Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Warrick
“ I ’m usually stronger than this. I haven’t let temptation dig so deep into me that I can’t let it go,” I admitted.
Normally, I’m not the kind of man who would even consider blurring the line between boss and employee, but Zara was a goddamn walking craving. I laced my fingers into her thick hair and massaged the back of her neck.
God, what would I get if I allowed the suddenly awakened lust in my belly to come to the fore and break the one golden rule of being a boss? All this time, with all the assistants whom I had, not once had I ever felt the urge to fraternize with them.
Be truthful, Warrick. When was the last time you lived like a man and not a machine? When was the last time you kissed a girl, much less took one to bed?
Regret darkened my heart, and it echoed in my voice, even while my erection throbbed. “We can’t do this, Zara.”
I fully expected her to resist, but she easily slipped off my lap and didn’t sit; instead, she pressed her hand to my cheek. “Remember what I said…you’re a hero.”
I didn’t believe her. “Breakfast is at six around here.”
She left the patio, and I listened to her footsteps echo as she headed inside and up. It was only when they faded that I allowed myself to slump into my seat, my body folding in on itself.
Ever since the accident, I’d given up on that part of my life; what woman wanted an almost crippled has-been like me, who had fallen so far down the totem pole that I, the lowest item on it, felt miles higher than I could ever be?
I pressed a hand to the tent in my pants, groaning at knowing that it was going to be a night with my hand as fire and a scorching kiss as fuel. I was already on the brink, god-damn it. Where was the old me who could stay aroused for hours and tease and taunt a woman in my bed without going off like an atomic bomb?
Apparently not post-accident Warrick.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I eased up to slide it out. Just as I was beginning to relax, my blood pressure went up ten notches.
“We need to talk. Please come to the town hall tomorrow by nine—G.”
G, as in Gregory Treeve, the mayor. He had not said what the meeting was about—most likely, it was about the fair—but who knew?
Grunting, I replied, “I will be there.”
Heaving up, I trudged to my rooms, all sparks of arousal not dead and gone.
The bedroom was larger than the apartment I’d been living in during my rodeo days, and even in the shadows, I could navigate the room. The bed was the principal feature; there was no way I could avoid it, and as I got closer, I stripped—shirt near the doorway, boots near the chest of drawers that was taller than I was, belt looped over the dresser, and pants near the foot of the bed.
Maria had sourced the bedding for the massive wood-framed bed, and a thick blue comforter covered the mattress. The bed was tucked into the corner. Heavy-looking blue curtains hung over the four windows opposite the bed, and the whole room smelled like mountain air and pine, clean and fresh.
Clad in boxer-briefs, I slid my hands under my head and tried to think about this meeting, but my thoughts strayed to Zara.
I could still taste her, feel her, alive and solid, having her on my lap, pressing right against my cock, and when we finally separated, the dark in her eyes had grown wide with desire, leaving only a thin rim of her green irises.
This was the worst timing in creation.
Why did my libido suddenly come to a roaring resurrection with the one woman I could not dare touch?
“Looking at my past, I’m pretty sure I’m cursed,” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and groaned. “Good, I need a few days up on the cabin with nothing more than my fishing rod and silence.”
My ranch was on the hills, yes, but my grandpa had built a hunting cabin up in tranquil Yellowstone, right by the river; that spot gave me a sweeping view of the Absaroka Mountain Range and was a prime stargazing spot.
Maybe after all this fair business was done, I could escape up there for a weekend or three days. I was a mountain man at heart, even though I rarely got the time to be there. Turning on my side, I drew the covers up and listened to a Great Horned Owl—a precious little critter who lived in the elm tree near my room that I’d named Rusty—hoot, a strange lullaby that sent me to sleep.
I flicked that morning’s paper’s page to local news and read a brief piece about the fair and the in-rush of tourists, most of whom were returning guests but some new, all agog to see the rodeo.
Marie rested a cup of coffee before me as dawn’s pink light began to slide through the windowpanes. “You’re up early?”
I eyed her. “I’m always up this early. I am a rancher, remember.”
“That you are,” she said, and I damn well heard the sly tone. It made my gut twist.
Looking up, I watched as she shared the bacon and hash into the serving pans while that smirk narrowed my eyes. After a long, awkward moment, I dropped the paper and asked, “Okay, what has bitten your buns?”
“Not as much as the one who has bitten yours,” she smiled.
God no—she’d seen us, hadn’t she?
I rubbed my eyes. “Don’t say anything, Marie. If they guys get a word of that, I will never live it down.”
“Oh, I know,” she replied. “I’ve heard them joke about how much of a spitfire she is and how she keeps you on your toes.”
“I can’t do it, Marie,” I admitted. “I know she’s beautiful and smart, but I will not be that perv boss people flash on the news or blast on social media. It sucks that she is the one who made me feel…something again, but it’s just bad timing.”
She sat my plate down. “Maybe it is bad timing, but she is the right person, Warrick.”
To give myself time to answer, I sipped my coffee. “You think so?”
“Not for sure, but what is life like if you can’t dare it to work for you?” Marie asked. “When I left my dead-end life as a ma?tre d' in Butte, I didn’t think I would end up here. All I knew was that I wanted fresh air and to cook. Frankly, I'm glad you ran into me instead of someone else.”
I quirked a brow. “Like whom? The mob?”
She shrugged while the rest of the guys began to file into the kitchen. Most early mornings like this, we have breakfast in the kitchen instead of at the table outside, and Zara came down, smartly dressed in jeans and a thick polo.
“Morning, guys,” she said, then beelined for the coffee carafe.
“Mph-ning Zha-rha,” Frankie said over a mouthful, and I smacked him.
“Eat with your mouth closed,” I chastised him. “We don’t need to see your masticated shit.”
He swallowed. “Oh, look who learned a big word. I don’t know what it means.”
I rolled my eyes as Zara dumped a mountain of sugar and a river of cream into her cup. “Are you back on the sugar coffee again? Don’t you know better now?”
“There is no quaint coffee shop with artisanal coffee around,” she said. “Until I go back there, sugar coffee it is. So what are we going to do today, bossman?”
I buttered my toast. “Actually, we’re going to see the mayor about the fairground. I need you with me to catch stuff I can’t.”
“So I am going to need a notebook, a recorder, a chisel, and a portable photocopy machine,” she said, joining us at the table.
“Why do you need that?”
“To make multiple copies so your old man brain won't forget,” she stirred her drink while the guys laughed. “I’ll nail them in your room, in your bathroom, and on top of that ridiculous hat of yours.”
“I do not have selective memory, thank you very much, and I am not old,” I grumbled.
“I saw you complaining about your back the other day,” Lucas said.
Frankie added, “And I went to grab your arthritis medication a week before.”
“Not to mention you went into your dentist for a denture fitting last month,” Santos chuckled, sipping his coffee. “And you plucked a gray hair from your nose in front of me.”
“You’re all fired,” I said.
“See you later, bossman,” Frankie grinned. “We’ll be rounding up the ornery bastards today and getting them into the breeding barn. Let’s hope I don’t lose an arm wrangling them in.”
“Pay attention then,” I muttered, checking my watch. It was after seven, and we needed to go. Swallowing the rest of my coffee, I asked Zara, “Do you need to get that in a traveler's mug? We need to leave now.”
“I—” she looked around. “Yes.”
Swiftly, Marie sat a large cup in front of Zara, and she poured the drink in, then cupped it. “Ready.”
I like being early, by at least five minutes, if not a little more, so we hustled out to the truck and hopped in. On a cool, clear morning like this, I would have rather saddled up Silver and ridden up to the Eagle’s Crag and looked down at the vista. But now, I was back down to the town, unsure of what I was about to walk into when we entered Treeve’s meeting room.
We broke through the lonely road and got to the main before Zara asked a question I hadn’t asked myself in years. “Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“The city life, you know, from back in the days when you were riding high in your career,” she explained.
“To be honest, I never was a city boy at heart,” I replied after swallowing. “Leaving the ranch was inevitable. If I wanted to be the best bull rider in this half of the country, I had to get out and learn how the city ran. It didn’t stop me from dreaming about open spaces and free-running rivers, though. But, yeah, living in a crowded city wasn’t my favorite thing.”
“I figured. Ranching is in your blood,” she said.
“What about you?” I asked, feeling oddly lopsided in this situation. Zara knew more about me in less than a week, and I knew little to nothing about her. Sneaking a look over to her, I pressed. “Surely you left a life behind in New York? A boyfriend, perhaps?”
She made a sound, half snort, half laugh. “Hardly. I wouldn’t have…” —she shot me a look. “—done that if I had someone in the city. I’m not that sort of girl. The truth is, the situation in New York was getting…complicated for me, so I left.”
“How complicated?” I asked.
She went tight-lipped, and I wondered if that was something she hadn’t wanted to tell me. I kept quiet, though, feeling that it was not a good time to push.
Eventually, she said, “I found something in my job’s files that I wasn’t supposed to find. Some dangerous people were all twisted up with the organization, so I felt it better, and safer, to find a better job.”
“Dangerous like…the mafia?” I asked. “Some gang extorting you?”
“Or a crooked politician,” she shrugged, gazing out the window. “Who knows? They are everywhere these days. All I know is that I saw some numbers that were not adding up and I did what was best for all involved and left. I know it sounds cowardly…”
“No,” I rushed to say while hitting the highway. “You probably did the right thing. There is no reason why you would jump into a pool and not know how deep that shit went. If it is any consolation, no one is crooked around here.”
“On the farm or in the town?”
“Both.”
“Do you ever think you’ll go back to city life?” I asked as we passed the fairgrounds. From the quick snapshots I got, the place looked like it would be up and running in a day’s time. “Work in a corporate building and put on a suit every day?”
“I dunno,” she said. “Country is starting to grow on me. I mean, the cowboys are pretty hot, and I have a very straight-laced boss that harps on me for drinking, quote, unquote, sacrilegious coffee, but yeah, I can give the country a good shake.”
We got to Silver Ridge, and instead of driving through the few streets I knew, I took another one that seemed to go to the end of the town. “We’re heading to the town’s mayor’s office. There are a couple of things here; the mayor’s office, the courthouse, and the chamber of commerce sit here, too. A lot of so-called big wigs walk through those halls.”
“Sounds like you don’t like a couple of them,” she said.
“There is this guy on the Chamber named Drayton, an older man in his sixties who professes to have worked in DC. He keeps bragging about how he made millions on his first hundred dollars he worked for at eight years old. Supercilious prick.”
She laughed. “Sounds like my aunt who said she had to run the restaurant floor, pour drinks at the bar, juggle balloons for kids while triaging geriatrics—and that was in high school.”
“Gird your loins if we run into Drayton,” I said. “He’s got a couple of sons I haven’t seen before, but he keeps bragging about.”
“Next time, remind me to pick up some earplugs at Hank's Store,” Zara replied, popping the handle and stepping out.
I tried not to stare at her ass—but I did.
“Get a grip, old boy,” I told myself while following her. “You already drew the line in the sand. You can’t cross it now.”