Barbara Dunlop - Seduction And The Ceo

He nodded. It wasn’t a lie. He needed to be with her right now. It was the only way he’d be sure she was okay.

She moved forward and placed a hand on his arm. “I know you miss Gramps. Do you still miss Mom and Dad?”

Jared nodded again. But this time, his lie was outright. He didn’t miss his parents. He was angry with his parents. Furious, if the truth be known. But that was his burden, the secret passed down by his grandfather. His only choice was to preserve their memories for his siblings.

Stephanie’s eyes shimmered and she blinked rapidly. “Then you should stay.”

Jared covered her hand with his. “Thank you.”

“You want to watch me jump?”

“Sure.” He nodded. “I’m going to check the pasture land at Buttercup Pond. Clear my head a little. I’ll swing by later in the morning.”

Stephanie nodded. Then she swiped the back of her hand across one cheek and headed for the main arena.

Jared tugged Tango’s lead rope free and swung up into the saddle. The ride to Buttercup Pond to establish his cover story would take him a couple of hours. But his real mission was across the Windy River. Since his grandfather’s deathbed revelation in April, he couldn’t get his great-great-grandparents’ cabin out of his mind.

The walk to the Ryders’ great-great-grandparents’ cabin took longer than Melissa had expected. At last she came around a bend of the river to see two cabins. One, made of logs, was nearly collapsing with age. The other was obviously newer. It was larger, made from lumber, with glass windows still intact and peeling white paint on the walls and porch.

A single story, it was L-shaped, with a peaked, green shingle roof. The rails had sagged off the porch, but the three steps looked safe enough, and the front door was a few inches ajar. The buildings were surrounded by a wildflower meadow that nestled up against steep rocky cliffs, jutting into the crystal-blue sky. The river glided by through a wide spot, nearly silent compared to the rapids upstream.

Melissa pulled out her cell phone, clicking a couple of pictures, wishing Susan was along with her camera.

Then she gingerly climbed the three stairs. She pressed the front door, slowly creaking it open. A dank, dusty room was revealed in the filtered sunlight through the stained windows. It held a stone fireplace, an aging dining table and chairs, and the remnants of a sofa. The floorboards were warped and creaky. Through a doorway, yellowed linoleum lined a small kitchen. Curtains hung in shreds over two of the windows.

Melissa let herself imagine the long-ago family. Jared’s great-grandfather must have grown up here. Was he an only child? Did he have brothers and sisters? Did Jared have cousins and more-distant relatives around the country?

She made a mental note to research the family’s genealogy.

On the far side of the living room, next to the kitchen door, a narrow hallway led to the other side of the house. The floor groaned under her running shoe-clad feet as she made her way through. Her movement stirred up dust, and she covered her mouth and nose with her hand to breathe more easily.

The hallway revealed two bedrooms. One was stark, with plywood bunks nailed to the wall and a hollow cutout of a closet. But the second was a surprise. Intact yellow curtains hung over the window. The bed was obviously newer than the other furnishings, and a brightly colored quilt was shoved against the brass footboard, while the remnants of two pillows were strewn at the head.

“Can I help you?”

The deep voice nearly scared Melissa out of her skin. Her hand flew to her heart as she whirled around to see Jared standing in the bedroom doorway.

“You scared me half to death!” she told him.

“Shouldn’t you be working?”

“It’s lunchtime. I thought you were a ghost.” Her heart was still racing, and adrenaline prickled her skin, flushing her body, then cooling it rapidly.

“Still very much alive,” he drawled, expression accusing. “What are you doing here?”

“I was curious.”

He waited.

“Last night. You mentioned your great-great-grandparents and, well, I like old buildings.”

“So you walked two miles?”

“Yes.”

“On your lunch hour?”

“I wanted to come while it was light.”

He sighed in disgust and gave his head a little shake. “You’re flaky, you know that? Instead of eating, you take off on a whim to see a dilapidated old building. How are you going to work all afternoon?”

“I’ll manage,” she offered, already hungry and quite willing to concede his point. But she didn’t have a lot of time to waste.

“You’ll be passing out by two.”

She could have argued, but she had more important questions. “What’s with this room?” She gestured around. “It seems newer.”

Jared’s gaze fixed on the disheveled bed for a long beat. His eyes hardened to sapphire, and a muscle ticked next to his left eye. “Must have been a staff member sleeping here.”

“You think?” She wondered why they hadn’t fixed up the rest of the house.

He seemed to guess her question. “I imagine they ate at the cookhouse with everybody else.”

He turned his attention fully to Melissa and held out a broad callused hand. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift home.”

“You drove?” Why hadn’t she heard the engine?

“I rode Tango.”

She instinctively shrank back.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid to ride double on him.”

“Of course not.” She sure hoped there wasn’t a trick to riding double.

“Then let’s go. You need to eat something.”

“I’ll be fi-”

“No, you won’t. Skipping lunch was a stupid decision. Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve managed to stay alive this long.” He reached out and grasped her hand, tugging her out of the bedroom and down the hall.

“Did your great-grandfather have siblings?” she dared to ask.

“He had a sister.”

“That explains the bunk beds.”

“Yes, it does.”

Melissa blinked in the strong sunlight, her focus going immediately to where Tango was tied to the porch.

Jared mounted, then maneuvered the horse flush against the railingless platform, holding out his hand.

Melissa took a deep breath. She braced herself against his forearm, then arced her right leg high, swinging her butt to land with an unladylike thud, off-center behind the saddle on Tango’s broad back.

The horse grunted and stepped sideways.

Jared swore out loud, reached back to snag her waist and shoved her into place as her arms went instinctively around his body and clung tight.

“Sorry,” she muttered against his back.

“You’re a klutz,” he told her. “On top of everything else, you’re a klutz.”

“I never learned to ride properly,” she admitted.

“You need to learn some life skills,” he responded. “I don’t even care which ones. But damn, woman, you’ve got to learn how to do something.”

He urged Tango into a fast walk. The motion and play of muscles were unsettling beneath Melissa’s body. She kept her arms tight around Jared, slowly becoming aware of the intimacy of their position. Her breasts were plastered against his back, his cotton shirt and her T-shirt little barrier to the heat of their bodies. Her cheek rested against him, and every time she inhaled, her lungs were filled with his subtle, woodsy musk scent.

She was quickly getting turned on. Arousal boiled in the pit of her belly and tingled along her thighs. Her nipples had grown hard, and for a mortifying moment, she wondered if he could feel them.

“Where do you live in Indiana?” he asked, voice husky.

“Gary.”

“You have a job there?”

“Not yet.” She’d decided claiming to have a job would raise too many questions about why she needed money, and how she had enough time off to travel across the country. “An apartment?”

“I’ve been staying with friends.” Not having a job meant she couldn’t claim to be paying rent. Unless she had investments or family money. In which case, she wouldn’t need to earn money for a bus ticket.

As embarrassing as it might be, she had to pretend to be as big a loser as Jared had decided she was in order to maintain her cover story.

He grunted his disapproval, and she felt a twinge of regret that she couldn’t set the record straight. But it wasn’t her job to impress Jared Ryder. And it sure wasn’t her job to be attracted to him. She’d have to fight her instincts on both fronts.

Near the cookhouse, Jared helped Melissa down from Tango’s back. She staggered to a standing position, and he could see the pain reflected in her expression as she stretched the muscles in her thighs. If the woman had ever been on a horse before, he’d eat saddle leather. “There you are,” came Stephanie’s accusatory voice.

Jared felt a twinge of satisfaction at the thought of Melissa getting her comeuppance. But then he realized Stephanie was talking to him. He’d obviously missed her jumping practice.

“I gave Melissa a lift,” he explained.

Stephanie looked at Melissa. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I was-”

“Downriver,” Jared quickly put in. “Walking.” The explanation earned him a confused look from Melissa.

Too bad. He’d worry about that one later. For now, he didn’t want to plant any thoughts about the old cabin in Stephanie’s head.

Stephanie looked from Jared to Melissa, then back again. “Well, you missed a no-fault round,” she told him, putting her pert nose in the air.

“I guess you’ll just have to do it again.”

“You think it’s easy?”

“No,” he acknowledged. “I think it’s very, very hard. But I also know you’re a perfectionist.”

“I wish,” Stephanie retorted. But Jared knew it was true. You didn’t become one of the top-ten show jumpers in the country without a strong streak of perfectionism.

He handed Tango’s reins to Melissa. “He’s all yours. When you’re done taking off the tack, put him back in the red-gated pen.”

Melissa glanced down at the leather reins. Then she looked at Jared, her eyes widening with trepidation.

Yeah, he thought so.

He gave a heavy sigh and took back the reins. “Or I could give you a hand,” he offered. “Then you can grab something to eat.”

He felt Stephanie’s curious gaze behind him, and he twisted his head to give her an I-told-you-so stare. If she wanted him to have time to watch her jump, she shouldn’t have hired such a hopeless case.

He wrapped the reins around the horn of his saddle, clipped a lead rope onto Tango’s bridle, then walked the few steps to the hitching rail in front of the stable.

“You can start with the cinch,” he called over his shoulder, and Melissa quickly scrambled into action, hoofing it across the loose-packed dirt of the pen.

Stephanie watched them for a moment longer. Then he saw a small, hopeful smile quirk the corners of her mouth before she turned away.

Great. His good deed was obviously not going to go unpunished. He was helping Melissa out of pity, not out of attraction. She might be a gorgeous woman, but he liked his dates with a little more gray matter and a whole lot more ambition.

She came to a halt a few feet back from Tango’s flank. Her hands curled into balls by her sides, strands of her blond hair fluttering across her flushed cheeks as she blinked at the tall black horse.

“The cinch,” Jared prompted, releasing the reins and gently drawing the bit from Tango’s mouth.

Melissa didn’t make a move.

He flipped the stirrup up and hooked it over the saddle horn. “The big, shiny silver buckle,” he offered sarcastically.

She took a half step forward, then wiped her palms down the front of her jeans.

Jared turned, planting his hands on his hips.

She pursed her lips, reaching her hand toward the buckle. But Tango shifted, and she snapped it back.

“He’s not going to bite you.”

“What if he kicks me?”

“Just don’t do anything sudden.”

“Oh, that makes me feel a whole lot better.”

This was getting ridiculous. “You know, you might want to think about another line of work.”

“I was perfectly happy scooping out pens.”

“Nobody’s happy scooping out pens.”

“I was.”

“Well, that’s a dead-end career.” He took a step forward and captured her hand.

She tried to jerk away.

“The trick is,” said Jared in the most soothing voice he could muster, “to let him know what you’re doing.” He urged her reluctant hand toward Tango’s withers. “That way, nobody is surprised.”

“Is ‘surprised’ a euphemism?”

“I mean it literally.”

Tango craned his neck to see what was going on.

“Your touch should be firm,” Jared advised, keeping himself between Melissa and the horse’s head. He gave Tango a warm-up pat with his free hand before placing Melissa’s palm on the horse’s coat. “That way, he knows you have confidence.”