18
Talia made it halfway down the road before she admitted she was in trouble.
Not aloud.
Never aloud.
Aloud would make it too real, and she was already dealing with the fact that her lips still tingled from Gordon Windgate’s mouth like her body had no respect for ethics, age gaps, professional boundaries, or common sense.
She walked fast, boots kicking up dust on the road back toward the bunkhouse. The cottages sat behind her, peaceful and new, as if one of them had not just become the scene of a very serious lapse in judgment.
A kiss.
One kiss.
A kiss she had not expected at all.
Well.
That was not entirely true.
She had thought about kissing Gordon. She would never admit that under oath, but she had. She had wondered what his mouth would feel like. Whether he would kiss the way he spoke, quiet and direct, or the way he worked, steady and thorough.
Now she knew.
He kissed like patience had finally snapped.
And unfortunately, she had melted like warm butter on a biscuit.
Talia groaned and pressed the heel of one hand against her forehead.
“No,” she muttered. “Absolutely not.”
Yes, she was attracted to Gordon. She had been attracted to him almost from the beginning.
His body alone was enough to make a woman reconsider several moral positions.
The shoulders. The arms. The hands. The way his shirts clung when he worked.
The way his jaw tightened when he was thinking.
The way his voice dropped when he said her name.
Fine.
Attraction existed.
So did gravity.
That did not mean she had to throw herself off a porch.
Gordon was the subject of her article. She was at Stanley Ranch because he had granted her access after she had lied her way through the gate.
She owed him professionalism, accuracy, and enough respect not to turn his life into some reckless personal entanglement just because he happened to kiss like someone with secrets and stamina.
She would not cross that line.
No matter how good a kisser the young man was.
Young man.
She winced.
Twenty-two.
Lord.
She was thirty-four. She had spent her twenties chasing jobs, bylines, and approval that always seemed to move farther away the closer she got. He had spent his becoming someone entirely different from the family that had tried to claim him.
He was not a boy.
She knew that.
Nothing about Gordon felt boyish except that grin from earlier, the one he had worn because Luke and Edye had given him a house and a truck and he had not known how to carry so much belonging at once.
Still.
Twelve years.
Talia exhaled sharply.
Maybe it had nothing to do with Gordon specifically. Maybe the problem was simpler than that. Cruder. Less emotionally catastrophic.
How long had it been since she had been with a man?
Too long.
That was all.
Celibacy had made her dramatic.
Her body had reacted like Gordon was some rare discovery instead of a handsome man who knew how to use his mouth. She was touch-starved. Overworked. Under-loved. Surrounded by a ranch full of couples who looked at each other like love had personally handed them keys to heaven.
Of course her system had malfunctioned.
She rolled her eyes at herself.
“You’re just horny, Talia,” she said out loud. “That’s all.”
A truck engine rumbled behind her.
Talia stiffened.
She moved to the edge of the road to make sure she was not in the way, keeping her eyes forward and her arms folded across her chest because she was still tragically braless.
The truck slowed beside her.
She did not have to look.
She knew.
“Talia,” Gordon called from the driver’s seat. “Get in the truck.”
She kept walking. “No. I told you I’d walk. Go back and talk to Cody.”
The truck rolled beside her at a crawl.
“Talia.”
“I said no.”
The truck moved ahead of her.
Then angled across the road.
She stopped abruptly.
Gordon had parked so that continuing forward would require climbing the fence and strolling through a pasture where several cows looked up with mild curiosity.
Talia considered it.
For one committed second, she truly considered climbing that fence just to prove a point.
Then one of the cows flicked its tail and stared at her like it knew she was not about that life.
She stayed on the road.
Gordon got out of the truck and came around to open the passenger door.
She did not move.
He stood by the open door, one hand resting on the frame, looking at her with far too much calm for a man who had just blocked a road.
“Talia Denise Monroe,” he said, voice firm, “get your beautiful behind in the truck.”
Her mouth fell open.
The smile on his face softened the order, but the tone still made her feel like a child being called by her full name after touching something breakable.
“Do not use my whole name.”
“Get in.”
“You are not my father.”
“No,” he said. “But I am your ride.”
“I didn’t ask for one.”
“I noticed. Get in anyway.”
She sighed loudly, rolled her eyes, and climbed into the truck.
The triumphant smile on his face as he closed the door made her want to throw something at him.
Preferably something soft.
She hated wanting to smile back.
Gordon walked around the hood and got behind the wheel. Talia turned her head toward the window, refusing to look at him. She folded her arms tighter across her chest, both for dignity and because she knew he had eyes.
Good eyes.
Too good.
The truck eased forward, then turned back toward the bunkhouse.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Gordon said, “I don’t regret kissing you.”
Talia’s breath caught.
She did not turn.
He continued, voice steady. “I wanted to do it. I want to do it again.”
Her fingers curled into her arms.
“But I won’t,” he said, “unless you make it clear you want me to.”
That was worse.
If he had been smug, she could have fought him. If he had teased, she could have snapped back. If he had pretended it had meant nothing, she could have used that insult to rebuild her wall.
But he sounded sincere.
Careful.
Controlled, but not indifferent.
Talia kept her mouth shut because she knew exactly what would come out if she opened it.
Yes.
Again.
Pull over.
Let me climb into your lap and find out whether that kiss was a fluke or whether we really have the kind of chemistry I’ve spent my entire adult life pretending I wasn’t waiting to find.
She pressed her lips together.
Not happening.
Gordon glanced at her, then back at the road.
When he spoke again, his voice was softer. “I like you.”
Her heart gave a hard, traitorous thump.
“I want to explore whatever this is,” he said. “And I think you like me too.”
Talia closed her eyes.
“All you have to do is admit it to yourself first.”
That made her turn.
He was not smiling now.
He was not playing.
His profile was serious, sunlight cutting across his cheekbone, one hand resting on the wheel, the other near the gearshift. He looked younger for one second, then older. A man still becoming, yet already too honest for her defenses.
He meant it.
He liked her.
And that frightened her far more than his mouth had.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I’m writing an article about you.”
“I know.”
“I have to remain professional.”
“I know that too.”
“What happened in your cottage can’t happen again.”
Gordon’s mouth twisted to one side.
She had watched him for a week now. She knew that look. He did it when he was thinking seriously. When something landed in him and he refused to answer before he had weighed it.
The truck rolled to a stop near the bunkhouse, in the same place he had parked when he came to get her earlier.
He turned off the engine.
For a moment, the silence pressed close.
Then he looked at her. “I’ll agree not to try kissing you again.”
Relief and disappointment hit her at the same time.
Both were annoying.
“If,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed. “If?”
“If you admit to me right now that you’re attracted to me.”
Talia stared at him.
“That is manipulative.”
“No. It’s honest.”
“It’s unnecessary.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I don’t owe you that.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because you keep acting like what happened in that cottage happened to you instead of with you.”
The words hit dead center.
Talia looked down at her lap.
He was right.
She hated that he was right.
She had been making the kiss into his mistake, his impulsiveness, his youth, his desire, as if she had not pressed into him. As if her hands had not curled in his shirt. As if she had not wanted more so badly she had forgotten every reason she should stop.
Her throat tightened.
Gordon waited.
No pressure.
No touch.
Just waiting.
She reached for the door handle.
Her fingers wrapped around it.
Then she looked at him.
“Not again,” she said.
The words came out soft.
Too soft.
They meant the kiss.
Do not kiss me again.
They did not answer his question.
They did not deny attraction either.
Gordon heard the difference.
She saw it in his eyes.
He did not smile.
He only nodded once.
“All right.”
That made it harder to leave.
Talia opened the door and stepped down from the truck, arms folded again over her chest because her body still had the nerve to remember his mouth.
She closed the door.
For half a second, she stood there beside the truck, aware of him watching her through the open window.
She wanted to say something else.
Something clear.
Something professional.
Something that would put the world back in order.
Nothing came.
So she turned and walked into the bunkhouse.
This time, he let her go.
Inside, the room was empty.
Thank God.
Talia shut the door behind her and leaned back against it, closing her eyes.
Her lips still felt like his.
Her body still felt awake.
Her heart, stupid and reckless thing, was beating like she had just run from danger instead of a man who had told her the truth and waited for her to do the same.
She slid one hand over her face.
“Not again,” she whispered.
But even alone, even with no one to hear the lie except herself, she was not sure which one of them she was trying to convince.