Wrangling The Rich Rancher

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her, like a rag doll, right over the center console and onto his lap.

He envisioned how they must look, parked on the road that overlooked his old place, with her straddling him in the driver’s seat, the steering wheel butting against her back.

Matt felt like a teenager, making out in the middle of the day, his hormones jerking and jumping.

He wound his hands more fully in her hair. He liked how wild and wavy it was. She rocked forward, rubbing him where it hurt, where it felt good, where his zipper made friction with hers.

They kept kissing, mindless and carnal. She mewled, then moaned, hot and sweet, and he suspected that she would make those same fevered sounds if he was deep inside her.

When they came up for air, she asked, “Is the truck still running? Is that the vibration I feel?”

“I think it’s us.” He’d shut the engine off earlier. Hadn’t he? Just to be sure, he double-checked. “It’s not running.”

“It’s not? Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. But we should stop now.”

“You first.”

“You want me to end it?” He didn’t appreciate her leaving it up to him. “You’re the one who’s sitting on my lap.”

“And you’re the one who put me there.”

Touché, he thought. “Yeah, but you can climb off me and get back in your own seat.” His frustration was building, at himself, at her. He wanted to strip her naked, right here, right now.

“I could.” Her eyes were glazed over and her hair was totally mussed, maybe even knotted in spots. Her frustration was mounting, too. “Or you could make me.”

“Screw that.” He kissed her again, harder this time, making good on his threat to bite her.

“Ouch.” She flinched, then kissed him right back.

A heartbeat later, he said, “It was only a nibble.”

“Says you. My lips are going to be swollen.”

“They already are.” And she wore it insanely well. “Now get off me before I do something I’ll regret.”

“You’re already regretting this, and so am I.”

“So go back on your own side of the truck.”

She didn’t budge. She stayed there, desire bristling from her pores. She snared his gaze, her eyelashes long and fluttery. “You owe me a cookie.”

Seriously? She was going to hold him to that? “Fine. As soon as I can take the wheel, we’ll go to the bakery.”

“I want coffee, too.” She crawled over the console and nearly kneed him in the nuts, missing him by mere inches. But she didn’t even notice that she’d almost done it.

Matt snarled to himself. He deserved a swift kick, but the entire situation still made him angry. Everything about it ticked him off. Especially what he couldn’t have—like Libby sprawled out beneath him.

He wanted to take her home and make hot-blooded love to her, to be rough and animalistic, to bite her again a hundred more times.

She settled onto her seat, lowered the visor and gawked at herself in the mirror. “Oh, my goodness. What did you do to my hair? I look like a blowfish.”

Since when did fish have hair? Spiny things coming out of their heads, maybe. “You liked it when I was doing it.”

She finger-combed her way through the mess. “We’re never kissing again. Not ever.”

“I know.” He tugged at his jeans, trying to make his bulge less noticeable. “It was awful of us.” Awfully hot, awfully barbaric, awfully amazing. He could think of a hundred mixed-up ways to describe what they’d done.

She kept fussing with her hair, struggling to tame it.

“You’re making it worse,” he said.

“What?” she asked. “Your hard-on or my hair?”

“Your hair, smarty.”

She glanced at his lap. “Not from where I’m sitting.”

“Don’t start.” But it was too late. They both burst into a quick, crazy laugh. The situation was too disturbing to keep it bottled up.

She raised the visor, giving up on her hair. He gave up on adjusting his jeans, too. Then he went serious and asked, “Are you going to tell Kirby that we kissed?”

“I would never do that. This was a private moment between you and me. It’s no one else’s business.”

“So what happens between you and me is private, but the rest of my life isn’t?”

“Your relationship with Kirby is the only part of your life that I’ll be writing about.” She glanced down at the canyon house. “Yours and your mother’s. And that’s why it’s so important for me to get your input, and hers, too. I have lots of interview questions, for both of you.”

“No doubt you do. But I’m not signing a release or answering them. If I tell you anything, it’s going to be the way we’ve been doing it, off the record.” He followed her line of sight to the house. He remembered his mom crying on the night Kirby had ended their affair. How she’d sat outside and bawled in the moonlight. Matt had been old enough then to understand what was going on. He’d sensed it was over for him, too, that his dad’s sporadic visits would become even less frequent. He’d even worried that Kirby would eventually stop coming around at all. And he’d been right on both counts. So painfully right.

“Please, just think about it,” Libby implored him.

He blew out a breath. “I can’t willingly be part of your book.” He didn’t want to bleed all over the pages of his old man’s self-serving biography. “I just can’t do it.”

“If you were involved in the book, I would get to know you, better than I am now.”

He laughed, as foolishly as before. “You’re getting to know me just fine.”

“That’s not funny.” She rolled her big blue eyes, frowned, smiled, shook her messy-haired head. “Well, maybe it is.”

He noticed that her lips were still sexily swollen. “Buckle up.” He reached over and pulled the strap across her body, doing it for her. “I’ve got to back out of here.”

And try to forget that he’d ever kissed her.

* * *

Libby couldn’t believe that she’d taunted Matt to kiss her. That she wouldn’t get off his lap. That she let it go that far.