Page 46 of A Baby for the Texas Cowboy
August laughed and Anders high-fived Catalina. Family. Friends. Solid relationships. Envy slithered through Tinsley even though she tried to ignore it.
“Just saying, boys. I grew up on a ranch—don’t think I don’t know how.”
To give herself something to do—mainly her job and to quiet the new and disquieting rush of…feelings—Tinsley reached out and pulled a case of wine from the truck.
“Where do you want me to start stacking these, Catalina?” she asked.
“I got this.” Anders swept the case out of her arms, added another and then stalked off toward the tasting room.
“That did not just happen,” Tinsley muttered.
“Pick your battles,” Catalina advised and grabbed a case. “And while you’re braining Anders, bring the dolly. There should be two of them in the closet that’s right outside the wine storage room. And you may want to grab a sweater. The tasting room wine cellar is cooler to protect all the wine.”
Tinsley grabbed another case to be more efficient and headed into the tasting room to get the dollies.
“Got it,” Anders said as she walked into the Verflucht tasting room, and for a moment she couldn’t see as her eyes adjusted to the difference in light.
“I’m going to kick you with the pointy toes of my cowgirl boots,” she said as he took the case from her.
“Gotta catch me first.”
Tinsley held on to her temper and dignity, barely, and instead wheeled out the two dollies to the curb.
“Thanks,” Anders said, loading one up with five cases and then another, his body blocking her access to the truck.
Catalina and August smoothly fed the cases to Anders, and he stacked them with an efficiency that was admirable.
And irritating.
“I have not suddenly become some weak, swoony heroine in a melodrama,” she informed him. “I’ve lugged thousands of cases of whiskey over the past year. And lugged up until last week.”
“And today you don’t have to lug anything.” He smiled and wheeled a dolly away.
She seized the other dolly as August made a move to hop off the truck.
“Wish I’d brought some popcorn,” August called out after her as she sped-wheeled the dolly back into Verflucht.
“Stop with the ‘I am a man’ attitude,” she hissed, joining Anders in the wine cellar.
“I am a man. Proved it.” The sexy light in his eyes filled her with heat, and that sensuous, arrogant gaze landed first on her breasts, lighting her on fire despite the climate-controlled cool of the room and then slid lower to her abdomen, which made her want to kick him all over again when she had never once had an impulse toward violence ever.
But this situation with Anders required a finesse and diplomacy she lacked after five years of independence. She was fiercely determined to control her own life to please herself.
“Congratulations. You and I both effed up the birth control. Not something to celebrate.”
His features shut down—his two dimples nowhere in sight.
“What I want to say, Anders, is let me do my job.”
“With no thought to the baby’s safety?”
She jerked back, shocked by the fierceness of his question.
“That’s not fair,” she said. “Are you thinking about the baby’s safety with your job, jumping up on two tons of bucking, thrashing bull with nothing but some leather, Kevlar, helmet, mouth guard, tied-on boots, medical tape and your crazy courage?”
The silence pulsed between them, and she felt a stab of satisfaction.
“The baby is not inside me,” he finally said, very slowly as if she were dimwitted. “Have you even checked about heavy lifting during pregnancy?”
