CHAPTER FOUR
OVER THE PAST WEEK, two words kept going through Josh’s head. Doodle and diddle. He still wasn’t sure what a doodle was, perhaps an ingredient in those cookies the Applewoods made. But the diddle had come across loud and clear in Roger’s text.
It didn’t matter that Josh hadn’t actually diddled Hope—though he had come close to doing just that in the truck. All that mattered was Roger had believed that sex was going on, and it’d been enough for him to pull out of the deal. Which, in turn, had sent Hope and Josh into moping mode.
Losing the horses was a low blow, and that, along with his concerns about losing the ranch hands’ respect, had been enough for Josh to rethink everything. He’d kept his zipper up and his hands off Hope. Not easy, but it was easier to do when he didn’t have to see her. Josh had managed that by fastening his butt in his office chair and working on plan B, which was trying to get the palomino stock from another seller. That had failed. So had the next ones.
He was now mulling over plan G.
Hope must have been in the rethink and mull mode as well because she hadn’t sent him any of those smoldering looks, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t skipped wearing panties. Of course, it was best if he didn’t think of Hope’s underwear choices. Or the dream he’d had about the two of them acting out page sixteen of the sex book.
“You gonna go in there, boss man?” Josh heard Termite ask. “Or are you figuring the boss lady’s still sleeping?”
Josh had been so deep in thought that he hadn’t heard the hand come up behind him. Termite came to stand beside Josh, put his hands on his bony hips and stared at Hope’s house—the very thing Josh had been staring at for a couple of minutes while he mulled over their situation.
“She’ll be awake,” Josh assured Termite. Like him, Hope was an early riser, and since it was already eight, she would have been up for a couple of hours. “I’m just trying to figure out how to word this proposal I’m working on,” Josh said. But when he heard his own words, he quickly added, “Business proposal.” He even lifted the printout he was holding in case Termite doubted that.
“Ah.” Over the past week Josh had learned it was one of Termite’s favorite “words.” Along with uh and huh. “This is about buying those blondie horses y’all both like so much.”
Josh nodded and wondered how Hope was going to take the news that plan G was going to cost her double or more than buying them from Roger. Maybe she would take it better than Josh had because he was plenty pissed off at himself for ruining this deal for her.
“There’s a lot of talk about you and the boss lady,” Termite went on. “Talk of y’all kissing and such.”
The such—what had gone on in his truck—would have caused a lot more talk if folks had actually known about it. “It won’t affect how Hope and I do the job here,” Josh assured him.
Termite made a face, the kind of expression a man might make if someone had just stated the obvious. Termite shook his head. “Never figured kissing would mess up ranch work. I mean, you probably wouldn’t want to kiss at the same time we’re worming the livestock or maybe on stall mucking day, but those are my chores, not yours or the boss lady’s.”
Those were wise words. Surprisingly wise words. “The other hands might not feel the same way,” Josh pointed out.
Termite snickered as if that was a fine joke, and he hitched his thumb to Shane Ellery, who was training a mare in the corral just off the barn. Then to Davy Martin, who was riding in from the pasture where he would have been repairing fences. “We talk about you and the boss lady a lot, and they don’t care if you kiss her, either. Davy thinks she looks kinda sad and mopey when you and her don’t spend so much time together.”
Apparently, Termite and the others had too much time on their hands, and Josh needed to add more work to their schedules. Still, it eased his mind a little to know that he hadn’t screwed that up for Hope, too.
“Well, if you run out of ideas about where to get those horses,” Termite went on, “just come see me. I know a guy who might know a guy.”
Josh wouldn’t hold his breath on that, but he mentally chalked up Termite as plan H. He thanked the hand and got moving to the house. The back door was open as it usually was in the mornings, but Josh couldn’t see inside because of the dark screen slider that kept the bugs out. When he reached the porch, he was about to knock, but then he heard Karlee’s voice.
“So, does this mean you forgive me?” Karlee asked.
He hadn’t seen Hope’s friend arrive, which meant she must have gotten there before he’d started his backyard staring session/chat with Termite, and Karlee had likely parked in front of the house.
“No, I’m not forgiving you for throwing away my pants,” Hope answered. From the sound of it, they were at the kitchen table, which was just to the right of the door. Also from the sound of it, she was eating something. “But if it hadn’t been for the red dress, Josh might have never noticed me.”
Actually, he’d noticed her plenty of times before that, but the dress had just allowed him to notice more of her. The noticing had been hard enough, but now that he’d kissed her, it was impossible to push Hope out of his mind.
Since he didn’t want to stand out there and eavesdrop, Josh was about to leave, but then Karlee said something that stopped him in his tracks. “You’re falling in love with Josh.”
He figured Hope would laugh and say it was just a lust thing.
She didn’t.
“I think I’ve been falling in love with him for years,” Hope said.
His heart stopped, too. Flat-out stopped. No beats whatsoever. What the hell? Hope was falling in love with him? That couldn’t be.
“Yes,” Hope continued a moment later, “I take things slow with him and me. Well, except when I don’t go slow like at the party last week. Don’t ask for details because I’m not kissing and telling.”
Karlee chuckled. “Whether you take things slow or fast, or whether you kiss and tell, just know that I approve. Josh is a good guy, and I’m pretty sure he’s been falling in love with you for years, too.”
“Say what?” he blurted out, but he wished he’d stapled his mouth together to stay quiet. Or unglued his feet from the porch so he hadn’t heard a word of this.
Judging from the horrified expression on Hope’s face when she opened the screen door, she had the same wish.
“I should be getting to work,” Karlee said, checking the time that he was certain she didn’t need to check. She gave Josh a silent apology and hurried out, heading toward the front.
“How much did you hear?” Hope asked him, but she waved that off, sighed and motioned for him to come in.
Josh wasn’t certain he wanted to go in, but Hope took hold of his arm and pulled him inside anyway. That’s when he caught her scent. Cinnamon and sugar. And that’s when he saw the source. There were huge stacks of boxes of Applewood cookies on the table.
“Mom sent them,” she said when she followed his gaze. “It’s her way of saying she’s sorry for pressuring me to be with Mark. By the way, Mark asked out your flirty doctor friend, and according to gossip, they seem to be hitting it off.”
That was good. It would stop the pressure from his mom. At least until she found someone else that she thought was suitable for him.
Because he was just standing there as if incapable of speech, Hope sighed again and took the proposal from him. She glanced through it, handed it back and then handed him a paper she took from the table.
“I was going to bring this over to you after Karlee left,” Hope explained.
It was a nearly identical version of his for a deal with a livestock broker, Lucky McCord, over in Spring Hill. “It’s not ideal. Lucky can only get us a fraction of what we need. And it’ll cost more than we want to spend because he’ll have to get them from out of state.”
She nodded as if she’d already suspected that, sank down at the table and bit into a cookie. Considering the amount of crumbs on the table and plate, it wasn’t her first of the day, and it wouldn’t be her last. If Josh had thought they would help, he’d eat the contents of all the boxes.
“Let’s think on this deal with McCord for a day or two,” she finally said. “Maybe in the meantime, something else will come up.”
It’d been the very advice he’d been about to give her, proof once again that when it came to business, they were on the same page. Their operation was fine just as it was, and there was no urgency.
Well, not with the horses, anyway.
Looking at her caused some urgency to start building in his body. No red dress today. She was in her usual jeans and a blue top and was barefooted. There was nothing particularly glamorous about how she looked, but because this was Hope, the hotness was automatic.
She bit into the cookie, licking a crumb off her bottom lip, but she missed another one. She looked up at him as if waiting for him to do something. Maybe for him to talk about what he’d heard while eavesdropping at the door.
That wasn’t going to happen.
If the subject came up, it would come from her, and then she could laugh and dismiss it as girl talk. She could assure him that she didn’t have feelings for him that would complicate the hell out of everything. Then he could assure her he felt the same and then they could have sex on those cookie crumbs.
He frowned, pushed away that last thought.
Hope didn’t help with that thought pushing, though. She kept up the cookie nibbling, kept staring at him. Kept looking good enough that he wanted her mouth to nibble at him like that. His heartbeat decided to return in full force. That was a big-ass warning for him to get out of there.
“I’ve got a few more calls to make,” he told her. They were past the long-shot stage when it came to horse deals and into the realm of astronomical probability, but he kept that to himself, and he walked out, heading back to the office in his cabin. He made it all the way, too. Even managed to get inside when he heard the hurried footsteps.
“That’s it?” Hope asked, coming through the door. “You hear me admit that I’m falling in love with you and you don’t say anything?”
Josh weighed his answers. He could admit he didn’t know what to say. He could ask her if she was sure. He could prattle on with reminders about how this wasn’t a good thing for the ranch. Or he could do something, well, stupid.
He took the stupid option.
Josh leaned in and licked that cookie crumb right off her bottom lip.
* * *
SPOILING FOR A FIGHT, Hope had stomped her way over to Josh’s cabin to have it out with him, but that lip lick caused her anger to vanish. Some confusion came in its place. She hadn’t even known that she was walking around with a cookie bit until she saw it disappear into Josh’s mouth.
“Cinnamon,” he commented.
It wasn’t the right comment, but then, anything he said that wasn’t related to the overheard conversation would fall into the wrong category. That’s why she stood there scowling at him.
Josh stood there and stared. And stared. “I think it’s this that’s messing with our heads.” He motioned at their zipper areas. “It’s like those beepers that go off on the fryers at fast-food places when you’re waiting in line to order.”
While she wasn’t totally sure she agreed with him, she’d followed him on the first part. Not the last, though. “Fryers?”
He nodded. “They just keep beeping and beeping when the fries are ready and no one’s taken them out yet. Beep, beep, beep.” Josh made the noise, though an audio cue hadn’t been necessary. “And after a while, the racket is so distracting that you forget about the hot delicious fries and think only about the blasted beeps.”
Okay, she understood that. The sound was annoying, but she couldn’t see how that fit their situation...
Oh.
“This is like the beeper.” Hope motioned to their zipper areas. “And until we stop the noise, we can’t deal with the fries.”
Fries equaled feelings. Specifically, all that falling she’d been doing for him. And maybe it also included getting back to being fully focused on the ranch.
Which brought her to the bottom line of the point he was almost certainly trying to make. He was saying they should just have sex and try to stop that beeper.
That was it, right?
She hoped this wasn’t some kind of life lesson that would lead to him not getting in her pants.
Thankfully, it wasn’t.
Josh went to her, sliding his hand around the back of her neck and pulling her to him as he kicked the front door shut. He did all of that in the blink of an eye, and Hope might have seen what he was doing if he hadn’t rendered her blind with that molten-lava kiss. Judging from the rattling sound, though, he’d locked the door. Good. She had just enough sense left to know that she didn’t want anyone walking in on them.
Her shred of common sense vanished, however, when he put her back against the door and pressed his body to hers. Not quite zipper to zipper because he was taller than she was, but she stood on her tiptoes to try to get a better feel of what was in store for her.
Oh, my.
There was a lot in store for her.
She wouldn’t have minded having that then and there, but Josh obviously had some more licking to do. On her mouth, then her neck, and then he shoved up her top and did his mouth trick on her nipples. Hope hadn’t thought it could get any better or that he could build the heat any hotter.
But she was wrong.
He stopped kissing her and, while looking her straight in the eyes and with his warm breath gusting against her mouth, he got in her pants. Part of him did, anyway. She was so thankful she was wearing her loose jeans because he slipped his hand right past the waist and into her panties.
“Pay dirt,” he drawled.
She’d never heard that part of her body called that before, and she didn’t care. Pay dirt worked, and so did his fingers. He touched and watched her face while his breath felt as if he were kissing her all over. Just when Hope thought he was going to finish her off with his hand, he didn’t.
Josh dragged her into his arms, his hands moving to her butt, and they started walking. Well, he walked, and he sort of dragged her along since Hope could no longer feel her feet. Thankfully, she could feel the rest of herself just fine.
He took her into the bedroom and eased her onto the mattress. She reached for him, ready to pull him down with her, but now she was the one stopping when Josh peeled off his shirt. Then his boots and jeans. Even though she was burning for him, she watched.
And lusted.
She lusted a lot.
Oh, he was perfect. She’d seen the backside of him the day after his shower, but the front side was even better. He had a six-pack. Of course he did. And he had a really interesting chest, complete with enough tight, tanned muscles...
He dropped his boxers, and she forgot how to breathe.
Forgot how to move, too, but Josh had that worked out, as well. With all those inches right there so close to her face, he started shimmying her out of her clothes. Hope was too spellbound to help, but she slowed him down when she managed to get in a lick of her own.
Josh cursed her and then he set a speed record getting her out of the rest of her clothes. Somehow, he’d managed to hold on to some of his common sense because he put on a condom that he took from the nightstand drawer.
“We’re not doing page sixteen,” he mumbled.
Color her clueless as to what that meant. Nor did she care. That’s because he got on the bed with her, his body against hers again. But this time, they were butt naked. Front naked, too. She got more kisses. More touches, and she finally got those inches.
All of them.
He pushed into her and just kept pushing. The man was a pro at finding the right angle. The right spot. The right pace.
Of course, Hope figured that was because he was the right man.
And with that thought flashing through her head, she let those inches work their magic, and they silenced the beep, beep, beep.