The Rancher's Rules
Page 47His hands settled on her thighs. “What do you mean?”
“I wanted to make love with you that night you took Madeleine up in your plane, after dropping me off at home like a pesky younger sister.”
“Well, you couldn’t have wanted it very damn bad. You left for college two days later—a full month before you had to be back for classes. And you didn’t come home for a long visit again until you moved back a year ago.”
Old anger and hurt welled up inside. “What did you expect me to do? Stick around and watch you have an affair with the bimbo model after treating me like your girlfriend for several weeks?” She shoved against his chest. “Let me down.”
He didn’t move an inch. “No way. We’re talking this out.”
“What’s the point? It happened years ago. It’s over and done with.”
“If it were over for you, you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
He was right, darn it. “Okay. Tell me again why you took Madeleine up in your plane if you didn’t want her, and while you’re at it try explaining why you had a rule against kissing me and why you asked Carlene out.”
He wanted a conversation? He could do the talking as far as she was concerned.
He opened his mouth and then closed it, an arrested expression coming over his face. “I did it all for the same reason. To protect you and our friendship.”
His grip on her thighs tightened, reminding her that talking wasn’t the only thing on Grant’s mind. “You weren’t ready to make love when you were nineteen. You even admitted it. I knew if I didn’t do something, I’d end up seducing you.”
“And seducing me would have been bad?”
“Yes. You were nineteen. A teenager. Totally innocent. And if that weren’t enough you had two years left of college and a career choice that could have taken you anywhere in the country after you graduated.”
Well, she was twenty-three now, but she was still pretty innocent. She wasn’t in college any longer, but her career could still take her away…if she wanted it to. She didn’t want to leave Sunshine Springs, but apparently Grant didn’t know that. “I came back to Sunshine Springs and you still had that stupid rule against kissing me.”
He smiled wryly. “I was still stuck in that mode of protecting you from my evil desires. It’s a tough instinct to fight once embedded in the male psyche, and I’ve been protecting your feelings one way or another for the better part of my life.”
“And Carlene?”
“I’d done a pretty good job of forgetting how much I wanted you, but all of a sudden everything about you turned me on—and I knew if I didn’t do something I was going to seduce you.”
Everything about her turned him on? Her fingers trembled as she laid them over his hand on her thigh. “And seducing me would still be a bad thing?”
“I thought so—at first. But then I realized two things.”
“One, you aren’t nineteen anymore.”
“Four years of living will do that.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. “Yeah.”
“And the second thing?”
“I can’t resist you.”
“But you resisted Madeleine and Carlene?”
“Absolutely, and without any problem.”
A sudden thought stopped her from closing the distance between their mouths. “What about Bud and the parrot?”
His laugh sounded something like a strangled groan. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you, but Tyler has already come by for the bird and your student’s dad picked up Bud this afternoon.”
He nodded, but said nothing, his intensity surrounding her like a physical presence. She opened her mouth to say something else—she wasn’t sure what—but his lips cut off anything she might have said. Passion exploded inside her like a launching space shuttle, fire and sound roaring through her with amazing force.
The second his tongue touched her lips she opened for him. He groaned his approval and pulled her body into his, holding her still for one slanting kiss after another as the urgency behind each one increased with every subtle shift of his lips.
He placed hot open-mouthed kisses against her chin and throat. “You smell like bleach.”
She laughed, the sound coming out strangled. “I’ve been cleaning.”
He tunneled his fingers in her hair and kissed her ear, tickling her with his tongue. It was a good thing she was sitting on the counter because her leg muscles had turned to water.
He tugged her hair out of the ponytail holder she’d used to keep it out of her face while she was tidying up. “I didn’t know household cleaning products could be so erotic.”