Embraced (8 page)

A teasing smile spread over Mandy’s face. “Oh, Barrett’s lunch, is it? Am I supposed to starve at home again?”

Meg caught Mandy’s eye. “Heaven’s no, why don’t you call Jake Tomasi and have him come take you out for lunch?” she asked in an angelic tone.

“Meagan! Why would I want that – that dirty cowboy to take me out? Really!”

Lunch for two in hand, Meg pushed opened the door with her hip. “Through protesting too much, Manda?” she dug, then stage whispered, “I hate to tell you, but your brothers are all dirty cowboys, too. That’s why they use soap.”

Amanda humphed and puffed as Meg grabbed keys to the battered old truck Barrett had told her to use in case of an emergency. Well, he’d forgotten his lunch in the fridge, and she didn’t want him to go all day without food, that was emergency

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enough for her, so she piled her goodies into the truck and drove off in search of him. He always left a note for her as to where he’d be if he was going to be out with the herd, and, thanks to their frequent rides around his property, she had a pretty good idea where to find him.

While she drove, Meg thought about Mandy and her reaction to Jake Tomasi. It was much the same as hers had been to Barrett. Jake was a very aggressive, opinionated, dominant man.

And alpha-male of the highest order, just like someone else they both knew. He’d rubbed Mandy the wrong way all her life – his ranch adjoined the Costas’ Circle C ranch, and lately had been turning it into an art form, or an enjoyable hobby, depending on how you looked at it. Mandy just couldn’t stop ranting about how boorish and chauvinistic he was, and how much she hated him.

Uh-huh. Everyone in her family had pretty much made the same diagnosis as Meg, and was wondering when they’d finally break down and either kill each other or start dating.

Barrett was exactly where he said he’d be; she spotted him immediately riding towards the truck, having seen the truck coming already. He was a magnificent rider, and, according to him, was practically born on a horse. Secretly, Meg thought his mother might have had some objection to that, but she kept quiet. He moved like a centaur, he and the horse thinking and moving alike.

Well, Meg thought wryly, she could definitely see him thinking like a horse . . .

He dismounted and walked toward her, disreputable Stetson crammed down on his head, jeans dirty and mucky, shirt ripped in several places, and caked with blood.

Blood? Meg quickened her step toward him when she noticed the dried red splotches on his shirt. “Barrett, are you all

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Embraced

right?” she asked, turning a concerned face up to him while her hand touched his chest lightly. “Are you hurt?”

“Right as rain, Sweetie. These little cuts are nothin’ to worry about,” he bent down and covered her lips with his, eliciting catcalls and howls from the men who were still working around him.

She was far from convinced about the cuts, but let him corral her to his side with his right arm. She smelled clean of soap and perfume in the midst of horse and leather and cow. They walked to the truck, and she produced the food. His eyes bugged and his mouth watered at the same time. “I forgot my lunch.”

“I know. I remembered.”

Their lunch was peaceful, Barrett eating three sandwiches to her half, and devouring the entire piece of coffeecake with lots of lip smacking and groans of delight. “You could sell this, Honey, and beat the pants off Sarah Lee,” he complimented, and she blushed. When he was done and she’d packed everything away, he leaned against the truck and pulled her between his legs to lean her back to his front. They fit together perfectly that way, both sighing contentedly at exactly the same moment, laughing together at their synchronicity.

“Well, much as I don’t want to,” he made as if to get up, but Meg’s hand on his stomach stopped him.

“Aren’t you going to see to those cuts, Barrett? What if they get infected?”

He was pleasantly surprised at her concern. “Well, I doubt they will . . .”

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She was already tugging him toward the cab of the truck.

“You come back to the house with me and I’ll clean them up.”

Barrett gave in more out of curiosity than necessity. “We’ll have to take Blue – I don’t want to drive the truck back onto the range.” He swung easily up into the saddle and hauled her up in front of him, yelling to his foreman that he’d be back shortly. The trip back to the house was conducted at an enforced, leisurely walk, because Barrett wouldn’t allow the horse to go any faster. He was enjoying the feel of her in his arms too much to rush it. Blue didn’t need any directions on how to get back to the barn, so he gave the horse his head and concentrated on how wonderful her breasts felt as the bobbed gently against his forearm. His mouth wandered from the line of her jaw down her bare neck, tongue drawing a wet line to her collarbone where he stopped to suck. Meg arched her back and nearly fell off, and then Barrett nearly fell off laughing at her.

The site of her 6’3” brother being lead docilely by hand through the kitchen door by her much smaller best friend left Mandy with her jaw on the floor. Barrett grinned broadly and put his finger over his lips so that she wouldn’t mention in passing to Meagan that her brother regularly worked with much more serious injuries, and allowed himself to be lead down the hall by someone who seemed to be a frustrated Florence Nightingale.

She would have taken him into her bathroom, but he vetoed that. “My bathroom is more comfortable for two people,” he suggested. Meg had never seen his bedroom, as far as he knew.

He opened the door for her, then showed her to the lavatory, where he sat at a chair that used to be his mother’s as a part of her vanity.

All she got was a quick view of a huge king sized bed, lots of burgundy, chocolate brown, and cream, as well as heavy oak furniture. Pointing to a tall closet, he said, “Band aids, antiseptic, cotton balls, et cetera,” as he stripped off his tattered shirt.

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Meagan drew a breath when she turned back around and there he was, bare chested. She could barely breath, much less fumble with band aid packaging. Biting her lip, she tried to stay as business-like as possible. Some of the cuts, no matter how he tried to downplay them, were nasty and deep. “Some of these cuts really need stitches.” Barrett snorted in response, and she guessed that thought was out. First things first, she dampened a cloth and washed off the broad expanse of his shoulders, upper arms, and chest, down to his waistband in the front and back. He sat stock-still and quiet, not even saying anything risqué, which she readily expected.

Dousing large bunches of cotton balls with antiseptic; she applied it liberally to each of the cuts, flinching for him because he apparently wouldn’t do it himself. To distract the both of them, she asked, “Was this your parents’ room?”

“Yes. I stayed in my own room for years after they died.

Couldn’t quite make that jump to really taking their place in the house, you know?” Meg nodded, listening intently while placing band-aids over the worst of the cuts. “Long about the time I turned 25 and came into the my inheritance, I decided to talk to the boys and Mandy about it, and they all thought I should use it. It took me another little while after I got their ok to finally realize that Momma and Daddy would have wanted me to use it. It’s my room now; I let Mandy redecorate it, bought all new furniture, everything, but I kept everything that was theirs. It’s in the spare bedroom. Just couldn’t part with it all the way, I guess.”

Ever a bundle of raw emotion, there were tears in Meg’s eyes when he finished. For a man who tried to be all things to all people, who had been forced to grow up well before his time, built several growing businesses, and managed to keep a young family together when he wasn’t much more than a kid himself, he was still

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sometimes achingly human. He missed his parents; that’s why he couldn’t be callous enough to just chuck their things. She’d been in the spare bedroom a time or two, and everything there was kept pristine.

Blinking back the tears, she kidded, “I wondered why you needed a vanity.”

He cleared his throat gruffly. “Yeah, it’s where I keep all my Mary Kay cosmetics,” he said with a completely straight face.

Meg giggled at the idea of Barrett bending in front of the vanity mirror to apply Day-glo orange lipstick. She’d pay a bundle for
that
picture!

“Are you done, Mother hen?” he asked.

She surveyed her handiwork, and pronounced him fit for duty, kissing him lightly on the top of his head. “Wow. I like you sitting down. It makes you short!! So that’s what the top of your head looks like – oh, my, the dandruff!” She quipped and was smart enough to run out of the room before he could grab her and exact retribution.

Barrett stayed put, looking at the multitude of pink bandages that he would have to rip off as he rode back out to work.

He was going to have to endure enough ribbing about her bringing him lunch; he didn’t need the extra helping of insults these plastic strips would get him. He could just see Rich, his foreman, asking if Meg had kissed it all better. Actually, she had. If she wanted to mother him some, that was fine with him. It was novel for him to have someone looking out for him, when all his life, it seemed, he had been looking out for everyone else. It felt damned good, he admitted, scrunching the hat back onto his head. Even if the mother hen was a stubborn little redheaded brat with more

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backbone and intelligence than most of the men he knew. She was his little brat, and that was the way he liked it.

Meagan was not surprised when Barrett wasn’t home for dinner on time. Time and cattle wait for no man, she thought, wandering into the kitchen. Mandy had gone into town to look for a new dress, but Meg thought it was probably just a ruse to see if she could catch a glimpse of Jake Tomasi at the local diner. She peeped out the kitchen window and saw a group of the men heading into the bunkhouse, and knew that Barrett wouldn’t be too far behind them, so she turned two burners on the gas stove and reached underneath for two sauce pans, so that she could heat up some supper for him. Anxiously peering out the window for a sight of him, she was horrified to see the flashing red lights of an ambulance pull into the driveway. Without a second thought, she took off her oven mitts and threw them toward the stove, unable to get the idea out of her mind that Barrett might have been seriously injured.

When she got out there, she saw him in the back of one of the other ranch trucks, holding one of the younger cowboys on his lap while applying pressure to the man’s stomach with his right hand. Someone had gotten gored. Barrett helped transfer the man to a stretcher then rushed into the house to call his personal physician. He wanted Larry to get the best of care. Meg remained outside until the ambulance left, getting the full story of a recalcitrant animal and a cocky young cowboy.

Meg wandered back into the house, expecting to refrigerate the leftovers she was going to feed Barrett because he would probably want to go to the hospital and make sure Larry was going to be ok. A strange smell like burning fabric crawled up her nose as soon as she entered the house, and suddenly she remembered

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that she’d left two burners on and thrown the oven mitts back toward the stove. When she saw Barrett standing next to the stove with a badly singed pair of gloves in his hand and a muscle working furiously in his jaw, her heart dropped into her stomach.

He didn’t say a word, but grabbed her hand and pulled her into his study, seating her on the cushiony leather couch.

He didn’t have to tell her to stay; she didn’t want to get into any deeper trouble by making him have to come get her, despite the fact that she knew he was going to spank her and she desperately wanted to be anywhere but here, waiting patiently, docilely to be spanked. Barrett went ahead and made his phone call; it gave him time to cool down. Dr. Joe Dennison was an old friend of his, and when any of Barrett’s people were hurt, he made sure that Joe took care of them, at no expense to the employee. Barrett took care of his own.

He cradled the phone and realized that he was going to have to take care of one of his own in an entirely different manner shortly. Meg was exactly where he’d left her; he had thought she might bolt, but he was glad she was made of sterner stuff. As usual, Barrett sat next to a recalcitrant girl on his father’s old leather couch. Only this time, it wasn’t his sister, not by a long stretch of his imagination. Spanking Meg and spanking Mandy were two very different things.

“C-can we talk about this?” her voice sounded breathy, and high pitched.

Barrett turned his body toward hers receptively, saying,

“What would you like to say, Angel-girl?”

As she waited, Meg had thought of a thousand things she wanted to say, each in hopes of deterring him from punishing her.

But all of those things now seemed ridiculous and trite. What

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could
she say? There was nothing adequate to excuse what she’d done. What came out was a heartfelt, “Barrett, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Tears were already in her eyes.

He held out his arms, and she plunged into them, seeking solace, comfort, absolution. His hand rubbed her back. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

“I was j-just going to h-heat up leftovers for you – I knew you’d be hungry a-and then the ambulance came and – “

“Shhhh, Babygirl. I know.” Meg’s golden red head tucked beneath his chin while she sobbed onto his shirt. When he spoke, his chin rested atop that bright hair. “There wasn’t a lot of damage done; the curtains are a little singed, and the house’ll have to be aired out good. We need a new pair of oven mitts, and maybe some touch up to the paint by the stove. All in all, Meagan, I’m very lucky you didn’t burn my family’s 150 year old home down.”