CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS LIKE striking a match, his thumb sweeping across her skin. It left a trail of fire where he touched, and made her feel hot in places he hadn’t. She was... Well, she was immobilized.
Like a deer caught in the headlights, seeing exactly what was barreling down on her, and unable to move.
Except, of course, Jonathan wasn’t barreling down on her. He wasn’t moving at all.
He was just looking at her, his dark eyes glittering, his expression like granite. She followed his lead, unsure of what to do. Of how she should react.
And then, suddenly, everything clicked into place. Exactly what she was feeling, exactly what she was doing...and exactly how much of an idiot she was.
She took a deep breath, gasping as though she’d been submerged beneath water. She turned her chair sideways, facing the computer again. “Well,” she said, “thank you for lunch.”
Fiddlesticks. And darn it. And fudging graham crackers.
She had just openly stared at her boss, probably looking like a guppy gasping on dry land because he had wiped mayonnaise off her lip. Which was—as things went—probably one of the more platonic touches a man and a woman could share.
The problem was, she couldn’t remember ever being touched—even platonically—by a man who wasn’t family. So she had been completely unprepared for the reaction it created inside her. Which she had no doubt he’d noticed.
Attraction. She had felt attracted to him.
Backtracking, she realized the tight feeling in her stomach that had appeared the first moment she’d seen him was probably attraction.
That was bad. Very bad.
But what she was really curious about, was why this attraction felt different from what she’d felt around other men she had liked. She’d felt fluttery feelings before. Most notably for Grant Daniels, the junior high youth pastor, a couple years ago. She had really liked him, and she was pretty sure he’d liked her, too, but he hadn’t seemed willing to make a move.
She had conversations with him over coffee in the Fellowship Hall, where he had brought up his feelings on dating—he didn’t—and how he was waiting until he was ready to get married before getting into any kind of relationship with a woman.
For a while, she’d been convinced he’d told her that because he was close to being ready, and he might want to marry her.
Another instance of sitting, waiting and believing what she wanted would come to her through the sheer force of her good behavior.
Looking back, she realized it was kind of stupid that she had hoped he’d marry her. She didn’t know him, not really. She had only ever seen him around church, and of course her feelings for him were based on that. Everybody was on their best behavior there. Including her.
Not that she actually behaved badly, which was kind of the problem. There was what she did, what she showed the world, and then there were the dark, secret things that lived inside her. Things she wanted but was afraid to pursue.
The fluttery feelings she had for Grant were like public Hayley. Smiley, shiny and giddy. Wholesome and hopeful.
The tension she felt in her stomach when she looked at Jonathan...that was all secret Hayley.
And it scared her that there was another person who seemed to have access to those feelings she examined only late at night in the darkness of her room.
She had finally gotten up the courage to buy a romance novel when she’d been at the grocery store a month or so ago. She had always been curious about those books, but since she’d lived with her parents, she had never been brave enough to buy one.
So, at the age of twenty-four, she had gotten her very first one. And it had been educational. Very, very educational. She had been a little afraid of it, to be honest.
Because those illicit feelings brought about late at night by hazy images and the slide of sheets against her bare skin had suddenly become focused and specific after reading that book.
And if that book had been the fantasy, Jonathan was the reality. It made her want to turn tail and run. But she couldn’t. Because if she did, then he would know what no one else knew about her.
She couldn’t risk him knowing.
They were practically strangers. They had nothing in common. These feelings were ridiculous. At least Grant had been the kind of person she was suited to.
Which begged the question—why didn’t he make her feel this off-kilter?
Her face felt like it was on fire, and she was sure Jonathan could easily read her reaction. That was the problem. It had taken her longer to understand what she was feeling than it had likely taken him. Because he wasn’t sheltered like she was.
Sheltered even from her own desire.
The word made her shiver. Because it was one she had avoided thinking until now.
Desire.
Did she desire him? And if she did, what did that mean?
Her mouth went dry as several possibilities floated through her mind. Each more firmly rooted in fantasy than the last, since she had no practical experience with any of this.
And it was going to stay that way. At least for now.
Small steps. This job was her first small step. And it was a job, not a chance for her to get ridiculous over a man.
“Did you have anything else you wanted me to do?” she asked, not turning to face him, keeping her gaze resolutely pinned to the computer screen.
He was silent for a moment, and for some reason, the silence felt thick. “Did you finish entering the invoices?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “Here.” He handed her his phone. “If anyone calls, say I’m not available, but you’re happy to take a message. And I want you to call the county office and ask about the permits listed in the other spreadsheet I have open. Just get a status update on that. Do you cook?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Do you cook? I hired you to be my assistant. Which includes things around the house. And I eat around the house.”
“I cook,” she said, reeling from the change of topic.
“Great. Have something ready for me, and if I’m not back before you knock off at five, just keep it warm.”
Then he turned and walked out, leaving her feeling both relieved and utterly confused. All those positive thoughts from this morning seemed to be coming back to haunt her, mock her.
The work she could handle. It was the man that scared her.
* * *
THE FIRST WEEK of working with Hayley had been pretty good, in spite of that hiccup on the first day.
The one where he had touched her skin and felt just how soft it was. Something he never should have done.
But she was a good assistant. And every evening when he came in from dealing with ranch work his dinner was ready. That had been kind of a dick move, asking her to cook, but in truth, he hadn’t put a very detailed job description in the ad. And she wasn’t an employee of Gray Bear. She was his personal employee, and that meant he could expand her responsibilities.
At least, that was what he told himself as he approached the front porch Friday evening, his stomach already growling in anticipation. When he came in for the evening after the outside work was done, she was usually gone and the food was warming in the oven.
It was like having a wife. With none of the drawbacks and none of the perks.
But considering he could get those perks from a woman who wasn’t in his house more than forty hours a week, he would take this happily.
He stomped up the front steps, kicking his boots off before he went inside. He’d been walking through sludge in one of the far pastures and he didn’t want to track in mud. His housekeeper didn’t come until later in the week.
The corner of his mouth lifted as he processed that thought. He had a housekeeper. He didn’t have to get on his hands and knees and scrub floors anymore. Which he had done. More times than he would care to recount. Most of the time the house he and Rebecca had shared while growing up had been messy.
It was small, and their belongings—basic though they were—created a lot of clutter. Plus, teenage boys weren’t the best at keeping things deep cleaned. Especially not when they also had full-time jobs and were trying to finish high school. But when he knew child services would be by, he did his best.
He didn’t now. He paid somebody else to do it. For a long time, adding those kinds of expenses had made both pride and anxiety burn in his gut. Adjusting to living at a new income level was not seamless. And since things had grown exponentially and so quickly, the adjustments had come even harder. Often in a million ways he couldn’t anticipate. But he was working on it. Hiring a housekeeper. Hiring Hayley.
Pretty soon, he would give in and buy himself a new pair of boots.
He drew nearer to the kitchen, smelling something good. And then he heard footsteps, the clattering of dishes.
He braced his arms on either side of the doorway. Clearly, she hadn’t heard him approach. She was bending down to pull something out of the oven, her sweet ass outlined to perfection by that prim little skirt.
There was absolutely nothing provocative about it. It fell down past her knees, and when she stood straight it didn’t display any curves whatsoever.
For a moment, he just admired his own commitment to being a dick. She could not be dressed more appropriately, and still his eyes were glued to her butt. And damn, his body liked what he saw.
“You’re still here,” he said, pushing away from the door and walking into the room. He had to break the tension stretching tight inside him. Step one was breaking the silence and making his presence known. Step two was going to be calling up one of the women he had associations with off and on.
Because he had to do something to take the edge off. Clearly, it had been too long since he’d gotten laid.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping her hands on a dishcloth and making a few frantic movements. As though she wanted to look industrious, but didn’t exactly have a specific task. “The roast took longer than I thought it would. But I did a little more paperwork while I waited. And I called the county to track down that permit.”
“You don’t have to justify all your time. Everything has gotten done this week. Plus, inefficient meat preparation was not on my list of reasons I might fire you.”
She shrugged. “I thought you reserved the right to revise that list at any time.”
“I do. But not today.”
“I should be out of your hair soon.” She walked around the counter and he saw she was barefoot. Earlier, he had been far too distracted by her backside to notice.
“Pretty sure that’s a health code violation,” he said.
She turned pink all the way up to her scalp. “Sorry. My feet hurt.”
He thought of those low, sensible heels she always wore and he had to wonder what the point was to wearing shoes that ugly if they weren’t even comfortable. The kind of women he usually went out with wore the kinds of shoes made for sitting. Or dancing on a pole.
But Hayley didn’t look like she even knew what pole dancing was, let alone like she would jump up there and give it a try. She was... Well, she was damn near sweet.
Which was all wrong for him, in every way. He wasn’t sweet.
He was successful. He was driven.
But he was temporary at best. And frankly, almost everyone in his life seemed grateful for that fact. No one stayed. Not his mother, not his father. Even his sister was off living her own life now.
So why he should spend even one moment looking at Hayley the way he’d been looking at her, he didn’t know. He didn’t have time for subtlety. He never had. He had always liked obvious women. Women who asked for what they wanted without any game-playing or shame.
He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t even want a serious girlfriend. Hell, he didn’t want a casual girlfriend. When he went out it was with the express intention of hooking up. When it came to women, he didn’t like a challenge.
His whole damned life was a challenge, and always had been. When he’d been raising his sister he couldn’t bring anyone back to his place, which meant he needed someone with a place of their own, or someone willing to get busy in the back of a pickup truck.
Someone who understood he had only a couple free hours, and he wouldn’t be sharing their bed all night.
Basically, his taste ran toward women who were all the things Hayley wasn’t.
Cute ass or not.
None of those thoughts did anything to ease the tension in his stomach. No matter how succinctly they broke down just why he shouldn’t find Hayley hot.
He nearly scoffed. She wasn’t hot. She was... She would not be out of place as the wholesome face on a baking mix. Much more Little Debbie than Debbie Does Dallas.
“It’s fine. I don’t want you going lame on me.”
She grinned. “No. Then you’d have to put me down.”
“True. And if I lose more than one personal assistant that way people will start asking questions.”
He could tell she wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. For a second, she looked downright concerned.
“I have not sent, nor do I intend to send, any of my employees—present or former—to the glue factory. Don’t look at me like that.”
She bit her lower lip, and that forced him to spend a moment examining just how lush it was. He didn’t like that. She needed to stop bending over, and to do nothing that would draw attention to her mouth. Maybe, when he revised the list of things he might fire her for, he would add drawing attention to attractive body parts to the list.
“I can never tell when you’re joking.”
“Me, either,” he said.
That time she did laugh. “You know,” she said, “you could smile.”
“Takes too much energy.”
The timer went off and she bustled back to the stove. “Okay,” she said, “it should be ready now.” She pulled a little pan out of the oven and took the lid off. It was full of roast and potatoes, carrots and onions. The kind of home-cooked meal he imagined a lot of kids grew up on.
For him, traditional fare had been more along the lines of flour tortillas with cheese or ramen noodles. Something cheap, easy and full of carbs. Just enough to keep you going.
His stomach growled in appreciation, and that was the kind of hunger associated with Hayley that he could accept.
“I should go,” she said, starting to walk toward the kitchen door.
“Stay.”
As soon as he made the offer Jonathan wanted to bite his tongue off. He did not need to encourage spending more time in closed off spaces with her. Although dinner might be a good chance to prove that he could easily master those weird bursts of attraction.
“No,” she said, and he found himself strangely relieved. “I should go.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said, surprising himself yet again. “Dinner is ready here. And it’s late. Plus there’s no way I can eat all this.”
“Okay,” she said, clearly hesitant.
“Come on now. Stop looking at me like you think I’m going to bite you. You’ve been reading too much Twilight. Indians don’t really turn into wolves.”
Her face turned really red then. “That’s not what I was thinking. I don’t... I’m not afraid of you.”
She was afraid of something. And what concerned him most was that it might be the same thing he was fighting against.
“I really was teasing you,” he said. “I have a little bit of a reputation in town, but I didn’t earn half of it.”
“Are you saying people in town are...prejudiced?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s on purpose. But whether it’s because I grew up poor or it’s because I’m brown, people have always given me a wide berth.”
“I didn’t... I mean, I’ve never seen people act that way.”
“Well, they wouldn’t. Not to you.”
She blinked slightly. “I’ll serve dinner now.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “the story has a happy ending. I have a lot of money now, and that trumps anything else. People have no issue hiring me to build these days. Though, I remember the first time my old boss put me on as the leader of the building crew, and the guy whose house we were building had a problem with it. He didn’t think I should be doing anything that required too much skill. Was more comfortable with me just swinging the hammer, not telling other people where to swing it.”
She took plates down from the cupboard, holding them close to her chest. “That’s awful.”
“People are awful.”
A line creased her forehead. “They definitely can be.”
“Stop hugging my dinner plate to your shirt. That really isn’t sanitary. We can eat in here.” He gestured to the countertop island. She set the plates down hurriedly, then started dishing food onto them.
He sighed heavily, moving to where she was and taking the big fork and knife out of her hands. “Have a seat. How much do you want?”
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t need much.”
He ignored her, filling the plate completely, then filling his own. After that, he went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “Want one?”
She shook her head. “I don’t drink.”
He frowned, then looked back into the fridge. “I don’t have anything else.”
“Water is fine.”
He got her a glass and poured some water from the spigot in the fridge. He handed it to her, regarding her like she was some kind of alien life-form. The small conversation had really highlighted the gulf between them.
It should make him feel even more ashamed about looking at her butt.
Except shame was pretty hard for him to come by.
“Tell me what you think about people, Hayley.” He took a bite of the roast and nearly gave her a raise then and there.
“No matter what things look like on the surface, you never know what someone is going through. It surprised me how often someone who had been smiling on Sunday would come into the office and break down in tears on Tuesday afternoon, saying they needed to talk to the pastor. Everyone has problems, and I do my best not to add to them.”
“That’s a hell of a lot nicer than most people deserve.”
“Okay, what do you think about people?” she asked, clasping her hands in front of her and looking so damn interested and sincere he wasn’t quite sure how to react.
“I think they’re a bunch of self-interested bastards. And that’s fair enough, because so am I. But whenever somebody asks for something, or offers me something, I ask myself what they will get out of it. If I can’t figure out how they’ll benefit, that’s when I get worried.”
“Not everyone is after money or power,” she said. He could see she really believed what she said. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“All right,” he conceded, “maybe they aren’t all after money. But they are looking to gain something. Everyone is. You can’t get through life any other way. Trust me.”
“I don’t know. I never thought of it that way. In terms of who could get me what. At least, that’s not how I’ve lived.”
“Then you’re an anomaly.”
She shook her head. “My father is like that, too. He really does want to help people. He cares. Pastoring a small church in a little town doesn’t net you much power or money.”
“Of course it does. You hold the power of people’s salvation in your hands. Pass around the plate every week. Of course you get power and money.” Jonathan shook his head. “Being the leader of local spirituality is power, honey, trust me.”
Her cheeks turned pink. “Okay. You might have a point. But my father doesn’t claim to have the key to anyone’s salvation. And the money in that basket goes right back into the community. Or into keeping the doors of the church open. My father believes in living the same way the community lives. Not higher up. So whatever baggage you might have about church, that’s specific to your experience. It has nothing to do with my father or his faith.”
She spoke with such raw certainty that Jonathan was tempted to believe her. But he knew too much about human nature.
Still, he liked all that conviction burning inside her. He liked that she believed what she said, even if he couldn’t.
If he had been born with any ideals, he couldn’t remember them now. He’d never had the luxury of having faith in humanity, as Hayley seemed to have. No, his earliest memory of his father was the old man’s fist connecting with his face. Jonathan had never had the chance to believe the best of anybody.
He had been introduced to the worst far too early.
And he didn’t know very many people who’d had different experiences.
The optimism she seemed to carry, the softness combined with strength, fascinated him. He wanted to draw closer to it, to her, to touch her skin, to see if she was strong enough to take the physical demands he put on a woman who shared his bed.
To see how shocked she might be when he told her what those demands were. In explicit detail.
He clenched his jaw tight, clamping his teeth down hard. He was not going to find out, for a couple reasons. The first being that she was his employee, and off-limits. The second being that all those things that fascinated him would be destroyed if he got close, if he laid even one finger on her.
Cynicism bled from his pores, and he damn well knew it. He had earned it. He wasn’t one of those bored rich people overcome by ennui just because life had gone so well he wanted to create problems so he had something to battle against.
No. He had fought every step of the way, and he had been disappointed by people in every way imaginable. He had earned his feelings about people, that was for damn sure.
But he wasn’t certain he wanted to pass that cynicism on to Hayley. No, she was like a pristine wilderness area. Unspoiled by humans. And his first inclination was to explore every last inch, to experience all that beauty, all that majesty. But he had to leave it alone. He had to leave it looked at, not touched.
Hayley Thompson was the same. Untouched. He had to leave her unspoiled. Exploring that beauty would only leave it ruined, and he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.
“I think it’s sad,” she said, her voice muted. “That you can’t see the good in other people.”
“I’ve been bitten in the ass too many times,” he said, his tone harder than he’d intended it to be. “I’m glad you haven’t been.”
“I haven’t had the chance to be. But that’s kind of the point of what I’m doing. Going out, maybe getting bitten in the ass.” Her cheeks turned bright red. “I can’t believe I said that.”
“What?”
“That word.”
That made his stomach feel like it had been hollowed out. “Ass?”
Her cheeks turned even redder. “Yes. I don’t say things like that.”
“I guess not... Being the church secretary and all.”
Now he just felt... Well, she made him feel rough and uncultured, dirty and hard and unbending as steel. Everything she was not. She was small, delicate and probably far too easy to break. Just like he’d imagined earlier, she was...set apart. Unspoiled. And here he had already spoiled her a little bit. She’d said ass, right there in his kitchen.
And she’d looked shocked as hell by her own behavior.
“You don’t have to say things like that if you don’t want to,” he said. “Not every experience is a good experience. You shouldn’t try things just to try them. Hell, if I’d had the choice of staying innocent of human nature, maybe I would have taken that route instead. Don’t ruin that nice vision of the world you have.”
She frowned. “You know, everybody talks about going out and experiencing things...”
“Sure. But when people say that, they want control over those experiences. Believe me, having the blinders ripped off is not necessarily the best thing.”
She nodded slowly. “I guess I understand that. What kinds of experiences do you think are bad?”
Immediately, he thought of about a hundred bad things he wanted to do to her. Most of them in bed, all of them naked. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. “I don’t think we need to get into that.”
“I’m curious.”
“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat, right?”
“But I’m not a cat.”
“No,” he said, “you are Hayley, and you should be grateful for the things you’ve been spared. Maybe you should even go back to the church office.”
“No,” she said, frowning. “I don’t want to. Maybe I don’t want to experience everything—I can see how you’re probably right about that. But I can’t just stay in one place, sheltered for the rest of my life. I have to figure out...who I am and what I want.”
That made him laugh, because it was such a naive sentiment. He had never stood back and asked himself who the hell Jonathan Bear was, and what he wanted out of life. He hadn’t given a damn how he made his money as long as he made it.
As far as he was concerned, dreams were for people with a lot of time on their hands. He had to do. Even as a kid, he couldn’t think, couldn’t wonder; he had to act.
She might as well be speaking a foreign language. “You’ll have to tell me what that’s like.”
“What?”
“That quest to find yourself. Let me know if it’s any more effective than just living your life and seeing what happens.”
“Okay, now you’ve made me feel silly.”
He took another bite of dinner. Maybe he should back down, because he didn’t want her to quit. He would like to continue eating her food. And, frankly, he would like to keep looking at her.
Just because he should back down didn’t mean he was going to.
“There was no safety net in my life,” he said, not bothering to reassure her. “There never has been. I had to work my ass off from the moment I was old enough to get paid to do something. Hell, even before then. I would get what I could from the store, expired products, whatever, so we would have something to eat. That teaches you a lot about yourself. You don’t have to go looking. In those situations, you find out whether you’re a survivor or not. Turns out I am. And I’ve never really seen what more I needed to know.”
“I don’t... I don’t have anything to say to that.”
“Yeah,” he returned. “My life story is kind of a bummer.”
“Not now,” she said softly. “You have all this. You have the business, you have this house.”
“Yeah, I expect a man could find himself here. Well, unless he got lost because it was so big.” He smiled at her, but she didn’t look at all disarmed by the gesture. Instead, she looked thoughtful, and that made his stomach feel tight.
He didn’t really do meaningful conversation. He especially didn’t do it with women.
Yet here he was, telling this woman more about himself than he could remember telling anyone. Rebecca knew everything, of course. Well, as much as she’d observed while being a kid in that situation. They didn’t need to talk about it. It was just life. But other people... Well, he didn’t see the point in talking about the deficit he’d started with. He preferred people assume he’d sprung out of the ground powerful and successful. They took him more seriously.
He’d had enough disadvantages, and he wouldn’t set himself up for any more.
But there was something about Hayley—her openness, her honesty—that made him want to talk. That made him feel bad for being insincere. Because she was just so...so damn real.
How would he have been if he’d had a softer existence? Maybe he wouldn’t be as hard. Maybe a different life would have meant not breaking a woman like this the moment he put his hands on her.
It was moot. Because he hadn’t had a different life. And if he had, he probably wouldn’t have made half as much of himself.
“You don’t have to feel bad for wanting more,” he said finally. “Just because other people don’t have it easy, doesn’t mean you don’t have your own kind of hard.”
“It’s just difficult to decide what to do when other people’s expectations feel so much bigger than your own dreams.”
“I know a little something about that. Only in my case, the expectations other people had for me were that I would end up dead of a drug overdose or in prison. So, all things considered, I figured I would blow past those expectations and give people something to talk about.”
“I just want to travel.”
“Is that it?”
A smile played in the corner of her lips, and he found himself wondering what it might be like to taste that smile. “Okay. And see a famous landmark. Like the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben. And I want to dance.”
“Have you never danced?”
“No!” She looked almost comically horrified. “Where would I have danced?”
“Well, your brother does own a bar. And there is line dancing.”
“I can’t even go into Ace’s bar. My parents don’t go. We can go to the brewery. Because they serve more food there. And it’s not called a bar.”
“That seems like some arbitrary shit.”
Her cheeks colored, and he didn’t know if it was because he’d pointed out a flaw in her parents’ logic or because he had cursed. “Maybe. But I follow their lead. It’s important for us to keep away from the appearance of evil.”
“Now, that I don’t know anything about. Because nobody cares much about my appearance.”
She cleared her throat. “So,” she said. “Dancing.”
Suddenly, an impulse stole over him, one he couldn’t quite understand or control. Before he knew it, he was pushing his chair back and standing up, extending his hand. “All right, Hayley Thompson, Paris has to wait awhile. But we can take care of the dancing right now.”
“What?” Her pretty eyes flew wide, her soft lips rounded into a perfect O.
“Dance with me, Hayley.”