Page 33 of Rough Ride

She shrugged. “I figured it was better before I got too busy here.”

It was hard to argue with that. “What was this with Danny?”

Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Tapping the help, Crysta? I didn’t think that was your kind of thing.”

The moment he said it, Eli wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Shit, he kept making mistakes with her. He had to learn to control his mouth, which hadn’t been a problem until he met her.

For a second or two, he thought he might have gotten away with it. Then her eyes narrowed.

“You think I was hitting on Danny?” Before he could answer, she plowed ahead. “What does that matter? If I want to go up to my room and have hot, animalistic sex with him, I can. I’m a grown woman, he’s old enough and I do whatever the hell I want.”

She turned around and marched off but he stopped her by grabbing her arm.

“How are you getting to Oahu?”

She drew in a deep breath as if trying to calm herself. “Micah’s brother-in-law is having his plane flown over.”

She looked down at his hand on her arm and he released it. Then, without another word, she left him alone. Although, he did hear her stomp up the stairs then across the floor upstairs.

He sat down and leaned his head back. Closing his eyes, he tried to pull a breath and control his temper. He’d lost his cool. It wasn’t like him. If a woman wasn’t interested, he had no problem letting her be. There were plenty of other women and an unwilling one was unappealing to him.

So, why couldn’t he just walk away from Crysta? True, they were living together. That made it hard. And owning the ranch made it even more difficult. Still, he normally wouldn’t sit and fantasize about a woman. With Crysta, he did things he hadn’t done since he was a teenager. He felt out of control and that was something he couldn’t handle.

Well, there is one thing he knew. Crysta wasn’t going over to Oahu with Micah’s brother-in-law alone. And she’d just have to deal with it.

* * *

Eli rented a car when they got to the island. Micah had offered his truck, but he didn’t want to deal with that. It was bad enough they were now driving out to the Rosses’ for dinner.

“If you’re going to be so grumpy, I don’t know why you agreed to go eat with your friends.”

He glanced over at Crysta and ground his teeth together. He was having a hard enough time keeping his hands off her. When she had walked down the stairs back at the ranch, he had wanted to drag her back upstairs. The yellow sundress was sexy in its simplicity, seemingly hugging her curves but not revealing too much. They had gotten a convertible and had the top down. She’d worn her hair up, but left a few strands to dance in the air. She looked like she’d just risen out of bed in that sexy, mussed up way.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” Eli said, passing a slow-moving sedan. “Micah told me to bring you to dinner.”

She laughed. The sound of it danced over the air to him. Damn. His cock twitched, his body heated.

“Yeah, like big, bad Eli St. John wouldn’t say no to Micah.”

At one time, yes, but now, he wasn’t so sure. The truth of the matter was that since Joe had taken a turn for the worse, the crew at Rough ‘n Ready had sort of adopted him. Joe’s chemo treatments had been horrible and while Eli couldn’t leave the ranch that long, he’d pop over at least once a week to check on him. No one else in his family would have done it.

Because of that, the ladies had started to look out for him. They would show up at Joe’s hospital room throughout the week and email Eli with how he was doing. That had been a little too much to take at times, but it had given him solace to know that Joe wasn’t spending every day in the hospital with no one to talk to.

Worse, they made sure Eli had home cooked meals while he was there. Now, he felt obligated to go and that was something he didn’t like. The only person on earth he’d felt he owed had been Joe. But little by little, this group of friends had dragged him into their circle.

He took the exit to Micah and Dee’s house.

“So, tell me about these people. I met Micah, and you said Evan was going to be here tonight?”

“Yes. They’re old friends. I gather they grew up poor, but they moved to the islands together. Now, they own Rough ‘n Ready in Honolulu.”

“Damon taught there for awhile.”

She said it casually enough so he felt okay with asking about it. “So, you and Damon broke up. Why?”

“It was a long time ago.”

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