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Unable to hold back, I frame his face in my hands.“Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
“You should move out here, to the ranch.”
I blink, then scoot back so I can look at him better.“What?”
“You heard me.You’re here most of the time anyway.”
“I can’t just move here, Remington.”I scoot off the counter and walk away from him.“I have an apartment.I have another job.”
“You can quit the other job.”
“Whoa.”I hold up my hand, stopping him.“No.Ineedthat job.Besides, I like it there.”
Rem pulls his hand down his face in agitation.“Obviously, I’m fucking this all up.I’m not trying to be a controlling prick.I’m being logical.”
“Logical.”I laugh at that and pace away from him.“It’s not at all logical for me to quit the job that I need.”
“Listen, I was going to ask you to work full time through the summer anyway,” he says.“I’ll need the help, and my mom enjoys having more free time.We’ll renegotiate your salary for that, and I’ll more than make up for what you’d lose by quitting the coffee shop.”
“I’m not quitting.”Yes, I sound stubborn, and I don’t care.“But maybe I could go down to one day a week.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because they’re like family to me,” I reply, my voice raising.“They gave me a chance when I moved here, and I love it there.I want to stay.”
“Fine.”He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets, which I’ve discovered he does when he’s agitated.
“And I don’t want to move out of my apartment.”My voice has quieted, but I feel just as strongly about this.“I rent from Roger Sherman.Do you know him?”
“Sure.”
“He’s alone.I like him, and I want to stay living nearby, in case he needs me.”
“I’m not saying you can’t have any ties to town.If you want to go visit Roger every single day, I say do it.I just don’t want you driving back and forth so late or early in the day that it’s dangerous.If you’re here more and more, it only makes sense that you would live here.”
“As your nanny.”
Now his eyes narrow, and his jaw tightens.
“Listen, I’m going to just be brutally honest here because that’s how I was raised, and I like spelling things out.I feel the chemistry between us.The attraction.Do you think I don’t want you to kiss me again?Because I totally do.”
He takes his hands out of his pockets and balls them into fists.
“But I’m not moving in here, and into your bed, when you have two little kids here who?—”
“Jesus, that’s not what I’m asking,” he says, shaking his head.“I’m fucking this up.Come here.”
He reaches for my hand and leads me through the house to a doorway at the end of the house that’s always been closed.When he opens it, my jaw drops.
There’s a pretty queen-sized brass bed dressed with white linens.A wooden dresser is on one wall with a big mirror over it, and there’s a chair by the window that looks perfect for curling up with a book or gazing out to the mountains and pasture.
“There’s an en suite bathroom,” he says, gesturing to the door.“Thiswould be your room.I’m not going to confuse my kids, Erin.And I’m not asking you to do anything that you’re uncomfortable with.The room is part of your salary, so you’d be saving money on rent anyway.”
Well, when he puts it like that, it would help me out a lot.
“Yeah,” he continues, “there’s chemistry here.Attraction.Fucking hell, I want to toss you onto that bed and kiss every inch of your body so bad that I ache with it, but I’m not an asshole.There’s a line.”
“There’s a line that we both seem to want to cross,” I toss back at him and watch as those eyes narrow on me once more.“Like I said, I’m being honest.But I do work for you.I need the job, and if that means that we keep this strictly professional, then that’s what we’ll do.”
