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Strutted into her damn throne room, and walked up to the seat at the front.
Where he still ruled, whether she liked it or not.
Who the hell was she trying to fool?
She liked it. She liked it too damn much.
“It’s pretty out here.”
No. She hated it.
His murmur, quiet as the breeze in the oaks and sycamores, roped that truth in with perfect timing. So what if that dark chocolate voice spread to the farthest reaches of her body, coating her like the most decadent dessert on the planet? So what if his footsteps, slow but steady on the wide stone veranda, reverberated through every nerve ending she possessed? So what if his presence, consuming more of the air as he moved, woke up her sex more sharply than the tang of the ocean on the air?
John moved up next to her. Stretched an arm up, bracing his forearm against one of the natural log support beams. She dared a glance over. While he was still dressed in his date night/Dominant/life-saving warrior clothes, he’d washed the grime off his face and arms, and had even cleared the dust out of his dark hair—not helping her libido calm by one damn bit. Biscuits and effing gravy. The man’s rugged beauty reached whole new heights in natural light. The sun, now reflecting off wispy peach clouds, mellowed his features and brightened the gold in his gaze. The wind, gusting a little stronger, flattened his T-shirt against his T-shaped torso.
Dammit.
She really needed to hate him right now.
She really longed to jump him right now.
More than that. She yearned to drag him off into the bushes and mount him.
Therewas a creative option for an uncomfortable silence. Definitely hadn’t ever been an option she’d gone for on the Hill—though she doubted any man in those chambers even remembered the definition of silence.
She liked what Franz did with this one.
God, God, she didn’t want to—but she did.
He simply let it rest. For a long minute then two. Just let the morning surround them, as the dawn shifted from pastel to primary hues, and the air warmed from chilled to pleasant, before he finally spoke again.
“Whole place belongs to Ethan,” he said, actually attempting conversation. She added a craving to hug him, on top of the monkey sex. The man “enjoyed” chit-chat about as much as she once “enjoyed” trips to Cheesy Chuck Pizza Land with Luke. He was trying, though. It was a start. “Far as you can see, nearly to the Morro Bay city line.”
“Oh.” Before she could retract it, her surprise underlined the reply—though the revelation should’ve been anything but. The soon-to-be ex Sergeant Archer wasn’t at ease discussing himself, but she at least learned he was one of the Archers, heir to a sizable fortune already. “Well, that makes sense, I suppose. He’s about to become Hollywood royalty. This’ll be a nice place to get away from all that stress.”
“Stress.” He flipped her expectations by echoing it on a chuckle. “It’s just…ironic,” he addressed to her open gape. “That you use that word.”
“Why?”
“Because the guy’s end goal isn’t addressing his stress.” He looked out over the horizon. “He wants to turn this all into a working ranch. Seriously. With dudes in Stetsons, horses, cows, chuck wagon barbecues on the weekends…” He pointed toward steeper slopes off in the distance. “He’s even thinking of putting in a vineyard, somewhere over there. Grape-growing ju-ju’s supposed to be great.”
While she was glad for the distraction from gawking-but-not-gawking at him, her brows pushed together in deeper puzzlement. “So what does all of that have to do with the stress-that-isn’t-his-own?”
“Because the place is going to welcome others, free-of-charge. It’s going to be like a working retreat for former soldiers, and others who qualify, who are fighting PTSD.”
“Oh.” Her reiteration of the word was doubly stunned—but in all the best ways. “That’s…”
“Pretty cool, right?”
“Better than cool.” She meant it and hoped he could tell, before she turned and sobered once again. “Hopefully that’ll also apply to survivors of the Oval Office.” She tried to add a wry laugh but it never materialized. They were talking, but the elephant on the porch wasn’t listening. “If I ever get to the damn place.”
Which, she was beginning to think, might not be such a tragedy…
“Okay.” He stretched out the word a little, almost tilting it toward a question, before asserting, “That’s fair subtext.”
“Subtext?” Now she did laugh. Bitterly.
He hurled back a huff. Also bitterly. “Tracy—”
