MIA pinned her wet hair up and put on some light makeup. Usually if she showered late in the day or at night she’d leave her skin bare, but with Sam waiting for her out there, she wanted to go the extra mile.
She’d half expected him to follow her into the bathroom, but he hadn’t and when she’d come out he was gone, the only evidence he’d ever been there in the first place was the rumpled bed sheets he’d left behind.
Mia checked her reflection in the mirror, deciding her jeans and tank top looked perfectly acceptable for a Saturday night in. She made her way to the kitchen, surprised to find Sam sitting at her counter, beer in hand.
“I made myself at home,” he said, chuckling as she stared at him. She must have looked surprised to find him there like that, because he set the beer down and crossed the room.
Mia smiled when he put his arms around her, melting into him when he kissed her, long and slow, his mouth tasting of beer. She kissed him back, body still tingling from all the wicked things he’d done to her. His stubble teased her skin and her top lip felt grazed from the touch, the whisper of bristles against her skin reminding her of where else she’d felt the very same sensation.
“What did you pick for me to drink?” she asked, stroking one hand down his chest. He had his shirt back on, only now it was only half buttoned up, untucked, and the sleeves were rolled all the way up. He looked so damn sexy she could hardly believe he was in her kitchen with her, or that she’d been brave enough to have sex with the most gorgeous damn man she’d ever crossed paths with.
“Well, I was going to pour you a wine, but there was nothing open. And I didn’t think you looked like a beer kind of drinker.” He raised a brow. “Or am I wrong? Is there another reason you have beer in the house, like for a boyfriend?”
She felt the corners of her mouth kick up into a smile. “Whiskey. On the rocks,” she said, trying to keep as straight-faced as she could. “And yeah, the beer is for my boyfriend.”
“You’re fucking with me,” he swore softly, his eyes catching hers, the look he was giving her making her want to melt.
“Yeah, I am.” She laughed when he caught her around the waist, moving swiftly, his hands broad and strong and locking her into place. “I don’t have a boyfriend, and the beer is Tanner’s. He stays sometimes, and he sure likes to keep my refrigerator well stocked.”
“You little she-devil,” he muttered as she dipped back, away from him, not letting him kiss her.
She squealed when he hauled her back up, manhandling her, throwing his weight around to make her body comply. He marched her backward, his hard body merged with hers.
“This is going to be a fun few weeks,” he murmured as he pressed into her, fingers skimming under her top, teasing her bare skin as he kissed her, his mouth hot and wet.
Yeah, it was. Only she wasn’t used to casual or no-strings. She had always been a boyfriend kind of girl, or a not-at-all kind of girl. But she was all grown up now, and she knew better than to go looking for a relationship. Sam was handsome and sexy and fun. He was perfect. And once their time was up, she could focus on her work and not have any distractions. Besides, it was nice to be hanging out with a guy who didn’t want or need her money and didn’t treat her any differently because of who she was.
Sam’s mouth left hers and she raised her hand, wishing his lips were still there, craving the contact. His eyes were stormy as he looked down at her.
“You know I still feel like shit for how I treated you, when I first came here.”
“What?” she whispered, leaning back to look up at him. “When you thought I couldn’t even ride? When you treated me like some rich princess who didn’t know the back of a horse from the front? That what you’re talking about?”
His laugh was deep—toe-curling kind of deep. Especially when it was paired with the sexy-as-hell way he was looking at her. “And now I know exactly how good you are in the saddle.”
A kick of heat flooded Mia’s cheeks and she didn’t even care. Sam was giving her a look that said he’d seen her naked and loved every minute of it, and she wasn’t going to shy away from that.
“Get me that drink, would you?” she muttered. “You’re terrible at looking after your boss.”
He pretended to tip his hat to her, touching his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And make it a beer,” she told him. Although privately she was wondering if maybe she did need that whiskey after all. Maybe a shot or two of straight liquor was exactly what she needed to make sure she could keep up with the delectable Sam.
Mia sauntered into the kitchen and opened the fridge, relieved to see she did still have some fresh pasta in there. She had a large bottle of tomato pasta sauce she’d only half used, one she’d made weeks ago and pulled out of the freezer when she needed something delicious to eat during the week, so that would have to do.
“Still thirsty?” Mia jumped when something cold touched her back.
“Shit!” she swore, spinning around to see Sam standing there, grinning like mad, holding up a cold beer. “How the hell did you even get that when I’ve been the one in the fridge?”
He went to press it against her skin again but she slapped at him, grabbing the beer from his hand.
“You staring into the fridge hoping it has all the answers?” he asked wryly.
“Actually, I’m trying to figure out whether you’ll care about eating vegetarian.”
His brows pulled together. “I thought we were having steaks on the grill?”
She lifted the bottle and took a long, slow sip. “Somebody distracted me,” she said. “Seems I was in such a hurry to get back here that I forgot to go get the meat.” It had actually been her sister on the phone distracting her from that particular task, but she kept that fact to herself.
Sam touched her shoulder, a gentle, sweet gesture that rattled her more than any sexual innuendo would have. His smile was … hard to read. It was genuine and it was warm, but she wasn’t sure what it meant or if it was supposed to mean anything at all.
“So what’re we eating then?” he asked, hand dropping from her skin.
She sipped her beer again, liking it. He’d been right that she wasn’t usually a beer kind of girl, unless it was a burning hot day and she was poolside or something, but she was liking it now. “Pasta and homemade tomato sauce,” she said, putting the bottle down and getting out what she needed. “It’s good, I promise.”
She filled a pot of water from the tap on the back-splash and added some salt. When she turned, Sam was leaning into the counter, propped up on his elbows, beer in his hands.
“Homemade by your housekeeper up at the main house?” he asked, smile kicking out his mouth before he took a pull of beer. “The woman who answers the door?”
“Screw you,” she muttered. “I had to fill an entire pot full of tomatoes to make this one jar,” she told him. “It took me three hours of slow cooking to reduce it to this delicious sauce, but if you’d rather go up to the main house and see what my father’s housekeeper is making for dinner, then by all means, go for it. He’ll probably enjoy the company.”
Sam winked and she could have killed him. “Nah, I think I’ll stay put. It’s kind of fun watching you.”
She shot him a look that was supposed to be fierce, but from the way he was staring back at her, he didn’t exactly look scared.
“So, tell me something I don’t know about you,” she said.
When he didn’t reply she looked up at him. His face had changed, the set of his mouth different, his jaw tighter.
“Like what?” he grunted.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Like maybe how you got into training horses. Is that what you’ve always done?”
Mia emptied out the sauce to heat it, glancing up at Sam. He was staring down at his beer, using his thumbnail to work at the label. She set the jar down. “Did I say something wrong?” She wasn’t sure what, but something had changed the mood between them from light banter to something darker. “Sam?” she said after he still hadn’t said anything.
When he finally looked up, his smile was forced. “I was a soldier.”
* * *
Sam saw the look of surprise as it passed over Mia’s face. Man, it seemed like a lifetime ago that he was serving, but he hadn’t wanted to lie to her. What was the point? It was part of his past, something he was damn proud of doing, but he just didn’t like to talk about it. Besides, it wasn’t who he was now.
“You were a soldier?”
“Yeah, I was.” He downed the rest of his beer, needing to drain the entire bottle after telling her. “But it was a long time ago, and I’ve been working horses pretty much ever since.”
She put the sauce on, and tipped the fresh spaghetti into the now boiling water. He watched as she took a wooden spoon out of a drawer to stir the sauce with.
“Were you deployed?” she asked, her voice low, as if she wasn’t sure about asking him the details.
“Yeah. Iraq.” Sam stood and went to get another beer from the fridge. He glanced over at her. “You want another?”
“Ah, no, I’m good. Thanks.”
Sam opened it, went to sit back down but kept walking instead. He moved across the room, looked at her sofa and her trinkets, noticed how many lamps she had and decided to flick them on for her. It was almost completely dark outside now and the lamps cast a warm glow across the living room.
He stopped when he reached the massive glass doors that led out to her patio and pool. It was a small house, but it packed a big punch. The outside was beautiful, and with so much glass around the house, it was like being part of the ranch no matter what room you were in or where you looked out from.
“How did you end up going from soldier to horseman then?” she asked, her voice pulling him from his thoughts and making him turn back to the kitchen. “And why haven’t any of the Google hits I’ve found on you mentioned your past?”
Sam relaxed, the tension falling away from his shoulders, unclenching his fists and letting it go. He liked her even more now. She’d seen how uncomfortable he was, maybe she’d felt it, and she’d moved past the thing he didn’t want to talk about. Talking about his horse skills was safe ground. Iraq was not.
“I was pretty fucked up when I got home, and I moved in with Nate for a bit,” Sam said, slowly walking back across to Mia. It helped that she was only looking at him every now and again as she finished getting their meal ready; having those aqua eyes fixed on him and showing him pity would have gotten under his skin. He hated pity, and he would have especially hated it from her. “I’d spent half my childhood on that ranch, learned to ride there and had fun, but I wasn’t myself when I got back. The only thing that chilled me out was being out with the horses.”
“I’ve read a lot about how horses can help children with their…” she paused and he waited for it, wondering what she was about to say, “problems. I guess I never really thought about how it could help soldiers with their PTSD.”
Sam gulped, his mouth as dry as the desert. He tried not to squeeze the beer bottle too tight. “I don’t have PTSD.”
Mia visibly paled, and he wished he’d just kept his mouth shut. Usually he would have, but then usually he wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.
“Sam,” she said, setting her spoon down and splaying her hands on the counter in front of her. “I’m not trying to put a label on you. I’m just saying that I can see how horses could help with any sort of trauma.”
Once again, he’d been too quick to jump to conclusions where his past was concerned.
“Sorry. Sore spot and all,” he mumbled, sipping again. “Some of the guys were affected pretty bad, but mine was more struggling to fit in when I got back. I didn’t feel like I had a purpose, I guess.”
“So tell me about the horse that tamed you?” she teased. “Or was it the other way around?”
He grinned, liking how easy she was to talk to and how quickly she’d turned the conversation around—again. “You know, I’m pretty careful with my temper now, but I came home kind of bent out of sorts. The smallest thing would set me off, and I was angry a lot of the time. But the second I set foot into the round pen with a horse?” He returned the smile she was giving him, knowing he was talking to someone who knew exactly what it felt like to be around horses and get that buzz from them. “Everything else just melted away. I’d turn into this calm guy and nothing rattled me in there. I’ve lost my cool a lot in my life, been in more fights than I can count, but I’ve never lost my cool with a horse. Something about them just brings out the best in me, I guess. It always has.”
“And something about you,” she said in a husky voice, her eyes dancing over his before pulling away, “brings out the best in every horse.”
“I guess it’s true what they say, that animals see through to the man beneath whatever façade is in place,” he said. “Or woman,” Sam corrected.
“I believe that,” she said, smiling over at him. Something about her gaze settled him, pulled him back and made him feel more comfortable about opening up to her. There was something about the way she looked at him, the way she spoke, that told him she understood. Or perhaps it was that she didn’t look at him with pity because she understood horses and the power they could have over a person.
“Anyway, how did you end up being a show jumper?” he asked, wanting to talk about her before he got pulled too far back into his past. Those months after he’d returned, they were part blur, part nightmare for him; in any case he’d done his best to block them out. “You know, I remember a really cute little girl, in a pretty little dress, arriving in her daddy’s big car at the King ranch looking like a real little lady.”
He took a pull of beer, the corner of his mouth rising as he saw the look on her face. It was half-scowl, half disbelief. She planted her hands on the counter and stared at him.
“Me? You remember me there?” she asked. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Sam chuckled. “Yeah, I remember you looking like that for all of five minutes, before seeing you sneak down to the horses and come back filthy dirty hours later. But you had a great big grin on your face that made me think it was probably worth getting into trouble for.”
She laughed, her cheeks flushing at the memory. He liked seeing her like that, barefoot, smiling in her kitchen, swilling a beer and being so natural. So many of the women he spent time with lately seemed so fake, but then at least it was obvious what they wanted and what they were after. He’d fallen for the woman who seemed like perfect wife material before. He grimaced, staring down at his half-empty bottle. Look where that had got him.
“My dad had high hopes for me that involved a corporate career, not a life of being filthy dirty and riding horses.”
“Yeah? Well, I can’t see you donning a suit and heading off to an air-conditioned office every day,” he declared. He’d shudder at the thought himself.
“Funny, my father thinks the exact opposite. He keeps telling me that I don’t know what I’m missing out on, or at least he did until we had a big fight about it before my last trip to Europe to ride on the show jumping circuit over there. It hasn’t come up again.” Her words sounded wistful, and when she turned back to her cooking, he took up his spot at the counter again, watching as she moved about and checked the sauce, tasting it off the spoon and smiling to herself as if she didn’t even realize he was watching. Maybe she didn’t. It was one of the things he liked about her, that she seemed to have no idea how attractive she was. “He already has two of his offspring working in corporate life, so it’s not like that’s the problem. Cody and Angelina will be happy to take over the reins of the family business one day.”
“It’s hard being the black sheep of the family,” he said, rolling his beer bottle between his palms as she tipped out the pasta and steam billowed between them.
“I don’t know if I’m the black one, so much as dark grey,” she said, making them both laugh. “My brother Tanner, the one you met today, I think he’s the black one. Our older siblings perform diligently for daddy, but the bull riding youngest son and another daughter wasting her time riding horses? Not exactly living up to the family name.”
Sam watched as she put the spaghetti into bowls and then poured the tomato sauce on top it.
“Yeah, well, having a kid who’s the top of her sport? That’s something I’d be damn proud of if I was a dad,” he said honestly. “It’s bullshit to pretend that a corporate job is somehow better than doing what you love every day. I’d put money on it that he’s damn proud of you, you just probably surprised him by not following the path he’d always envisaged for you.”
“And with that,” she said with a grin, “dinner is served.”
Sam rose and reached for his plate, hand closing over hers as she went to pick it up at the same time. Mia looked up at him, smiling and wide eyed.
“I’ll carry them,” he said.
She gulped, the movement in her throat impossible to miss at such close range. Everything had changed between them in an instant, the touch of her skin reminding him exactly how soft and warm she’d been against him in bed.
“I thought we could eat outside,” she said, still not moving. “Unless you’re scared of getting eaten alive by bugs.”
“There’s not much that scares me,” he said, taking the plate and gesturing for her to walk out ahead of him. Except getting too close to a woman.