She pushed herself to her feet to break the spell and change the view to something less dangerous.
“But you do still consider requests for help,” she prodded softly. She tried not to hope too hard.
“Depends on the request. Mrs. Best’s is something I can do myself. Yours involved begging my friends for favors. I don’t beg well. I don’t ask for things. Even so, I came to tell you yes.”
She blinked. She’d been prepared to argue more, even to plead a little.
“Just like that.”
“No. Not just like that. I still don’t like this any better than I did, but I’ll do it.”
“Why?”
“Don’t push it, Kathryn. If you’ve decided you don’t need my help after all, I’m better than fine with that.”
“No. I want your help. I’ll take it. You can’t back out now.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t back out. Ever. Once I’ve given my word, it’s golden. Understand?” The look he gave her might have killed a man. But she’d faced worse.
“Do you look at Blue like that?”
He looked taken aback. Then he gave her that maddening, half-amused expression. “Blue and I understand each other. Without speaking.”
“My apologies. I’m not a wonderful and psychic dog but a decidedly human woman.”
“Yes, I noticed. That you’re not psychic. And that you’re a woman.”
He wasn’t really even looking at her body. His gaze didn’t drop, but she felt as if he could see through her clothing. Kathryn felt hot. And bothered.
“Okay,” she rushed on, irritated that she couldn’t seem to control her reaction to Holt. “I’ll draw up some plans, all the things we need to do, and I’ll give you a copy so that you know your part and I know mine.”
“Why are you doing that?”
She looked up, blinking wide. “I like organization. I make lists.”
“No. You’re rubbing your back. You’re—you’re real pregnant.”
“Yes. I noticed.”
He didn’t smile at her sarcastic tone. “You should sit down. You don’t need to stand.”
Now he was making her mad. “Mr. Calhoun, I don’t care to go into the details, but know this. I have been ordered around all my life and I’m done with that. I’ve thoroughly researched pregnancy, and Dr. Cooper and I have talked. I’m a healthy woman, and I’ll let you know if I need to sit down.”
He raised that sexy eyebrow that had always driven her mad. “I wasn’t giving you an order.” His voice was low and somewhat mocking.
“I— Yes,” she stammered. “I understand that. My apologies for jumping to conclusions. Of course, you were just being polite.”
He didn’t answer her. But she didn’t sit, either, even though right now her legs were beginning to feel as if they wouldn’t hold her up any longer. Her back was aching, and if Holt hadn’t been here, she would have sat down, but the man had always made her feel weak. She had a bad feeling about what might happen if he knew that she was susceptible to him. It was very important that they keep things on a business footing during the remainder of her time in Larkville.
“Thank you for agreeing to help.”
“I won’t be available a lot of the time,” he warned her. “Now that I’m back at the ranch, I have duties.”
“We can meet there.”
“I don’t think we need to meet.”
And she certainly didn’t want to meet any more than was necessary, but …
“Humor a pregnant woman,” she said, knowing that wasn’t fair.
“Just send me a list. I’ll do my part. And decide which parts I won’t do.”
With that, he walked away. For a few seconds, Kathryn wondered what she’d ever seen in him.
Other than that gorgeous body that could still make her squirm. When she woke in the middle of the night having the “Holt dream,” the one where he picked her up and carried her to his bed, the one where he came to her wearing nothing but an unzipped pair of jeans, the one where she finally got the chance to plunge her fingers into all that wonderful black hair, Kathryn knew she was going to have to be incredibly careful during her time here.
A man like Holt who could make a bloated, nearly-nine-months-pregnant woman feel desire was far too hot to handle. Good thing he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE first place Holt went the next morning was to the hangar on the ranch where he kept his Cessna and his helicopter. There was really no reason to do this. Both were kept in pristine condition, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t have any cows to herd out of remote locations. And he had no emergencies to tend to.
While he’d been away, his ranch hands had done their best to keep the place going, but the Double Bar C was big. He had plenty of tasks stacked up. Good. He needed some sweaty, backbreaking ranch work to clear his head and keep away any distracting thoughts of Kathryn. What was it about the woman that made her so tough to ignore? Was it the combination of delicate woman combined with that tigress determination? Or the fact that he could tell that he intimidated her but she still held her own with him?
He swore. Did it even matter? No, it didn’t. Because he didn’t want it to. They were going to have the equivalent of a “ten-minute business relationship.” They were fire and ice, not a good combination. Plus, ranching was all he cared about, all he knew. It was what he was good at, and he wasn’t good at relationships. At all. Not that it mattered.
Don’t lose track of what’s important, he could hear his father saying. You ‘re in charge of the Double Bar C, the family’s legacy. When you’re away from the ranch, remember who you are. You represent the biggest concern in the area, and people will look up to you. You have a responsibility to the ranch, and through the ranch a responsibility to the family and the town. The ranch is the one thing that will never fail you. Don’t let anything interfere with that. Don’t get sidetracked or weak and make foolish mistakes with a woman the way I once did, son. Wanting a woman too much can kill a man.
Holt knew that his father had been talking about someone other than his mother—possibly his first wife—because he saw how his mother suffered for loving his father too much. Sometimes she cried; he remembered her telling him how his father had never really loved her and now he, her son, was becoming another cold, closed-off Calhoun male. She clung to him when Clay was away. He felt sorry for her, but her unhappiness only reinforced what his father had said. Giving in to emotion was a mistake.
That wasn’t happening. He’d already made some pretty foolish mistakes. He’d already run into his own weaknesses, and he wasn’t doing it again. He’d lost too much. But he didn’t want to think about
