AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It might have been my imagination, but I’d swear Richard’s eyes followed my movements. That his gaze dropped to the stretch of my work shirt across my chest and the place where the edge of it was coming untucked from my pants.
This was a complication I did not need.
Richard blinked and looked away. “That’s fine, but then I really need to eat something. My blood sugar is plummeting, and I tend to get hangry if I go too long between small meals.”
Lord have mercy, I was going to kill Oscar. Kill him.
“Then by all means, let’s get this over with,” I said, deciding to cut the tour short and deposit him back at the bunkhouse with only a cursory gesture toward the paddocks, machine shed, and farmhouse kitchen entrance.
He wouldn’t need to know any of it.
This spoiled princess wasn’t staying.
4
RICHARD
At dinner, I’d tried not to think of Boone Hammond, mostly because the name Boone for a rancher that hot—and decidedly not ancient—made me snicker, and that wasn’t exactly the first impression I wanted to make with a bunch of butch cowboys.
Fortunately, I’d found it very easy to distract myself.
Oscar may have done me wrong in many ways with this job—like failing to tell Boone I was arriving, for a start—but what he hadn’t lied about was the eye candy. I’d kept my mind occupied by staring in circles around the dinner table like a young pup with a yard full of juicy bones, deciding which strapping fella I’d like to give my own juicy bone before this little job experiment was over.
Maybe Harrison Malone. I’d give Malone my bone. Heh.
The thought of that followed me into sleep—a sleep that was more like a butter-laden, carb-induced coma, despite the criminally narrow bed in my prison cell of a room, and led to some very, very interesting dreams that I did not want to wake up from—
“Get the fuck up!”
The screaming voice didn’t merely wake me; it catapulted me headfirst out of a dream and onto a cold, hard floor. For a moment, I was so disoriented I had no idea where I was. I pressed my hands against the ground in the pitch-darkness, feeling the scrape of dirt and dust under my fingertips. Behind me, the rough metal of a bed frame bit into my back, and the scratch of cheap sheets slid from my shoulder. I sucked in a deep breath, and…
Dear god, the stench. Like unwashed animals and manure.
“What the hell is going on in here?” the same voice boomed.
Suddenly, I remembered. Oscar’s deal. The ranch in Wyoming. Boone.
An image of the beautiful cowboy flashed in my mind, warming my skin against the cold morning air… though the effect was ruined when the man began cursing me under his breath from somewhere above my head.
With a huff, I tugged down the edge of my silk sleep mask and glared up at him. “Do you mind? I was asleep.”
Boone’s teeth were bared, and his eyes were narrowed to angry slits. “Matter of fact, I do mind. This here is a working ranch. Emphasis on working. Did you think we kept office hours around here? When I told you to be at the breakfast table at five, what exactly did that mean to you?”
Those were a lot of questions for so early in the morning. I glanced at my Apple Watch and then back up at him. “It’s five thirty.”
He crossed beefy arms in front of his wide, muscular chest, and a shiver ran down my spine. Somehow, Boone’s anger made him even more good-looking, emphasizing the firm set of his shoulders and the telltale tick of a muscle in his locked jaw. He was in control. Commanding. I caught a wispy fragment of the dream I’d been having just moments before—something about me on my knees while Boone showed me exactly what happened to men who couldn’t control their sassy mouths—and had to ruthlessly force it away.
Boone Hammond was not in the running to get my juicy bone… or give me his, as the case might be. Not if the look on his face was anything to go by.
I sat back on my heels and cleared my throat, trying to think fast. “I got things mixed up because of the time difference, that’s all. I’m still on New York time, you see.”
His nostrils flared. “So you were at the breakfast table at five Eastern time? Three o’clock in the morning?”
Shit. Why were time zones so complicated?
I nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, I was. And since no one was around, I assumed there’d been some sort of miscommunication—probably your fault, but I wasn’t going to hold it against you—and I decided, under the circumstances, the smartest thing to do was to get back in bed and wait for daylight to sort it all out.” I gave him a winning smile.
