the track. Was the call for me?”
“I can’t say. There was no one there.”
She cradled the mug in both hands as if to steady it, declared, “Probably a wrong number,” then swiveled around to peer down the alleyway. “I wonder what’s keeping Jason?”
Nick gritted his teeth. Her evasiveness was already roughing the edges of his patience. “If it was a boyfriend calling,” he suggested slowly, “I might have put him off.”
“If I had a boyfriend, he’d know not to call when it’s short odds I’d be down at the track.”
When he met her hostile glare, Nick felt a perverse satisfaction, and it had nothing to do with the no-boyfriend revelation. Finally he had her attention. “Seems to me there’s something funny going on with your telephone. No one there this morning, off the hook yesterday.”
“Geez, T.C.” Neither had heard Jason’s approach. He stood there, shaking his head reproachfully. “Did you leave it off the hook again?” He handed Nick his coffee. “She did that the other day, too.”
The warning glare she directed at Jason told Nick his instincts were spot on. “Perhaps you had better explain.”
“Explain what? I knocked the receiver off the hook and didn’t notice. You got a wrong number. End of story.” With a dismissive shrug, she turned to Jason. “You can show Nick around while I finish the jogging.”
Nick stopped her intended exit with a hand on her shoulder. “Have you been getting nuisance calls?”
When she shuffled from foot to foot without answering, Nick increased the pressure on her shoulder. Over the top of her head he met Jason’s worried look and smiled reassuringly. “How about you carry on with the horses while I sort this out?”
As Jason set off, whistling cheerfully, he felt her tense up beneath his hand. “You’ve been here less than twelve hours and you’re giving directions to my staff?”
“Our staff,” he corrected.
She let out her breath in a soft whoosh. “We have to talk about that.”
“Yes, we do. But first we’re going to settle the phone business.”
She bit her bottom lip, and Nick waited a count of ten while she considered. “So, okay, there has been the odd anonymous call.”
“How long has this been going on?”
She shrugged. “A couple of weeks. On and off.”
“A couple of weeks! Have you reported it?”
“Look, there’s nothing to report. No threats, no heavy breathing. Probably just kids mucking about. It’s no big deal.”
“No?” Nick swore beneath his breath, then out loud when the penny dropped. “That’s why you attacked me last night. You thought I was the caller. What if you’d been right? What if I had been some stalker hell-bent on hurting you? Did you think of that before you confronted me with that damn fool toy?”
“I can look after myself. I’ve been looking after myself—”
“Is that what you think you were doing when you ran your hands all over me last night?” He grabbed her hand and pulled it to him, forcing her to touch him, then to stroke down his chest from collarbone to waist in one long, slow sensuous caress. “When you touched me like this?”
She recoiled as if she had contacted a live wire, then stood blinking her huge green eyes at him. She rubbed the hand he had used to demonstrate his point down her thigh as if trying to remove his imprint from her skin.
That notion was as powerfully erotic as her actual touch.
With a proud lift of her chin, she drew herself up as tall as her diminished height allowed and met his gaze. “I did not touch you like that,” she said with quiet dignity.
“You might as well have,” Nick muttered, and grimaced at the uncomfortable tightness of his jeans as she turned on her heel and walked away, her backbone rigid, head held high. He watched her until she disappeared out the front of the barn, and then he shook his head in disgust.
Well, hell, didn’t that little demonstration come off a treat?
All he had managed to prove was how easily she could fire up his temper and heat his blood. He had come out here this morning to get the phone business sorted, to smooth over their rocky start with some getting-to-know-you dialogue, then to move her back into the house. After lunch he wanted to check the balance sheet valuations to ensure the offer he made to buy her out was fair. And after dinner, once business was out of the way, his getting-to-know-you plans were aimed purely at pleasure.
So far he had barely managed to tackle item one on his list—not exactly a grade-A start. Then he relived the touch of her hand, recalled the hot spark in her eyes and the soft color in her cheeks, and he smiled. He had some work in front of him to get to that last pleasurable item, but it would be worth the effort.
Yep, it would take both work and flexibility, and when Jason came by leading a horse, Nick saw an opportunity to adapt his plans. Chances were he would learn more from the kid in an hour than he could finesse from Tamara in a day.
“Need some help?” he asked as Jason tethered the animal to a hitching rail.
“You know how to bandage?”
Nick counted four rolls in Jason’s hands and smiled easily. “I’m a quick study. You show me the first one, and I figure I can manage the rest.”
T.C. eased Monte’s leg down, stretched out the kink in her back and tried to prevent her gaze straying to the other end of the barn. What were they laughing about this time? They’d been at it for more than an hour, chatting easily, laughing with nerve-grating regularity, Jason obviously reveling in his role as teacher to Nick’s student. Their rapport shouldn’t rankle. Nick could spread his charm from here to the back of beyond, but as long as he didn’t try it on her, what should she care?
With a last disgruntled glance in their direction, she stooped down, took Monte’s leg again and eased it between her knees, determined to refocus on rasping a level surface for the horseshoe. She managed to concentrate for all of three minutes before she heard the slow tread of approaching boots, then the scrape of a drum against concrete. Looking back beneath her arm, she saw the outstretched length of denim-clad legs as he took a seat.
Ignore him, she warned her body, but to no avail. Already her muscles had tightened in unconscious response to his proximity, to the notion of him watching her. So okay, she told herself, the man unnerves you, but he’s right there, not six feet away, and it’s about time you started on that list of questions. But as she shifted the words about in her mind, forcing them into some sort of logical order, her tension must have transmitted itself to Monte and he shifted his weight, almost overbalancing her.
By the time she righted herself and calmed Monte, she had decided this was neither the time nor the place for this conversation. Much too important for casual asides between hammer blows, she justified, attacking Monte’s hoof with renewed fervor because she wanted the job finished—quickly. She could practically feel the touch of that warm blue gaze on her backside every time she bent into her task, but she clenched her jaw firmly, determined
