CHAPTER FIVE
“NOW, I DON’T want to be insensitive or hurt your feelings, princess, but why are you being such an asshole today?”
Chase looked over at Sam, who was staring at him from his position by the forge. The fire was going hot and they were pounding out iron, doing some repairs on equipment. By hand. Just the way both of them liked to work.
“I’m not,” Chase said.
“Right. Look, there’s only room for one of us to be a grumpy cuss, and I pretty much have that position filled. So I would appreciate it if you can get your act together.”
“Sorry, Sam, are you unable to take what you dish out every day?”
“What’s going on with you and Anna?”
Chase bristled at the mention of the woman he’d kissed last night. Then he winced when he remembered the kiss. Well, remembered was the wrong word. He’d never forgotten it. But right now he was mentally replaying it, moment by moment. “What did you hear?”
Sam laughed. An honest-to-God laugh. “Do I look like I’m on the gossip chain? I haven’t talked to anybody. It’s just that I saw her leaving your house last night wearing a red dress and sneakers, and then saw her this morning when she went into the shop. She was pissier than you are.”
“Anna is always pissy.” Sam treated his statement to a prolonged stare. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just that her brothers bet her that she couldn’t get a date. I figured I would help her out with that.”
“How?”
“Well...” he said, hesitating about telling his brother the whole story. Sam wasn’t looking to change the business on the ranch. He didn’t care about their family legacy. Not like Chase did. But Chase had made promises to tombstones and he wasn’t about to break them.
It was one of their main sources of contention. So he wasn’t exactly looking forward to having this conversation with his older brother.
But it wasn’t like he could hide it forever. He’d just sort of been hoping he could hide it until he’d shown up with investment money.
“That’s an awfully long pause,” Sam said. “I’m willing to bet that whatever you’re about to say, I’m not going to like it.”
“You know me well. Anna got invited to go to the big community charity event that the West family hosts every year. Now I want to make sure that we can extend our contract with them. Plus...doing horseshoes and gates isn’t cutting it. We can move into doing details on custom homes. To doing art pieces and selling our work across the country, not just locally. To do that we need investors. And the West fund-raiser’s a great place to find them. Plus, if I only have to wear a suit once and can speak to everyone in town that might be interested in a single shot? Well, I can’t beat that.”
“Dammit, Chase, you know I don’t want to commit to something like that.”
“Right. You want to continue on the way we always have. You want to shoe horses when we can, pound metal when the opportunity presents itself, build gates, or whatever else might need doing, then go off and work on sculptures and things in your spare time. But that’s not going to be enough. Less and less is done by hand, and people aren’t willing to pay for handcrafted materials. Machines can build cheaper stuff than we can.
“But the thing is, you can make it look special. You can turn it into something amazing. Like you did with my house. It’s the details that make a house expensive. We can have the sort of clients who don’t want work off an assembly line. The kind who will pay for one-of-a-kind pieces. From art on down to the handles on their kitchen cabinets. We could get into some serious custom work. Vacation homes are starting to spring up around here, plus people are renovating to make rentals thanks to the tourism increase. But we need some investors if we’re really going to get into this.”
“You know I hate this. I don’t like the idea of charging a ton of money for a...for a gate with an elk on it.”
“You’re an artist, Sam,” he said, watching his brother wince as he said the words. “I know you hate that. But it’s true.”
“I hate that, too.”
“You’re talented.”
“I hit metal with a hammer. Sometimes I shape it into something that looks nice. It’s not really all that special.”
“You do more than that and you know it. It’s what people would be willing to pay for. If you would stop being such a nut job about it.”
Sam rubbed the back of his neck, his expression shuttered. “You’ve gotten off topic,” he said finally. “I asked you about Anna, not your schemes for exploiting my talents.”
“Not really. The two are connected. I want to go to this thing to talk to the Wests. I want to talk about investment opportunities and expanding contracts with other people deemed worthy of an invite. In case you haven’t noticed, we weren’t on that list.”
“Yeah, I get that. But why would the lately not-so-great McCormacks be invited?”
“That’s the problem. This place hasn’t been what it was for a couple of generations, and when we lost Mom and Dad...well, we were teenagers trying to keep up a whole industry, and now we work for these people, not with them. I aim to change that.”
“You didn’t think about talking to me?” Sam asked.
“Oh, I did. And I decided I didn’t want to have to deal with you.”
Sam shot him an evil glare. “So you’re going as Anna’s date. And helping her win her bet.”
“Exactly.”
“And you took her out last night, and she went back to your place, and now she’s mad at you.”
Chase held his hands up. “I don’t know what you’re getting at—”
“Yes, you do.” Sam crossed his arms. “Did you bang her?”
Chase recoiled, trying to look horrified at the thought. He didn’t feel horrified at the thought. Which actually made him feel kind of horrified. “I did not.”
“Is that why you’re mad? Because you didn’t?”
His brother was way too perceptive for a guy who pounded heavy things with other heavy things for a living.
“No,” he said. “Anna is my friend. She’s just a friend. We had a slight...altercation last night. But it’s not that big a deal.”
“Big enough that I’m worried with all your stomping around you’re eventually going to fling the wrong thing and hit me with molten metal.”
“Safety first,” Chase said, “always.”
“I bet you say that to your dates, too.”
“You would, too, if you had any.”
Sam flipped Chase the bird in response.
“Just forget about it,” Chase said. “Forget about the stuff with the Wests, and let me deal with it. And forget about Anna.”
When it came to that last directive, he was going to try to do the same.
* * *
ANNA WAS DREADING coming face-to-face with Chase again after last night. But she didn’t really have a choice. They were still in this thing. Unless she called it off. But that would be tantamount to admitting that what had happened last night bothered her. And she didn’t want to do that. More, she was almost incapable of doing it. She was pretty sure her pride would wither up and die if she did.
But Chase was coming by her shop again tonight, with some other kind of lesson in mind. Something he’d written down on that stupid legal pad of his. It was ridiculous. All of it was ridiculous.
Herself most of all.
She looked at the clock, gritting her teeth. Chase would be by any moment, and she was no closer to dealing with the feelings, needs and general restlessness that had hit her with the blunt force of a flying wrench than she had been last night.
Then, right on time, the door opened, and in walked Chase. He was still dirty from work today, his face smudged with ash and soot, his shirt sticking to his muscular frame, showing off all those fine muscles underneath. Yeah, that didn’t help.
“How was work?” he asked.
“Fine. Just dealing with putting a new cylinder head on a John Deere. You?”
“Working on a gate.”
“Sounds...fun,” she said, though she didn’t really think it sounded like fun at all.
She liked solving the puzzle when it came to working on engines. Liked that she had the ability to get in there and figure things out. To diagnose the situation.
Standing in front of a hot fire forging metal didn’t really sound like her kind of thing.
Though she couldn’t deny it did pretty fantastic things for Chase’s physique.
“Well, you know it would be fine if Sam wasn’t such a pain in the ass.”
“Sure,” she said, feeling slightly cautious. After last night, she felt like dealing with Chase was like approaching a dog who’d bitten you once. Only, in this case he had kissed her, not bitten her, and he wasn’t a dog. That was the problem. He was just much too much for his own good. Much too much for her own good.
“So,” she said, “what’s on the lesson plan for tonight?”
“I sort of thought we should talk about...well, talking.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are ways that women talk to men they want to date. I thought I might walk you through flirting.”
“You’re going to show me how to flirt?”
“Somebody has to.”
“I can probably figure it out,” she said.
“You think?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels.
His clear skepticism stoked the flames of her temper, which was lurking very close to the surface after last night. That was kind of her default. Don’t know how to handle something? Don’t know what you feel? Get angry at it.
“Come on. Men and women have engaged in horizontal naked kickboxing for millennia. I’m pretty sure flirting is a natural instinct.”
“You’re a poet, Anna,” he said, his tone deadpan.
“No, I’m a tractor mechanic,” she said.
“Yeah, and you talk like one, too. If you want to get an actual date, and not just a quick tumble in the back of a guy’s truck, you might want to refine your art of conversation a little.”
“Who says I’m opposed to a quick rough tumble in the back of some guy’s truck?”
“You’re not?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting upward.
“Well, in all honesty I would probably prefer my truck, since it’s clean. I know where it’s been. But why the hell not? I have needs.”
He scowled. “Right. Well, keep that kind of talk to yourself.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable to hear about my needs, Chase?” she asked, not quite sure why she was poking at him. Maybe because she felt so unsettled. She was kind of enjoying the fact that he seemed to be, as well. Really, it wouldn’t be fair if after last night he felt nothing at all. If he had been able to one-up her and then walk away as though nothing had happened.
“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable. It’s just unnecessary information. Now, talking about your needs is probably something you shouldn’t do with a guy, either.”
“Unless I want him to fulfill those needs.”
“You said you wanted to date. You want the kind of date who can go to these functions with you, right?”
“It’s moot. You’re going with me.”
“This time. But be honest, don’t you want to be able to go out with guys who belong in places like that?”
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling uncomfortable.
Truth be told, she wasn’t all that comfortable thinking about her needs. Emotional, physical. Frankly, if it went beyond her need for a cheeseburger, she didn’t really know how to deal with it. She hadn’t dated in years. And she had been fine with that. But the truth of the matter was the only reason Mark and Daniel had managed to get to her when they had made this bet was that she was beginning to feel dissatisfied with her life.
She was starting a new business. She was assuming a new position in the community. She didn’t just want to be Anna Brown, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She didn’t just want to be the tomboy mechanic for the rest of her life. She wanted...more. It had been fine, avoiding relationships all this time, but she was thirty now. She didn’t really want to be by herself. She didn’t want to be alone forever.
Dear Lord, she was having an existential crisis.
“Fine,” she said, “it might be nice to have somebody to date.”
Marriage, family—she had no idea how she felt when it came to those things. But a casual relationship... That might be nice. Yes. That might be nice.
Last night, she had gone home and gotten under a blanket and watched an old movie. Sometimes, Chase watched old movies with her, but he did not get under the blankets with her. It would be nice to have a guy to be under the blanket with. Somebody to go home to. Or at least someone to call to come over when she couldn’t sleep. Someone she could talk to, make out with. Have sex with.
“Fine,” she said. “I will submit to your flirting lessons.”
“All the girls submit to me eventually,” he said, winking.
Something about that made her stomach twist into a knot. “Talking about too much information...”
“There,” he said, “that was almost flirting.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Was it?”
“Yes. We had a little bit of back and forth. There was some innuendo.”
“I didn’t make innuendo on purpose,” she said.
“No. That’s the best kind. The kind you sort of walk into. It makes you feel a little dangerous. Like you might say the wrong thing. And if you go too far, they might walk away. But if you don’t go far enough, they might not know that you want them.”
She let out a long, frustrated growl. “Dating is complicated. I hate it. Is it too late for me to become a nun?”
“You would have to convert,” he pointed out.
“That sounds like a lot of work, too.”
“You can be pleasant, Anna. You’re fun to talk to. So that’s all you have to do.”
“Natural to me is walking up to a hot guy and saying, ‘Do you want to bone or what?’” As if she’d ever done that. As if she ever would. It was just...she didn’t really know how to go about getting a guy to hook up with her any other way. She was a direct kind of girl. And nothing between men and women seemed direct.
“Fine. Let’s try this,” he said, grabbing a chair and pulling it up to her workbench before taking a seat.
She took hold of the back of the other folding chair in the space and moved it across from his, positioning herself so that she was across from him.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
She laughed. “A mai tai.” She had never had one of those. She didn’t even know what it was.
“Excellent. I’m having whiskey, straight up.”
“That sounds like you.”
“You don’t know what sounds like me. You don’t know me.”
Suddenly, she got the game. “Right. Stranger,” she said, then winced internally, because that sounded a little bit more Mae West in her head, and just kind of silly when it was out of her mouth.
“You here with anyone?”
“I could be?” she said, placing her elbow on the workbench and tilting her head to the side.
“You should try to toss your hair a little bit. I dated this girl Elizabeth who used to do that. It was cute.”
“How does touching my hair accomplish anything?” she asked, feeling irritated that he had brought another woman up. Which was silly, because the only reason he was qualified to give her these lessons was that he had dated a metric ton of women.
So getting mad about the thing that was helping her right now was a little ridiculous. But she was pretty sure they had passed ridiculous a couple of days ago.
“I don’t know. It’s cute. It looks like you’re trying to draw my attention to it. Like you want me to notice.”
“Which...lets you know that I want you in my pants?”
He frowned. “I guess. I never broke it down like that before. But that stands to reason.”
She reached up, sighing as she flicked a strand of her hair as best she could. It was tied up in a loose bun and had fallen partway thanks to the intensity of the day’s physical labor. Still, she had a feeling she did not look alluring. She had a feeling she looked like she’d been caught in a wind turbine and spit out the other end.
“Are you new in town?”
“I’m old in town,” she said, mentally kicking herself again for being lame on the return volley.
“That works, too,” Chase said, not skipping a beat. Yeah, there was a reason the man had never struck out before.
She started to chew on her lip, trying to think of what to say next.
“Don’t chew a hole through it,” he said, smiling and reaching across the space, brushing his thumb over the place her teeth had just grazed.
And everything in her stopped dead. His touch ignited her nerve endings, sending a brush fire down her veins and all through her body.
She hadn’t been this ridiculous over Chase since she was sixteen years old. Since then, she had mostly learned to manage it.
She pulled away slightly, her chair scraping against the floor. She laughed, a stilted, unnatural sound. “I won’t,” she said, her voice too loud.
“If you’re going to chew on your lip,” he said, “don’t freak out when the guy calls attention to it or touches you. It looks like you’re doing it on purpose, so you should expect a comment.”
“Duh,” she said, “I was. That was...normal.”
She wanted to crawl under the chair.
“There was this girl Miranda that I—”
“Okay.” She cut him off, growing more and more impatient with the comparisons. “I’m old in town, what about you?”
“I’ve been around.”
“I bet you have been,” she said.
“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to take that,” he said, flashing her a lopsided grin.
“Right,” she said, “because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” he said. “I think you actually need to feel some chemistry with somebody if flirting’s going to work.”
His words were sharp, digging into her chest. You actually had to feel some chemistry to be able to flirt.
They had chemistry. She had felt it last night. So had he. This was his revenge for the six-point-five comment. At least, she hoped it was. The alternative was that he had really felt nothing when their lips attached. And that seemed...beyond unfair.
She had all this attraction for Chase that she had spent years tamping down, only to have it come roaring to the surface the moment she had begun to pretend there was more going on between them than just friendship. And then she had kissed him. And far from being a disappointment, he had superseded her every fantasy. The jackass. Then he had kissed her, kissed her because he was angry. Kissed her to get revenge. Kissed her in a way that had kept her awake all night long, aching, burning. And now he was saying he didn’t have chemistry with her.
“It’s just that usually when I’m with a girl it flows a little easier. The bar to the bedroom is a pretty natural extension. And all those little movements kind of lead into the other. The way they touch their hair, tilt their head, lean in for a kiss...”
Oh, that did it.
“The women that I usually hook up with tend to—”
“Right,” she said, her tone hard. “I get it. They flip their hair and scrunch their noses and twitch at all the appropriate times. They’re like small woodland creatures who only emerge from their burrows to satisfy your every sexual whim.”
“Don’t get upset. I’m trying to help you.”
She snorted. “I know.” Just then, she had no idea what devil possessed her. Only that one most assuredly did. And once it had taken hold, she had no desire to cast it back out again.
She was mad. Mad like Chase had been last night. And she was determined to get her own back.
“Elizabeth was good at flipping her hair. Miranda gave you saucy interplay like so.” She stood up, taking a step toward him, meeting his dark gaze with her own. “But how did they do this?” She reached down, placing her hand between his thighs and rubbing her palm over the bulge in his jeans.
Oh, sweet Lord, there was more to Chase McCormack than met the eye.
And she had a whole handful of him.
Her brain was starting to scream. Not words so much as a high-pitched, panicky whine. She had crossed the line. And there was no turning back.
But her brain wasn’t running the show. Her body was on fire, her heart pounding so hard she was afraid it was going to rip a hole straight through the wall of her chest and flop out on the ground in front of him. Show him all its contents. Dammit, she didn’t even want to see that.
But it was her anger that really pushed things forward. Her anger that truly propelled her on.
“And how,” she asked, lowering herself slowly, scraping her fingernails across the line of his zipper, before dropping to her knees in front of him, “did they do this?”