Chapter 3 #2
“I asked you a question,” she snapped.
Her relief was short-lived. When he turned, the anger on his face almost stopped her heart.
“Don’t go there,” he said quietly..
“Go where? I don’t know what you mean.”
“There’s one thing we’d better get straight right now. I don’t take orders from you, and I don’t take your money. I pay my own way.”
She couldn’t imagine how he’d obtained the clothes. For all she knew he might have stolen the stuff. She would have been shocked to know he had a gold credit card with an unlimited line. And, if she’d known, would have been even more surprised to learn he hadn’t used it in months.
“But the uniforms… why didn’t you do as you were told?”
As far as Ryder was concerned, what was in his past was none of her business. Suddenly-he was right in front of her. His breath was hot, his words angry.
“Because you’re not my boss, you’re my wife. I gave you my name, and I’ll drive you and yours anywhere they please for the next twelve months, but I’m not wearing a damned monkey suit to do it.”
Casey’s mouth dropped. Never in her entire life had anyone had the gall to defy her in such a manner. Before she could think of a comeback, he turned away, opened the top drawer of the dresser, withdrew a brand-new pair of white cotton briefs and dropped his towel.
She bolted, taking with her the image of a long-limbed body that was hard and fit and brown all over.
A few minutes later he emerged from the bedroom in his bare feet, wearing an old and faded pair of jeans and no shirt. The casual are-you-still-here glance he gave her made her furious.
Disgusted with herself for not standing her ground, she watched from across the room as he sauntered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
When he bent down to look inside, the urge to hit him was so strong it startled her.
She was not the type of woman to resort to violence.
Then she rescinded her own opinion of herself.
At least she hadn’t been. But that was before she’d driven into the flatlands and brought out a husband.
He set a package of raw hamburger meat on the counter then went back to the refrigerator. She didn’t know what angered her most, the fact that he was being deliberately mutinous, or that she was being ignored.
Smoothing her hands down the front of her blue summer suit, she tossed back her hair and slipped into the sarcastic mode she used to keep Miles and Erica at bay.
“Are you finished?” she drawled, wanting the bathroom all to herself.
Ryder straightened, looking at her from across the open refrigerator door. He stared at her, from the top of her hair to the open toes of her sling-back pumps. A slight grin tilted the corner of his mouth as he stepped back and closed the door.
His thoughts went to the year stretching out before them, considering which one of them would be the first to break. “Finished?” he muttered. “We haven’t even started.”
With that, he moved toward her.
Panic came swiftly and Casey wondered if the family would. be able to hear her scream from here. She held up her hand in a warning gesture.
“Don’t you dare!” she said, and winced at the squeak in her voice.
She was scared! The fact surprised him. She’d walked into a bar with a roomful of strange men and offered herself up as a golden goat without batting an eye.
She’d roused a doctor, a county clerk and a judge out of bed to do her bidding.
She’d stared down a roomful of antagonistic relatives and kept a lawyer out of her pants who seemed to have had his own hidden agenda, and she was suddenly scared?
And of him? It didn’t make sense. He hadn’t done anything to warrant this.
Yet when he might have eased her fears, he found himself letting them grow.
When he got within inches of her stark, white face, he realized why. This woman, who was his wife, was damned pretty. In fact, if a man didn’t get picky about that little bitty mole at the left corner of her lips, she was beautiful.
Sexually, he was a starving man and this woman was legally his wife.
Although he’d cut himself off from everyone he cared for, he’d been unable to cut off the emotions of a normal, red-blooded man.
Keeping her slightly afraid was a safe way of keeping her at arms’ length.
Yet when her eyes widened fearfully and her color rose, he relented.
“Easy,” he said. “All I need to know is how you like it and do you want more than one?”
She would have sworn that her heart shot straight up her throat and she had to swallow several times to work up enough spit to be able to speak. More than one? Oh my God! “I don’t think you understand the situation here,” she stuttered.
“What? Don’t tell me you don’t eat meat!”
Her face flushed as she thought of his lean, bare body. “Eat? Meat?”
“Do you like it hot and red, slightly pink, or hard as a rock?”
Her eyes widened even more and her voice began to quiver. “I don’t do things like that,” she whispered, and put her hand to her throat, unconsciously stifling that scream she’d been considering.
He frowned. Things like what? All he needed to know was if she wanted… And then it dawned on him what interpretation she’d put on their conversation. He stifled a grin and pointed back to the counter.
“Are you telling me you don’t do hamburgers?”
“Hamburgers?”
He went straight past her and out a small side door onto the attached deck above the driveway, opened the lid to a smoking barbecue grill, checked the coals, then let the lid drop back down with a clank.
“The charcoal is ready.” He headed back toward the kitchen, pausing at the package of hamburger. “One last chance. Do you want one hamburger or two, and how do you want it cooked?”
There was a silly grin on her face as she slumped to the floor in a dead faint.
* * *
Ryder sat in the room’s only chair, watching as Casey began to regain consciousness. The sofa he’d laid her on was a small, two-cushion affair, and he’d been forced to make the decision as to whether her head would be down and her feet up, or vice versa.
He’d opted to lay her head on the cushions and let her legs dangle. No sooner had he done so than one of her legs slipped from the arm of the sofa and onto the floor, leaving her in an indelicate, spread-eagled faint.
Ryder stifled a grin. Waking in such a compromising position would embarrass anyone.
For Casey, a woman obviously used to nothing but the best, it would be the height of humiliation.
In a considerate move, he removed her shoes, then lifted her leg back in alignment with the other.
But when it slipped off again, he decided to leave it, and her, alone.
As he watched, he couldn’t help but stare at the woman who was now his wife.
He was still a little shocked at himself for going along with such a hare-brained scheme.
The Justice men were not impulsive. They had always considered the consequences and then lived with their decisions without regrets.
Until now. While it was too late to consider anything, it remained to be seen if there would be regrets.
He kept looking at her, separating her features in his mind. It wasn’t just that she was pretty, though he couldn’t keep his eyes off her thick black hair and those big green eyes. And her skin—it looked like silk, ivory silk.
And Ryder remembered that when she smiled, her mouth had a tendency to curl at one corner first before the other decided to follow.
It gave her an impish expression, which he knew was deceiving.
If this woman had an ounce of playfulness in her, he hadn’t seen it.
The devil maybe, but nothing so frivolous as an imp.
While he was watching, she blinked. And when she groaned and reached for the back of her head, he grimaced. It had been thumped pretty good when she’d fainted. He felt bad about that. She might be touchy as hell, and they might not agree on anything, but he didn’t want her hurt.
Casey opened her eyes. The ceiling didn’t look familiar, and for a moment, she wondered where she was. A whiff of charcoal smoke drifted past her nose and, all too swiftly, her memory returned.
Seconds later, she became aware of the implications of her less than ladylike sprawl. What had that man done to her while she’d been unconscious? Better yet, where was he?
She turned her head and caught him staring at her from a chair on the other side of the coffee table. When he grinned and winked, she swiveled to an upright position, grabbing at her skirt and smoothing at her hair. When she could think without the room spinning beneath her, she glared at him.
“What did you do to me?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Not nearly as much as I wanted,” he replied, and knew he’d scored a hit when she doubled up her fists.
He stifled a laugh. “Easy, now. I was just kidding. I’ve been the picture of decorum.
I picked you up from the floor, laid you on the sofa, and have been waiting for you to come to. ”
Her southern manners forced her to thank him. “I appreciate your consideration.”
His grin widened. “Honesty won’t permit me to accept your compliment. I have to admit it was hunger that kept me waiting for you. I was taught that it’s bad manners to eat in front of people without offering them some, too. And, you never did answer my question. How do you want your hamburger?”
If she’d had a shoe, she would have thrown it. As it was, she had to satisfy herself with a regal, albeit shaky, exit from the room, slamming the door shut between them with a solid thud.
“Does that mean you don’t want one?” Ryder yelled.
She yanked the door open long enough to give him what was left of her mind.
“You’re a swine. A gentleman would have covered my legs and bathed my head with a cold compress.”
“If you wanted a gentleman, you shouldn’t have gone shopping for a husband down in the Delta.”
She glared and slammed the door again, this time louder and firmer.