.”
“Sounds good.”
Then he extended his hand, and she looked at it. The corner of her lips curved upward, and she stuck her hand out, shaking
his.
The spark of their skin on skin was electric.
They held each other’s gaze, a dare. Because they both felt it.
They were familiar with the spark of desire, both of them.
But this . . . Well, he could say honestly that for him this was far and above anything he’d ever dealt with before.
His whole body was alive with desire for her.
She was such a damned temptation. And he couldn’t stop himself from looking her over. Slowly. That stubborn face, her well-curved
body.
“Still not sleeping with you,” she said, her voice going husky.
“Still not offering,” he said back.
He moved his hand from hers slowly. The slide of her skin on his feeling like the flat of an expert tongue on the underside
of his manhood.
He gritted his teeth. And in spite of her determination to look unbothered, he could see two slashes of red at the tops of
her cheekbones.
“Partners,” she said.
“Partners,” he said in return.
Then he went back to the ranch house, took a cold shower and went on with his work for the day.