Her coy smile tells me where her thoughts are. “Here,” she says as she opens a cooler and pulls a bottle of white wine from it. It’s already opened, which would explain the glass already half drank sitting on the table.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Long enough to enjoy the scenery,” she murmurs and then lets out a hum of appreciation, her attention toward the stables.
“Of course, you have.” Without looking, I plop down onto one of the chairs.
Fiona’s hair is perfect, her manicure fresh, and her blue eyes vibrant and alive.
“What’s in that?” I ask, pointing to the pink bakery box she must have brought. I haven’t eaten since the banana I grabbed before taking Ruby out on our ride four-plus hours ago.
“Muffins.”
“Muffins?” I repeat because there’s something about the way she says it that has me drawing my eyebrows together.
“I figured you already had the stud, so why not get the muffins to go with him?”
“Jesus,” I bark out through a laugh, but hell if it isn’t what I need. “Did you—”
“Yes. I did say that.” She shrugs unapologetically. “It isn’t exactly fair for you to keep him corralled up here all to yourself.”
“He’s a grown man who can come and go as he pleases.”
I don’t catch the innuendo until it’s out of my mouth, but the quirk of her eyebrow tells me she sure as hell does. “Stud muffins like that”—she lifts her chin out to where Jack is working on something—“are more than easy on the eye and hard to come by.” It’s her turn to laugh. “Let’s hope he’s hard and the coming part is easy.”
My mouth is agape as her suggestive chuckle echoes around the space.
Jack is showing Will something on the clipboard in his hand. They’re squatting on their haunches with their backs to us and their heads leaned forward. I can assume it’s our charting system for feed and exercise and medicines, but I’m not looking at that.
I’m looking at Jack’s broad shoulders and perfectly showcased ass, the way he talks with those strong hands of his, his forearms flexing with each motion.
I keep picturing the look in his eyes the other day when he put me in my place.
When he told me the things I needed to hear that seem to be on repeat in my mind.
“Mmm-mmm-mmm,” Fiona murmurs, and when I look her way, she meets my eyes. “You’re telling me you haven’t hit that yet?”
“I don’t even know what to say to you.”
“Men have been talking like that for years. It isn’t a crime to be a woman and talk about a man how they talk about us.” She takes a sip of her wine and keeps her eyes on mine from above its rim. “He’s like a seven-layer dip. Sexiness layered upon a good body atop attractiveness—”
“That’s the most absurd analogy I’ve ever heard.”
“It can be absurd all you want so long as you get to the layering on top of each other part.” She winks, and I bring my own glass to my lips because I have no words.
The wine is crisp and sweet and welcome, and even though I know I’ll probably regret it later when I’m tired and sluggish, I take another drink.
“So?” She draws the word out.
“So?”
She is fighting her smile like a little kid trying to contain a secret. “So, how are things?”
“Good. Better.”
“I bet they’re better.” Her laugh carries down to the men and Jack waves in greeting as Will shields his eyes to look our way before turning back to his work. “My, oh my, the man grew a goatee.”
“Fiona.” I’m not sure why her name comes out as a warning, but it does. Maybe it’s because I don’t want her to say what’s been on my mind late at night. Then again, maybe I do.
“My third husband had one. We’ll just say the feel of it between my thighs is the only fantasy I’ve ever had that he stars in.”
“Never been with a man who had one.”
“See? It’s fate. He’s just the man to break your goatee cherry.”
“Goatee cherry?” I almost spit out my wine.
“C’mon, Tee. You know me. I’m part shock-value, part truth, and always pro you get yours.”
After that, she doesn’t ask anything else about things between Jack and me, though. Even with as forward as she is, I think she knows this is uncharted territory for me that I need to wade through on my own.
Instead, we fall into small talk. My plans for the ranch. How Rhonda Fitz was pissed at her husband so she got drunk at Ginger’s and drove her car through the front of the Post Office. How I’m in desperate need of a manicure. If I’ll attend the Lone Star charity event of the season this year.
The sun slowly moves toward the west as we sit and polish off the first bottle of wine and decide to have a sip or two of the second one.
“So, how’s he working out?” she asks and lifts a piece of huckleberry muffin to her lips.
I exhale a long, audible sigh that speaks for itself, but the wine has me smiling like the cat that ate the canary. “He’s frustrating and a know-it-all and . . .” The man can kiss like there’s no tomorrow.
“And?” she prompts while her eyes flicker between the stable and then back to me.
“And what?”
“You like him, don’t you?” My wine glass halts midway to my mouth as I contemplate telling a bald-faced lie with the truth. Fi points at me. “Don’t you lie to me. It’s written all over that gorgeous face of yours.”
“You got a second, Knox?” Jack catches me off guard because I didn’t notice him walk this way. A slow, sinking part of me knows that this whole situation is about to make me uncomfortable on so many levels. Between Fi’s forwardness and Jack’s tell-it-like-it-is attitude, I’m certain I’m in over my head.
“Talk about a tall drink of water,” Fiona murmurs appreciatively under her breath, her eyes roaming the length of him. I sit up, suddenly feeling like a kid caught ditching school, and set my wine glass down.
“Yeah. Sure. What did you need?” I ask.
“She was just playing hooky for a bit,” Fiona says, her Texan accent suddenly becoming a little more Southern and a lot more seductive. “You gonna get mad at her for that?”
“No, ma’am,” Jack says as he walks up to the foot of the verandah and tips his hat in a way that I swear only happens in old-school western movies. His grin is wide, and his eyes crinkle at the corners.
There’s an unexpected thrill that shoots through me, which I blame on the wine I’ve consumed but is really because I’ve already decided I’m having sex with him.
“And who might you be?”
“Jack Sutton,” he says, his boots clomping on the wood as he walks toward her to shake her hand. I swear that, if I didn’t know any better, she holds out her hand for him as if she’s hoping that he’ll kiss the top of it, which he doesn’t.
Still, I’m startled by the small streak of jealousy that fires through me.
“Fiona Camden.” She bats her lashes. “Such a pleasure. Is my girl here behaving herself? She’s been known to have a wild temper.”