The Texas Billionaire's Bride / The Texas Bodyguard's Proposal: The Texas Billionaire's Bride. Crystal Green
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began a sultry melt—hot, liquid, weak.
“Livie?” she heard him ask gruffly from the other room.
Shoot! No escaping now.
“No.” Melanie realized she was wearing a nightgown. Conservative by most standards, but…a nightgown. Her breasts pressed against the linen, her nipples hardening at the sound of his voice alone.
But she couldn’t hide here like a kid playing games.
Exhaling, she pulled her gown away from her chest, hoping that would do as she walked around the corner.
“It’s me,” she said. “I was going to the kitchen for something to drink, and I…”
He was staring at her, and it ratcheted her pulse up to high speed, enough so that she could feel the tiny, propulsive rhythm of it in her neck veins.
Just the two of us, she thought—after midnight.
While she’d been behind the wall, he’d clearly placed the wooden chest on a shelf to the side of his massive TV, but her mind wasn’t so much on that, or even what might be inside of it.
One hundred percent of her was concentrated on him.
As he put his hands on his hips, making the muscles in his arms that much more obvious, making him seem like that noble, Western everyman, she corrected herself.
She was paying one hundred and ten percent attention to him now.
Those shoulders under his T-shirt, she thought. And that broad chest…
She bet that he had corrugated abs under his shirt, and she could just about feel them under her fingertips right now—ridges, muscle, flesh.
Hot and smooth…
“Sorry I bothered you,” he said in a low voice that shook her, even over the quiet hum of everything else.
“No bother.” What to say now? Hi, yes, I’m sporting a nightgown, but you must admit it’s prettier than that business suit you saw me wearing at our interviews.
“You want me to…?” He motioned toward the kitchen, as if asking if he should fetch her something to drink.
My, how polite they suddenly were with each other.
“No, no, I’ve got it.” She started to leave, thinking she would skip the beverage and just scram.
“Wait.”
It was as if he had a pull on her, and she didn’t go anywhere.
“Yes?” she said.
During his pause, she looked at him again, to find him running a slow gaze over her. When he saw that she noticed, he crossed his arms over his chest.
She was tingling all over. How could just a look do that?
“About earlier tonight…” he said, business as usual.
Great—did they have to talk about this now? “If you’re going to fire me, could you do it tomorrow? I’d like to at least say goodbye to Livie—”
“I’m not going to fire you.”
She stared at him as he leveled a firm gaze at her.
“Not yet, anyway,” he added.
This man. Dear God, she couldn’t make heads or tails of him. Was he angry because she’d brought Livie here, or not? After all, he’d retreated to his study right after they’d settled in; then they’d gone to bed after saying good-night. No more mention of anything. But she figured she would have to pay the piper when the timing was more convenient for him—like in the morning.
Yet, now she couldn’t predict him at all.
He was as mysterious as whatever he’d put back in that chest by the TV.
“Then I’m glad you’re not going to kick me out of the job,” she said, gathering her guts, standing up for herself and for Livie. “I think I’m good for your daughter.”
“I see that. She looks…happy.” The corners of his mouth seemed to rise for a fleeting moment, then stopped as if his mouth was so unused to the expression that it rejected any change.
“She’s happier,” Melanie said.
She waited for him to react, but he only got that shadowed look in his eyes again, the one she’d seen so many times during her interviews.
What could she do to get rid of it?
“You know what she’d really like?” Melanie asked.
“What?” The shadows were still there.
“If you’d do something with her tomorrow. Even just lunch. Or, if you could spare any more time, she talks about trying some horseback riding. Maybe that’d be an activity you’d both like.”
As if he’d been waiting for something to reject, he said, “Livie’s grandma died from a riding accident. I’d prefer we didn’t go that route.”
Talk about stepping on a mine in a field full of them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
She hadn’t come across any family history articles that went so deep beyond rumor and innuendo, and that family feud with the McCords.
“I try to keep most things private, if I can manage,” he said. “Even from the press.”
She thought of Danielle but didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to, when it looked as if those shadows were about to wrap around him and drag him into the walls.
“Instead of riding,” she said, “how about an hour in the neighborhood park with us? I saw one about a block away.”
He hesitated, and Melanie stabilized herself.
For Livie.
“She’s missed you,” she added. “This would mean the world to her.”
When he glanced at that chest on the shelf, the tightening of his jaw made her think he was going to refuse the invitation. But then he started to walk away from the object, toward that hallway, as if leaving whatever was in the chest behind.
Or at least putting distance between him and it.
“One o’clock,” he said as he continued toward the hallway, but she wasn’t even sure she’d heard him right. “I have to go into Dallas before that, but I’ll work the rest of the day from here.”
“Did you say—?”
He paused, staring at the ground. “One o’clock.”
Melanie could’ve shot through the roof. “Perfect. I’ll pack a lunch, so don’t worry about eating.”
“You’ll find the cupboards pretty empty around here,” he said, meandering away again, barely looking at her. “Maybe I should leave money, if you don’t mind stopping at the market.”
“I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”
She was smiling to beat the band, and he lifted his head, his gaze coming to rest on her mouth.
Then his eyes met hers again, thrashing her with a slam of that awareness she’d been trying so hard to dodge.
But dodge she did, nodding at him and then leaving before he could, walking past the kitchen and back to her bedroom, where she intended to shut the door nice and tight behind her until tomorrow.
He’d meant to get to the park for their Father’s Day date.
He really had.
But Zane had found some accounting errors while reviewing a monthly report he was catching up on, and by the time he’d finished smoothing out the near damage, he’d looked at his watch to see that it was past three o’clock.