Texas Wedding

“You don’t need to borrow one,” Eli broke in eagerly, like the smarmy teacher’s pet everyone had hated in high school. “I’m good with machines. I bet I could fix ours.”

Ours? The kid had worked here one half of one day, and already he owned the equipment? Trent turned toward the brat, ready to let loose, but Susannah put out her hand and touched Trent’s forearm lightly.

“Thanks, Eli,” she said, “but unless you can actually raise the dead, I’m afraid it’s no use. We’ll be fine with the loaner. Please go let Mr. Hobbin know it’s arranged, okay?”

Eli was caught for a moment, wedged between his desire to avenge himself with Trent and his determination to impress Susannah.

Self-preservation won the day. He bobbed his head deferentially. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

After he was gone, the silence in the office was fraught with tension.

Susannah put the kit away, locked the cabinet and then finally turned to Trent. “Please tell Chase thanks. I appreciate the loan of the shaker.”

For some inexplicable reason, Trent was suddenly irritated. For one thing, Chase didn’t even know about the loan. Trent was in charge of all such details at the Double C. It was Trent who had made it possible.

But clearly there’d be snowball fights in Hell before Susannah would ever thank Trent for anything.

She lifted her chin. “Was there anything else you needed?”

That ice-cold tone was the last straw. “Yeah,” he said. “One other thing. I thought I’d just mention what a colossally bad idea it is to flirt with teenage boys who happen to be on your payroll.”

Her eyebrows dived together. “I wasn’t flirting with him.”

“Really? Are you sure he knows that?”

“I’m quite sure.” She stood ramrod straight, clearly offended. “Is that why you were being such an ass to him? Because you thought we were…flirting?”

Trent sat on the corner of Zander’s desk, the only spot not covered in files and papers and junk. “No, I was being an ass to him because he is a cocky little loser who hasn’t ever done an honest day’s work in his life, and I can’t believe you were dumb enough to hire him.”

She’d gone slightly pale, which he knew from long experience was a sign of fury. He braced himself for the storm, and as he did he realized that, in some strange way, he welcomed the fight.

At least it would be real emotion. A real connection.

And, God help him, he still craved that. All that crap about being too exhausted to desire her? He’d been sunk the minute he saw the curve of her back as she’d bent over Eli’s hand, and the way the sunlight created a halo around her head.

It had been enough to send the hunger raging through him all over again. He wouldn’t get what he really wanted, of course. But a good, rousing battle might at least siphon off some of this tension.

She took a couple of deep breaths, obviously determined to hold on to her temper. She placed herself behind the desk, as if she thought its scarred oak surface could provide the buffer zone she clearly needed.

But it wasn’t a very big desk.

“How I run Everly is none of your business.” She straightened some papers on the desk, a ridiculously futile gesture. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”

Her fingers trembled as they nudged another sheet of paper into line. The pause stretched until it shimmered in the room like ectoplasm.

“Oh, yes,” he said slowly. “The deal.”

She didn’t look up. But her grip tightened, crumpling the edge of the file she held.

“The deal,” he repeated. He reached out and took her wrist between his fingers. “We did have one, didn’t we?”

She tensed, though she didn’t try to pull back her hand. “Trent, I don’t think we should—”

“I do.”

She lifted her chin. “Look, I know you’re angry.”

He ran his thumb across the inside of her wrist, until he found the pulse, jumping and skittering between the delicate bones. “Am I?”

“Well, you’ve been gone all weekend. I’m not a fool, Trent. I know what that means.”

He thought of Peggy, of the secret trips he’d been making to Darlonsville for five years now. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know. He hadn’t wanted to look as if he did it only for the good public relations it might bring.

“And what do you think it means?”

“It means…” She bit her lower lip. “I know where you must have been, who you must have been with. Even though, when we agreed to do this, you promised me that there would be no other women, not while we were married.”

He tugged her wrist slightly. She either had to wrestle herself free or come around the desk to meet him. She chose to come around, though it brought her close enough that he could see the nervous twitch next to the corner of her mouth.

Ah…she felt more fear now than anger. In a perverse way, that pleased him. It proved he still had power.

And he saw something else, too. A physical awareness of him that heated the surface of her cheeks.

It made him ache, being so close to her, smelling her, hating her and wanting her all at the same time. It was as if someone had shoved a hot brand against the small of his back.

“I did promise I’d be faithful,” he said, careful to keep his tone lightly ironic. “But that was when I believed I’d be getting what I needed here at home…within the marriage bed, so to speak.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Yes, of course I see the difference. So that’s why I wanted to make you an offer. I understand that it’s a…a hardship to have to…to do without sex for a full year, and…”

He smiled. Her pulse had tripped on itself from the effort to even say the word sex.

“And?”

She swallowed, blinking as she tried to hold his gaze. “And I’d like to make it up to you. Financially, I mean. I was thinking ten thousand dollars for every month we’re married. That’s one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, when the year is up, when I can sell the acres I need, and—”

He tilted his head, chuckling softly. “You’re offering to pay me not to have sex with you?”