Need Me, Cowboy. Maisey Yates
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to enhance the muscle there, to draw focus to the skin beneath the lines, even while they covered it.
She parked the car and sat for a moment, completely struck dumb by the sight of him.
She had researched him, obviously. She knew what he looked like, but she supposed she hadn’t had a sense of...the scale of him.
Strange, because she was usually pretty good at picking up on those kinds of things in photographs. She had a mathematical eye, one that blended with her artistic sensibility in a way that felt natural to her.
And yet, she had not been able to accurately form a picture of the man in her mind. And when she got out of the car, she was struck by the way he seemed to fill this vast empty space.
That also didn’t make any sense.
He was big. Over six feet and with broad shoulders, but he didn’t fill this space. Not literally.
But she could feel his presence like a touch as soon as the cold air wrapped itself around her body upon exiting the car.
And when his ice-blue eyes connected with hers, she drew in a breath. She was certain he filled her lungs, too.
Because that air no longer felt cold. It felt hot. Impossibly so.
Because those blue eyes burned with something.
Rage. Anger.
Not at her—in fact, his expression seemed almost friendly.
But there was something simmering beneath the surface, and it had touched her already.
Wouldn’t let go of her.
“Ms. Grayson,” he said, his voice rolling over her with that same kind of heat. “Good to meet you.”
He stuck out his hand and she hurriedly closed the distance between them, flinching before their skin touched, because she knew it was going to burn.
It did.
“Mr. Tucker,” she responded, careful to keep her voice neutral, careful when she released her hold on him, not to flex her fingers or wipe her palm against the side of her skirt like she wanted to.
“This is the site,” he said. “I hope you think it’s workable.”
“I do,” she said, blinking. She needed to look around them. At the view. At the way the house would be situated. This lot was more than usable. It was inspirational. “What do you have in mind? I find it best to begin with customer expectations,” she said, quick to turn the topic where it needed to go. Because what she didn’t want to do was ponder the man any longer.
The man didn’t matter.
The house mattered.
“I want it to be everything prison isn’t,” he said, his tone hard and decisive.
She couldn’t imagine this man, as vast and wild as the deep green trees and ridged blue mountains around them, contained in a cell. Isolated. Cut off.
In darkness.
And suddenly she felt compelled to be the answer to that darkness. To make sure that the walls she built for him didn’t feel like walls at all.
“Windows,” she said. That was the easiest and most obvious thing. A sense of openness and freedom. She began to plot the ways in which she could construct a house so that it didn’t have doors. So that things were concealed by angles and curves. “No doors?”
“I live alone,” he said simply. “There’s no reason for doors.”
“And you don’t plan on living with someone anytime soon?”
“Never,” he responded. “It may surprise you to learn that I have cooled on the idea of marriage.”
“Windows. Lighting.” She turned to the east. “The sun should be up here early, and we can try to capture the light there in the morning when you wake up, and then...” She turned the opposite way. “Make sure that we’re set up for you to see the light as it goes down here. Kitchen. Living room. Office?”
Her fingers twitched and she pulled her sketch pad out of her large leather bag, jotting notes and rough lines as quickly as possible. She felt the skin prickle on her face and she paused, looking up.
He was watching her.
She cleared her throat. “Can I ask you...what was it that inspired you to get in touch with me? Which building of mine?”
“All of them,” he said. “I had nothing but time while I was in jail, and while I did what I could to manage some of my assets from behind bars, there was a lot of time to read. An article about your achievements came to my attention and I was fascinated by your work. I won’t lie to you—even more than that, I am looking forward to owning a piece of you.”
Something about those words hit her square in the solar plexus and radiated outward. She was sweating now. She was not wearing her coat. She should not be sweating.
“Of me?”
“Your brand,” he said. “Having a place designed by you is an exceedingly coveted prize, I believe.”
She felt her cheeks warm, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She didn’t suffer from false modesty. The last few years of her life had been nothing short of extraordinary. She embraced her success and she didn’t apologize for it. Didn’t duck her head, like she was doing now, or tuck her hair behind her ear and look up bashfully. Which she had just done.
“I suppose so.”
“You know it’s true,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, clearing her throat and rallying. “I do.”
“Whatever the media might say, whatever law enforcement believes now, my wife tried to destroy my life. And I will not allow her to claim that victory. I’m not a phoenix rising from the ashes. I’m just a very angry man ready to set some shit on fire, and stand there watching it burn. I’m going to show her, and the world, that I can’t be destroyed. I’m not slinking into the shadows. I’m going to rebuild it all. Until everything that I have done matters more than what she did to me. I will not allow her name, what she did, to be the thing I am remembered for. I’m sure you can understand that.”
She could. Oddly, she really could.
She wasn’t angry at anyone, nor did she have any right to be, but she knew what it was like to want to break out and have your own achievements. Wasn’t that what she had just been thinking of while coming here?
Of course, he already had so many achievements. She imagined having all her work blotted out the way that he had. It was unacceptable.
“Look,” she said, stashing her notebook, “I meant what I said, about my brothers being unhappy with me for taking this job.”
“What do your brothers have to do with you taking a job?”
“If you read anything about me then you know that I work with them. You know that we’ve merged with the construction company that handles a great deal of our building.”
“Yes, I know. Though, doesn’t the construction arm mostly produce reproductions of your designs, rather than handling your custom projects?”
“It depends,” she responded. “I just mean... My brothers run a significant portion of our business.”
“But you could go off and run it without them. They can’t run it without you.”
He had said the words she had thought more than once while listening to Joshua and Isaiah make proclamations about various things. Joshua was charming, and often managed to make his proclamations seem not quite so prescriptive. Isaiah never bothered. About the only person he was soft with at all was his wife, Poppy, who owned his heart—a heart that a great many of them had doubted he had.
“Well, I just meant... We need to keep this project a secret. Until