The Cowboy Who Lost His Ranch to a Size 20 City Girl novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Bathroom

A storm traps Nadia and Jace under one roof, and the fight in the kitchen turns into a kiss against the pantry door.

The kitchen went dark except for the lightning.

Jace found a lantern on top of the fridge without looking for it.

He lit it with a kitchen match, and the room turned gold.

"Power goes out every storm," he said. "Gas range still works."

"You live here."

"I've lived in that back bedroom since April."

He pulled a flannel shirt off a hook and shrugged into it.

He did not button it.

I tried very hard to look at the lantern.

"Lottie got sick in the spring," he said. "Somebody had to carry her to the bathroom. I figured it was me."

His voice stayed flat, but his jaw moved.

That was all he said about it.

It was enough to take half the air out of my anger.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know she was that sick. Nobody told me until the funeral had already happened."

"I know. I looked for you for two weeks."

"You did?"

"Your number on the postcards was wrong."

That was my old apartment, which I had left a year ago.

I stood in my funeral dress in a dead woman's kitchen and felt like a fool.

"Sit," he said. "I'll make eggs."

"I can cook."

"I know you can. You manage banquets. Lottie told me everything about you."

He cracked eggs one-handed into an iron skillet.

I watched his forearms flex.

"What did she say?"

"That you were too much for most men and she hoped you'd stay that way."

I laughed once, a short surprised sound.

He glanced over his shoulder, and for a second the fury in his face cracked and showed something else.

Then it was gone.

"Don't think I've changed my mind," he said. "I want that half."

"I know."

"I'll get it."

"Not this week."

"You really aren't going to sell."

"I really am not going to sell."

He plated the eggs with bacon and toast and set one in front of me.

Then he sat on the corner of the table, close, with his boot almost touching my chair.

I ate three bites before I said, "Rules."

"Here we go."

"Separate rooms. Buyout talk goes outside. You don't call me ma'am."

"What do I call you?"

"Nadia."

He said it slowly, trying out each sound.

"Nadia."

It did something to the back of my knees.

"And I get a rule," he said.

"Go on."

"You keep looking at me like that, and I won't be able to keep my hands to myself."

I put down my fork.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm dessert and you've been told you can't have any."

My face burned.

"Nobody has ever told me I can't have dessert," I said.

"Good."

His eyes dropped to my mouth, then to the neckline of my dress.

He didn't hide it.

"Let me be plain," he said. "I'm furious. I lost the ranch I was supposed to get, to a woman I met three hours ago. And I've wanted to bend you over this table since you tripped into my hands."

My heart was hammering.

"Both of those are true," he said. "I'm not going to pretend either one isn't."

"That's the worst thing anyone has ever said to me."

"Is it?"

I stood up.

I meant to walk out of the room.

I walked straight into him instead.

He was already standing.

I put both hands flat on his chest and felt his heart going as hard as mine.

"Tell me to stop," he said, very low.

"Make me."

He lifted me by the waist and set me against the pantry door.

His mouth came down on mine.

It was nothing like the careful kisses I knew.

He kissed me hard, deep, with a low sound in his chest.

I grabbed fistfuls of his open shirt and pulled him against me.

His hands slid over my ribs and my hips and gripped my ass, and he groaned into my mouth.

"Fuck," he said. "You're so soft."

"Is that a problem?"

"It's the whole problem."

He kissed my jaw, my throat, the place under my ear.

I reached down and found his belt buckle and pulled hard, and felt how hard he was through his jeans.

He pushed into my hand with a growl.

"Nadia."

"Say it again."

"Nadia."

The phone on the wall rang.

It was an old rotary phone, yellow, and it screamed in the quiet.

Neither of us moved.

It rang again.

"Landline," Jace said into my neck. "Never goes out. It's my grandfather."

"Ignore it."

"He'll drive over in this."

He peeled himself off me, breathing hard, and picked it up.

"Granddad."

I could hear a man's voice, loud and cheerful, on the other end.

"She there? Is she pretty? Lottie said she was pretty."

Jace shut his eyes.

"I'm hanging up now."

"Is she mean?"

"She's," Jace said, and he looked at me, and I was still pinned against the pantry door with my dress rucked halfway up my thighs.

His eyes went all the way down.

"She's staying," he said.

He hung up.

The air was still thick.

"I'll sleep on the couch," he said roughly. "The crossing to my cabin's under a foot of water."

"Good."

"Nadia."

"What?"

"If you want that again, you'll have to come find me."

I took the lantern and went upstairs, and I locked the bedroom door, which was ridiculous.

I lay awake for hours listening to the storm and the creak of the couch downstairs.

I fell asleep at dawn.

A truck engine woke me an hour later.

I went to the window in the oversized T-shirt I'd slept in.

A clean white pickup sat in the yard.

A heavy man in a good hat stood on the porch with a briefcase, knocking like he owned the door.

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