“I don’t agree,” Brynne said, with a slight smile, “but I get that men under twenty-five—and often over twenty-five—don’t think with that particular part of their anatomy anyway, so maybe it doesn’t matter.”
Eli’s grin broadened. “You may have a point there, Bailey. I’ll take it under advisement.”
Brynne reflected in the privacy of her own mind that, right about now, she’d rather be taken under something quite different from advisement. What she said aloud was, “Take off your shirt.”
Eli looked pleasantly startled. “Well,” he replied, “all righty, then.”
Now it was Brynne who laughed. “Your shoulders are too close to your ears, Sheriff. You need a back rub.”
Eli removed his flannel shirt, tossed it over the back of a chair. “I won’t turn that down,” he said, reaching for one of the chairs at Brynne’s kitchen table.
He turned it around and sat astride it.
Brynne stood behind him, began to work the muscle in Eli’s neck and shoulders with the strong fingers of an artist and a cook.
He groaned, rested his forehead on his arms, folded across the back of the chair. He was still wearing his T-shirt.
“Hard day?” Brynne asked quietly. Of course, the question was rhetorical, since that much was perfectly obvious, given the way he and Melba had rushed out of Sara’s house earlier.
His response was muffled because he didn’t raise his head. “Worse than hard,” he replied. “Freddie Lansing hanged himself in that old barn on J.P.’s ranch.”
Brynne had only encountered Freddie once or twice, in passing, and she’d recoiled inwardly each time. She knew he’d threatened Eric Worth and, by extension, his younger sister, in the text Eric had shown Eli the night before.
Sara had filled her in on the details, explaining that she’d taken the threat seriously, and hired Dan Summers as a bodyguard.
“That’s awful,” she said, and she meant it, even though a part of her was deeply relieved that Sara and her children were no longer in harm’s way.
Eli sighed. “I despised that kid,” he said, relaxing slowly as Brynne’s fingers worked to loosen rigid muscles. “But I sure as hell wouldn’t have wished him dead. His folks are destroyed. Freddie wasn’t much, but he was all Fred, Sr., and Gretchen had.”
Brynne pressed her thumbs into a hard knot between Eli’s shoulder blades. “I feel sorry for them,” she replied honestly.
“Yeah,” Eli breathed out the word. “So do I.” He paused, turned his head from side to side, stretching his neck. “People like Fred and Gretchen confound me. They seem to like being miserable. I don’t get it.”
“They’re damaged,” Brynne said simply. “Most likely, they were raised by people just like them. Or worse.”
“I don’t know,” Eli answered, between low groans of pleasure. “Makes me wonder what they were like—Fred, Sr., and Gretchen, I mean—when they were young and in love. Did they get off on making each other suffer, or what? And how the hell did they get Freddie, when the two of them are like a pair of porcupines with every quill ready to launch?”
Brynne sighed. She was sad for the Lansings—all of them—but she couldn’t help smiling at the picture Eli had painted in her mind.
“You might be a writer, like your sister,” she observed.
That made Eli lift his head, look back at her over one shoulder. “Oh, hell no,” he said with force, though that devastating grin of his was very much in evidence. “Sara makes a lot of money, and she loves what she does, but if I had to sit in front of a computer screen all day and spin yarns, I’d die of boredom. Or writer’s block.”
“I don’t think Sara gets writer’s block,” Brynne answered, feeling light-headed, as though she were trembling on the edge of a precipice, about to tumble end over end into Eli Garrett’s laughing eyes. “She told me once that she’ll never live long enough to tell all the stories inside her.” A pause. “I used to feel that way about painting.”
Eli made no comment. He stood, turned the chair around, sat down and pulled Brynne onto his lap.
She landed astraddle of his thighs, and a tsunami of heat roared through her, then pooled, pulsing, in her lower belly and between her legs.
She trembled, closed her eyes against the onslaught of physical sensations—and emotions. It would have been impossible, she thought, to untangle all the things she felt.
Eli stroked her cheeks very gently with the edges of his thumbs. “Shhh,” he said, and though that made no sense, it soothed her a little.
Then she realized he was hard. Very hard.
So much for being soothed.
She opened her eyes, gazed directly into his. “Eli—”
“It’s okay, Brynne,” he said. “If you’re not ready, that’s okay. I’m not in any hurry, here.” He paused, and an impish twinkle sparked in his eyes. “Well, actually, I am in a hurry, but we’re going to follow your timetable, not mine.”
“You,” Brynne replied, “are not a normal man.”
“Gee, thanks,” Eli drawled.
“I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it. I meant, well, you’re different. I’ve never been with anybody like you.”
Eli pretended to consider her words deeply. “How am I different?” he asked. “In case you haven’t noticed, the flag might not be flying, but the pole is up.”
Brynne laughed and swatted at him lightly, then let her hand linger on his shoulder. “I definitely noticed. Am noticing. You’re hard and you’re making me want you and yet you’re telling me there’s no hurry. The crazy thing is, I think you actually mean it.”
“Okay, I’ll give it to you straight.” Another pause. Another grin. “Pun intended. I want you, Brynne, too much to push you into something you’re not ready for. I’m not being noble—I’m hedging my bets. When we make love—and I’m pretty sure that’s inevitable—I want it to be right, for both of us. Not because I’ve had a hard day and you want to make me feel better.”
Brynne rested her forehead against his, closed her eyes again. “Could we—could we just lie down together for a while? Hold each other and see what happens? Because honest to God, Eli, right now I want so much to be held.”
He kissed her mouth lightly. Briefly. “Are you the least bit particular about who does the holding?” he teased.
“You,” Brynne blurted, pulling back to meet Eli’s gaze. He was even harder now, pressing against her, and she feared—hoped—that if he moved at all, she would go over the edge in a ball of flame. “I want you to hold me.”