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“Yeah. Mike’s fine.”
Emily rolled her eyes even as she kept her arms crossed against the cold. “Whether Mike can handle himself or not, I’m sure he’d appreciate some backup.” She was half-tempted to go back inside, just to demonstrate how a loyal friend should act. But Mike was Foster’s friend, not hers.
Foster looked irritated. “Mike’s fine.”
“And you’re a wimp.” Then she smiled at him, very sweetly, just as he’d been begging her to do all night.
Foster opened his mouth, looking offended as all get-out, ready to tell her off.
Bring it, wimp. She was so in a mood for a fight. Nothing was going her way tonight. She’d come here to blow off some steam with girlfriends, because her family had spent the entire Christmas break trying to talk her out of the one career—the one life—she wanted. Talk had turned to ultimatums she couldn’t disobey. But her friends hadn’t shown up. Her ex had. Then a stranger named Graham had rocked her world just by standing still, but the man couldn’t be less interested in her. Frustration of every kind was boiling over.
Foster abruptly shut his mouth and settled for a sneer before he shuffled away a couple of feet.
Awareness prickled down her spine, and she turned around to find Graham back in his silent bodyguard mode, standing just behind her. He was scanning the crowd again, but he spared her a glance as she looked at him. He nodded.
Great. Apparently he communicated in nods, which she’d already misinterpreted once. She kept her arms crossed and crossed her ankles, too, squeezing her thighs together to keep warm, and tried communicating with words. “That was my ex and his friend.”
“I figured that out.”
Ah, he speaks. Emily waited, but that was apparently all Graham was inclined to say.
She tried again. “He’s harmless, but it was nice of you to step in earlier by the bathrooms. You don’t have to keep being my bodyguard, though. I can handle him.”
“There’s no gate in this fence,” he said. “We’re penned in if the fight spills outdoors.”
Okay, then. He was still in bodyguard mode. She might not need a bodyguard, but he’d be a heck of a good one, always on duty, always making people think twice with that air of danger about him.
She rubbed her arms. “The only way in and out is the front door where they check the IDs. We won’t be leaving for a while.”
“If the fight comes out here, we’ll have to go over the fence. I’ll give you a hand.” He glanced at her, and she knew, without a doubt, he was judging how much she weighed and how easy or difficult it would be to toss her over. It was a purely practical evaluation. There was nothing sexual in that look.
He nodded toward one section of the fence. “We’ll go there. I can see between the planks that there are no shrubs on the other side to get tangled in.”
It wasn’t that he was dangerous, she realized. It was that he was prepared to handle danger. “Do you always have an exit plan?”
“Always.”
She’d benefited from his last exit plan when they’d been inside, but it was kind of sad that he’d had one when he could have been smiling at her and enjoying a beer instead. Expecting the worst at all times must wear a person out.
“This bar usually isn’t this bad. Just a fistfight that’s over before it’s started, maybe one a week. This one’s probably over already. You won’t have to throw me over any fences.” She patted his arm without thinking, a couple of firm slaps. It was the same way she’d pat her horse’s neck after they’d worked the cattle.
Atta boy. We’re done now; you don’t have to keep watching the herd.
But this was no beast under her hand. This was a man, with hard muscles and an even harder expression on his face.
She pulled her hand back, embarrassed at her impulse, and tucked her hands back under her arms. She uncrossed her ankles, then crossed them the other way, trying to stay warm. There was just enough of a breeze to make the ruffles on her dress lift and ripple.
Graham didn’t look cold. In fact, he looked pretty comfortable outside. It was as if now that he’d assessed the situation and located his alternate exit, he was content to wait it out.
Emily wished everyone were that way. The drama gearing up around them was ridiculous. While the men all puffed out their chests and claimed they could have done something if they’d needed to, a group of girls hung all over each other, sobbing, not two feet away. Emily found their drama even worse than the men’s bragging. She just couldn’t summon up any sympathy for perfectly healthy, perfectly capable women who acted like they were dying.
“Did you see how close they got to me? I swear to God, I thought I was going to die.”
Emily glanced at Graham. He’d crossed his arms against the cold, too, but he was watching her instead of the crowd, for once. Great. She’d probably been rolling her eyes or wrinkling her nose in disapproval. Her family teased her about the faces she made all the time, so it was entirely possible that she hadn’t been keeping her thoughts to herself.
She could pretend she wasn’t embarrassed, but it was harder to pretend she wasn’t cold. The breeze was pretty brisk, but surely the police were on their way. It took a little while for them to get this far out of town, but they’d be here soon to sort out the action inside. Maybe the patio crowd would be stuck out here for another half an hour, tops. She’d survive.
The cluster of girls weren’t cold. They had each other to hug and weep upon, of course, but some had a different strategy. One woman chose a man from the crowd and zeroed in on him, tiptoeing over to him in little baby steps. She clasped her hands and blew on them like they were already frozen solid. “I’m so sorry to bother you, but could I borrow just the edge of your coat? Just to tuck my hands under the hem for a minute? It’s so freezing out here.” Within a matter of seconds, she had the man eating out of her cold hands, taking off his coat and laying it over her shoulders while she thanked him as if he’d done something extraordinary—as if she hadn’t maneuvered him into doing just that.
Emily knew how to play that game, just as she knew how to flash some cleavage to catch a bartender’s attention. She simply didn’t want to. It took too much energy to keep up the golly-gee-whiz facade. It felt a little demeaning to her, to have to act like an innocent child in order to be thought of as cute. She hadn’t been able to sustain it very long with Foster, and Foster hadn’t liked her much when she’d acted more like herself and less like a helpless doll.
Still, the girl in the borrowed coat was undoubtedly warmer than Emily at the moment. Girls who acted cute got all the attention.
Not from Graham.
Emily had given him a hearty handshake instead of a cute tilt of her head, and yet, for whatever reason, Graham had gotten her to safety first before helping anyone else.
No wonder Graham was so darned appealing. She hadn’t asked him to step in when Foster was harassing her; he just had. She hadn’t felt helpless when the fight had broken out, but he’d protected her, anyway. He had to be interested in her, didn’t he?
Graham walked a few steps to stand on the other side of her, just close enough to be in her personal space.
“Here, try turning this way,” he said. With one hand on her arm, he angled her so that she was once more standing with her back to his chest, but they weren’t touching this time. The ruffles of her dress fell still.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked.
“It feels less cold if the wind’s at your back.”
But of course, he’d blocked the wind for her with his larger body without her having to pout or flirt or even flatly ask him to.
If the man was trying to seduce her without touching her, he was succeeding. Now that Emily thought about it, the literary Jane wasn’t a cute or adorable character. She never manipulated anyone. She’d just been herself, lost in a jungle, and a man had swooped in to save her because he’d wanted to, not because she’d flirted with him first.
She looked at Graham over her shoulder. “Now the wind’s not at my back. It’s at yours.”
“That was the idea.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips. He looked so unconcerned, standing behind her, but he had to be cold. It was forty-something degrees out, and he was human.
“You’ll freeze to death,” she said.
“That’s doubtful.”
She did roll her eyes then.
He shrugged, a small movement of his shoulder. “It’s not that windy. More of a brisk breeze.”
“It’s still cold, no matter how much wind there is or isn’t.” She hesitated, all her thoughts about not being fake or manipulative swirling in her head. She hoped she wouldn’t come across that way. “I know we don’t know each other, but if you put your arm around me again, it would keep us both warmer.”
He didn’t move for the longest moment.
She hadn’t played the game right. She should’ve smiled when she’d said that and tilted her head just so, maybe run a finger over his arm. Or she could’ve just said she needed to warm up and then leaned into him with a giggle and puppy dog eyes.
Too late now. She’d been straightforward, and it would be too psycho if she suddenly switched gears. So she shrugged her own shrug, as casual as his had been. “I’d feel a little less guilty if I was helping to keep you warm, too. That’s all.” Pretending her pride wasn’t stung, she crossed her ankles the other way and studied the pattern of swirls that had been tooled into the pointed toes of her leather boots.
His arms came around her so gently, the only thing startling was how very warm he felt. He stepped closer, so his chest touched her back. His square-toed boots mingled with her fancy ones.
“Nothing to feel guilty about,” he said. “There was no sense in both of us getting windblown, so I thought I’d stand on this side.”
“But this is even warmer, for both of us.”
“I can’t argue with that.”
His voice was close to her ear. No, not his voice—his lips. His mouth. She hadn’t meant to use near-freezing temperatures to indulge in a little fantasy with this man, but being wrapped in his arms was delicious.
“For the record, I wouldn’t normally put my hands on a woman in the first half hour that I’ve met her,” he said. “My mother would call it ‘getting handsy.’”
He had a deep voice. She shivered, and pretended it was from the cold. “It’s forty degrees out. Believe me, all I’m thinking is that you’re warm, not handsy.”
He chuckled, which surprised her, because his expression hadn’t been anything but grave from the hallway to the bar to the patio. “My mother drilled it into my head that girls don’t like guys who get handsy. I should have dated more in the winter.”
“Look how we’re standing. We look like a prom photo. You’re not being any more handsy than a boy who gets to put his arms around his prom date for the camera while his teachers are chaperoning. Pretty innocent stuff.”
“I don’t know about innocent intentions at prom,” he murmured from his prom position behind her. “I think I was a pretty handsy date. Yours wasn’t?”
“I’d had my hair done at a salon. I didn’t want him to mess it up.” She loved this, being able to just turn her head a little to the side to have a private conversation with Graham, cheek to cheek. “I think I scared him off early in the evening when he went in for a kiss. I said, ‘Don’t touch my hair.’ Maybe it was more like a shriek. Don’t touch my hair. He barely touched any part of me after that, not even for the slow dances.”
She felt Graham’s smile even before she peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. He held her just right, his arms loosely crossed over hers, hands resting at her waist, no awkwardness in trying to avoid touching certain parts of her, no accidentally-on-purpose brush against her breasts, either. It was heaven to be with a man who knew what he was doing.
“Whoever your date was, he’s kicking himself every time he remembers his prom,” Graham said. “An opportunity to hold a pretty girl doesn’t come along every day. Fortune favors the brave.”
“And you are the brave?”
He paused a fraction of a second. “Back then.”
“What about now?”
“I got older. I’m a very, very good boy now.” He murmured those words close to her ear, this man who knew what he was doing. Her breath left her in a rush of want, her body reacting instantly with a heavy ache deep inside. A very, very good boy...
She turned her head to see more of his profile. He had hard features, nothing of the prettiness of the theater majors at her college, none of the country club grooming of the aspiring business majors. Graham was still keeping an eye on the crowd around them, the way he narrowed his eyes causing little lines to fan at their corners. She felt that same thrill of being protected; she felt that same tug of sympathy for a man who never dropped his guard.
“At least now you won’t freeze to death for my sake,” she said. “You already took a few punches for me tonight. I’m sorry about that.”
“I did?”
“On the way out of the bar.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. That was just some pushing and shoving. No one landed a decent hit.”
And it wouldn’t have fazed you if they had.
He was older, stronger, tougher than the other guys. Stronger than she was, although she thought of herself as both strong and strong-willed—stubborn, her mother called it—and she needed to continue being both if she ever hoped to live the life she wanted. But always being strong could wear a person out.
So tonight...
Why couldn’t she be Jane for just one night? Not the strongest, not in charge, not the decision maker. What could be the harm in spending a little time with a man who knew what he was doing?
Chapter Three (#ub1dd3a45-205b-5aff-bc0b-040f549beb5d)
Graham had no idea what he was doing.
His plan had been set: he was checking out of the world, going to live in isolation on a cattle ranch, which sounded like going to live in Siberia. Good. He was battered and tired and ready to retreat from the human race. He’d be done with society and all the empty social niceties, officially, tomorrow.
And yet here he was, standing in the crisp, clean air with his arms around a woman who was warm and beautiful, young and full of the future. What the hell was he doing?
Starting tomorrow morning at sunrise, he’d report for duty, so to speak, at the James Hill Ranch. His uncle Gus was the foreman there, and had been for a long time. Word must have traveled through the family that Graham had left the Marine Corps, then left the corporate business world, and now left grad school. For thirty years, Uncle Gus had been a benignly neglectful bachelor uncle, but he must have decided it was time to pay attention to his nephew. The offer had come out of the blue.
Graham didn’t know anything about horses. The closest he ever got to cattle was seeing them out the car window as he drove the highways between military bases. That meant he was coming to his new job with no skills, so he’d only be good for the grunt work. He was going to get worked as hard as he’d ever worked in the Marine Corps, digging ditches and hauling sandbags like the lowest-ranking new recruit.
It had been a long time since he’d been the low man on the totem pole. Graham had left the service at the rank of captain. He’d been a company commander, personally responsible for the training and well-being of two hundred Marines, charged with leading them on every assigned mission, anywhere in the world they were sent.
No longer—and that was fine. Graham looked forward to the oblivion that hard labor would grant him. He’d be responsible for no one and nothing. He’d be bone tired every night; he’d sleep. He’d wake up the next day and do it all over again. He expected nothing more out of life.
So why was he standing here with one light and lovely Emily Davis in his arms?
Some of the crowd had started to go back inside. Graham watched as they hustled right back out again. The sound of men shouting and bottles shattering mixed with the hyped-up chatter of the outdoor crowd.
“It sounds like a war zone in there,” Emily said.
Not quite. But Graham had no desire to start dredging up memories from Afghanistan, so he said nothing.
“The poor Keller family. They bought this place just a few years ago. I went to high school with their son, Jason. Sounds like they aren’t going to have much furniture left.”
“So you’re a local?”
He could have bitten his tongue out. What was he doing? Making small talk? Trying to get to know her?
“Sometimes,” she said. “I was born in San Antonio, but I’ve got family around here. I grew up going between San Antonio and Austin, Austin to San Antonio. I never went beyond that little hundred-mile stretch until I started college in Oklahoma.”
He said nothing.
“I’m nearly done there. Nearly. Not soon enough.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. A college girl with her life ahead of her. His was so empty in comparison. He shouldn’t have his hands on her, not even in an innocent prom pose.
“How about you?” she asked quietly, and he could tell she’d turned her head to look at him.
He opened his eyes. “Just passing through.”
Glass shattered inside the bar.
“We may be here awhile.” She sighed and relaxed into Graham’s arms just as easily as if they were old friends who hung out together all the time. “Every time it sounds like it’s quieting down, it spins right back up again.”
