Page 20 of At the Rancher's Pleasure

Want.

To.

Go.

“And I’m sorry about your wine,” Sarabeth added.

“Yeah, I just tossed five thousand dollars all over your porch floor.”

She winced. “Sorry. Um...”

Brett flipped the covers back and stood up, utterly at ease in his nakedness. He saw Sarabeth’s eyes drop to his crotch, saw the interest in those pretty blue depths and smiled grimly. Yeah, she wanted his body but wasn’t particularly interested in his mind. He felt, to be honest, a little used.

You’re being a hypocrite, Harston, and you damn well know it. Ten minutes ago, you were prepared to give her the same speech but, because she beat you to it, your nose is out of joint. You don’t want a relationship, a “just-sex fling” would be amazing, and you’re going to mess it all up by being a juvenile dick.

Pull yourself together. Pronto!

Brett walked over to Sarabeth and dropped a kiss on her temple. “Thanks for being honest.” He admired candor in a woman. “I appreciate that...and I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

Sarabeth placed her hand on his bare chest and tipped her head back to look at him. “We are?”

He nodded. “Yep. And yeah, of course I’d like to sleep with you again, for as long as it works for both of us.” He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin in her hair. “Come over tomorrow night and eat with me.”

Sarabeth stepped back and pulled a face. “OMG. I never offered you anything to eat. You must be starving!” She placed a hand on her belly and wrinkled her nose. “I’mstarving.”

He laughed, his irritation vanishing. “I’ll take great sex over food any day, sweetheart. But tomorrow night we’ll eat first and allow ourselves to be distracted afterward.”

“Good plan,” Sarabeth agreed. “Go on down and find your clothes, and I’ll find you a broom and pan to sweep up the broken bottle.”

He liked the fact that she didn’t offer to do it for him, that she didn’t buy into the stereotype that she was the woman therefore she must clean.

Sarabeth was full of surprises, and he couldn’t wait to see what else she had up her sleeve.

Six

In Brett’s gourmet, barely used kitchen, Sarabeth whisked eggs with buttermilk and eyed the number of dry ingredients for corn bread in the glass bowl in front of her. After ten days of eating many of her meals with Brett—they’d ditched the “no sleeping over” rule after one night, deciding that waking up together was far more fun—she’d realized that the man ate.A lot.

So, not being a fan of the microwave meals he kept in his freezer, Sarabeth cooked.

But only because shewantedto, not because he expected her to. As a rancher—as a good ole Texan—Sarabeth expected him to assume that she would do the cooking and cleaning. But Brett, she’d come to realize, was more evolved than she’d given him credit for. He employed a housekeeper a couple of days a week to keep his home spotlessly clean and to do his laundry, but he loaded and unloaded his own dishwasher, made coffee and his bed.

Got her wine, rubbed her feet, gave her outstanding orgasms...

“C’mon, get it into the oven, sweetheart.”

Sarabeth smiled at Brett, who was standing on the other side of the massive, marble-topped island in the center of his kitchen. “Hungry?”

“I’m always hungry but doubly so today. I rode up to the high meadow to check on a herd. I spent the whole day sitting in the saddle.”

They’d taken a couple of rides together and Sarabeth was slowly regaining her youthful confidence. Though being on a horse reminded her that she had muscles in places she’d forgotten about. Actually, sex with Brett did the same.

“I took Bella out for a ride today,” she told him, adding the wet ingredients to the dry. “She’s a lovely horse and I adore riding her. She’s definitely my favorite.”

“She was one of my first foals, and I couldn’t bear to part with her,” Brett told her, picking up the bottle of wine and topping off her glass. He sent her a curious look. “You looked a bit pensive earlier. Anything on your mind?”

“Ah, no. I was just thinking that I like that you don’t follow convention.”

He used his fingers to transfer some grated cheese from the pile on the counter to his mouth. Sarabeth glared at him and pushed the cheese and the grater toward him. “Replenish the stock, Harston.”

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