Shrinking Violet (Colors #2) (3 page)

“Gladly.” I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud until I heard a giggle from Milly and saw Cassidy flush red once again.

It took me four steps to catch up with her quick pace toward the old barn. Once I was walking alongside her, I racked my brain for something to say. I needed a way to get her to look at me again.

“So, who’s Bug?” I finally asked. As we stepped into the darkness of the barn, I was hit with the smells of hay and everything else you’d come to expect from horses.

Finally
, she looked back toward me and my chest tightened. “Huh?” She looked confused, like she hadn’t heard my question.

“You were asking Milly about someone named Bug? Is that a woman who works here?”

“Oh, um, no. She’s my…”

Her answer was cut short by a high-pitched shriek coming from further in the barn.

“
Mommy!
”

I stood stunned as a little girl came barreling toward Cassidy before plowing into her legs and wrapping her little arms around her.

“Mommy, Unca Kal said I can have a horsey!
Can I, can I, can I
? Pleeeeeeeease!”

Cassidy reached down, scooped the little girl up and propped her on her hip. “We’ll talk about it later, Doodle Bug,” she answered as she shot a glare toward a man walking toward us.
Good Christ!
The dude was a giant!

“But,
Moooooom
!” The little girl whined on her hip.

“Later,” Cassidy said in a warning tone.

Obviously, the little girl had the attention span of a flea because just as soon as she turned and saw me, the horse was long forgotten.

“Mommy,” she whispered loudly. “Who’s dat?”

“That’s Carson, Doodle Bug. He’s gonna be working at the ranch. Why don’t you say hi?”

The little girl—was her name seriously Doodle Bug?
—
began squirming on Cassidy’s hip to be let down. “Hiya,” she said once she stood in front of me.

Kids weren’t typically something I was used to dealing with, so I was a little thrown as to how to act around the mini-spitting image of Cassidy.

“Uh, hi. I’m Carson. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m Willow. Niceta meechu too.” I didn’t understand anything she’d just said.

“This is Willow,” Cassidy deciphered, brushing her hands through the child’s unruly blonde hair. “My daughter. But we all call her Doodle Bug, or Bug for short.”

Her
daughter
?
Holy hell!
No way did Cassidy look nearly old enough to have a daughter. Especially one who looked to be three or four years old.

“You’s tall,” Willow told me. “But not as tall as Unca Kal.”

“What’s an unca kal?” I asked.

“That’d be me,” the big, burly guy answered.
He rocked back on the heels of his dusty old work boots. Judging from the silver around his temples and smattered through the rest of his dark brown hair, I put the guy in his mid- to late-fifties. He had to have been at least six-foot-five, standing an inch or two taller than me, and judging by the bulk of muscle he carried on his frame, hard ranch work was most definitely in his blood. Not a man I’d want to run into in a dark alley at night, that was for damn sure.

I offered my hand to the beast of a dude standing in front of me. The man’s gigantic hand shot out and wrapped around mine, squeezing a little tighter than necessary. Refusing to wince at his bone-crushing hold, I kept my gaze trained on his. The glint in his dark brown eyes let me know he was sizing me up, seeing if I was worth my salt. I was up for the challenge. I’d been in enough foster homes to know when I should be rightfully intimidated. And everything about the man screamed intimidation.

“I’m Kal Sheffield, or Uncle Kal to Bug here.”

“Carson Langford, sir. I’m the new ranch hand.”

“That so?” A slow grin spread across his face. “Guess that makes me your boss, huh?”

Ah, hell.

“Bug, why don’t you go back up to the house and find Aunt Milly? We’re going to be making jam in just a little bit.”

“
Yay!
” Willow shrieked at Cassidy’s announcement, taking off out of the barn like a bolt of lightning. Once gone, Cassidy turned back to Kal and shot him with a look I’d never in my right mind dare to give him.

“What’d I say about the horses, Kal? She’s going to break her neck one of these days,” she practically hissed. At the warning in her eyes as she stared up at him, her head nearly tipped all the way back, I was starting to think the shy, shrinking violet vibe I’d gotten from her earlier was a bit off the mark. She had a fire inside of her. I could see it right then.

I stood in wonder as the big man actually had the decency to look ashamed. “Ah, baby girl. You know I’d never let anything happen to her. Besides, she’s gonna have to learn sooner or later, living on a ranch and all. You can’t keep her away from them forever. And you’re worrying about nothing.”

“Falling off a damn horse isn’t
nothing
, Kal. It doesn’t look like that long of a fall from the ground, but once you get up there, it’s a different story,” Cassidy replied, propping her hands on her hips, accentuating her sexy-as-hell curves.

Kal’s deep chuckle snapped me from my daydreaming about what those curves would feel like beneath my hands.

“We’ll beat the last of that city outta you one of these days, baby girl. Just you wait.”

City? So, Cassidy wasn’t raised on the ranch?
That was interesting.

“We’ll see about that,” she huffed, but I noticed she was biting the corner of her lip to keep from smiling. “Have fun, you two,” she offered up as she turned and headed out of the barn. The view from the back was just as awesome as it was from the front. I hadn’t even realized I was staring until Kal’s rumbling voice snapped me back to reality.

“Sweet girl, right there,” he said with a tip of his chin in the direction Cassidy had gone. “She’s my niece, but I look at her like I would my own daughter. You understanding me, son?”

If I hadn’t already understood the warning in his tone loud and clear, the ‘I’ll beat you within an inch of your life if you so much as look at her’ glare spoke volumes. As far as
my boss
was concerned, Cassidy was off-limits. And considering I needed the money from this job, I was inclined to heed his warning.

At least for the time being.

“So, that Carson boy’s a looker, huh?” Milly glanced at me from the corner of her eye.

Not again.

In the four years I’d been living on Willow Ranch, Milly never let an opportunity pass to try and set me up with any and all reasonably attractive young men she came across. She refused to accept that relationships weren’t something I had any interest in. My priorities were finally where they needed to be. After so many years of putting myself and my selfish needs before everything else, I was finally seeing things clearly. Willow came first, above everything else. That meant there was no time for such things as relationships.

I refused to let myself fall back on old behavior. And relationships always seemed to lead me down that road. I couldn’t afford to make those same mistakes again.

“Wassa lookew, Mommy?” Willow asked.

“It’s nothing, sweetie,” I answered before shooting a warning glare at Milly to drop it. As usual, she didn’t listen.

“I’m just saying,” she stated with an innocent shrug as she continued to stir the fruit boiling in a pot on the stovetop. I screwed the lids on the recently poured jars of strawberry jam and placed them in a water bath. “You’re only young once. And what’s that thing kids say nowadays? ‘If you don’t use it, you lose it?’”

“Oh, my God, Milly!” I laughed in surprise. My eyes darted to Willow, who was mushing peaches up with so much determination she wasn’t paying attention to what we were talking about. “She’s gonna hear you,” I hissed.

“Oh, no, she’s not.” Milly shrugged it off with a wave of her hand. “That child can’t concentrate on anything for more than ten seconds.” As if to prove her point, she tilted her head in Willow’s direction. Sure enough, my little girl had abandoned the peaches and was throwing sugar around the kitchen like it was snow.

“Bug, no!” I could hear Milly laughing as I took off at a run when the little sugar thrower sprinted off like a bat out of Hell. I could hear her cute little giggle just as I rounded the corner out of the kitchen into the hallway, barreling straight into a massive wall.

A massive wall of muscle and man that smelled way too damn good.

“Whoa. Are you okay?”

His entire presence was overwhelming, and all I could do was stare. My eyes were glued to his chest, where his sweat-dampened t-shirt clung to his muscles…his fabulous, rock-hard muscles. He smelled divine, like the outdoors and laundry detergent and something else entirely masculine. It was enough to fry the most intelligent woman’s brain.

I blinked and somehow managed to pull my eyes away from his chest in order to look up to see his lips moving. Although, with the combination of his scent, his fabulous body, and the feel of his work-rough hands on my arms, I hadn’t heard a single word he said.

“I’m sorry, what?”

One corner of his mouth tipped up in a smirk that told me I’d been busted shamelessly ogling him. His mossy-green eyes glinted with something I hadn’t seen pointed in my direction in four years. Something that sent my stomach plummeting down to my feet.

Attraction.

“I asked if you were okay,” Carson responded with a smirk.

“Oh, uh…” I took a step back in order to clear the fog from my head. “Y-yeah. I’m okay,” I stuttered as I ran my hand through my hair anxiously. It had been so long since I felt drawn to a guy, since I even let myself get close enough. It was too dangerous. I couldn’t stand the anxiety coursing through me at Carson’s attention.

“I was just going after Bug.” I kept my eyes on the scuffed hardwood floors beneath my feet. The adrenaline of our initial contact had worn off, and I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eyes. It was too much.
He
was too much.

I felt it when I first saw him outside. His presence was just so dominating. Red flags were going up left and right in my mind, warning me that a guy like Carson screamed trouble.

“She took off out the door right as I was coming in.”

“Yeah.” My lips quirked up in a small grin as I leaned over to peek out the door. “No doubt she’s run to Kal to keep from getting in trouble.”