hurt her,” Jake said to Brady, “you deal with us.” Beau and Luke nodded their confirmation of that threat. “You call if you need anything,” Beau told Kelsey sympathetically, before he exited with the group.
Jenna came back in. She put a key on the table beside the door. “My apartment above the shop is empty right now. Should either of you need it, for any reason, you feel free to use it.” She left again, too.
Motors started up. One by one, the vehicles headed down the lane to the highway. Kelsey looked at Brady. Brady looked at Kelsey. She had never looked more beautiful or desirable to him than she did at that very moment. He sighed. This was going to be a lot harder than he’d thought. A lot harder. Given the way she had just felt in his arms, he didn’t know how in the heck he was going to keep their relationship platonic. “I hate to say it, Kelse,” he drawled, “but I think we’ve just gotten ourselves into one heck of a mess.”
KELSEY COULDN’T HELP BUT notice the mixture of derision and regret in Brady’s low tone. Suddenly, it seemed the Lockharts and the McCabes weren’t the only ones worried about what she and Brady had done. Determined not to let herself fall prey to the same pessimism, Kelsey propped her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “Why in the world would you say that?”
Brady rolled his eyes and continued to pace. “Besides the fact I’ve got the whole Lockhart-McCabe ‘army’ breathing down my neck?”
“They’re a little excited.” Kelsey plopped down on the sofa as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She shrugged, and continued, “They’ll get over it.”
Brady’s lips curved up on either side. “Before or after they pulverize me?” he asked. His probing glance made a leisurely tour of her body before returning to her eyes. “And speaking of pulverizing me, what was that kiss about just now?”
Kelsey had hoped he would be too nice a partner to bring that up. Guess not. Again, she pretended a lot more self-confidence and courage than she really felt. “I know we promised no sex.”
Brady’s midnight-blue eyes narrowed. “That was part of the deal, all right.”
“But we had to make it look good,” Kelsey persisted as she leapt to her feet once again. Unfortunately, Kelsey thought, it had felt good, too. Much more so than she had expected or ever experienced. But Brady didn’t need to know that.
Brady clamped a hand on her shoulder and spun her around to face him. His fingers were as warm and strong as the rest of him, his manner every bit as stubborn and headstrong as hers. “Are we going to have to keep on making it look good?”
Kelsey flushed and stepped back, out of reach. “What do you mean?” she demanded, still able to feel the impression of his touch, even though he was no longer holding on to her.
Brady’s eyes narrowed as he reminded her seriously, “Wade McCabe said if our marriage is nothing but a ruse to get his money—which, by the way, we’ve already taken—then he’s going to take the ranch from us.”
“I remember,” Kelsey said irritably.
“So how are we going to get around that?” Brady adapted a no-nonsense stance, legs braced apart, arms folded in front of him, that would have been very intimidating had Kelsey allowed it.
She didn’t. Kelsey ran a hand through her tousled hair, pushing it off her face. “The way I see it, there are all kinds of marriages that are real as can be and yet…well, you know how it is after a while,” Kelsey continued as if she knew what she was talking about when she damn well didn’t have a clue. “The husband and wife don’t seem at all romantic anymore, or even much involved with each other physically, and yet they stay together.”
“There’s a difference between being together and being happy,” Brady pointed out sagely.
“That’s true,” Kelsey said, “but we could be together and be happy without having sex.”
Brady lifted a brow and looked straight into her eyes. “Speak for yourself,” he said.
KELSEY STARED AT HIM in silence. Brady wasn’t sure why he had started this. He just knew someone had to shake up Kelsey’s cock-eyed view of the world. It looked like it was going to be him. He edged closer. “I don’t know any man who is living under the same roof with a woman he lusts after, who is happy when the two of them aren’t sleeping together at least every once in a while,” Brady continued, and watched the way Kelsey’s freckled cheeks turned an even pinker hue.
Kelsey studied him suspiciously as she slightly tilted her pretty head to the side. “Are you saying you lust after me?”
Brady shrugged, seeing no reason to lie about it. Not that he could. Surely, she’d felt his arousal, pressed up against him the way she had been. “After that kiss, I sure do.” He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops on either side of his fly and rocked back on his heels. “And now we’re going to be living under the same roof.”
Kelsey’s green eyes shot sparks. “Says who?” she demanded.
“Says me.” Brady strode closer. No way was he going to be her puppet on a string and it was high time she realized that. He lifted a hand and brushed an errant strand of cinnamon-colored hair from her cheek, then cupped her face with his palm. The silky heat of her skin warmed him through and through. “We can’t make this look like a real marriage if I’m still sleeping in the stable and you’re sleeping in the house.”
“Oh. Well.” Kelsey jerked in a breath and stepped back, away from him. “You can have one of the other bedrooms, then. There are three to choose from.”
Brady knew that would only make things worse. After that kiss, he was going to keep wanting her. And not just as a platonic partner, either. And unless he missed his guess, even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself, Kelsey was probably going to keep wanting him, too. “That doesn’t solve the problem of lust,” he told her frankly, meaning it.
KELSEY KNEW WHAT HE expected here. Like Wade McCabe and everyone else who knew her, Brady expected her to cry uncle, and declare this impetuous marriage of theirs a mistake. Sooner, rather than later. He may have even figured that she would beg Wade McCabe’s forgiveness for trying to pull one over on him, and possibly even get it. Well, she wasn’t going to do that. People thought she was fickle enough as it was, without adding fuel to the fire. Which left her only one option. Which, under the circumstances, wasn’t nearly as untenable an idea as she would have expected it to be.
Kelsey shot Brady a glance, letting him know she was as reckless and impulsive as ever, and proud of it. “Fine then, we’ll sleep together once, and then that will be it. At least until we decide it’s necessary to do so again. It’ll be a good thing,” Kelsey continued, picking up steam as she went along. “I’m no good at lying. Everything I feel or think is right on my face, anyway.”
Brady rolled his eyes. “No kidding about that,” he said dryly.
Kelsey lifted her shoulders in an indifferent shrug and kept her eyes on Brady’s. “Now that we’re married, everybody is going to be trying to figure out if we’ve slept together or not, anyway,” she told him with as much outrageous brazenness as ever. “So we might as well do it, get it over with, and out of the way, so to speak.”
Brady narrowed his eyes at her thoughtfully. To Kelsey’s disappointment, he didn’t back down one bit, either. “That’s a very
