“Okay. Good to know.”
“I’m voting for pasta,” he said lightly, taking a metal pan out of the freezer. “I had a long workday.”
“Have you always been a rancher?” she asked. “I mean, Lane did tell me a little bit about you. Or, I mean about Violet. But I applied some of it to you.”
“Right. Well, then you know we just moved here from Texas. And yes, I have always been a rancher. I sold the spread back in Dallas. That was beef, this is different. But I like different. Violet not so much.”
“Well, you know what they say. You can please some of the people some of the time... But you can’t please teenagers ever.”
He laughed, making his way over to the oven and sticking the pan of pasta inside. “True. Very true.”
“Really though, she’s not bad as far as teens go. She’s a good kid.”
He felt a momentary flash of... Something. Jealousy almost? That this woman, this stranger, got something from his own child that he didn’t. And then, he was just pissed. Pissed that he was standing here with a beautiful woman, the first woman he wanted to touch since his divorce, and he couldn’t.
Because of his daughter who hated him anyway.
“Do you want to come sit in the living room while that warms up?”
That was better than inviting her up to his room, which was what he actually wanted to do.
“Sure,” she said.
They both walked into the living room, and he took a seat on the couch. She took the chair across from him. Probably for the best.
“She’s a good kid,” Alison repeated, keeping her eyes focused on the window, on the view outside. Which was pretty spectacular. His grandfather had had the custom home built a few years ago, if Cain understood the timeline correctly. It was nestled in the center of the mountain, taking advantage of the scenery of the valley and the fields below.
“You said that,” he responded.
“Yes,” she said, “I did. And I mean it. She’s a good kid. But I think she needs to take a little more of her own responsibility. She could be driving herself to work. And she can definitely get herself up in the morning.”
Irritation streaked through him, heat that rivaled the heat of attraction that had been firing in his gut just a moment before. “Excuse me?”
“She can take more responsibility than she is. I understand that you’re feeling protective because you just moved here...”
“Look, I know you think that you know the situation because Lane told you some things, but you don’t. I do feel protective of her. Very protective. She’s been through enough.”
“Yes. But I have a feeling that part of the reason she’s sometimes surly with you is that you’re hovering a little too much.”
“No. That isn’t it. Just ask her. She feels like she doesn’t see me. She’s mad at me because I have a job, and because I don’t talk to her, which she doesn’t actually want. Because she hates me.” He was not going to let this woman, no matter how sexy, tell him anything about his relationship with his daughter.
Because you’re such an expert about your relationship with your daughter?
He ignored that obnoxious inner voice.
“Hovering over her and driving her to work, and coming in to talk to her boss when she’s late isn’t the same as spending time with her,” Alison said calmly.
“How many children do you have, Alison?” he asked, crossing his arms.
She frowned. “None.”
“That’s what I thought. So, you’ll understand if I don’t take your advice on mine.”
“I don’t have any children, but since my bakery essentially functions as job training I see a lot of different kinds of women. And I’ve learned to work with a lot of different personality types. I’ve learned the most effective ways to build different kinds of people up, to give them confidence. I want Violet to understand that she can accept help, and that it’s a good thing to get help. But I also want to see her standing on her own two feet.”
“You think I don’t want that? You think that because you spend a few hours a day with her you know her better than I do? I’ve been raising her for sixteen years. Four of them by myself. You don’t have any right to make commentary.”
She stood up, making her way over to the window, twisting her hands in front of her. “All right. Maybe I don’t. And fine, I don’t know anything about kids. But I do know about women. And she’s almost a woman.”
He didn’t want to hear that, even though he’d been having similar thoughts earlier. He stood too, agitation pouring through him. “She’s still a kid. And she needs certain things done for her. She’s had it rough. Her mother abandoned her and she needs...she needs more from me because of it, okay? She needs to feel taken care of.”
Alison turned to face him, her cheeks pink, this time from anger, and not from any kind of attraction. “If you’re going to purposely misunderstand me, then I don’t see the point of having this discussion.”
She started to walk back toward the kitchen and he reached out and caught her arm. She looked down at where his hand was curled around her, and she jerked away, her expression wary. “Don’t.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Did I hurt you?”
She blinked, her expression schooled into a perfect, blank slate. “No.”
He knew she was attracted to him. And he’d bet money that was why she’d reacted the way she had when he’d touched her.
He expected her to walk past him. To walk away then. But she didn’t. Instead, she just stood there, looking at him. And he forgot what they were talking about. He forgot that they’d been arguing. And the tension—tension that had been associated with anger only a second ago—shifted, changed.
He forgot everything. Except that she looked like heaven. And a little bit angry, but that just made him want to reach out and smooth the crease between her eyebrows, then trace the shape of her face, down to her chin, slide his thumb across her lower lip and see if it was as soft as a rose petal, like he suspected it might be.
He took a step toward her. Again, he expected her to move away. Again, she didn’t. No, instead, she held her ground, and she licked her lips again.
Before he knew what he was doing, he reached out, hooking his arm around her waist and drawing her up against him. She looked startled for a moment, her hands held up like he had her at gunpoint. But that only lasted a moment. Then she softened, her spine curving as she melted against him, pressing her palms to his chest.
“This is a bad idea,” he said.
She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
But she didn’t push at him. Didn’t try to pull away. So he began to lower his head, slowly, those rose-petal lips so close to his own he was already anticipating the taste.
“No,” she said suddenly. “Oh, no.” And then she did push against him, extricating herself from his hold. “I can’t do this. I don’t do things like this. I’m sorry. I really need to go.”
And then, as it seemed to be the pattern in his life, Alison stormed from the room, leaving him standing there to wonder what the hell he had done wrong now.
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