Chapter 4
Dustin
Living with Vanessa Baldwin was going to test his self-control, and that wasn't something he was known for anyway.
Three days into the arrangement, and Dustin was starting to understand that his injured ankle was the least of his problems. The real problem was the woman on the other side of the wall who'd somehow managed to become the only thing he could think about.
She had routines. Morning coffee at six-thirty, prepared in a machine that probably cost more than most people's rent.
Shower at seven, accompanied by humming that made him picture her naked under the spray with soap sliding down curves he had no business imagining.
Gone by eight-fifteen in her sensible sedan, dressed in business clothes even though she was just going to job interviews that kept leading nowhere.
He knew about the rejections because she left the emails open on her laptop, and he'd caught a glimpse while getting coffee yesterday morning.
The woman had a business degree, five years of retail buying experience, and references that should have had employers fighting over her.
But the economy had teeth these days, and even qualified people were getting chewed up and spit out.
It bothered him more than it should have.
She was handling it with the same competence she brought to everything else, but he'd caught her staring out the kitchen window with an expression that had nothing to do with serenity and everything to do with barely contained panic.
And the urge to fix it for her, to make it better somehow, was getting harder to ignore.
He'd known her for three days. Three days, and he was already thinking like a man who had the right to solve her problems. Like a man who was planning to stick around long enough to matter.
Right now she was in the backyard, attacking weeds with the kind of intensity that suggested gardening was how she processed stress.
He'd been watching her from his bedroom window, telling himself it was because he had nothing better to do and absolutely not because she'd changed out of her interview clothes into jeans that fit her like they'd been designed specifically to drive him insane.
His phone rang, interrupting his completely inappropriate study of how she moved when she thought no one was watching.
"Fleming."
"Dustin? It's Dr. Patterson. How's the ankle feeling?"
He tested his weight on it, noting the improvement from even two days ago. "Better. Still sore, but the swelling's down."
"Good. I wanted to let you know that Thunder's bloodwork came back, and everything looks excellent. Whatever you're doing for his conditioning program is working."
Thunder. His horse was the one constant in a life that had been nothing but variables for the past ten years.
Four years ago, he'd bought the gelding from a rancher who was getting out of the business, and they'd developed the kind of partnership that made the difference between winning and eating arena dirt.
Except lately, when he thought about Thunder, he also thought about Vanessa. About whether she'd like his horse. Whether Thunder would nuzzle her hand looking for treats. Whether she'd laugh at his shameless begging or roll her eyes at Dustin for spoiling him.
Whether she'd fit into his world the way she was already fitting into his head.
"He's been antsy being stuck in a stall. I've been hand-walking him when I can manage it."
"The exercise is good for both of you. But don't push too hard too fast. You've got time."
Time. Everyone kept telling him he had time, but time in rodeo was different than time in the real world.
Every month he spent on the sidelines was a month closer to thirty, and thirty was when most riders started looking for careers that didn't involve getting stepped on by animals that outweighed them by half a ton.
"I know. Just ready to get back out there."
Except he wasn't. Not really. Not when getting back out there meant leaving this house, leaving morning coffee in a kitchen that smelled like Vanessa's perfume, and leaving the possibility of a real grown up relationship with a woman who knocked his socks off.
"Understandable. But remember what we talked about. Rushing back too soon could turn a few weeks off into a permanent problem."
After she hung up, he went back to watching Vanessa's gardening project.
She'd moved on to planting something, her movements sharp and focused like she was declaring war on the flower bed.
The afternoon sun caught the blonde in her hair, and when she pushed a strand behind her ear, he got a clear view of the line of her neck.
He was definitely losing his mind.
The smart thing would be to grab his gear and head out to check on Thunder.
Get some distance, some perspective, maybe some sanity.
But his truck keys were on the kitchen counter and getting them meant walking past the back window where she might see him watching her, and he wasn't ready for that conversation yet.
Wasn't ready to admit that he'd been watching her instead of acting like a grown man who should know better.
Instead, he limped to the kitchen and started going through her cabinets. She'd said he could use anything he needed, and what he needed was to cook something that would fill the house with enough good smells to maybe get her attention in ways that didn't involve him staring at her through windows.
Her spice collection was impressive for someone who seemed to live on takeout and frozen meals. He pulled out what he needed for his grandmother's chili recipe, the one he'd perfected over years of cooking for himself on the road.
Now he just wanted to feed her. To take care of her in whatever small ways she'd let him. To see that smile when she tasted something that made her happy.
By the time she came inside, he had onions and garlic going in a cast-iron pan that had probably never been used for anything more adventurous than scrambled eggs.
"Something smells amazing." She stood in the kitchen doorway, dirt smudged on her cheek and her hair escaping from its ponytail in ways that made her look softer, more approachable.
More beautiful than anyone had a right to be after an hour of manual labor.
"Just chili. Hope you don't mind me taking over your kitchen."
"It's your kitchen too now." She moved past him to wash her hands at the sink, and he caught a hint of something floral mixed with fresh earth and clean sweat. The combination should not have been as appealing as it was. "I can't remember the last time anyone cooked in here."
"You don't cook?"
"I heat things up. There's a difference." She dried her hands on a dish towel and leaned against the counter, watching him add ground beef to the pan. "Where did you learn to do that?"
"My grandmother. She said any man who couldn't feed himself and whoever he was trying to impress wasn't worth the space he took up.
" He stirred the meat, breaking it up with a wooden spoon.
"Course, she also said any woman who couldn't change her own oil wasn't worth impressing, so she had opinions about a lot of things. "
Vanessa laughed, and the sound went straight through him. Not like whiskey. Better than whiskey. Like something he could get drunk on without ever needing a hangover cure.
"She sounds like she didn't put up with much nonsense."
"None at all. Raised me after my parents split up, and she made sure I knew how to take care of myself." He added tomatoes and beans, then reached for the spice bottles. "What about you? Your family teach you anything useful?"
"How to balance a checkbook and always have a backup plan.
" Her voice carried an edge that suggested those lessons had come with a price.
"My parents divorced when I was twelve. Messy divorce, lots of fighting about money.
I learned early that financial independence was more important than romance. "
No fairy tales in that sentence, but he heard it anyway. The ghost of dreams she'd given up because watching her parents fight had taught her that love wasn't enough when the bills came due.
That explained a few things about her need for control, her focus on stability over adventure.
He'd grown up in a different kind of broken home, one where love hadn't been enough to keep the bills paid or the ranch in the family, where his father had worked himself to death trying to save something that was already lost.
"Smart lessons," he said, meaning it. "Even if they're hard ones."
She was watching him cook with an expression he recognized.
Women trying to figure out whether he was genuinely domestic or just putting on a show.
The truth was somewhere in between. He could cook, he could clean, he could take care of himself because ten years on the road had taught him that no one else was going to do it.
But he'd also learned that most women liked men who could do more than order pizza and pick up their own socks.
With Vanessa, though, it felt different. He wasn't trying to impress her so much as he was trying to take care of her. Trying to give her something good in a week that had clearly been full of bad.
Trying to show her that maybe, just maybe, he was worth the risk.
"How long until it's ready?"
"About an hour. Why?"
"I should shower." She gestured to her dirt-stained clothes. "I got a little carried away out there."
A little carried away. He watched her walk down the hall toward her bedroom and spent the next ten minutes trying not to picture her stripping out of those jeans, stepping under hot water, using soap on all the places he'd been imagining touching since the day he'd met her.
Three days. He'd been living here for three days, and he was already so far gone it wasn't even funny.