“Two days,” she confirmed.
“Are you going to be able to be chill around me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Hunter, it would take more than you to dismember my chill.”
“Apparently, you do a very good job at getting rid of mine.”
And that, well, that made her feel wonderful.
“Sorry about your hand,” she said, except she could hear that she sounded cheerful.
She shouldn’t be celebrating his broken knuckles. But they were for her. So she did. Even if just a little.
“I don’t think you are.”
“I’m not,” she said. “You were right. This is very basic. I... I am no better than anyone else. I am glad of your ridiculous display. I am glad that I made you break your hand.”
“Great. I’m not especially. But here we are.”
“Here we are,” she said.
Silence stretched between them, and so did tension. She was about a second away from asking him to stay. Asking him to get into bed with her.
“I’ll let you get some rest,” he said, moving away from her.
She nodded. “Just remember that you’re the one that said that. Not me.”
“And that is important for you to say, why?”
“To make it clear that I’m not the one who can’t handle it.”
He stared at her. “All right,” he said. “Maybe I can’t handle it. Maybe I can’t handle the fact that a few weeks ago I saw you only as my friend’s little sister, and a pain in my ass, and now I want to lie back down on that couch and do unspeakable things to you. Maybe I can’t handle that. If that shocks you or bothers you, that’s too bad.”
Her face went red. “I am not shocked or bothered. Thank you. Though, a couple weeks ago you were only my brother’s friend who was not unannoying to me. So there.”
“Is that what we’re doing now? Trying to score points?”
“It’s what we always do.”
He leaned in, his mouth a whisper from hers. “But not this.”
And he kissed her. Soft this time, and it made her flutter. Made her feel like she was floating. Elsie Garrett had never felt like she was floating a day in her life.
But she had a feeling she was going to have a hard time making it feel like her feet were connecting to the ground over the next few days. And she was going to have to act like everything was normal.
Hunter collected the rest of his things and moved toward the door.
“I’ll see you at work tomorrow,” he said.
“Yeah. I’ll see you at work.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WHERE THE HELL have you been?”
When Hunter pulled in the driveway he was shocked to see his brother Gus standing there, bathed in the headlights.
“Since when do you check up on my whereabouts?”
“Since you and I were supposed to meet to discuss the timeline for bringing those horses in from Vancouver.”
Well. He had completely forgotten about that.
“I went out. Sorry.”
“Right. Where were you, exactly?”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
Gus crossed his arms, his expression grim as hell. “The fact that you won’t answer tells me that it does.”
Hunter sighed, feeling exhausted and wrung the hell out. And he had taken himself to the edge with Elsie without getting any satisfaction and he was absolutely not in the mood for Gus to suddenly get involved. “Gus, don’t act interested in my life. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Who said I wasn’t interested in your life, Hunter? Sounds like somebody has some daddy issues.”
“That would be all of us,” Hunter said.
“True enough,” Gus replied.
“Anyway. Sorry. If you want to talk about timelines—”
“It might escape your notice that you have a couple of pretty young things around Four Corners deeply interested in you.”
Hunter stilled. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I think you know. Alaina and Elsie.” He looked at Gus and he tried to figure out where this was coming from. And he also decided to see if he could play it off.
“What makes you think that?”
“I was at Game Day, Hunter, and I was watching the way they act around you.”
“Elsie likes that ranch hand. Travis,” he grunted.
“She doesn’t,” Gus said, shaking his head. “Look, Hunter, I’m not charming like you. I’m not easy. I watch people. And I see what’s going on, and I’d have let it go, but I have a concern it’s all escalating.”
And right then, he kind of hated his brother. Because the thing about Gus was he didn’t jump in and talk and joke with everyone else. He hung back. He watched. Gus had an entirely different experience of the world and everyone in it than the rest of the McCloud brothers.
Hunter wasn’t vain about his appearance. He had no reason to be. But he also knew that he was the kind of good-looking women found easy.
That wasn’t true for Gus. Hunter’s looks drew people in, Gus’s tended to repel them first, and while Gus never issued a complaint on that score, never seemed bothered by it, the fact of the matter was it shaped the way he dealt with people.
And when it came to judgment, he wasn’t wrong. He never was. He just wished that Gus had been looking the other way the last few weeks.
“It’s Elsie,” he said, trying to keep his tone dry, trying to play off the fact that he had just kissed Elsie. Touched her to orgasm. Trying to play off the fact that he was planning on taking her virginity sometime in the next few days. Dovetailing nicely with the conversation about picking up the horses, actually.
“What does that mean?” Gus asked, repeating his own dumb words back at him.
“She doesn’t have feelings for me.” That he did believe was true. They were suffering from an excessive amount of chemistry, but that wasn’t the same as having feelings.
“I don’t believe that. But it’s complicated, because Alaina’s got eyes for you too. Or haven’t you noticed?”
He hadn’t noticed Alaina at all because yeah, Gus was right, he didn’t care.
He was a little surprised Gus had noticed.
“I wondered if you hadn’t,” Gus continued, “because it seems to be Elsie that preoccupied you.”