going on, but I’ll pretend I don’t smell it. Since he’s too busy to come to you, you should drop in at the jobsite for the new community center on Creek Drive.”
Tate scrutinized Val for ulterior motives but her face remained blank. “You don’t think he’d mind?”
“Nah. He could use the break. Man works like a slave. Half the time he forgets to eat.” She snapped her fingers. “There’s a thought. Take him dinner. He’s partial to beef lo-mein and hot and sour soup.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
“Don’t mention it.” Val picked up her sketchbook from the coffee table. “What’s this?”
“Just some doodles for art projects at the Girls Club.”
“How is that going?”
“Good. Grace and I put our heads together and came up with a really cool curriculum before I started last week. The kids have been so pumped up that teaching them doesn’t seem like a real job.” She debated on telling Val about Grace’s troubles. Val had dropped hints things were rocky with Luke and Grace. Except Tate didn’t want to break Grace’s confidence either. Seemed her only choice was to hope her covert attempts to unearth answers from Val weren’t hopelessly juvenile. “Unfortunately, I don’t see Grace much. Have you talked to her lately?”
“No, I haven’t talked to her, but that wasn’t a very subtle segue in the conversation.” When Tate didn’t smile, Val turned serious. “What happened?”
“Grace started crying. That’s what happened.”
“Omigod! Why?”
“Guess Luke applied for a new position in Rosebud without telling her. He expects her to move.” Tate took a big swig of water. “She was so lost and confused and didn’t act anything like the efficient Grace we both know and love. I wish you had been there because I sure wasn’t much comfort.”
“Just having someone to listen to her had to be a huge relief. Heaven knows, she never calls me up and whines the way I do with her.” Val tossed the sketchbook back on the coffee table. “She hasn’t said anything else?”
Tate shook her head. “It’s a fine line. She is my boss. But I don’t want to press her for details about the situation with Luke if she’s not ready to talk.”
“I’ll call her. Maybe between the two of us we can figure out how much support she needs.” The line between Val’s eyebrows puckered. “I can’t believe the marriage would be over. They’ve always been one of the happiest couples I know. Even if they are both hyper-focused on their careers.”
Did Val realize Nathan fell into that same “the job is everything” category?
Val heaved herself up, slinging the kiwi-colored canvas bag over her shoulder. “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what I find out from Grace.” At the last second she spun on her Toms and pinned Tate with a look. “Even if you can’t give me the dirty lowdown about you and my brother, you can give me a few general hints, right?”
Tate smirked. “We’ll see.”
Ginger and garlic scented the inside of Tate’s car as she navigated the unfamiliar dirt road.
After one particularly hard bump, she’d expected to see bean sprouts and egg ribbons strewn across the floorboards. Miraculously the soup had stayed lodged in the seat.
She spied Nathan’s truck among the other pickups, all big rigs with toolboxes and mysterious machinery poking out of the beds. Piles of building material littered the ground, but she didn’t see anyone wandering around.
Damn. Where was he? She doubted he was the only one here, but she didn’t want to feed him in front of an audience. She hadn’t the foggiest idea what he’d said to his friends and coworkers about their relationship.
Relationship. Wrong word choice. Theirs was a business agreement with fringe benefits, plain and simple. She left the food in the car and skirted the piles of plastic pipes, sheet metal and fine powdery dirt, scouring the motley group of men that had just appeared. A tap on her shoulder nearly made her scream.
A blond man with a dusty beard stepped in front of her and smiled. “Can I help you?”
“Umm, yes. I’m looking for Nathan LeBeau. He still around?”
“Yeah. Last time I saw him he was over by the stockpile of gravel.” He pointed to her red flowered flip-flops and added, “Kinda rough terrain for those shoes. Tell you what. Give me your name, and I’ll go fetch him for you.”
Tate stayed put, torn with indecision.
“Nice try, Steve.” Nathan’s voice drifted from behind her. “But I’ll take care of this.”
Her first reaction was to leap into his arms. Probably the macho guys watching them from the clearing with unabashed interest would rag on him forever if she did something so typically female. Instead, she smiled brightly. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself. What brings you here?”
Not the warm welcome she’d expected. “Val stopped by. Said you might need a break.”
“I imagine she asked you a zillion questions.”
“Yep, but I didn’t crack under pressure. I’m a tough cookie, remember?” She reached for a chunk of pine bark clinging to his faded denim shirt. When her fingers brushed across the soft fabric, lingering a beat too long on the warm flesh beneath, his hand engulfed hers.
Then he shocked her by slanting his mouth over hers for a steamy kiss that fogged up her insides. “You’re a tasty cookie too. I’m glad you came.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” asked the blond man who at some point had sidled up alongside them.
“Nope.” Nathan’s tone half-teased, but his eyes never left hers. He made no move to dislodge her hand. “Go away, Steve.”
The man grumbled good-naturedly, leaving them alone.
But when Tate leaned closer to him, he held her at bay.
“Tate, honey,” he said, his thumb rubbing her jaw, “you don’t want to do that. I’m dirty, sweaty and most likely I stink.”
“I don’t care.” She wrapped her arms around his waist. As she rested her head against the sun-warmed skin and firm muscles of his chest, a strange peace passed through her. “Hard work, in the great outdoors means you smell like a real man.” She tilted her head back to look at him in the fading daylight. “Besides, you’ll feel like hugging me when I tell you I brought you dinner.”
“You did?”
“Yep. Chinese. It’s in my car.”
“I think I love you.”
“So food is the way to a man’s heart.”
Something resembling hope danced in his eyes. “You looking for a way to my heart, winyan?”
“Nope. I’m looking for a way into your pants. Unfortunately my mother didn’t have a clever saying for that scenario, so I’m winging it.”
“Glad Steve wasn’t around to hear that one.”
She froze. “Does it bother you that I’m here?”
“Not at all. Hope you don’t mind if I don’t introduce you around. I don’t feel like sharing you.” Behind a wide cottonwood tree he kissed her again, sweeping his hands over her body as if touching her had healing properties. How she wished it did. He followed her across the glorified goat path to her VW Bug and helped her unload the food.
Tate set up a makeshift picnic area, spreading an old velour blanket inside a grove of pines. She dumped the soup in bowls and opened the other square white cartons, spooning the noodle concoction on his plate. While Nathan devoured every morsel with his chopsticks, she barely choked down an egg roll.
After they’d cleaned up, he settled back against a spruce trunk. His ever-present clipboard hit the rocky ground. “Come here.”
Tate dropped beside him, trying to avoid the pine needles. She didn’t need to turn her bare legs into an acupuncture experiment.
“I said come here.” He lifted her between his outstretched thighs, aligning his front to her back. “Comfy?”
She scooted backward until her butt met his groin. She wiggled suggestively until his breath hissed out. “Now I am.”
His low chuckle sent the hairs on the back of her neck to full alert. “Wan
na take a peek at the changes I added to your landscaping project?”
No, I want to take a peek at your package.
Focus, Tate. “I’m sure they’re fine. I trust you.”
Nathan’s body went absolutely still beneath hers. A black crow screamed high above them and another answered in kind. His callused fingers stopped drawing lazy circles on her upper arms. “Then why are you really here?”
“If I tell you I don’t know, will you believe me?”
“Possibly.” His boots hooked under her ankles, bringing her thighs directly over the top of his. With his hands splayed over her legs, he stroked the same path of skin from the line of her shorts to the dimple in her knee. “But plying me with food is a highly romantic ploy.”
“It is?”
“An impromptu picnic? With my favorite foods?” Stubble tickled her nape as his chin skated across her bare shoulders. “Admit you’re liking this romance stuff.”
“Maybe.” Tate wondered how hands so strong could also possess such infinite gentleness. “But not more than sex.”
A pinecone crashed behind them. “You’d rather we were on top of the picnic blanket? Going at it wildly like a pair of squirrels?”
Tate couldn’t help but laugh even when his constant touches made her squirm. “I don’t want to think about squirrels having wild sex. I want to think about us having wild sex.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” Nathan nipped the upper part of her ear. Tingles raced the length of her body, inside and out. “You don’t like this? Letting me touch you like I’ve dreamed all week?”
“You dreamed of me? Then why didn’t you call? Especially since I know you’re surgically attached to your cell phone?” She almost kicked herself with his big boot the minute the words left her mouth.
“Because I’m a lousy jerk.” His warm wet tongue dipped into her ear.
Tate promptly turned to mush. “I can’t think when you do that.”
“Then stop thinking.” He traced the rim, bit the lobe, sucked on the hypersensitive skin between her jaw and ear. “God,” he breathed, “what you can do to me in two seconds flat with my clothes on is obscene.”
She offered the other ear. “Do it again.”
Nathan’s sigh was full of regret. “I can’t. Dinner break is over. I’ve got to finish up before it gets dark.” He left a trail of promising kisses along her shoulders. “But I did enjoy the surprise.”
They stood. Golden light streamed through the tree branches, creating misshapen shadows on the forest floor. Birds, animals, even the bugs were quiet. The eerie silence signaled the fading of day into evening. Nathan didn’t seem to notice. He only had eyes for her.
He framed her face in his hands. Lowered his mouth and the gentle, tender kiss became rough and needy before he withdrew. Pressing his lips to her knuckles, he said, “Thank you for showing up here. Most people are afraid they’ll find me knee-deep in sewage. I never get visitors.”
“Never?”
“You’re the first.”
“Glad I could be your ‘first’ at something too.”
He smiled wearily. “Tomorrow night?”
“Sure.” She smoothed her fingers over the lines of exhaustion imprinted in his face. She wished she could erase them, if only for a little while.
“I’ll call you. I swear.”
Tate watched him walk away, confused again by his sweet, romantic actions and her own tangled emotions.
Emotions she was finding, much to her chagrin, that couldn’t be blamed only on her desire for red-hot sex.
The phone rang midafternoon and Tate answered it with a yawn. “Hello?”
“Hey, sexy girl.”
“You really did call me.”
“I said I would.” Heavy machinery sounds echoed in the background. “Look. I don’t have much time to talk. What are you doing tonight?”
“I’d planned on going to Tanner and Tyler’s Little League game.” Not on the off chance he might show up. The twins would be snoring in their bunk beds long before Uncle Nathan quit working. “Why?”
“I’ve got a more tempting offer,” he said.
That possibility jolted her from her lethargy quicker than a caffeine injection. Did this offer involve her body draped around his while the fan cooled the sweat from their naked, satiated selves? Yeah right. Might as well imagine being named artistic director at a Madison Avenue ad firm, ’cause it seemed neither scenario was happening anytime soon.
“I could swing by and pick you up, say at seven? The nursery is open until eight—”
She gasped as panic set in. “Val had her baby? When? Why didn’t anyone call me before now?”
“No, not the nursery at the hospital, the greenhouse nursery. Where we need to pick up trees and bushes for your landscaping?”
“Whew.” She laughed. “Had me worried there for a second.” A loud grinding noise flowed from the receiver, followed by a stream of curses. Then silence. “Nathan?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Eight, then? After I get the nursery business out of the way, I’d like to…well, I’ve got a surprise.”
A surprise? She remembered the last time he’d surprised her. In mind-blowing, orgasmic detail. Were they finally getting down to the nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty terms of the deal? “What kind of surprise?”
“The kind which requires swimwear. The thong suit would be nice,” he added with a low male chuckle.
“My thong swimsuit? Why am I not shocked that this ‘surprise’ entails more mystery and romance?”
“Bring a towel too. See you later.” He hung up.
Without doubt, she’d be unable to accomplish another thing today. Luckily she’d already drawn up her lesson plan for tomorrow’s art classes.
Nathan showed up promptly at eight. Before he uttered a syllable, he tugged her against his solid frame. He wrapped his strong arms around her in a bone-crushing hug. Then he pulled back and studied her face as if he hadn’t seen her for years, instead of a day. He brushed a roughened fingertip down her cheek, then across her bottom lip.
She breathed him into her lungs. Felt him in every pore.
He kept their gaze locked until the breathless moment their lips finally touched.
It was a devastating kiss. Amidst the sparks short-circuiting her brain, Tate suspected that a man who poured such pure emotion into a mere kiss was a man worth keeping.
“It’s strange,” he murmured. “I hardly know you and yet I missed you.”
Not so strange, since she felt the same way. “We could remedy that.” She slowly ran her hands down his wide back. “Let’s stay here.” She latched on to his hips, bumping his pelvis to hers. “And get to know each other a whole lot better.”
Almost immediately he stepped back. He gave her an indulgent smile and a quick peck on the forehead. “Tempting. But your surprise awaits.”
She sighed, grabbed her stuff and followed him outside.
“Where are we going?” Tate asked, vaulting herself into his truck.
“To the lake.”
“At night?”
“Yep.”
When he downshifted at the stoplight, she was fascinated by the raw power in his muscular legs and how his overwhelming masculinity filled every bit of the confined space.
He gave her a curious, sideways glance. “Ever been on a moonlit boat ride?”
Tate pictured Nathan, half-naked with his long raven hair flying behind him as they skimmed the water’s surface. Then the violent rocking motion of the boat on the water as their bodies slapped together, moonlight bathing their wet skin…
“My friend Steve,” he continued, oblivious to the added hitch