rolled off the raft and swam to the dock, grabbing her towel as she stood in the shallows. “Hey!” she called after Gage. “Hang on a sec.”
He walked back, his eyebrows raised. Taking a deep breath, Chelsea wrapped the towel around herself and stepped onto the bank. “Listen, I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot here. I think it just caught me off guard that we’d be living—”
He’d been watching her as she spoke, listening, but her words stopped abruptly when he pulled a gun from his jacket, firing at the dirt to her left. Chelsea shrieked and jumped back, pinwheeling into the water, towel and all. Coughing, she rose to the surface.
He was staring down at something on the ground, then moved dark eyes to her. She pushed her hair out of her face.
“You…you crazy—” Chelsea took a deep breath. “You’re not living with me! I don’t care what Jonas says. I was here first.” She tread water, angrier than she’d ever been in her life. “I’m not living with a man who carries a gun on him as casually as a piece of chewing gum!”
Gage looked perplexed. “Why would you want to live with a man who didn’t carry a gun?”
She stared at him. “I don’t know. I don’t care! You’re crazy, and you’re not living with me. It doesn’t matter if you pitch a tent, but you’re not staying in the house.” She didn’t allow herself to think about his poor daughter, who had a maniac for a father. “Get out of my sight.”
She wanted to send a few more choice words after him, but he retreated so obligingly that she held her tongue. Jonas was going to get an earful! In fact, she was mad enough to drive out to Rancho Diablo and tick him off in person.
She swam to the bank, not bothering with pulling herself up on the dock. Her towel was soaked. She started wringing it out, muttering under her breath—and realized a three-foot-long snake was lying at her feet with its head shot off. The scream that erupted from her could have been heard in the next state as she leaped back into the water.
Chelsea was shaking badly, and was pretty certain she was sweating despite being in the creek up to her neck. She hated snakes! And that wild-eyed cowboy had shot the nasty creature and left her, no doubt snickering about how freaked out she’d be when she saw it.
No cowboy came to check on her.
She grabbed the float, which had become wedged in the shallows, and sat on it, looking around for more snakes. The stupid thing had probably been slithering to the creek for a drink, or to nest in the rocks.
Shivers crawled up her skin.
“Are you out there, cowboy?” she called timidly.
“Yes,” Gage answered, “but I’m not walking into your sight, Irish. Just want to make certain you’re not one of those hysterical females who can’t stand the sight of a little creepy-crawly.”
Little! He was having a laugh at her expense. Still, she owed him for shooting the snake. She probably would have stepped right on it. “I might be just a wee bit afraid of snakes,” she admitted.
“Nobody likes snakes. You did real well.”
She sniffed, surprised that he was offering her some empathy. “I take back what I said about you being a gun-toting freak, or whatever I called you.” She took a deep breath, still feeling goose bumps tighten her skin.
“No worries,” he said. “I’m heading off now to do my errands in town. You going to be all right?”
She wasn’t. She glanced around, wondering if the snake had any friends that might be nesting in the wet towel she’d dropped. “You know we don’t like snakes in Ireland,” she said. “Saint Patrick ran them off for us.”
There was a moment of silence before Gage walked toward the creek. He fished her towel from the water and held out his hand. “I’m no saint.”
She looked at him, not accepting the hand he extended. “I know that.”
He shrugged. “Come on, Red. I’ll walk you back to the house.”
She didn’t need a second invitation. Taking his hand—he felt strong and substantial, thank God, because she needed something strong right now—she let him drag her from the creek. He kept his eyes steadily averted from her, and she was out of the water and away from her snake nemesis in a blink. While Gage pinned her raft between two scraggly trees so it wouldn’t blow away, she hurriedly wrapped herself in her towel, unable to stop shivering. She couldn’t shake her fear that another snake might be nearby. Still, Gage didn’t look her way. Didn’t every man want a glimpse of a woman in a bikini?
He didn’t seem to. His posture was stiff, fixed in a deliberate stance of avoidance. Chelsea remembered that she’d told him to stay out of her sight, and he was clearly trying to obey her not-very-nice demand.
She swallowed, letting go some of her pride. “I’m sorry. I’ve been kind of a witch to you.”
He finally glanced at her. “It doesn’t seem so bad with that sweet accent you’ve got.”
Was that a compliment? “Really?”
“No.” Gage laughed and started walking. “Getting blessed out by a woman is no fun in any language or accent.”
She scampered after him, not thrilled to be left behind with a dead snake. “Maybe we could start over.”
“No need.”
Okay. She wasn’t going to beg him to accept her apology. They walked in silence back to the farmhouse. He went to his truck, and Chelsea went in the house, pulling off the dripping beach towel.
And that’s when she realized she’d gotten out of the creek without her bikini top.
She shrieked, this time with rage and embarrassment. The sound of male laughter came through the open screen door before Gage’s truck started up and drove away.
And he called the Callahans pranksters!
Chapter Two
When Gage ran into Jonas Callahan in Tempest’s town square, he was ready to let all his annoyance fall on his employer’s head. “Jonas, you ornery son of a gun,” he began, stopping when Jonas held up a hand.
“You can thank me later,” Jonas said. “I can’t chitchat now. I need to go over last-minute plans with an architect. I think I’m going to knock the farmhouse down and start over. It’s just much too small.”
Gage’s jaw tightened. “Knock it down? It’s the only livable place at Dark Diablo.”
“True,” Jonas agreed. “I wouldn’t do it until after the summer is over. Cat will have gone back to school by then, is how I figure it. Chelsea will have finished her Great Novel, and you can park your boots in the bunkhouse.”
The bunkhouse was, as Chelsea had noted, pretty old and not really inhabitable, even for someone who was as used to roughing it as he was. “This is almost the end of June, Jonas. What if I can’t get the bunkhouse and the barn renovated that fast?”
Jonas glanced
