Lonesome Ryder. Carol Finch
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was so frustrated and angry that she was shaking. Her heart jackhammered in her chest, spurred by an overdose of adrenaline. She wanted to grab this infuriating rascal by the throat and strangle him for making her lose her temper. She almost never lost her temper. But Wade Ryder, the devil incarnate, had witnessed her complete loss of control.
“You aren’t going to let loose with the waterworks, too, are you?” he taunted. “If you’re going to cloud up and rain every day, I’ll make sure I have flood insurance.”
“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction of seeing me cry,” she snapped at him. “Just go away.”
“Nope, this is my house and my kitchen.”
“Fine then, I qu—” Laura shut her mouth so fast she nearly cropped off the tip of her tongue. No matter what the man said to her, no matter how often he goaded and insulted her, she wasn’t going to quit. She wanted this job. She needed this job for a dozen good reasons.
He arched a dark, challenging brow, daring her to complete that sentence. “Yes, Seymour? You were saying?”
Laura might not have been the modern-day version of Einstein, but she was smart enough to deduce that A: Wade Ryder didn’t like her. And B: He didn’t want her crowding his private space. And C: He was trying to provoke her into quitting her new job before she had twenty-four hours under her belt. She didn’t understand why he wanted her gone because she didn’t know him well enough to determine what made him tick. But, for pure contrariness alone, she wasn’t giving this cantankerous rancher the satisfaction of hearing her say she quit. She wasn’t a quitter and she’d dealt with troublesome students during her four years of teaching at the elite private school in Colorado—a job her brothers had pulled a few strings to secure for her….
The thought served to bolster her firm resolve. She was going to tough it out on her own, no matter how snide and sarcastic Wade Ryder proved to be. She wasn’t a wuss, even though most of her former students weren’t in the juvenile delinquent category of kids who tested her temper and challenged her authority on a daily basis—not like Mr. I’m-Gonna-Give-You-Hell-Just-To-See-If-You-Can-Take-It Ryder. No matter how mad he made her—and he’d made her plenty mad already—she wouldn’t quit. She’d stay, if only to aggravate him.
“I’m not quitting,” she told him as she squared her shoulders and tilted her chin to a determined angle. The fact that she was trembling with frustration probably detracted from her defiant stance, but she’d get better at dealing with this rascal. Now that she knew he was deliberately trying to get rid of her, she’d refuse to take him seriously, wouldn’t allow him to annoy her. In fact, she could be as disagreeable as he was if she really tried.
“If you aren’t quitting then you better toughen up,” he goaded her. “I have no intention of letting up on you.”
“Why? Because it goes against your sour, surly nature to be nice to people?” she flung back.
Wade didn’t so much as flinch when she flashed him a smirk. With jerky, agitated motions, she resumed stocking the kitchen cabinets in alphabetical order. He felt like a first-class ass for provoking Laura. His conscience—which he was trying to ignore—was screaming some pretty raunchy curses at him for behaving so badly.
Silently he marveled at her organizational abilities that the White House would envy. Hell, the woman could probably run a small country all by herself and still take a couple of days’ vacation each week. But if he was to succeed in his campaign to rout Ms. Temptation from his house then he couldn’t pay her compliments or cut her any slack.
An apology flocked to his tongue, but he refused to voice it because being nice to her would defeat his purpose. And damn it, he was uncomfortably aware of Laura Seymour in her trim-fitting, perfectly creased jeans and her pink knit blouse that displayed the full rounded swells of her breasts. Her perfume kept trying to lure him across the kitchen to get a stronger whiff and his good hand itched—and so did the injured one—to map the alluring contours of her goddesslike body.
Sheesh! Of all the women in all the world why did she have to be the one hired as his temporary housecleaner, cook and bottle washer…? Bottle, that’s what he needed, he decided instantly. After a few drinks he’d be numb to the goddess in designer jeans.
Wade hobbled across the room and reached up to the top shelf to retrieve a bottle of hooch. He accidentally bumped into Laura when she grabbed the box of tea bags to align them beside the spaghetti sauce. Her breasts brushed the side of his left arm and Wade snatched a quick breath—only to be assailed by that citrusy scent that had been driving him crazy from the far side of the room.
When he glanced down his gaze collided with those enormous powder-blue eyes, surrounded by a hedge of long, thick lashes. Then his attention dropped to the teasing hint of cleavage displayed by her V-necked blouse. Feeling like a kid who’d been caught with his hands in the cookie jar—or wherever—because he knew that she knew what had momentarily distracted his attention, his gaze bounced guiltily back to her face. Her full, tempting lips were only a scant few inches from his. Wade didn’t dare draw breath, for fear of breathing in her essence so deeply that he’d succumb to the reckless urge to kiss her and find out if she tasted as delicious as she looked. Gawd, he’d known she’d be pure trouble!
“What are you doing?” she asked, a hitch in her voice, a flush of color on her face.
Checking you out, though that’s the last thing I’d planned to do, the voice of honesty replied. But Wade decided to play dumb. He could do dumb if he had to. “Whaddya mean, what am I doing?”
Blushing profusely, her gaze focused on his mouth, Laura gestured toward the top shelf where his hand had stalled in midair. “If you’re reaching for that whiskey bottle, that isn’t a wise idea. Pain medication doesn’t mix with liquor. Your doctor wouldn’t approve, Mr. Ryder.”
“First off, I decided to forego that pain medication because it makes me woozy.” He ignored her when she muttered something about preferring woozy to downright cranky.
“Secondly, you can drop that mister stuff, professor,” he instructed, then backed away from temptation personified.
“I’m not a college professor,” she clarified. “I’m a secondary school instructor.”
“Yeah, whatever. Fact is that my doctor is Jack Daniel’s and he makes house calls.” He snatched the bottle off the shelf and set it on the counter with a decisive thump. “Hand me two glasses.”
“I don’t want a drink,” she informed him.
“I’d hope not. You’re on the clock. I want two glasses, one for each hand.”
She stared pointedly at his left wrist that was draped in the sling. “You only have one good hand,” she reminded him.
“So what? Just hand me the damn glasses.”
She didn’t move, just stared him down as if he was one of her belligerent students.
“Fine then, I’ll get it myself, which only goes to prove that I don’t need you.”
Before Wade could reach around her to grab the glasses she plucked them off the shelf and set them down with a clank.
“Thanks, professor,” he said, and not very politely.
“You’re welcome, Ryder. But you should know that you don’t get extra credit for doing things for yourself when you’re supposed to be resting all those body parts you injured while bull wrestling.”
“I wasn’t bull wrestling,” he corrected.
“Yeah, whatever.”
When she tossed his caustic words back in his face he gnashed his teeth, then realized his jaw was as sore as the rest of his abused body.
“According to your cousins’ version of the incident that required immediate medical attention,” she went on, “you valiantly distracted the big bad bull before he flattened Vance and Quint. But I suspect that you were just