Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Warrick
I probably should have asked Treeve to call Lady Blackwood before I drove over here and dropped in on her doorstep unannounced—but there we were anyway.
Zara looked positively gob-smacked as she looked around, clearly wondering the same thing I had decades ago: how utterly out of place the house was. She joined me on the porch as I pressed the doorbell, and the wind fluttered with the silver windchimes hanging from the rafters, briefly drawing my attention.
As someone answered the door, I turned back in time to jerk my head back in shock. Janie Blackwood stood there touching her pearls, her icy blond bob carefully cut to her chin, her slim form clad in tan tailored pants and a white blouse.
“Warrick, dear,” her eyes widened, and she smiled. “Come in, you and your friend, too. I never expected you.”
“I know, and I am sorry to drop in on you like this,” I said as we stepped into a foyer as elegant as she was. Janie was a Mississippi-born, southern belle who did cotillion as a girl and baked the best gooseberry pies I’d ever tasted. “Lady Blackwood, please meet my newest PA, Zara Harrington.”
“Pleased to meet you, dear,” Janie replied.
“So am I.” Zara smiled. “You have a wonderful home.”
“Thank you. It has the charm I love and the functionality I need,” Janie replied, then turned to me. “I suppose Treeve told you I’d gotten the equipment you’d wanted from the dawn of creation.”
“Guilty as charged,” I replied. “You are a miracle worker.”
She laughed. “I don’t know about that, but I do know some powerful people in high places. They will be here in a week or two as they are coming from the United Kingdom, but be sure I will contact you when they get to me. I’d ask if you wanted to share a cup of tea and some of my freshly baked pie, but I suspect you just dropped in for a spell.”
“Right on that, too,” I nodded. “But thank you for the offer.”
“Oh no, no, no,” Janie laughed. “Let’s get you some pie to go. My nana would send me back to cotillion school if I didn’t give you some. Plus, I baked more than me and my guys can eat, so give me a moment.”
Ten minutes later, we were back down the road to my ranch while three large foil-wrapped wedges of pie rested on Zara’s lap. “I didn’t tell you this, but I plan on going to my grandfather’s cabin for the rest of the weekend. It’s way up in the hills. I go there to decompress when things get a bit…tense.”
She shot a look at me. “Oh, what do you do up there?”
“Sleep and fish,” I replied. “I take Goose up there with me because he loves to swim in the creek up there.”
Zara looked down at her lap. “Would you mind if I went with you?”
I dared look at her as we hit the highway. “You want to?” I winced at the incredulous tone in my voice.
Way to go, Warrick. Now she thinks you don’t want her to come.
She looked everywhere but at me. “If you don’t want me to?—”
“No, no, please, come with me. I’d like to show you the cabin,” I said as we turned off onto the road to the ranch. “What worries me is that it might look funny to the guys on the ranch. They’re already looking at me sideways, and I don’t want them to get on your case either.”
“They think we’re….” Zara paused. “What do they think we are?”
“Knocking boots,” I replied. “Yes, they do, and I am not the sort of man who does that kind of thing.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. “What if I don’t mind that…”
I stomped on the brakes so hard I damn well gave us whiplash, but that didn’t help as my head snapped to the left. Had I heard what I thought I’d heard? “Zara! W-what did you just say?”
Cars swirled around us, honks were deafening, and I heard someone shout at us, but I was deaf to what was outside the window and doors. All I needed to know was what Zara said and if I could dare hope.
She looked at me, nibbling on a corner of her lip and then—her lips met mine in a soft, swift kiss to my lips, sending a shock throughout my entire body. As short as the kiss was, it was unequivocally shattering.
I inched closer to her as her warm breath caressed my cheeks. The need to kiss her, to take her mouth with mine, overpowered me. I licked my lips but didn’t push any further.
Her kiss on my lips was soft—mine wasn’t.
Giving in to the hunger, I grabbed the back of her head, dipped mine, and claimed her mouth in a scorching kiss. Zara let out a noise that sounded like surprise, but then the noise turned low, husky, needy, and her hands skimmed up my chest to grip my shoulders.
I shouldn’t be doing this; I know I shouldn’t be. It was all kinds of wrong, and it was going to bite me in the ass. I was her boss, for God’s sake.
But damn it, if I wasn’t lost in the feel of her, her touch, her taste, and with each decadent slide of my lips against hers, my hunger spiraled into a craving. With a groan, my fingers tangled in her hair, holding her head in place while I continued to plunder her mouth.
It was like a dam had broken, releasing a flood of desire I’d been holding back from the day I’d laid eyes on her.
I wanted her in every way I could imagine.
Naked, sweaty, on the bed.
In the shower.
Bent over a table.
Against the wall—screaming my name at the top of her lungs.
A long horn blow jolted me out of my lust-filled haze, and regrettably, I turned the truck back in gear and headed up to the hills. Somehow, and for no logical reason, the tension seemed even higher between us, but it had another edge to it. It was not awkward, but anticipation.
We got to the ranch, and I kept my head straight ahead after I parked. “You regret it?”
Zara was silent for a long moment, so long I swore I heard crickets. Finally, she said, “When you wanted to get into bull riding, did anyone tell you it was a bad idea?”
A laugh punched itself out of my gut. “Sweetheart, they all did. Everyone I knew, and after word got around town, everyone I didn’t know, and their third aunt, who was twice removed, did.
"It was all doom and gloom; I’d fall to my death, a bull would stomp a mud hole through me, and a horn would go right through my gut. They all said it was a bad idea. I did it anyway.”
“That’s what I was counting on hearing because that is how I feel about this—us—now,” Zara replied.
I reached over the armrest between us and cupped her face in both hands. This time, my touch was soft as I claimed her mouth in a tender kiss. “We’ll continue this at the cabin. Now, come on, let’s get the stuff we need for a few days.”
Dropping the duffel on a kitchen bar stool, I rooted through the fridge for one of my chilled water bottles. Frankie, Isaac, and Santos walked into the room, chatting and jesting, with Frankie holding Isaac in a headlock and giving him a noogie.
“…take it from a man who knows his way or two around women,” Frankie said. “After you set the bait, let her come to you.”
“With a fist to your face,” I said, grabbing the bottle. “You’re a player, Frankie.”
“I think variety is the spice of life,” Frankie grinned, unrepentant. His gaze dropped to the bag. “Going up to the cabin, eh? Aren’t the goldeneye not biting this time of year?”
“No, but the paddlefish are, and I want a good fight,” I replied.
“Also meaning you want a dislocated shoulder and a trip to the ER,” Santos clapped me on the back. “Gotcha. Just so you know, I won’t be?—”
“Warrick, do I need a second—” Zara stumbled into the room, her bag slung over her shoulder and every eye snapped towards her. She eyed us all while slowly adding, “—pair of boots.”
It didn’t take a degree in rocket science to know what was going on here, and the guys, like the goddamned bloodhounds they were—well, minus Isaac—caught on in seconds. They turned to me with smirks that I brushed off, and I set the bottle down with a warning clank.
“Don’t start.”
Santos snickered. “You’re making it hard for us, man.”
“Calm your premature jets,” Zara said easily as she tugged a bag of chips from a cupboard. “I am just going up there to take a look around.”
“And a flat tire or a sudden storm or a lightning bolt is gonna split a tree and fall it over the road—” Frankie smirked.
Santos chipped in, “Or Goose runs off somewhere and you can’t find him?—”
“Or little missy twists her ankle, and she can’t walk, so bossman has to take care of her—" Lucas laughed.
“So we won’t see them until two days’ time.” Frankie ended with a bellowing laugh.
Poor Isaac’s head was snapping between the three. “W-what—what sort of movies are you three watching?”
“Piss-poor ones, that’s for sure,” Zara laughed.
“We need to go,” I said to Zara. “Ortiz, don’t burn my bunkhouse down when you party tonight.”
She grabbed her bag, and I hefted mine before we headed out to the truck. Dropping my bags inside the bed, I grimaced, “I wish I hadn’t endured that.”
“If we had disappeared, it would have been worse,” she said while hopping into the cabin. “I mean, is it really that bad for them to know something is happening between us? It's not like you’re the President, and I’m your aide.”
Chuckling, I headed up the incline. “Hold onto that in case we end up in the shithole.”