A Hasty Wedding

“How’s this for specific—”

It occurred to her the glint in his eye that she had mistaken for interest was actually anger. Blake was angry at her.

“—what does it feel like to have the blade of a knife pressed against your pretty little throat?”

“Oh,” she said, deflated, “that.” She wondered if it counted at all that Blake Fallon thought her throat was pretty.

“Oh, that. Hardly worth mentioning.”

“To be quite frank, I’d forgotten about it already.”

“It seems to me I asked you if something was wrong as soon as I stepped into this office and saw you with Tomas. It doesn’t seem to me as if I got a straight answer.”

“The whole thing was already long over by the time you got here.”

“Oh? The way I heard it, the knife was being shoved under the desk by your big toe just as I came in the door. Is it still there, or did Miss Efficient file it already?”

Miss Efficient? “Actually, I did file it already. It’s in the trash. Outside.”

“Not inside, where I might see it.”

She was beginning to feel really angry. This was what his interest in her was about? The first strong emotion he had ever shown to her was annoyance? Anger? She realized she had not totally forgiven him yet for that teasing but still slightly stinging remark he had made earlier.

I didn’t know you were a girl.

And now the brief interest that had lit in his eyes was about this? Even his remark about her neck had been accompanied by that cynical tone of voice.

“I had no interest in hiding the knife from you,” she said stiffly. “I put it in the outside garbage so I didn’t have to see it every time I disposed of a piece of paper.”

“Meaning the episode did leave some impression on you.”

“Some,” she agreed reluctantly.

He leaned very close to her. “In the future, if you are attacked by someone with a knife, do you think it would be asking too much to let me know?”

“I explained to you, it was already over. And it was nothing. I never really felt threatened. I never even really felt frightened.”

“And you didn’t want to get him in trouble,” he guessed softly.

“Now that you mention it, I didn’t want to get him into trouble.”

“Your first loyalty belongs to me, Miss Lamb.”

Now she was really angry. “No, it does not, Mr. Fallon. It belongs to me. You seem quite satisfied with my heart telling me what to do with these kids so far. Tomas wasn’t a dangerous boy, he was a frightened one.”

“And if you had a few years experience with these kids, instead of a few months, you would know that was the most dangerous kind of all.”

She could see he was angry, too. Really angry for the first time since she had been employed by him. She had never even seen him get irritated with the children, but now his voice had a dangerous edge to it, and his eyes were snapping with sparks that had not the slightest thing to do with passion.

She sighed inwardly, but not out loud. Wasn’t that just her luck? Discover the humiliating secret that you were madly in love with a man who was never even going to give you a second look, and then end up in his doghouse on the very same day!

“If that’s all, Mr. Fallon,” she said, looking at her watch, “I really should have gone home half an hour ago.”

Her voice was perfect. Reprimand accepted. Except then she went and spoiled it all. Her lip trembled just a little bit. She ducked her head, but not quickly enough.

The silence filled the room. She refused to look at him.

His hand found her chin and lifted it, and she was forced to look at him. She saw the immediate remorse flash through the gray depths of his eyes.

“I’ve hurt your feelings.”

“Not at all,” she said. Her voice was trembling now, too. It would have been so much better if he didn’t touch her, if his hand was not resting on her chin, his fingertips leathery and tough. Yet his touch was not tough at all. It was everything she had known it would be.

Electric. Strong. Tender.

“Here you are, working extra time, as always, and I come in and blast you.”

His cold, hard anger was much, much easier to handle.

“You were absolutely right, I should have told you about the knife. I just didn’t even think. It won’t—”

“Holly, I think what I should have said was that it scared me. When Tomas told me what had happened, I could imagine you at the end of that knife and it scared the living daylights right out of me.”

She stared at him. He was not a man who looked like anything would scare him. She had seen him face tough, angry kids, big kids, without even a flicker of fear. So what did that mean, that he had been scared for her?

“I’m sorry it happened to you,” he said in a low voice.

Don’t read too much into it, she warned herself. He would have been sorry it happened to anybody. He ran a tight ship. An incident had occurred out of the far reaches of his control. His fear for her had not been personal.

“I guess what I wanted to say was that I don’t want you siding with the kids against me,” he continued. “I need to know what’s going on, and I need to know you trust me.”

“Oh.”

Now that he was being nice, she felt more like crying than ever.

“Maybe,” she whispered, “I need to know you trust me, too.”

“Oh.”

He let go of her chin, thankfully, though her skin felt like it burned where he had touched it. He leaned back and ran his hand through his hair. The rooster tail sprang right back up the instant his hand passed over it.

“You know what?” he said.

She shook her head mutely. Too much to hope that he was going to say, I just realized I’m madly in love with you.

“We’ve been working too hard,” he said instead. “The whole water thing has put an incredible amount of stress on the ranch, and you and I have been carrying the majority of the load. I know you’ve been putting in more time in the front lines than anyone could have asked of you.”

This was looking hopeful. You and I, as in a partnership.