thought he’d be relieved not to have to worry about feeding the cowboys.
Instead, he kept looking at her as if he’d seen a ghost. And not a particularly nice one at that.
“Would you prefer it if I didn’t take the job and left the ranch?” she asked, determined to remain unintimidated by his brusqueness.
He waved her inquiry away with an impatient hand. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“It matters to me,” Jacey countered stubbornly.
Rafferty frowned, his gaze probing her. “Why?” he asked, indifferently.
“Because! I’m trying to figure out who you are—Mr. I Couldn’t Remember My Manners If a Snake Jumped Up and Bit Me.”
“Snakes don’t jump,” he said, a muscle flexing in his jaw.
She stepped closer, as if she hadn’t noticed how impatient he was becoming. “Or are you ‘The Really Nice Guy’ who helped deliver my baby? The skill with which you dispense rudeness and inhospitality says it’s the first. But the gentleness you exhibited when Caitlin and I needed you, or the way you were holding my baby just now, says that kindness isn’t entirely foreign to your nature.”
He regarded her with a slow, devastating smile. “I thought your sister was the psychiatrist.”
Jacey shrugged. “Her constant analyzing is rubbing off on me.”
He came closer, too, daring her with a look. His eyebrow went up. “And what does your analyzing say about me?” he asked softly.
A ribbon of desire swept through her. She had the sense that she was getting too close for comfort, yet could not turn away. “I think you protest too much. That you kind of like the idea of having me here, even if it’s only going to be through the holidays.” After that, she’d told Eli she would try to find something in her field.
Rafferty rolled his eyes. “Now you are off in la-la land.”
“Look,” Jacey said, “I may not have trained professionally, if that’s what you’re worried about, but I am a great cook.”
Rafferty blew out a contemptuous breath. “Your skill at the stove has nothing to do with how I feel about this arrangement.”
“Then what does?” Jacey demanded, stepping closer still.
“This,” he told her gruffly, pulling her into his arms for a steamy, all-bets-off kiss.
It had been way too long since Jacey had been embraced this way. Unable to withdraw from the evocative pressure of his mouth moving over hers, she surrendered to the taste and feel of him. It felt so good to be surrounded by such strength and warmth, to lose herself in a kiss that was so sensual and searing it took her breath away.
She had been kissed before. But never like this, in a way that sent emotions swirling through her at breakneck speed. Never in a way that brought forth such a soul-deep yearning.
Rafferty had figured she’d slap him across the face before their lips ever touched. Instead, logic and feelings had fled. Feelings, need, had taken over. She had wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back passionately. So passionately, in fact, he didn’t ever want to let her go. Their lips had just begun to fuse, and already he wanted another kiss that was deeper and hotter and more intimate than the last. And damn her, he thought, as she curved her body into his, if she didn’t want it too…
Which was why it had to stop. Now. Before it went any further. He let her go. “Now do you see why it’s a bad idea for you to be here?” he asked.
“Maybe for you,” she retorted, blushing furiously. “Since you can’t control your lust or your tongue.”
She swore, realizing too late the way he was taking what she had just said.
“I meant your mouth,” she corrected over his chuckling.
His rogue amusement only deepened.
All the more frustrated, she swept her hands through her hair. “I meant your words. Manners. Deeds,” she finished flatly.
Rafferty agreed—he shouldn’t have kissed her, and she sure as heck shouldn’t have kissed him back. But they had and now the passion that had been simmering beneath the surface was out there. Hotter than a fire burning in the grate on Christmas Eve.
“I do have a way of upsetting women.”
“That’s an understatement and a half.”
“That being the case—” he sauntered lazily toward the door “—maybe you should leave.”
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