To Tempt a Wilde (3 page)

“E
ither I can work off the advance or leave. Either way I'm fine with it…”

A deep frown settled between Nate's brows as he drove past the south pasture heading into town, thinking of the words slung at him by the woman.

He hadn't wanted to go to town. He had enough to do around the ranch to keep him busy from sunup to sundown. But thoughts of the woman—Althea—had plagued him the
entire morning.

Hell, thoughts of her and their exchange had kept him up most of the night as well.

Although she'd said it in an “I don't give a damn” kind of way, he'd seen a look akin to desperation in her eyes. The look, coupled with his reaction to her, had plagued him throughout the night and into the next day.

One time too many while helping the hands mend
some critical fence, he'd had
to redo a piece he'd fixed. Once he'd nearly hammered off his own finger as he pounded away at the fencing before he decided he needed to get away.

Immediately images assaulted his mind in vivid, erotic detail of just
how
Ms. Althea Dayton, or whatever her real name was, could work out the debt.

Vivid, mind-blowing images.

The type that even now had his cock rock-hard and ready. Ready to show
the smug woman just
how
she could service him.

His mood had gone from hell to hell-in-a-handbasket when he'd stalked inside the house and caught his brothers before they could make a quick getaway.

Nate stopped just inside the doorway and surveyed the scene in front of him. Both of his brothers were eating the jumbo cookies Lilly had made. Praising her for them as though they'd never tasted
a damn cookie before. Relaxed as though they hadn't a care in the world.

To say he was pissed off was putting it mildly.

“Okay, who the hell's bright idea was it to hire that
woman
and not let me know about it?”

The conversation came to a grinding halt in the warm, airy kitchen as soon as he spoke.

His brothers looked up at him, cookies halfway to their mouths, both looking as guilty as two
boys with their hands caught in the cookie jar.

One look at Nate's angry, tight features and they knew, instantly, they were in deep-shit trouble.

A side glance in Lilly's direction and Nate had seen the humor lurking in her dark eyes but had chosen to
ignore it. Miss Lilly could find humor in the situation. She had that right. He couldn't go off half-cocked with the woman who'd helped raise
him, one who was like a surrogate mother.

He turned back to his brothers.

They, on the other hand, didn't get a get-out-of-jail-free card. Not even close.

“Don't even
try
getting away,” he said, pinning them with a look when they both, at the same time, made as though to leave the room.

Both Shilah and Holt paused midflight. Slowly, they spun around on the scuffed-up heels of their well-worn
boots, both warily watching him as he advanced farther into the large kitchen.

He stopped less than a foot from them, crossed his arms over his wide chest and stared them down.

Although technically there wasn't much in the way of staring down. The men were all of similar height, Holt being the tallest at six foot five, Nate and Shilah just a few inches shy of that.

“Okay, now look here, brother—”
Holt was the first to speak in his slow, crawling drawl, the one he used when he was either trying to get a piece of tail from a woman or when he knew he'd screwed up and was buying time.

“Cut the brother crap,” Nate interrupted. That was another thing he did. Whenever he wanted to maneuver his way out of a situation, Holt was quick to pull out the brother card.

“Besides, it wasn't me who invited
her to come. It was Shilah—”

“Way to throw me under the bus,” Shilah broke in, his
expression neutral, yet the look he gave Holt promised retribution was coming his way. Soon.

“I may have issued the initial invitation, but you were the one who actually hired her when she came.”

“Yeah, well—”

Nate held up a hand, forestalling any more arguing on exactly
whose
fault it was.

“Whichever one of
you—or both of you—is to blame, I don't give a damn. Just take care of the problem. Now.”

“And how do you want us to do that? We've already paid her in advance.”

“So I heard,” Nate replied tightly.

“Besides, we need the help, you know that, Holt,” Shilah said, always the one to use logic in any situation. “Lilly's surgery is in a few weeks and we can't spare any of the hands to help out. It's
just temporary. She can do the odd jobs. Can help Lilly out in the kitchen—”

“Hell, no, she's not working in the kitchen. That's out,” Nate bit out, the thought of the woman actually in his home, in his domain, something he wasn't about to allow. “No matter how you reason this out, you both know how I feel about women on the ranch. I should have been consulted.”

There was a short pause, none
of the men giving an inch, all staring each other down.

“How'd you find out, anyway?” Holt finally asked, running a hand over the back of his head.

“How long did you plan to hide it from me?” he asked, raising a brow. When Holt shrugged, his expression sheepish, Nate continued. “Walked into the stable where I've been keeping the new horse, and she was there, feeding it.”

“Thought that horse
didn't let anyone near her.”

“She doesn't. Didn't,” Nate corrected himself.

Thinking of how gentle the horse had been with the woman, the lines of his face wrinkled, momentarily making him forget his irritation with his brothers. “Damnedest thing, too. She was feeding it by hand. It was all but cuddling in her lap, like some kinda lap dog.”

“Your problem is you don't know how to deal with a
stubborn female. Horses are no different. You have to be gentle, say all the right things to her. Make her feel special.”

“Oh, yeah, and I suppose you know how?”

“Damn right I do,” Holt said, barking out a laugh. “You have to whisper in her ear, tell her how sweet her…tail is,” he said, staring at his brother, laughter lurking in his eyes. “You do remember how to do that, right, Nate? Or do
you need a crash course, brother? 'Cause if you do, I'm here for you, man…I'm here for you,” he said, his voice lowering to a whisper, stringing out the last words.

“Yeah, I got your crash course right here,” Nate replied, flipping his brother the bird. This time Holt openly laughed at him.

“You know what your problem is, Holt? You think everything is a damn joke,” Nate bit out, and caught the
gleam of humor in Shilah's eyes as well. This time he included him in his middle-finger salute as well.

“Since when do we need your permission to hire help around here?”

“Since the help you hired was a woman,” he replied, not giving an inch. “I damn sure don't need another
woman around here. Especially who, after realizing living on a ranch is not some bullshit Hollywood glamorized version,
cuts out with the first man that comes her way.”

“Man…what the hell?” Holt asked, frowning.

As soon as Nathan made the retort, he wanted to snatch the words back, feeling like a fool. He didn't need or want the pity he saw lurking in either one of his knuckle-headed brothers' eyes once it dawned on them what he'd said and why.

Holt grabbed the back of his neck again, rubbing it, his face reddening.
“Yeah, well, sorry, bro. I guess I wasn't thinking. With Lilly about to have surgery in a few weeks and all, I figured she could use the help around the house. I wasn't trying to hurt you, you know that…” His voice trailed off into an awkward silence.

“You won't see much of her, anyway, Nate,” Shilah said, pulling away from the wall he'd been leaning against. “You don't want her in the kitchen,
that's cool. There's plenty of other things for her to do. And she's not staying in the main house. She's using the guest cottage. No worries. She'll only be here for a short time, just until Lilly has the surgery and is back on her feet. She'll be gone before you know it.” Shilah finished.

Nate eyed him suspiciously, wondering at the swift change in attitude. Although he didn't like her using
the guest cottage, the place he had built and planned to live in before Angela left, it was a better alternative to her living in his house. Under his roof.

Where he'd have easy access to her, night and day.

The errant thought blew across his mind before he could stop it, irritating him further.

“When you
boys
are done, dinner's in the oven. I'm going out to take the men their food, then I'm
going to lie down before supper,” Lilly interrupted before Nathan could speak.

All three men turned to look at her, completely forgetting her presence in the room as they argued, they were so used to her being around.

The emphasis she placed on calling them
boys
hadn't been lost on any of them.

“Let me help you with that, Ms. Lilly,” Shilah said first, and she nodded her head toward the large
covered dishes set on the counter. “Grab those.”

“Truth be told, I
could
use a little help around here. That previous boy didn't last longer than a frog in heat; didn't know his butt from a hole in the ground
and
I ended up doing most of the work myself.” She lifted the last dish from the oven and turned to place it on the stove. “I told you that boy was more trouble then he was worth. Don't
know why you didn't hire that nice young woman from town like I told you to in the first place,” she finished, staring a hole in Nate.

He felt all of ten years old, fighting the urge to duck his head in shame at the silent reprimand.

Lilly was going to have knee surgery in a few months, and with the date soon to arrive and lots of work to do, Nate had hired the young man to help with household
chores, refusing to entertain the idea of hiring one of the local women from town at Lilly's suggestion.

He'd made no apologies for his “no woman hired” policy on the ranch, something everyone, including Lilly, had simply accepted as fact.

But now, with Lilly's silent reprimand, and the fact
that he'd probably made an ass of himself not only to the woman, but to his brothers about her being
there, he knew he'd overreacted.

“You'd do well to give this one a chance, Nate. She actually looks like she understands the value of hard work. And sacrifice,” she said, and after one more considering look added, “something you and your brothers know too well. Think about it before you throw her away.” With that she turned and gathered the food, Shilah and Holt helping her, leaving Nate feeling
like an idiot.

Now, as he drove into town, the entire situation was giving him a migraine he could damn well do without.

He floored the accelerator on his truck just as he was passing a cop, cursing when, after a glance in his rearview mirror, he caught sight of the cop peeling out from the side of the road and the accompanying flash of red lights.

W
hen Althea's radio alarm blared to life she woke up with a start, her heart thumping against her rib cage as the lyrics to the old Clash song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” blared loudly from the small speakers.

With a groan she slapped a hand over the knob, beating the alarm into silent submission.

“Should I stay or should I go?” She asked the question out loud, thinking how
appropriate the lyrics to the song were in her current situation.

The light peeking through the wide slatted blinds cast a beautiful amber glow over the room.

Although she'd awakened to the sun rising often over the last two years, this one was different. It was as though it was embracing her, filling her with a “newness” that she hadn't felt in a long time.

She shook her head at her flight
of fancy, but the smile on her face lingered as she stretched her back.

For once it didn't scream at her in pain. The muscles weren't tensed up as they usually were from a night spent on a bed that was either thin as paper or so lumpy it felt as though she'd slept on a bed of rocks all night.

Raising her arms above her head, she released a long, satisfying breath.

The bed she'd been sleeping
on for the past week was queen-size with a thick, plush mattress, pulling a deep sigh of bliss from her lips.

She'd almost forgotten what it felt like to live decently.

No loud neighbors wakened her, either from cries of passion heard through the thin walls or screams and fighting, either. Nothing stopped her from getting a full eight hours of sleep. Not even her own mind.

After a week of this
type of living, she knew she could get used to it.

The thought brought her eyes wide open and caused the smile to slip from her face. That kind of thinking was what she had to avoid.

Getting too comfortable in one place was something she couldn't afford to do. With a sigh, she placed her hands on the side of her and pushed herself into an upright position.

She'd used the alarm to wake her,
realizing after the first three nights the ease with which she'd slept, surprised when her personal inner alarm allowed her to sleep past dawn, was both surprising and disturbing.

Her glance slid over the room.

She spied her baseball bat across the room, propped up against the wall. She'd even forgotten to place it near her as she'd gone to sleep last night.

She flipped her feet over the side
of the bed and
rose. “Girl, you're getting soft,” she murmured aloud to herself.

Althea headed toward the small, brightly lit kitchen to make tea, her bare feet sinking into the thick carpet, her mind on the changes in her life over the short time she'd lived at the ranch.

She'd been relieved when, after hiring her, the brothers had informed her she'd be staying in the guest cottage. It was
close enough that the walk to the main house was only ten minutes but far enough way that she had a semblance of privacy.

It was an eclectic yet beautiful blending of rustic and contemporary design. Although no larger than fifteen hundred square feet, the open floor plan maximized the space, making full use of the living area and giving the cottage a larger feel.

The bedroom was sectioned off
by five large floor-to-ceiling wood posts, and in the center of the room the queen sleigh-style bed was the focal point, its rich deep mahogany wood and scrolled etching unlike anything Althea had seen before.

In one corner was a stone-covered fireplace, similar to the one in the living area although slightly smaller, flanked by an antique-looking cheval mirror and Victorian-era chair that completed
the furnishings.

There was a distinctly feminine touch to the room, making Althea wonder if a woman had had something to do with the decorating. Immediately she discounted the thought. With the way Nate Wilde had reacted to her, she doubted any woman, save Lilly, ever set foot in the cottage. At least not if he had anything to say about it.

The man obviously had issues.

As she walked through
the cottage on her way to the kitchen, she glanced around the main living area. Although more rustic…masculine, in design, it too had a hint of softness, with its oversize furniture and ornately carved tables. As in the bedroom, there was a stone-covered fireplace, with a large, plush chocolate-brown rug set in front of it.

Althea paused, then walked over to the fireplace. Hunching down, she
ran her hand over the soft pile, her fingers sinking deep into the fibers.

Out of nowhere came the image of her and Nathan Wilde sitting in front of the fireplace, drinking a glass of wine together, their bodies pressed close, their attention only on one another.

As soon as it did, she ridiculed herself for the fanciful image.

Nate Wilde had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted
nothing to do with her and if he had his way she'd be packed up and off the ranch, the sooner the better.

Not that she wanted him, even if he were so inclined.

She didn't know one thing about the man. Had only met him once.

What she did know was that he was arrogant and condescending. She also knew he had a chip on his shoulder about women that even a blind man could see.

And he was so different
from the type of man she normally was attracted to it was ludicrous to even think of the two of them sharing a glass of wine, or anything else for that matter.

With an almost cruel clarity her body mocked her, her nipples tensing as thoughts of him barged their way into her mind. Forcing her to remember the way his aftershave, mixed with his body's natural scent, had blown across her senses,
making her catch her breath when he'd stepped close to her inside the stall.

Or the look in his eyes when she'd issued the challenge to him. A look that said more than his words, one he probably wasn't aware of himself. One every woman knew the meaning of when it crossed a man's face.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

Rising, she walked toward the kitchen, poured water in the kettle
and set it on the stove while she stood staring out of the small window. She didn't know how long she stared outside, but the sound of the kettle whistling jarred her out of her thoughts. She poured the water into a mug, sunk a tea bag inside and sat down in one of the chairs at the dinette table.

Should she stay or should she go.

The lyrics of the song played around in her mind.

From the corner
of her eye, she spied a penny lying on the carpet and rose slowly, walking over to it, a thoughtful frown on her face.

She lifted the coin from the carpet, fingering it.

“Heads I stay, tails I go. Seems a good enough way to decide as any,” she said, laughing humorlessly.

Closing her eyes, she flipped the coin in the air, willing to allow fate to make the decision for her.

In what seemed to
be slow motion she watched it spin in the air before it landed, soundlessly, on the thick carpet at her feet. She waited a full minute before glancing at it.

Heads.

She lifted the coin, palmed it in the center of her hand.

“Two out of three,” she murmured.

Two more times the coin came up heads.

She sat back on her haunches, this time her laughter more relaxed. She shook her head. Not only
because she was allowing a coin toss to decide her fate, but the fact that fate was
seriously
conspiring against her.

She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly and pulled herself together.

Despite everything that had happened to her over the past two years, she wasn't a quitter. She was tired of running. Damn tired. And this seemed to be the perfect place, if only for a short while, to take
a break from running. Do some thinking about her life, figure out how to untangle the mess it had become.

And if Nate Wilde had a problem with that…well, she had tackled bigger obstacles in her life. He wasn't
anything
she couldn't handle.

After breakfast, Althea took a leisurely shower, smiling in bliss when she squirted the foamy, deeply scented bath gel onto her sponge, the rich, decadent
lather smooth and silky against her skin.

Much like the rest of the cottage, the bathroom was fully stocked with everything from designer shampoos to the shower gel that felt like silk against her skin.

After indulging for longer than she should have in the shower, she quickly dried off, hurrying through the rest of her morning routine. When it came time to get dressed, she paused as she rifled
through her meager possessions.

“Jeans, or jeans…or then again, there's jeans. Hmmm…what'll it be?” She tilted her head as though seriously considering her options. “Jeans it is,” she said aloud, a reluctant laugh tumbling from her lips.

After lifting out the jeans, her hand brushed against her rare concession to feminine sensibility, one of only a few things she'd brought with her, nestled
at the back of her drawer.

The proverbial little black dress.

She remembered the last time she'd worn it, at a black tie event with her father, the last one they'd been to together before he died. The smile drifted away from her face as she spied the small, framed photo of them she kept in the drawer. She lifted it and ran her thumb over his face.

“You look so handsome, Daddy,” she whispered.

It was the last photo she had of herself and her father together. That night had been the last night she'd seen her father alive.

She closed her eyes briefly and placed the photograph back where she kept it.

Thinking of the man who'd stolen her life, her world made her clench her jaw tight and battle against tears that were never too far away, threatening to consume her if she allowed them to.

But she wouldn't. She couldn't.

Angrily Althea swiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

Tears weren't going to help her current situation, no more so than they could bring back her father. It was what it was, as that cliché saying went. But damn if it wasn't a hard, bitter pill to swallow.

She carefully refolded the dress and placed it at the back of the drawer, along with the photograph.

She quickly dressed, choosing her standard jeans, thermal undershirt and sweater, stuffed her feet inside her worn tennis shoes before grabbing her parka and heading out the door, putting her emotional armor in place, ready to face whatever the day…or Nate Wilde…dealt her.