Page 13 of Unexpected Sweetheart
“That was a dirty trick.”
He smirks, and I swear I see a little playfulness in him. “Who’s ‘Dell’?”
“My friend,” I repeat.
“Guy or girl?”
“I’m not giving you that information,” I say as I fold my arms and turn away from him.
He taps at my phone a few times then tosses it back at me. “Girl,” he says, withdrawing from the vehicle and returning to the task of getting the feed into the back of the truck.
Letting out a surprised gasp, I open my phone to find out how he figured it out. Then I see he’s opened her contact card and found the picture of her I attached to it.Guess it wasn’t so hard to figure out after all.
I get out of the truck and meet him at the tailgate where he’s pumping the pallet lifter’s handle to bring it level with the truck’s tray. “What would you have done if Dell turned out to be a guy?”
His eyes move to mine as the muscle in his jaw twitches. “I’d have kept your phone.”
“Why?”
“Because you have your future to think of, and you don’t need twenty-year-old boys who are only after one thing fucking with that.”
“But it’s OK for forty-year-oldmento do that?” The lift levels with the tray, so he lowers the handle and transfers the pallet into the truck with a scraping thump.
“Thirty-nine. And I’m not fucking with anything. Get back in the truck. I’m taking this back into the store and then we’re heading home.”
“It’s home now?” I lift my brow.
“The ranch. We’re heading back to the ranch,” he says, pulling the pallet lift away.
I follow after him. “You can’t keep ignoring this.”
“Ignoring what, Lorelei?” He positions the lift at the front of the store next to another of the same model and starts walking back to the truck. I’m quick to change direction with him, rushing to keep up.
“What’s going on between us. I see how you look at me. And every time I even try to discuss it with you, you change the subject or just stop talking altogether.”
“There’s nothing happening between us.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You think I don’t see you, but I do. You look at me like you’ve given up carbs and I’m a donut.”
He bursts out laughing at that.
“This isn’t funny, Ryan.”
Pulling the passenger door open, he pauses and meets my eyes. “You want me to be serious? Sure. Let’s talk this out: I’m a thirty-nine-year-old man who’s been hired to teach you about life on the land for three weeks. I’m not here to be your plaything or an anecdote you tell about the time you roughed it in the mountains—that’s not how I operate. So, while you’re here, you’ll do the job I tell you to do, then you’ll go back to New York far more worldly than you were before you arrived. Your cards will start working, and you’ll get your nails done again. After a few days, the stench of manure will be out of your hair and clothes, and your real life will feel like such a blessing that you’ll be glad you escaped this place. Thisthingyou’re talking about will become a distant memory. Maybe it’ll just feel like a bad dream. But when that day comes, heiress, just know I’ll still be this guy right here—the guy who just had to agree to run an extra twenty head of cattle on my land for free so I can keep feeding the cattle and horses I’m already struggling to take care of, all because I can’t bring myself to sell my family’s ranch to land developers.”
I gasp, his words feeling like a slap in the face. “Don’t give me that shit, Ryan. You are no one’s plaything. If anything, it’s you playing with me. Torturing me with those heated looks and that obvious arousal you refuse to do anything about. If you wanted me, you could have me. But you seem to get a kick out of denying us both what we want. Hell, for all I know, you get off on suffering and this isexactlythe life you want.”
“I want out of this life,” he growls, shocking me with his vehemence.
“So, sell the ranch. Sell it to my father.”
“No.”
“But you’ll sell it to another rancher?”
“As long as they plan to fix it up and run it the way it was intended, yes.”
“That’s a big caveat coming from a man who’s desperate to be rid of something.”
