He’d been a hell-raiser, but even he hadn’t had the nerve to keep a bottle of whiskey in the cellar right under his mom’s nose. She’d have tanned his hide, regardless of his age. He’d never met a fight he didn’t like—except when it was against his mom.
Carrying both the tin and the bottle, he went back to sit on the sleeping bag.
Sugar lifted her head and shuffled over to him, curling up against his thigh and going back to sleep.
“How old is she?”
He rubbed the dog’s ruff. “About three. I brought her back from Germany with me when I got out of the army.” He left out the part that he’d basically stolen her from his master sergeant. The man had gotten Tess. As far as Jayden was concerned, he hadn’t deserved to have the dog, too.
“Was she born blind?”
“No.” He ignored her curious expression and peeled open the cracker box. Fortunately, it looked relatively new. And the outer metal box had done a good job keeping bugs from getting at the cardboard inside.
The storm was howling worse than ever outside. Rain had started lashing against the door and he hoped to keep Ariana distracted from it as much as he could. “Here.” He set a sleeve of crackers on the sleeping bag between them and wiped off the dusty bottle with his wet shirttail. “No glasses, I’m afraid.” He held the bottle closer to the lantern so she could see the label he’d exposed. “You are legal, right?” For all he knew, she could be a twenty-year-old journalism student.
She let out a soft, sexy laugh and leaned forward to take the bottle. Her fingertips brushed his. He wasn’t sure if that made more of an impression on him than the way her long, tangled hair formed a curtain around her. “More than legal,” she assured him. “I’m twenty-seven.”
Older than she looked, which was a relief. “I’ve got nine years on you.”
“Not exactly a generation gap,” she offered drily. She twisted off the cap from the bottle of whiskey, took a sip and promptly coughed. “Potent,” she finally managed. She set the bottle next to the crackers and peeled off her sweater.
The clinging shirt beneath possessed no sleeves. Just two narrow straps over shoulders that gleamed ivory-smooth in the lantern’s light. His gaze started to drift over the shadowy cleavage also on display beneath her collection of thin gold necklaces, and he grabbed the whiskey bottle for himself.
Hell of a time for that dead feeling inside him to be shocked back to life.
“Potent,” he agreed after he took a healthy swig. The liquor burned all the way down, joining the heat already pooled inside him.
Fortunately, she seemed to take his comment at face value and fiddled with her cell phone. “I couldn’t function without the internet,” she said. “How do you stand it?”
“Just fine,” he drawled. “What do I need it for?”
“Keeping up with the world?”
He smiled slightly. “Hear everything I need to know at the feed store in town.” It was an exaggeration, but not that much of one since he, personally, wasn’t all that inclined to ever turn on the television. Not when every time he did, all he saw were politicians arguing and neighbors shooting neighbors. He’d seen enough of that in the service. “What do you need the internet for?”
She’d been sitting cross-legged and she shifted, straightening out her legs, too. “My job, for one thing. Research. Filing stories.” Her lips twitched. “Keeping up with the world.”
“I kept up with the world plenty thanks to fifteen years with the army.”
She set aside her phone and lifted her hair off her neck with both hands. “It’s warm down here.”
And getting warmer. He wasn’t entirely certain that his clothes hadn’t started steaming. “Blame it on the whiskey.” Personally, he was blaming it on her.
“It’s June but the rain still ought to cool things off.” She twisted her hair, managing to tie it into a knot atop her head. She inhaled deeply and Jayden did blame the whiskey then, because he should have looked away from the lush curves pushing against that thin excuse for a shirt, but he didn’t.
And the heat inside his gut just increased.
The only thing that distracted him was the thumping of the cellar door as the storm buffeted against it. It sounded like it was hailing, but in the lantern light, he could see the glimmer of rain dripping through the slats of the wood door.
If he’d met Ariana Lamonte under just about any other circumstance, he wouldn’t hesitate to pursue the attraction. But she was in his storm cellar. Essentially under his protection.
Which changed the rules entirely.
Or should.
“So what do you do in Austin when you’re not chasing around stories for your magazine?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “The usual. I have friends. Parents.” As if she realized the spare details were hardly the way to keep a conversation going, she pushed to her feet and paced the short distance to the shelves, arching her back a little as she stretched. Then she bent over in half, her bracelets jingling softly, and pressed her fingers against the dirt floor.
He damn near swallowed his tongue.
The knot in her hair wasn’t holding up. As he watched, it seemed to uncoil in almost slow motion. Then she straightened again, caught her hands behind her back and stretched once more.
He closed his eyes, stifling an oath. “Grow up there?” He had to raise his voice over the noise from outside.
“In Austin? Born and raised. Same as my mom and dad before me. I love the city. I have an apartment that overlooks the skyline. Ridiculously expensive, so I barely have it furnished, but I can walk or ride my bicycle to work if I want. I can get most anywhere I want, really, without even taking out my car.”
He looked at her again and was both relieved and chagrined that she’d stopped stretching and was pacing once more. “Except here,” he said drily.
Her lips curved. They were full and luscious, like the rest of her. Not overblown. Just...right.
Exactly right.
“Except here,” she agreed. “What about you? Did you grow up in Paseo?”
“Born and raised,” he parroted. “Right here on this very ranch.”
She propped her hands on her hips and looked at him. “And your parents?”
He wasn’t accustomed to telling strangers his business. But she was easy to talk to. And it kept her from turning to see the water that had begun streaming down the steps.
The cellar had stone walls and a dirt floor. He’d never known it to flood more than a foot. Still, if it got worse, he was already figuring they’d have to leave the shelter. In a flood, being inside the house higher up was better than being below ground. If there really were tornadoes in the area, they’d have to take their chances. His mom’s bedroom closet in the house would be the best bet. First floor. Interior room.
There
