Chapter Seven
Troy’s pulse thundered through his ears, his breathing like a tornado in the small bathroom as all the scattered parts of his anatomy slowly came back together again.
Although he doubted they’d ever go back the same way.
That had been intense. She’d been intense. Hell, he’d had full-on sex that hadn’t been that intense.
It had been fucking tantric.
If Joss could do that with just a hand job then he was sunk for sure. “You are a goddess.” His mouth brushed the point where her neck met her shoulder and a shiver trembled through her body. Gooseflesh puckered her skin, tickling his lips.
She huffed out a husky half laugh, her ankles unlocking from behind him. “I guess I’m not as rusty as I thought.”
Troy eased himself back. She met his eyes shyly, her gray gaze wary. “I think there are some things you just don’t forget.”
“Like how messy a hand job can be.”
She glanced down and he followed suit. His flesh prickled in awareness as her eyes skimmed his chest and abs, streaked with the evidence of his orgasm.
“Sorry.”
Troy blinked. Sorry? He wasn’t. That had been the goddamn gold standard of hand jobs and if a bull killed him tomorrow, he’d die a happy man.
She reached over to the towels he’d taken off her earlier and passed him one, using one end to wipe her hand as he fixed himself up, his hips still firmly wedged between her thighs. He re-tied the towel at his waist, sucking in a swift breath as his elbow twinged.
“God. Your elbow…” Her cheeks pinked up. “I hope I didn’t… Is it okay?”
Troy had been so blissed out he doubted he’d have felt it being amputated. He sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it now. Not standing between Joss’s thighs and two hours until his physical therapy appointment.
“Trust me, I was feeling no pain.” His good hand found her ponytail again, winding it around his palm. “Now…” He pulled gently and her neck stretched out nicely for his pleasure. “Where were we?”
“Oh no.” She resisted the tug and shoved against his chest. “Let me up.”
“What’s your rush?” He lowered his head and nuzzled down the slender ridge of her throat. “I’m just getting started.”
Troy was gratified to feel the bob of her throat beneath his lips. “I’m…good.”
He chuckled against the soft spot where throat met jaw. “I’m thinking giving me a hand job in your bathroom makes you bad. Very, very bad.”
“Troy.” She pushed on his shoulders and Troy reluctantly pulled his lips from her neck. “Look. We got carried away. That’s understandable. You were practically naked and this is a very small bathroom. We have…chemistry.”
Troy laughed at her understatement. “I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since I saw you with that lug wrench. I could tell even then you were good with your hands.”
She shot him a prim look down her nose, clearly not going to get down in the mud with him. “I’m a thirty-four-year-old widow with a fifteen-year-old kid. You’re a twenty-seven-year-old bull rider—”
“So?”
Her cheeks heated. “I just gave you—someone I didn’t even know five days ago—a hand job in my father-in-law’s house.”
He grinned at her. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
“I don’t do this kind of thing.” She glared at him obviously exasperated. “I have a job and a community and roots. You drift through life with no family, no roots, no home. I don’t do casual sex. That’s all you do. At the moment all we have in common is an appreciation for lug wrenches and hand jobs. There’s nothing compatible about us, Troy.”
“Oh yeah? You don’t think I don’t know how wet you are right now?”
She dropped her gaze. “That’s just sex.” She waved it away with her hand like sexual compatibility wasn’t an important consideration.
Like it wasn’t something rare and unique. Troy had indulged himself a lot since he’d lost his virginity at fourteen. He’d had all kinds of sex in all kinds of ways and most of it had been empty and only momentarily satisfying.
He could still feel the hum in his cells from the orgasm she’d yanked out of him. And the strange jungle beat of his heart.
“So you’re telling me your body’s not screaming for fulfillment now? That if I slid my hands between your legs that I couldn’t get you off in ten seconds flat? That you’re not going to touch yourself tonight as you lie in bed thinking about how hard you made me come?”
She shut her eyes for a moment and Troy didn’t have to be inside her head to know his words had affected her. Hell…he’d given himself a hard-on.
Her knuckles had whitened suddenly and he could see her nipples, two hard little dots, straining against the fabric of her T-shirt.
Her eyes flicked open, gray gaze steely and determined. “Let me up.” He sighed and took two steps back and one to the side, his arms semi-raised in surrender.
She slid off the vanity, her ponytail bobbing. “Look…we just had this perfect moment. This perfect memory. It was hot and fast and dirty and I wouldn’t change a damn thing.”
Troy nodded in total agreement. He wouldn’t either.
“I’m going to bring that thing out next time Damien tells me hates me or after I’ve had to tell some parents that their kid is paralyzed from a car crash and it’s going to put a smile on my face again. I don’t want to ruin its flawlessness with the train wreck that will come after if I let this become sex or a fling or anything other than one perfect moment.”
Troy regarded her silently. What she said made a lot of sense. Their reality had gotten lost in the heady sexuality of the moment. He was moving on and she was firmly rooted here.
With her kid.
For a crazy ten minutes he’d forgotten she was anything other than a desirable woman. And she was right. There were so few perfect moments in life—maybe being the star of someone else’s was enough.
Given her look of grim determination, it would have to be.
“Fine.” He sighed. She was right. He knew she was right. “But you pick up a lug wrench again in my company and all bets are off.”
*
Joss heard Gus’s truck pull up outside at five on the dot. Two car doors thunked shut seconds later and she mentally prepared herself for the impact of a tired, sweaty Troy wearing the hell out of a pair of jeans. Between that and the images in her head of him in nothing but a towel, it had been more trying having him around than she’d ever imagined.
And he’d only been with them four nights.
It didn’t help that she wasn’t used to having a man around the house anymore. Not the fit, virile variety anyway. His boots at the door, a waft of leather and rope when she least expected it, his sexy Calvin Kleins hanging on the line next to Gus’s large striped boxer shorts all combined to keep her on edge.
There seemed to be a piece of him around every corner and Joss wondered how long it would take to erase him when he left. The physical signs of him anyway. She knew she’d never be able to erase him from her head—he was indelibly etched into her memory banks and she would always hold that moment in the bathroom close to her heart.
“It’s good to be home, love,” Gus said as he opened the back door and spotted her shelling peas from the garden at the table.
He said the same thing every day without fail and generally she agreed with the sentiment. But it felt like her home wasn’t her own anymore as was quickly proven by the appearance of Troy, his splinted arm in no way detracting from the coiled energy of him.
Gus turned and whacked Troy in the stomach. “You should ask Joss if she wants to go.”
Joss startled. This did not sound good. “Ask me if I want to go where?”
“Johnny Duggan was out at the Harris farm today and he recognized Troy. Asked him to be his special guest at the steakhouse tonight.”
John Duggan was the owner of the finest eating establishment in town—the Bull Bar.
“You know, sign a few autographs, shoot the breeze with the customers, that kind of thing.”
“That’s nice,” Joss said noncommittally, keeping her gaze fixed on the peas. “I’m sure Troy doesn’t need me holding his hand. He’s a big boy.”
As soon as the words were out she could have bitten her tongue off. She didn’t dare look at Troy. She didn’t have to. She could feel his gaze on her face, sense his laughter bubbling just below his surface.
She knew from intimate experience just how big that boy was.
“Oh…” Gus shifted from foot to foot, his mouth moving a couple of times as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know how. “Well, sure…but Damien’s not home from work until ten and it’s Thursday, night. Half price grills.”
Joss glanced up from her peas, narrowing her eyes at her father-in-law. He was acting strangely, pussyfooting around something. Gus didn’t do pussyfooting. He was wincingly direct.
“You have company don’t you?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. Gus didn’t do nonchalant either. “Linda did say as she might drop in.”
Ah. Now it made sense. Gus had been widowed a very long time—Andy’s mother had died when Andy was six and Gus had been true to her all this time. Since Joss had arrived on the scene she’d encouraged him to get out more. It had been obvious that her father-in-law was lonely and while her and Damien had filled that hole to a degree there were different types of lonely.
She knew that well enough.
Gus’s face was a little weathered from the sun but he still looked reasonably youthful for his age, was as fit as a fiddle and loved to line dance. Linda Wells was his age, had been widowed for eight years, made the best sweet tea in town and also loved to line dance.
More importantly, they liked each other. Which made them pretty damn perfect couple material. They’d just needed a gentle nudge. Which is what she’d been doing. Although the pace had still been slower than a wet week so Joss sure as hell didn’t want to cramp their style tonight.
“What time did she say she might be dropping by?”
“I believe she mentioned seven.”
Joss suppressed a smile at Gus’s casual affect. He wasn’t fooling her for a moment. “All right then.” She eyed Troy. The last thing she wanted to do was go out with him in a social situation but Troy would be gone soon and Gus and Linda would still be here. She could while away a few hours in his company without wanting to do him.
Probably.
“Shall we leave about quarter to seven?”
That wide grin did not bode well. It emphasized his crooked nose and gave him a devilish air. But he nodded all nice and polite in front of a distracted Gus. “Yes, ma’am.”
*
John Duggan pumped Troy’s hand when they arrived just before seven. He was a big man with a salt and pepper handlebar moustache and he was wearing his regulation ten-gallon hat. “Do you mind if I whisk this man away from you for a few minutes, Doc Garrity? There are some people who are dying to meet him.”
Troy looked like he was about to object but she beat him to the punch. “Not at all, John.” She smiled at him genially. “Send me over a glass of wine and you can take all the time you want.”
John laughed in his big guffawing way. “I’ll get the girls to bring it right on over and don’t you worry, I’ll have him back lickety-split.”
It was fifteen minutes before John made good on his word. Joss didn’t mind. The booth seats were comfortable, Lady Antebellum played through hidden speakers and the longer Troy was away the less she had to look at him. He was wearing his best dress jeans and a blue and green paisley button-down shirt that accentuated his eyes and fit his lean chest to perfection. His hat—apparently called an Akubra—was pulled low on his forehead.
John chatted for a few more minutes and took their orders before he departed. “You never told me they had a mechanical bull.” Troy sipped a beer he’d brought to the table.
Joss frowned. “I didn’t know they had. It must be new.”
He grinned at her suggestively and she shook her head. “Oh no you don’t, buster—absolutely no riding bulls of any variety. Your PT would have a fit.”
“I wasn’t talking about me.”
“Oh hell no.” She shook her head again, even more vehemently. “I’m wearing a skirt in case you hadn’t noticed.” The last thing she wanted was to flash her ass to half the town as she was tossed off.
His gaze dropped to where the foot of her crossed leg stuck out from the edge of the booth, the fringe of her peasant-style skirt fanned over her ankle. “Oh I noticed.”
His voice dropped an octave and Joss’s insides melted like marshmallow being slowly roasted over a campfire.
“Besides, I don’t know a bull’s head from its ass and I’m not getting on one, mechanical or otherwise.”
He tsked. “Such a city girl.”
She refused to let his teasing go to her head. “Chicago born and bred.”
“It must have been a shock to come to a place with less than twenty thousand people.”
“Yes and no. We’d visited on and off over the years so I knew the town but a permanent move was still a big deal. I don’t think Damien’s forgiven me yet and it’s been a year.”
“He misses his mates?”
“Yeah well…I don’t miss his mates.” Joss’s lips twisted at the thought of the company Damien had started to keep. “They were trouble and I didn’t want him heading into the gutter, or worse with them.”
“That why you moved?”
“Yes. Plus Gus was lonely; I could hear it in his voice. What about you? You country down to your bootstraps?”
“No. I was born and bred in Sydney, actually. Didn’t go out to the Top End until I was sixteen. I didn’t know the ass end of a bull either.”
Joss blinked. “So you went from city boy to rookie champion on the national circuit here in the States in four years?”
He cocked an eyebrow and Joss’s gaze was once again drawn to the white scar that slashed it in half. “You been Googling me?”
Joss’s cheeks warmed. “I needed to know I wasn’t letting an axe murderer into our house.”
He snorted. “Yes,” he said, getting the conversation back on track. “I took to bull riding like a duck to water.”
“I would have thought to be that good it’d have to be in your blood.”
“A lot of guys do start at a really early age. But—” He shrugged. “It isn’t all about practice. It’s about nerve and steel and a complete disregard for your own safety.”
She leaned forward, her elbow on the table, her chin propped on her palm. “And that’s you, isn’t it?”
Even at this short acquaintance she could see it. He may have perfected the art of laid-back but his reckless streak bubbled not that far below his surface.
“I’ve been known to get in the odd scrape or two.”
“How did a kid from the city end up on a massive cattle station? You wanted to be a cowboy?”
He snorted. “Ah no. It was the last thing I wanted to do.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Oh.”
“You’re not going to elaborate?”
He stared at her for long moments as if he was weighing her up, his gaze dark and brooding before he sighed and gathered himself. “I was more or less forced to go.”
Joss frowned, a prickle at the base of her spine. “Forced?”
“It was kind of my last chance before I ended up in juvie.”
Joss sat back in her seat at the admission. “Juvie?” Now that she hadn’t expected.
He nodded. “I was quite the delinquent.”
Images from the night she’d pulled open the front door to find Troy standing on the other side came back to her. He’d been standing tall on her doorstep, confident and patient. Not angry or vengeful, not judgmental of her or Damien. But not apologetic either.
Like a man who had been there before and understood the psyche of a teenage boy, understood the need for discipline and consequences.
Interesting.
It was hard not to see parallels between Troy and Damien. Maybe having Troy around would be good for her son. A living example of how things could work out if you gave them a chance.
“Did you…” Joss didn’t know what she should ask or even if she had a right to. And frankly she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answers. “What did you…?”
“What did I do?” He shrugged. “What didn’t I do? I lied, I conned, I got into fights. I stole. All kinds of things. Bags and money and jewelry and even cars from time to time. I spent most of my teenage years either drunk or stoned. I rarely went to school, I was in and out of the system and I was buying drugs for my parents by the time I was eight.”
He said it so casually, as if the words meant nothing to him, as if he was immune to them. But his face was a mask and behind it, she suspected, there was a world of pain.
If he’d ripped her heart out of her chest, Joss couldn’t have felt any more wretched for him.
Silence settled in the space between them. Troy had told her he didn’t have any family and she could see why. Even if his parents were still around, why would he want anything to do with people who’d exposed him to that kind of life?
Delinquents were made, not born.
She knew the answers of course. She’d grown up in Chicago. Worked in the hospitals there. But it didn’t make it any less heart wrenching.
“I’m sorry,” she said eventually. It was hopelessly inadequate but it came from the bottom of her heart.
He lifted a shoulder in a dismissive gesture. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not that guy anymore.”
“I’m not worried.”
She’d met some scary dudes in inner-city hospitals. Edgy guys with chips on their shoulders bristling with anger and anarchy. Guys who put a real itch up her spine. But there was nothing remotely edgy about Troy.
Whoever he’d been for sixteen years was plainly not who he was now. He’d proved that over and over. Stopping to help her with her tire. Bringing Damien home that night. Working for Gus for free.
Even letting her call the shots in the bathroom without getting pushy and pissed off.
No. She wasn’t worried about the kind of man Troy Jensen was. She was too busy worrying about the leap in her pulse whenever he was around.