shirts with stains she never could remove. She wasn’t good at any of the tasks the housekeeper gave her today, and to top it off, she didn’t know how to gossip.
Break room lunches sent her into a tizzy. She preferred to eat behind her computer screen. So getting dumped into a household of a housekeeper, two other housemaids and a kitchen maid who gossiped like it was their life’s work made her far from comfortable.
But she had a goal—find out anything she could about Black’s wife. In the five hours she’d worked, she’d put away a delivery of groceries and polished all the chair legs in the entire house, by her guess. She also knew the lawn boy had slept with the cook’s daughter when she came to visit. And that the cook took offense to them sneaking around under her nose and threatened to lop off the boy’s dick with her meat cleaver.
There were half a dozen other tales Lauralee overheard that made her question if she was too sheltered, both growing up and as an adult. Maybe she should get out from behind her computer screen more often and live. She didn’t have sordid tales to relate.
Nor did she want any. She enjoyed her routine life, though running off to be married on a moment’s notice wasn’t exactly ordinary, was it?
Her feet were killing her. So was her lower back. She felt sticky and the scent of furniture polish lingered in the depths of her sinuses so it was all she could smell.
Until she opened the door of the bedroom she shared with her new husband and caught a whiff of his cologne.
Across the room, he stood stripping off his shirt, which didn’t look nearly wrinkled enough for him to have done actual work.
She slammed the door, and he shot her a smile.
A smile. Damn the man for looking so good despite the extreme stress they were both under.
Or maybe he wasn’t really stressed by pretending to be someone else in order to steal Black’s wife out from under his nose.
“Hard day at work, honey?” He dropped the shirt to the bed.
Her stupid eyes wanted to drop to his bare chest. His bare, chiseled, very muscular, gorgeous chest that sported a tattoo of a horseshoe with a wreath of flowers hanging off it and another on his shoulder.
She jerked her gaze to his face, but that wasn’t better, since he wore a cocky grin.
“Why do you still look all fresh and perky?” she snapped at him.
He shrugged.
She could barely lift her feet as she crossed to the bed. “I’m a nerd, not a laborer.” With that declaration, she fell face down on the bed.
“Awww, poor Lauralee.” His drawl edged under her last nerve and pried it up, kicking and screaming.
She twisted her face to flatten him with a look. Then she flipped over. “Are you looking at my ass?”
The set of his striking jaw and the burning depths of his amber eyes left no question that he’d been doing exactly that.
“Stop it!” She heaved herself upward using the last of her energy.
“Stop what? You said don’t lay a hand on you. You didn’t say anything about eyes.”
Flustered, she ripped her hair out of the tight bun on the back of her head. The pins had been digging into her scalp for hours, and she’d wanted to snatch them out countless times.
She tossed the pins down on the mattress and glowered at Boone. At least before she swallowed her tongue.
He unzipped his fly and started to slide his pants down his body.
Dear heavens. And right behind it: He’s muscled…everywhere.
She threw out her hand to stop him. “What are you doing?”
He flashed a grin and let his trousers drop, exposing boxer briefs in a deep gray color. “Getting changed, my pretty l’il wife. You should too so you can come with me.”
Her eyes bulged. “Where?”
“Riding.”
“I haven’t ridden since I was fifteen.” She hooked her arm behind her back to feel along her spine for the zipper of the ugliest garment in Wyoming.
“It’s not something you forget. Like riding a bike.” He watched her twist her arms at odd angles and practically dislocate her elbow in order to catch the zipper.
“Here, let me help you out of that uniform.”
Lordy. Did her stomach have to dip at his words? It wasn’t as if Boone was asking her to undress so they could do something.
Like consummate the marriage.
She groaned, but not because she was trapped in the dress.
His eyes danced as he tugged