shoulders. His warm breath crept across her skin, causing a deliberate shiver. “Come on, Tate. It wasn’t that bad.”
“No?” She rolled over to face him. “I don’t remember your mom bossing you around this week.” Nathan and Val’s mother’s early appearance had ended Tate’s babysitting gig.
“Being your own boss creates a whole different set of problems.”
“Poor baby,” she cooed. “Tell me all about it.”
His gaze turned pensive as he absentmindedly stroked featherlight touches over her arm. “Since I’m in charge of everything, if a bid or a project gets screwed up, I don’t have anyone to blame besides myself.”
“But if you do an awesome job, then you alone can take all the credit, right?”
Shame darkened his eyes before he looked away. What was up with that?
“Have you considered hiring on? Find someone to share the blame and the workload?” Tate rested her chin in her hand. “Or are you one of those perfectionists who believe your way is the only way?”
He winced, letting her know she’d struck a nerve. “I guess maybe I am. It’s easier to do everything myself than to rely on anyone else, especially seasonal workers.” His sigh flowed across her skin. “By the time I get them trained, they’re either sick of working in the muck, or they head back to college, grateful they’re not stuck digging ditches permanently. I don’t kid myself that installing utilities is fascinating.”
“But do you like it?”
“I don’t mind it most days.” The tips of his fingers moved south to caress the pulse point in her elbow. “Between the heavy machinery and the earplugs, there isn’t much sense for conversation. Guess that’s a hard habit to break once I leave the jobsite.”
Her heart pitched at his easy acceptance of how his life had turned out. Even if nothing between them could be permanent, she had to convince him that spending his off hours in such isolation was a waste. “Is that the way you see the rest of your life?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want?”
“A home. A life like Val’s.” Nathan paused, seeming surprised he’d voiced that answer out loud. “Being alone never bothered me much before. But now…”
Tate wondered if she’d played a part in his transformation, but she didn’t have the guts to ask. “Why do you work so hard?”
“Lately I’ve been asking myself the same question.” Scooting sideways, he cradled her against his body. “Scary stuff, to think I’ll be crippled up when I’m sixty years old because I was too stubborn to admit it’s gotten harder to keep up this crazy pace.” He smiled. “I’ve come up with a back-up plan. If this latest project pans out, I can shift the focus of my business. Work less hours, hire someone I trust to run the utility end and spend less time belowground and more time on top.”
“Mmm.” She inhaled his familiar scent and slipped her knee between his thighs. “I like the ‘on top’ part very much.” She yelped when he pinched her butt.
“You would like that, jungle girl.”
“So are you going to give me specifics on how your great new business scheme will turn your life into a dream?”
“No.” He developed a sudden interest in the stuffed pheasant on the fireplace mantel. “Your turn. What are your options if your job bites the dust?”
Her warm feeling of sharing disappeared. “I don’t know.”
“Uh-oh.” He propped his head on his elbow. “I’m beginning to hate that look.”
“What look?” she said crossly.
“The one that says I’ll never know what’s going on behind those beautiful blue eyes.” Using slow, melting kisses, he left her lips tingling and her thought processes scrambled. “Tell me, my sweet Tate,” he urged against the corner of her mouth, “how do you see your future?” He punctuated every word with a kiss, each one an erotic promise, dropping progressively lower down her neck until he reached her breast.
Hedging any subject wasn’t usually this difficult. Then again, Nathan’s interrogation technique was highly distracting.
“Tell me,” he warned, teasing the beaded tip, “or I swear I’ll do something romantic that involves no touching at all.”
“I can’t think when you touch me like that, so you’d better stop right now if you want me to talk. This may be your only chance.”
He blew a raspberry on her belly. “Fine.”
Tate wondered where to start and if she had the courage not only to admit the truth to him but to herself. “My future, huh? Well, before the suspension, I envisioned a big office with a secretary and an assistant. And I was the epitome of chic in my Prada and Armani suits as I flitted from board meetings to client lunches. Of course with my many successes I had to get a larger office so I had more wall space to hang my numerous industry awards.”
“And now?”
“Awards mean nothing.” When Nathan blanched, she clarified, “I mean, now I’d trade every designer outfit and cheap plaque for one day of Val’s crazy life.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t my mother throw a conniption fit if she knew the source of my envy was a housewife?” She looked right in his eyes. “Val and Richard have it all, don’t they? Love, happiness, great sex…” She frowned. “However, the jury is still out on why they feel compelled to reproduce like rabbits.”
His deep chuckle warmed her from the inside out.
“I thought Val would end up a competitive, driven lawyer, and not the type of woman content being a lawyer’s wife and a mother.”
“Much as your mother sees you as the career woman she couldn’t be?”
“I guess.”
“Val would have made a great attorney, but her focus changed once she met Richard.”
Tate nodded. “I’ve never known anyone so truly happy with their life until I spent time with Val. She wants everyone on the planet to experience that same level of contentment. I think that’s why she’s pushed me so hard to try teaching art classes. She remembered how much I wanted to do it when I was younger. If nothing else comes from this mini-sabbatical, she showed me that if my graphic art career is over, my life isn’t. I can move in another direction.”
He went completely motionless. “Which direction were you planning on moving, Tate?”
A chirping sound echoed in the foyer. Nathan’s cell phone. Thank God. For once she welcomed the interruption and leapt up to answer it.
Nathan grabbed her ankle, and she tumbled back to the floor right on top of him. He banded those beefy arms around her. “Going somewhere?”
She wiggled and thrashed, but his long, muscular legs pinned hers as effectively as his dark gaze. “To get your cell.”
“I’m not supposed to let you answer the phone any more today under penalty of death, remember? Besides, it’s probably just my mother checking to see if I’m still slaving away.”
“You usually are,” she retorted when the phone continued to trill. “Fine. Ignore it. But I can’t loll around naked all night. I need to get dressed. Now let me go.”
“Not on your life. Stop pushing me away, Tate. I care about you. Every part, even the stuff you keep hidden. Especially the stuff I’m finding we have in common.”
Nathan’s eyes answered every question she’d avoided asking him since the Bobcat episode. And it scared her to death.
The landscaping was nearly finished. She’d have no excuse not to list the house and get back to her real life in Denver. Why did that eventuality fill her with dread? Why was she wishing for the time to explore a relationship that wasn’t based on sex?
His manhood twitched and hardened underneath her belly. A rush of moisture answered. Her heart might be confused about what it wanted, but her body wasn’t.
She whispered, “Don’t go all sweet on me now, Mr. Romance. I’d rather you made me scream.”
He lifted a brow. “You said you were getting dressed.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Good. Then there’s hope for me yet.”
He seared her lips with a voracious kiss and branded her skin with the feverish touch of his hands. Without preamble he slid her body down the length of his and fit himself inside her with one decisive push.
“Yes,” she hissed, grinding into him.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he groaned. “Even when I’ve just had you, I want you. Even when you’re driving me crazy, I want you.”
He swallowed her moans like they were much-needed oxygen. His callused fingers burrowed into her buttocks as if the sweat sheening their bodies weren’t enough to hold them together. He broke away and growled in her ear, “Does that feel sweet?”
“Am I pushing you away?” she countered, gliding her slick skin across his and rolling on top of him. Rodin’s sculpture Paolo and Francesca came to mind. Now she knew why that erotic piece had always held her fascination: the position put her in control. Tate planted her hands next to his face on the floor. “Harder, faster, more. I want it all, and I want it right now.”
Then all thoughts zoomed from her head as Nathan sat up and hooked her ankles at the small of his back. He kept her on his lap, wrapped around him as he impaled her with each deepening stroke of his cock. Shudders of absolute ecstasy racked her body.
The earth stopped but for the points where their bodies connected and pulsed as one. A lifetime passed before he joined his mouth to hers in a heartfelt kiss that showed her the sharing of hopes and dreams was as intimate as the sharing of bodies.
In that instant, Tate knew she hadn’t found nirvana. She’d found love.
Although the night air was balmy, Nathan shivered as he climbed into his truck.
Tate had sent him packing again. He’d wanted to spend the night—the whole night—with her. Waking up together. Indulging in passion when she curled her lissome body into him in the early-morning hours. But she’d given him some lame excuse and shooed him out the door. It confused the hell out of him.
He’d given her space she seemed to need after they’d lost control in the Bobcat. He should’ve been the one embarrassed, coming in his pants like an overanxious teen. To that end, he’d foregone any pretense of romance. Instead of acknowledging that their relationship had changed, she blithely continued on as before, spreading sunshine over every avenue of his life. He’d be content basking in the glow if it weren’t for the fact he’d nearly completed her landscaping project.
And if it weren’t for the other fact he was hopelessly in love with her.
Telling her proved the major problem, although he had spilled his guts pretty good tonight about the kind of life he wished he had. The kind of life he now envisioned only with her.
Damn. Nathan knew she’d be gone the minute the ink dried on the realty contract marking her house sold. Tate was a city girl. Even when she feigned nonchalance about her career and the strained relationship with her mother, an undercurrent of anxiety colored her every action—with good reason. He had nightmares about her reaction when she discovered his deception. Mostly, he was mired in guilt on why he hadn’t confessed when he’d had ample opportunity. Then again, whenever he brought up the future—hers or theirs—that blasted woman changed the subject.
They’d have to address these issues soon, because her time in Spearfish was running out and his luck was wearing mighty thin.
The next afternoon as Nathan and Tate took a breather from planting trees, her cell phone rang. “Hello? Paul? No, no, that’s fine, you weren’t interrupting anything.” Tate raked a dirty hand through her hair and started to pace, ignoring Nathan’s quizzical stare.
Her heart pounded. A trickle of dread replaced the sweat running down her back. This couldn’t be good news. She could count on one hand the number of times her supervisor had called her on a weekend.
After listening to Paul’s ubiquitous small talk, she forced a dry chuckle. “Okay, I’m stumped on why I’m getting your personal attention on a Sunday.” She grabbed a pen and paper and wrote furiously. “How soon do you need it?…No, that’s fine…Six full pages?…Sure. No problem. I’ll expect it tomorrow then…Of course FedEx delivers here.” She laughed. It sounded fake. “I’ll call the minute it arrives. Bye.”
“What’s up?”
“I don’t know.” She stared at the phone as if it might disappear. “That was the head of my department. He’s sending me some big rush project. Top priority layout for one of the firm’s biggest clients.”
Nathan guzzled the glass of water and wiped his mouth. “I wouldn’t think suspended employees got those kinds of projects.”
Tate sniffed. “They don’t, and I certainly haven’t before today.”
“So what does that mean?”
“They’re giving me a chance to redeem myself?”
He went cross-eyed staring at a dirt smudge on the end of his nose. “Think it’s a good sign?”
“Either that”—she crossed to him and wiped off the spot he missed—“or Paul will deem whatever I create as lousy and use it as an excuse to can me.”
“Would he really do that?”
“With glee.”
When Nathan’s cell buzzed, Tate stared out the kitchen window, relieved for the disruption.
This whole spur-of-the-moment assignment felt hugely wrong. It wasn’t luck that’d landed this in her lap. Projects of this size were lined up months in advance. Was this a test?
Another problem niggled. Of all the partners in the firm, Paul had wanted to fire her immediately—not golden-boy Malcolm. Not only had he questioned the legality of her proposed extended leave, he’d never believed in her ability to handle the designs of their prominent clients in the first place. So why was Paul dangling this plum assignment in front of her now? To see if she’d blow it? Then he’d have concrete proof to convince the other partners to cancel her contract at the reinstatement hearing.
It galled her. After years of questioning the sacrifices she’d made in her life for the career she’d never really wanted, everything ultimately boiled down to one man’s decision.
Tate steeled her resolve. So, she just wouldn’t fail. No matter if she had to spend the next week working nonstop, she’d blow everyone’s socks—and Paul’s argyles particularly—right out of Arapahoe County.
Nathan’s strong arms wrapped around her. “You really need this project to dazzle them, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Her reply sounded lackluster even to her own ears. She snuggled into him, wondering when he’d sensed she needed to be held. “Sounds like I’ll be surgically attached to my drafting table.”
“Then come to Val’s with me tonight. My mom is making her famous pot roast with all the trimmings. I know Val, Richard and the brats would love to see you.”
A family dinner. It’d been months since she’d passed pleasantries along with the potatoes. She missed her parents, but not that irritating feeling of their restrained tolerance. A wave of homesickness enveloped her. But where was home? Tate wasn’t sure she knew anymore.
Her dinner that night with the LeBeau/Westfield clan only added to her confused state. What would it be like to be part of such an accepting, loving family on a permanent basis?
Nathan had been aware of her melancholy upon returning to her house. He teased, tickled and taunted her until she chased him outside and they rolled around in her backyard like a couple of frisky puppies. Sex between them had been intense and spontaneous but never silly and fun. She giggled, imagining the odd places on her body she’d discover grass stains.
Afterward, they stargazed on a blanket, wrapped in the secret world of lovers—hushed whispers, stolen caresses. The simplicity of this intimacy filled her soul with joy and sadness. Leaving Nathan would be the hardest thing she’d ever done. But she had no choice. And besides, he hadn’t mentioned he wanted more from her.
For the next few days, Tate scarcely moved from her dining room table. She’d reluctantly called Grace and cancelled her art classes. She’d miss her students, their enthusiasm, pride, and yes, even the pencil shavings and spilled paint. Teaching h
ad taught her far more about herself than the little she’d been able to impart to her students.
Grace had been strangely brusque but understanding of her dilemma. All was not right with her friend, but Tate didn’t have the time to push for answers Grace wasn’t inclined to give.
Elated with her project design and the fact she’d slipped under Paul’s deadline by a full day, Tate returned the package via overnight delivery. Any decision regarding her career was out of her hands now. She’d delivered her best work, and if it wasn’t good enough, she could stop running from her past mistakes and start her future with no regrets.
Later that week, Nathan checked to see that the new retaining walls at Tate’s house had held through the torrential downpour. The tiny patches of buffalo grass soaked up the moisture. Even the bushes and trees had sprouted in the past week. Good. When the committee inspected the work tomorrow, everything would be green and lush.
Thunder rumbled; lightning crackled. The hair on the back of Nathan’s neck prickled, and he ran for the shelter of Tate’s porch.
Inside the pitch-black house, he called, “Tate?”