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“So what’s up?” Lauren asked.
“Give her a second,” Pepper said. “She’s thinking about her hot contractor.”
“She’s been thinking for nearly a whole minute. Molly? What’s wrong? I’m getting a bad sense.”
“I’m still here,” Molly said, finding her voice.
She’d needed to hear her cousins’ voices but as soon as they’d come on the conference call, she’d stalled, wondering what it was she expected of them. She’d spent a sleepless night after getting back from seeing Alice, tossing and turning in her bed, unable to get comfortable because her mind was full of torment about never being somebody’s anybody, and her body had ached, ached, ached because she wasn’t right for the man who was sleeping at the other end of the lodge house. Saul had turned the broody cold shoulder on her. The only persons she could tell were her cousins, and she needed advice. Good, solid advice.
“I’ve got a bit of a problem,” she admitted.
“You’re racking them up.”
“Give,” Lauren said. “What’s happened now?”
“My hot contractor doesn’t want my cute little hands all over him, and he doesn’t want to put his hands on me.”
“Why not?”
Molly sniffed. “I don’t know. He went to see Alice and then suddenly he’s all cold shoulders and brooding frowns.”
“What did Alice say to him?”
“Apparently she told him the same thing she told me. That I’m not right for him. I think she scared him off.” Which probably meant that Alice was right and Molly wasn’t right for the dark blond, muscular builder.
“It’s got to run deeper than that,” Lauren said. “Do you think there’s something Alice isn’t saying?”
“She told me to think about what she wasn’t saying, but how can I know what she isn’t saying if she isn’t saying it? And now Saul doesn’t want to know me.”
“Men,” Lauren said on a frustrated sigh. “They think we’re the impossible ones. Look, Molly—I feel sure he does like you.”
“I feel sure the same way,” Pepper said. “Men are complicated. Talking about men,” she added. “I did some research on the thing after our telephone conversation last night. Nice looking creep, I can see why you were taken with him. What are his abs like?”
“He hasn’t got any of value. But if you like beady eyes and fake tans, he’s your perfect good-looking creep without decent abs.”
“Since you’ve suddenly opened up,” Lauren said, “could you give us some notice before you call next time? I’m not stocked up on wine yet.”
“She’s been thinking about us,” Pepper said. “She needs to throw her problems around and talk about them. Don’t ask me how I know this—it’s got nothing to do with you-know-what, I can just tell. Want us to throw some spells his way, Molly?” Pepper added, with a heavy shot of derision. “Or text him something witchy? That would scare the shirt off the sorry ab-less creep.”
“You’re scaring me,” Lauren said. “Stop with the spell talk, would you? I’d rather have dinner with the sorry ab-less creep than talk about all that—stuff.”
“I may have found a bit of psychic ability, actually,” Molly interjected, thinking it might be the right time to mention it, since spells were being bounced around the conversation.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lauren said.
“Am shuddering at the very idea,” Pepper added, and Molly shut up about the spooky experience.
“So what am I going to do about my broody contractor?”
“Act normal,” Lauren said.
“Just be yourself,” Pepper added. “But since he’s ignoring you, totally ignore him right back.”
Since it was Wednesday and the crane wasn’t arriving until tomorrow, Saul would have to work alongside Molly all day. Which ought not to be any different to previous days.
But by ten a.m. he was thinking what he’d really like was to go for a walk. Anything to get his mind off making up and kissing Molly.
He’d sorted the tools he’d need. The large levels, nail gun, hammer, and his scaffolding poles and planks. Plus, he had a ladder longer than Molly’s, propped up on the wall. He’d already fixed and repointed the masonry section that had crashed at his feet the other night.
Although he’d nearly slipped off a rung of the ladder. Not once in his life had he slipped a foot off a rung. And if he believed in all the oracle, mystic stuff, he might have admitted he’d felt a hand on his back, pushing him.
It had sent a shiver down his spine.
Weird stuff aside, he’d taken triple precautions from then on.
He jabbed the end of his pencil onto the graph paper on the makeshift table he’d erected at the bottom of the exterior staircase of the hacienda. He’d calculated various setbacks, and where the rafters would tie together. He’d have to mark out and cut the hips and the valleys on the few rafters they’d reclaimed so that everything fit snugly. The way Molly’s mouth had fit snugly beneath his when he’d kissed her last Saturday.
He threw his pencil down. He would have managed getting on with the day if it hadn’t been for her sudden not-talking-to-him attitude. Which would be the result of what he’d said last night, of course. And this was what he wanted. Just get the roof up and get out.
But all he’d done while he was working was remember that kiss. He’d like to kiss her to shut her up—if she’d just speak to him. He’d like to kiss her to prove a point—point being that both of them liked the kissing, regardless of whether or not they were right for each other. Which of course, they weren’t. Any fool could see that. So where was the harm if he kept kissing her whenever he wanted to, just to prove that point.
I like a man who knows what he wants. So long as he doesn’t expect to get what he wants.
“Oh, shut up, Alice,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes and staring at the graph paper and his calculations. “She wanted it, too.” Alice knew it, otherwise she’d have told him to back off on the romantic stuff.
Not that he wanted to think of Molly in a romantic way, but Alice had put some sort of Molly spell on him. Fortunately, it hadn’t penetrated his heart, or he figured he’d be a goner. Sexy, cute, good, pretty—actually she was beautiful. How could that jerk have cheated on her?
She’d gone loose, warm, and inviting in Saul’s hold when he’d kissed her. Had she gone weak and tender in Birling’s arms? He didn’t want to picture it; didn’t want to think about it. But maybe he’d ask her. To put his mind at ease. Because if she went warm and inviting like that with every man who kissed her, he had an idea he might get jealous. He knew where jealousy would lead him. To her bedroom. To prove a point. Birling couldn’t possibly have lit her fire. The guy was an idiot.
He checked over his shoulder once again to make sure Molly wasn’t lifting too many tiles at once. He’d tasked her with stacking them elsewhere because they were in the way of where the crane needed to be once it arrived tomorrow. The woman had perseverance. It was either her temperament or her courage that was seeing her through this endeavor to get the hacienda ready for her business and ready to make the town shine.
She turned to pick up a stray tile and caught Saul’s attention.
He’d like to be the one to make her tender and warm and trembly, and all the sensual, sensitive stuff he didn’t care to think about too often.
He wanted her, no denying it. Wanted her in a warm and sensual way, and in a hot and passionate way. Just wanted her. Any which way. But he wasn’t right for her and didn’t want to be, because being right for Molly would mean he had to change his plans and succumb to hers. That wasn’t going to happen.
Surely Molly had already seen the huge money-making opportunities around here, for herself and the town. She could get involved with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and get some cooperative tourist thing going with the Palo Duro Canyon. There had to be some great walking trails in Calamity Valley, too. Had she considered all the possibilities? Going by the notes she’d left lying around, she appeared to be concentrating solely on her photography business and not the broader outlook. Maybe it was because she had so much on her mind. Like the jerk and the money he owed her.
“Hey, Molly.” He leaned against the table, arms crossed.
“What?” she asked, raising the brim of her baseball cap and swiping a gloved hand over her brow.
Which left dirt marks on her forehead.
“I’ve been doing some thinking on your behalf.” Just because he didn’t want to be under some spell didn’t mean he couldn’t or wouldn’t impart information that might help her when he’d gone. He wasn’t going to change his attitude toward her, he’d just stopped the personal stuff. That was too close to the likes of a relationship than he was comfortable with, given that he wasn’t sticking around. The last thing he wanted was to own the same tag as all the other men in the Mackillop women’s lives—arrived, liked, then left when things got too close to the bone.
He pointed over to the lodge house. “You might want to live in the two-story section of the hacienda instead of the washhouse.”
“Lodge house.”
“Yeah, that one.” He offered her a smile expecting to see her finger, but she didn’t move.
“Why would I do that?” she asked.
“Because the lodge house will offer you more accommodation opportunities for tourists. Because you deserve to live in the hacienda—not the washhouse.”
“I’ll live where I damn well choose. Thanks for your input though.”
She went back to her tile stacking.
“Can’t you take advice?”
“We’re wasting time here,” she said, indicating his work bench. “Haven’t you got to get your valley placements and hip grooves sorted out?”
He shook his head in a slow, ponderous manner. “Thank God I’m in charge.”
“What did you say?”
“I said thank God you’re in charge. I might have forgotten to slot my hips into the right groove.”
“Sounds like you might need to get your tool out,” she said, giving him a lift of her mouth that almost became a smile.
“You’re thinking about sex?” he asked, enjoying the sudden banter.
“Me?” Her eyes widened. “No way. You’re thinking about sex.”
“I am now.”
“See? Told you. I bet you think about sex all the time.”
“Not true. Not anymore. When I was seventeen I thought about sex every minute. But when I turned twenty it was every couple of minutes. So I grew up, right?”
“Oh, so adult. How about now? When you’re, what, thirty?”
“Every fifteen or so minutes. So that’s only three or four times an hour. Unless I’m looking at you, and then it’s every second.”
The tile she was holding slid out of her hands and crashed to the ground.
“More than that even. Every moment.” No point in being dishonest.
“So, are you thinking about sex with me now?” she asked, her voice whispery.
“What do you think?”
“We’re not right for each other.”
“That’s correct,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t tell you I like looking at you.”
Molly stared at him until she realized her mouth had gone dry. He thought about sex every moment he was with her?
“So we’ve got that out of the way,” he said, unfolding his arms. “We look at each other, we like what we see but we’re not taking it anywhere. So like you say, let’s get on with what we’re doing,” He put his attention on the his work table, hands either side of the graph paper.
“Fine. Let’s do that.” Like it was going to be so simple.
I am not going to think about kissing or sex. Not going to.
“Don’t say ‘fine’,” he told her in an aggrieved tone. “I said it first, and I meant it for the correct use—I’m okay with getting on with the next task in hand. You say it and it means you’re pissed. I wish women didn’t say ‘fine’ when they don’t mean it.”
Molly pulled her work gloves off, threw them into the wheelbarrow, and marched to his work bench. “I have no inclination whatsoever to see you naked,” she said, stabbing a finger his way. “You can keep your hat on as far as I’m concerned. And your boots. And your pants.”
“Naked? Now you’re thinking about me naked?”
“You admitted you wanted to have sex with me, and the obvious conclusion is that I picture you naked.”
Both his eyebrows shot up. “It is?”
“But rest assured I have no intention of making you take your pants off in my presence.”
“Fine. So we both understand each other.”
“Fine. Now get back to work.”
He moved fast, yanked her into him, and kissed her.
Molly instinctively opened her mouth, and heaven arrived.
All too soon, he released her.
“What did you do that for?” she asked, trying to stop her knees from buckling. It hadn’t been a “sweet kiss” it had been a full-on hot kiss.
“I’m proving a point. You want me to take my pants off. You were trembling just then when I kissed you. You want me as much as I want you.”
She was still trembling—and—he did want her? “I’m not right for you.”
“As it happens, I’m not right for you, either.” He shrugged. “Look, sometimes I just want to kiss you,” he said in a tone that suggested he was holding onto his patience while he explained the simplest multiplication to a ten-year-old.
“Well you can’t, because we’re not right for—”
He took hold of her again, kissed her again, and heaven filtered from her mouth to her throat, to her chest and down her legs to the soles of her feet.
“Being around you is a lot frustrating,” he told her when he released her.
She swallowed hard. She’d been about to get cozy with that kiss. She’d even raised herself to tiptoes to get closer to him. “Is that a fact?” she said as caustically as she could.
“Don’t start another argument because you know damn well I won’t kiss you unless I’m sure you want me to. You wanted that kiss.”
“I did not.”
Before she had time to take a breath, he was kissing her again. Stop kissing him back. He’ll think you like him. But her tongue wasn’t listening. I’ll give it five more seconds.
She gave it six, then pulled her lips from his. “You have to stop doing this,” she said, breathlessly.
“Don’t you want it?”
“You’re a fairly good kisser. But I can take it or leave it.”
“Prove it.” His eyes were now storm blue, his focus intent. “Prove you don’t feel what’s between us.”
“Fine.” She gave a resigned sigh and before he had a chance to even blink, she yanked his head down until his mouth struck hers and kissed him like she hoped he’d never been kissed before.
His arms slid firmly around her, crushing her against his hot chest. He’d challenged her, and she’d only wanted to stir him up, but his body had gone hard. The whole packed-muscle six-two length of him hard and keen.
There was a possibility this was the point she might beg him not to stop. She couldn’t let that happen!
With a determination she hadn’t known she possessed, she pushed away.
“See? Means nothing to me,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth as though ridding herself of his pathetic—stunning!—kiss. “I can kiss you any time I like, and not get bothered by it. I know you better than you know me.”
“You know nothing about me, and there’s a lot more to be proved.”
“Sorry. I’m all proved out.” She made her way passed him, her entire body energized and tingling. “Get on with your calculations,” she called. “I’ll get lunch ready.”
She stomped across the courtyard, picking up her work gloves from the wheelbarrow and slapping them against her thigh as she strode away before he got the last word.
That was showing him.
