Page 49 of A Rancher's Bride
“What?” he demanded.
“I don’t need to ask what you see in her, besides the obvious.”
Jack’s appreciative glance sent a bristle along Luke’s spine. “Put your eyes back in your head. You’ve got your own woman.”
“Who I love and adore, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate your good luck. And I was talking about more than the packaging.” Jack twisted toward him his expression going a little more serious.” “I haven’t seen her in the field, but it sounds as if she knows her stuff.”
“Kelli is the best,” Luke affirmed.
“When’s the wedding?” Jack asked. “Because if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you’d be smart to lock that up as soon as you can.”
It’d been too easy to turn back to the pool and watch her with the kids as she and Diane played keep-away with them. The heat in his belly rose from a blatant physical attraction. Something that hadn’t registered until now.
Kelli was great with kids. She adored his nieces and was wonderful with their friends, even when it came to helping with birthday parties and the like.
An image flashed into his brain of her holding a kid, and it didn’t freak him out. Maybe it was that wholeshe’s already mostly familybusiness, but this was another part of their relationship that seemed right.
“Earth to Luke, come in.”
Damn, he was staring at her again.
He turned back to Jack and tried to remember the last question, but he lost it. “What did you ask me?”
His friend patted him on the shoulder. “You are so gone.”
The comment should’ve sent Luke into a panic, and yet it still felt right. “We need some time. The change in our relationship is new, and while it’s going well, we have a lot of things to figure out.”
None of that answer was a lie, and the discovery gave Luke hope. He might be able to turn this situation from disaster, to positive, to perfect without a lot of effort.
Jack raised a brow. “A bit of advice. She’s now on the radar of more than a dozen ranches, and while only some of them have eligible competitors who’d be interested in fighting you for a spot in her bed, all of them want to see what she can do with their stock.”
It was a fair warning, but not one that Luke wanted to spend any time on. Not when a sense of urgency was rising to let her know he’d not only seen the change in the traffic signals, he was ready to hit the highway at full speed.
“On that note, I think we need to gather our women.” Luke stood, water sliding away. Jack joined him and the two of them closed the distance to the main pool.
Kelli was out of the water, chasing after a ball that had rolled onto the deck and under a chair. She was on her hands and knees as he strode up, nodding politely to the woman sitting on the chair who wore street clothes and a snow jacket.
“Excuse me.”
He scooped Kelli around the waist, lifting her in the air as she shrieked in surprise.
“What—?Luke?!”
He knocked the ball from her hands toward Jack, enjoying the warmth of her body against his as he strode for the water. “Were you expecting someone else?”
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, clutching tightly. Eyes wide as she stared into his face. “Maybe. I ordered a battery-operated inflatable boyfriend from Amazon.”
A burst of laughter escaped. “I’m better. Life-sizedandI don’t deflate that easily.”
Whatever she was about to answer in retaliation was lost under her squeal as he threw them forward. They crashed into the deep end of the pool. He pushed off the bottom and brought them to the surface, turning her in his arms as he headed shallow enough he could stand.
Water dripped down her cheeks, one of her braids lying over both their shoulders.
She held on tight as she stared. “You’ll make my team lose,” she warned.
“We can’t have that,” he responded even as he slid his hands to her hips, and lower. He cupped her ass briefly, dragging their bodies together just to torment himself.
“Luke,” she murmured, motioning with her head over her shoulder. “Kids. Behave.”
