Stripped Down (20 page)

She’s breathless when I release her mouth. “Do you like it?”

It’s perfect. “Beautiful,” I tell her. “Kinda makes me want to let you ink all of me. Now tell me why you picked a feather.”

She sighs. “The next time you climb up a cliff without a rope, maybe you’ll remember that maybe you can’t fly, but you can fall.”

That’s when I know she cares.

ANGEL

R
ose doesn’t come over to the house during the daylight hours for three days. Probably because she’s busy inking every loser in Lonesome. She talks when she works, a constant stream of chatter that I listen to shamelessly when I can. I learn which TV shows she likes and which bands. I also know what her dream vacation would be (hiking up to Machu Picchu because apparently she has a secret masochistic side), what she would name a horse (another thing that happens over my dead body), and where I can buy almost everything online. At night, though, she comes over to my place and we have sex. Lots and lots of amazing, hot, fantastic sex.

And then she gets up and she leaves my ass in the bed. I’m fairly certain she’s doing this to make a point, but I go with it.

I need to work on my nonexistent relationship skills, because when she’s not working and we’re not fucking, she disappears inside that RV of hers. I can’t tell if she’s ignoring me, ignoring us, or maybe she has some deadly bird flu and she needs me. Yeah. It’s fucking pathetic. Eventually, I lose patience and I go over to her “place.” The fucking not-good-enough RV she shares with Rory. I bang on the door and wait. And then wait some more.

The screen door stays firmly closed.

Okay then.

I knock on the door harder than is strictly necessary. Rory flings the door open. He’s wearing a pair of partially buttoned Levis. This means that I now know his nipples are pierced, as are his ears. Even through the tattoos decorating his ribs and scrolling over his stomach, the muscles are clearly visible. The look on his face is decidedly unfriendly, making it obvious that, despite the pretty decorations, he’d be happy to kick my ass for me. That’s fan-fucking-tastic, because I’m not feeling civilized myself. I could get away with murder because out here I’m a fucking king. I own the land, I run the cattle. My boys will guard my back and cover my ass.

“Where’s Rose?”

“Out.” Rory scratches his belly with a self-satisfied smirk.

I slap a palm against the doorframe and lean in. “Be more specific.”

He flashes me his middle finger. “Guess who’s not the boss of me?”

He makes me fucking repeat myself. “Where’s Rose?”

Rory waits a beat before he gives it up, but guess he’s into self-preservation after all because he finally does give me the information I need. “Rose is cleaning out at Auntie Dee’s.”

Information appreciated. I nod toward my truck where Dare’s got his ass parked in my front seat. “I’ve got her a second opinion on potential repairs.”

A skeptical look crosses Rory’s face. “You want to help her?”

There’s all sorts of shit I’d like to do to Rose and that’s the truth. “She needs a second opinion on the repairs to that house,” I say instead.

“She’s at the house,” he repeats. “You want her, you’ll find her there.”

Good enough. I head toward the truck and slam the vehicle into drive.

Dare crosses his arms. “Rose is a good kid.”

Fuck. The whole world’s on her side. I don’t need the five-minute drive to Auntie Dee’s to figure that out. Not being a flowers and candy kind of guy, I’ve traded romance for practically. Dare rocks at construction and there’s nothing he can’t fix.

When Dare and I roll up, Rose is standing on the sagging porch, picking at the ribbons of paint curling from the railing. She’s got a stack of architectural drawings pinned to the floor with a pair of flip-flops, but she doesn’t look defeated. That’s my Rose.

The local inspector is just finishing up. The guy leans into her in a way that makes me want to growl, walking her through a list of a dozen-plus code violations she needs to remedy before he’ll even consider giving her a certificate of occupancy.

Rose’s get-up today is clearly designed to torture me. A pair of itty-bitty denim cut-offs cup her ass and stop just short of covering her cheeks. As if those shorts aren’t impractical enough, the four-inch wedge sandals give her legs that go on for miles. I should worry about her breaking an ankle—I doubt Rose has health insurance and there’s no resident doctor in Lonesome—but instead, I imagine her legs wrapped around my waist.

Just like the damned contractor is.

Making her vision a reality won’t be easy. Money aside, Lonesome lacks the contractors she needs. The house also requires more major repairs than I have fingers. And yet her passion for her dream is infectious. For no good, understandable reason, she’s decided to turn Auntie Dee’s house into a tattoo parlor with an apartment for her to live in. If I could, I’d make it happen for her.

She pops right over to me when my boots hit her front porch. “Getting the bad news?” I ask her.

The last time we saw each other, we were both naked and I was balls-deep inside her. You’d never know it to look at her, though. She levels an icy smile on me.

“You expect me to fail,” she says.

Pretty much, but this isn’t really about her succeeding or failing. This is about the house, the property, the water, and the sheer impossibility of her living here. I go with the safe answer.

“This house needs major repairs.”

“But it can be fixed,” she argues. Rose lives to argue with me. She plops down on the top step of the porch. Followed by Dare, the inspector disappears back inside to “check one more thing,” even though I can’t imagine what the man hasn’t investigated already.

“It should be bulldozed. You’d need thousands of dollars.” I lean back against the porch pillar, crossing one booted foot over the other. “Tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do you have that kind of cash?”

“I could try for a mortgage,” she counters stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. That defensive movement pushes her breasts up into luscious little mounds. Carrying her back to bed and making her forget all about this crazy dreams of hers shoots up my priority list. I can make the loss up to her. She’ll get over it.

“We both know a bank won’t lend on this place. There’s no value in a tear-down house.”

Plus, I pretty much
am
the bank in these parts.

“Auntie Dee’s place is not a tear-down.” Fingers rubbing her arms, she tilts her head back, letting it hit the railing. Maybe, with her eyes closed, she can’t notice the shower of paint flakes that catch in her hair. “Not to me,” she says, but now she sounds tired.

Yes,
I think. That’s the plan. “Be reasonable, Rose,” I say instead, because I have no intention of answering her question. “Tell me what’s
right
about this house.”

She shakes her head as if she can’t believe I’m asking that particular question. “This was our
home
.”

“Four walls”—barely—”a roof. And a door. I don’t see anything so special.”

She could find a rundown wreck in any one of the fifty states.

“No, you wouldn’t. But Auntie Dee would sit right there”— she waves a hand at the two-seater swing behind us—”and I’d curl up right there beside her. You can see the sunset from here, and we’d watch the mountain go all pink and gold. Sometimes she’d tell me stories about places she’d gone, people she’d known before she settled down in Lonesome for good. Other times we’d just sit there together. It was my job to push.” She stares at the swing as if she can still see the woman who took her in when her mother moved away. As if that old woman really was the center of her world, even after Rose up and went, following in her mother’s footsteps.

“Every night,” she continues quietly. “We came out here and we sat and we smelled the roses. She said that mattered, taking that time together. She’d planted that rosebush when she first moved in here. She joked it took up more space on the porch than she did.”

The rosebush is a Lady Banks, which are known for moderation about as much as Rose is. The tiny yellow flowers climb over the roof of the porch, the sheer weight of the blooms threatening to bring the whole thing down beneath its canopy of green and yellow. Rose reaches out, stroking a soft petal, lost in thought. She doesn’t see just flowers. She sees something
more
.

I have to wonder what it would take to make Rose Jordan look at
me
that way. We had sex and she was a wildcat in my arms. She came when I told her, and she gave it up like a dream. And then she killed me by opening up to me. She let me touch and taste her, and now she’s under my skin and I want
more
. I’m jealous of a fucking rosebush and a dead woman Rose can’t, won’t, forget.

Of course, Auntie Dee was a good woman. I’m the exact opposite of good.

“This place is
mine,
” she says, talking away even though I’m not answering, not with words. “I’ve spent months dreaming about it, drawing up plans for the renovations. This is
my
home and my chance at success, and I plan on hanging on to it. Even if it is falling down around my ears and I only own half of it,” she adds wryly.

“Start over,” I suggest, hoping she’ll listen. “My offer still stands. I’ll cut you a check, and you can pick out a place that doesn’t come with the largest colony of termites west of the Sierras.”

She opens her mouth, and I can just about see the refusal coming, when the contractor bangs open the screen door and joins us on the porch. Dare follows behind him more slowly, scrawling numbers on one of those notebooks he’s always carting around in his pocket. He’s never quite adjusted to the whole iPhone thing.

“Christ,” the contractor announces cheerfully. “She’s a tear-down, all right. Not sure why you’d want to put her to rights.” He shakes his head. “Thought you were putting a well in here, Mr. Mendoza, not doing renos.”

And cue the shit storm
. I glare at the man, but the damage is done.

“The house already has a well.” Rose sounds confused. “It’s not dry.”

“We’re done here,” I snap.

The contractor nods, glancing down at the yellow legal pad where he’s jotted his endless notes.

“No, we’re not. You don’t call the shots
here,
Angel. Not in my house.” Rose flies to her feet, looking irritated. “Tell me why I need a new well.”

The contractor looks at me because the man isn’t stupid. I can ensure he never works in Northern California again, but the words are out there, the damage done. I mentally flip it the bird and gesture for the other man to continue.

“You got plenty of water here. This place is sitting on a real nice little aquifer. Mr. Mendoza had a drilling engineer out to check the levels a few months ago. Knock down the house, put in a new well, and you’re golden.”

Rose’s face closes right up. “I see,” she says, and I’ll bet she does. The contractor must smell trouble brewing, because he beats a retreat to his pickup. Rose just watches him go.

“Rose,” I say, and I want to say this carefully.

“Your offer to buy me out isn’t just a be-nice favor, is it, Angel?”

“This house is sitting on an aquifer. Blackhawk Ranch is running dry on its southern border. I drill here, that problem goes away.”

She looks horrified. “You want to turn my home into a cattle yard.”

“Hell, Rose.” I scrub a hand over my head, then jam the Stetson back on. “I want what’s best for both of us. My ranch needs the water. You need a chance to start over. Take the check, and you’ve got that chance. What’s so hard about doing that?”

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me.” She’s standing chest to chest with me now, eyes snapping. She’s furious, and she still doesn’t know the half of it. Goddamn it, why can’t she admit I might be right? Maybe I do know what’s best for her. “You have no right.”

“Actually, I do, darling,” I drawl, watching her eyes narrow. “I can take you to court and force the sale.”

ROSE

Angel is big, tough, and sexy. Part of me wants to get my hands on his belt buckle and undo him the way he’s undone me. He’s gorgeous—I try the word out mentally, and it fits—but he’s put that distance between us again. He stands there on my porch, leaning against the pillar, while I sit lower down on the steps. Well, screw him. Screw his well-intentioned plans for my life.