She stuck out her hand and forced a decision, one way or the other. “Do we have a deal?”
Thinking he’d rather kiss a rattlesnake than shake her hand, Grant’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Like I have a choice.”
He looked to Paddy for support but instead found a happy smile of anticipation plastered on his old friend’s face. This little vixen had indeed positioned him upon the horns of a dilemma. Either way he jumped, he could expect to be gored. Grant considered the small, manicured hand dangling in the air in front of him. He shook his head in disgust. As Paddy had pointed out earlier, such hands were not intended for the kind of hard work to which this woman was so blithely pledging herself. Grant hoped she understood that on this rig she would be asked to pitch in and do more than what might fall into the scope of a written job description. Real life wasn’t as orderly as college professors were apt to lead one to believe.
Damned if he didn’t feel the strongest urge to bend his lips to those clean, polished fingertips and kiss them. He shook his head at the medieval image that evoked. Both Paddy and Caitlin were looking at him, waiting for his response.
Reluctantly he took Caitlin’s hand in his.
He was not prepared for the impact her touch had on him. A thousand volts of electricity surged between them. Grant knew that Caitlin felt it too by the way her eyes grew wide, exposing her shock for the length of two full seconds.
Sheer willpower alone gave him the strength to pull his hand away from hers.
A telltale blush stained Caitlin’s cheeks as she looked straight into his eyes and told the most prodigious lie he’d ever heard. “You won’t be sorry.”
Four
“I don’t want to inconvenience anyone,” Caitlin insisted. “Really.”
Grant tried not to gag as he watched her work her father over. The little lady had perfected the art of female persuasion with an adoring look that had Paddy doing back flips to accommodate her. It didn’t take an enormous stretch of the imagination to envision a horde of pimple-faced, preppy schoolboys falling all over themselves for a chance to carry the Princeton Princess’s books across campus. The poor suckers.
Grant’s observation that their small trailer was going to be mighty cramped, considering the fact that there were only two bedrooms available didn’t seem to faze Caitlin in the least.
“I’ll just have to sleep on the couch then,” she responded with the kind of magnanimous sincerity Grant considered worthy of Hollywood’s recognition.
“Fine with me,” he grumbled. He saw no reason to give up his bed for this spoiled college brat. The least a man should expect after putting in long, demanding hours of physical labor was a firm mattress. The very least.
His words were drowned out by Paddy’s firm protest.
“Absolutely not,” he declared. “If anyone’s going to sleep on the couch, darlin’, it’s going to be me.”
Grant groaned. Paddy had no more intention of sleeping on that couch than he did of using a rock for a pillow. Greatly amused by the older man’s grandstanding, he watched him forage helplessly in the closet for bedding, one hand pressed dramatically to the small of his back. Grant was tempted to applaud the performance.
“Don’t even think of it, Dad!” Caitlin exclaimed, successfully wrestling him away from the closet and into the easy chair.
“I won’t have you sleeping on the couch and that’s all there is to that,” her father puffed chivalrously. “It wouldn’t be right for a beautiful young lady to be without her privacy.”
Had Paddy’s pallor not been of such real concern to him, Grant might have enjoyed the show a good while longer. As it was, he was too fond of the older man to ever actually allow him to jeopardize his health by sleeping on a sagging sofa. It would not, however, have bothered him in the least to save the privilege for Caitlin. As far as he was concerned, a bed of nails would be good enough for her Royal Eminence.
In the midst of their argument, Grant slipped away unnoticed. When he returned a few minutes later carrying enough heavy suitcases to tax his considerable muscles, father and daughter were still engaged in a rousing game of martyrdom.
“Enough already,” Grant groused on his way through to deposit Caitlin’s luggage in his room. “Think you packed enough for what promises to be a short stay?”
Caitlin refused to dignify his sarcasm with a response. Instead she merely stepped out of his way, “I had every intention of doing that myself, and I hope you know it wasn’t my idea to put you out of your room.”
“Save it for the Academy Awards,” he grumbled, not even bothering to slow down.
Caitlin hated letting such an odious man do her any favors. Having fought hard for the right to be treated as an equal, she preferred carrying her own baggage around—so to speak. She did not want to begin this particular job in debt to Grant Davis for anything as chivalrous as opening a door or carrying in her belongings. She was keenly aware that he wasn’t doing this out of fondness for her but rather out of respect for her father. Antipathy emanated from every pore in his body. Since he’d made it abundantly clear that he took affront to her college degree, Caitlin made a mental note to downplay her education in his presence. Seeing how they were going to be roommates after all, she saw no sense in borrowing trouble.
“He’s a good man,” her father assured her.
Caitlin remained unconvinced as the sound of suitcases being dumped onto the floor resonated through thin walls.
She smiled weakly. “A regular knight in shining armor.”
A minute later he was back, crossing the room in a few long strides. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he said, pointedly checking his watch.
Opening the trailer door, Grant let in the light and the heat from outside. Caitlin was struck by the way the sunshine glowed about his body, giving the momentary illusion that she was in the presence of an angel. Not some cute little Cupid, but rather an angel warrior. Rugged St. Michael entering a fray without benefit of sword or shield.
The image disappeared with the slam of a door.
“It would mean a lot to me if you two could find a way to get along,” Paddy said to his daughter. It was miserably hot inside the trailer. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face.
Caitlin reached over and wiped it away with a lacy handkerchief her mother had sent with her. A misty look came into Paddy’s eyes as he recognized Laura Leigh’s signature scent. The fragrance lingered between the two of them, an invisible reminder of the happy home they had once shared. As loudly as Paddy and Caitlin had both disavowed Laura Leigh’s penchant for feminine frills and fancies, the memory that scent evoked was a rich contrast to the austerity of a small, tidy trailer sitting in the middle of the sagebrush. The sudden hint of honeysuckle bridged the gap of time, overpowering the mingled smell of dust and sweat and a river of oil rumbling silent and deep in the Earth’s belly waiting to be awakened like a slumbering lover.
“I’ll go unpack my things,” Caitlin said. With clumsy tenderness, she placed a kiss upon the very spot where that errant drop of sweat had lingered. “Thanks for letting me stay, Daddy.”
Grant’s bedroom matched the rest of the trailer’s decor. Neat and bleak. Walls, as bare as the top of the small cheap dresser that held his clothes, revealed no personal secrets. No single clue of Grant’s past or future was evident in the room. Not that Caitlin gave a darn, she reminded herself as she opened the closet door.
A half-dozen work shirts hung there, leaving plenty of room for her own clothes, which she put up in short order. Soon all that was left was to find a suitable place for what her mother referred to as her “delicates.” Caitlin hoped at least one of the dresser drawers was empty.
A funny feeling settled into the pit of