forgot to take my pills. I probably look awful, with puffy, red eyes.”
He tugged her reins, drawing her mount to a stop alongside his. His gaze traveled over her. “You actually look beautiful.”
She issued a short laugh. “It must be getting too dark for you to see.”
“I can see fine,” he grated in a roughened whisper as he leaned over, hooked an arm around her waist and plucked her out of her saddle.
She squeaked with surprise when she landed in his hard lap. With one palm pressed against his chiseled chest, she tilted her head to stare into his eyes.
He slid his callused fingertip down the curve of her cheek and brushed the corner of her lips. She sucked in sharply in awareness of how hard he was growing beneath her and from the way he swept his gaze over her face, as if seeing the sun for the first time.
“You really are striking, Lauralee. Your pale skin and freckles.” He skimmed his finger across her cheekbone. “Most of all your eyes. I noticed those the first day we met.”
Her breaths came faster. “You…did?”
He glanced over her hair, which must look a mess after being pinned into a bun all day while she slaved and then their romp back in the room had it spilling all over the place in a wild mess.
Tensing at the raw electricity zapping between them, she stopped breathing just as Boone lowered his mouth and claimed hers in an all-consuming kiss.
He cupped her head in one palm, angling it back to plunge his tongue inside. His flavor filled her head with longing, and she wiggled closer, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders and anchoring herself to his body.
The kiss went carnal, with sexy moans escaping from each of them and a fire burning hotter and more out of control by the heartbeat.
When he finally lifted his mouth free, he gazed down at her. She felt hot and sticky and even more disheveled, but he continued to look at her in a way that made her feel beautiful.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you, Lauralee,” he grated. “Not on my watch.”
Some of her good sense returned after being shaken up like fizzy soda from his kisses. “You’re not responsible, Boone.”
He captured her hand and pressed his fingers into her rings. “I damn well am.”
The walls of her heart trembled. Had he really just spoken those words?
Shaken to the core, she could only stare at him.
They weren’t yet able to voice whatever was going on between them, but maybe it was due to them both being logical thinkers. They lived by what they knew, and there wasn’t a book written to tell them how to deal with a fake marriage.
When he kissed her again, something had changed between them—shifted. He worried about her. He cared.
He’d acknowledged he was her husband.
Chapter Nine
“Hey, Marks. How’s it goin’?” Butch Flaherty, the ranch foreman, looked up as Boone entered the garage, where he and a couple of ranch hands were working on a tractor.
In a glance, Boone assessed what they were doing. How many times had he and one of his brothers torn apart a transmission in the old girl on the Wynton Ranch?
“I’d say my day’s a sight better than yours.” He settled his hand on the cool metal of the tractor and ducked his head to eye the progress.
Flaherty chuckled. “You’re probably right about that. Ever fixed a tractor?”
“A couple times. Or twenty. Growing up, we didn’t have the best equipment.”
“Black should just buy a new one so we can quit ripping this one apart,” one of the hands working on the mechanical beast grumbled.
Flaherty shot Boone a look and then tipped his head toward the door, indicating they should step outside.
He followed the older man, contemplating the spite in the ranch hand’s voice. It wasn’t very different from the tone in which those men at the oil conference had spoken to Black.
Once outdoors, Flaherty took a pinch of snuff from a pouch and stuffed it into his bottom lip. He offered it to Boone, but he refused.
“You don’t use tobacco? Or just not on the job?”
Boone threw him a grin. “I tried it once, after I saw my cousin use it. I puked and never tried it again.” He always wondered what his cousin had been thinking to risk something like that, knowing if caught that his strict parents would thrash him good.
Flaherty laughed and tucked the pouch in his pocket. They gazed out over the