Chapter 15 Traitorous Tingles
The voice, a low and maddeningly familiar drawl, came from directly behind her. Sierra spun around, her heart leaping into her throat. Ryder was leaning against the sound part of the fence, arms crossed over his chest, a half-eaten apple in one hand. He had that infuriating smirk on his lips. How long had he been standing there, watching her?
“You’ve got to use the tension in the wood to hold the rail, not just muscle it,” he said, taking a lazy bite of the apple. “And you’re using a twenty-penny nail when you only need a twelve. Not to mention you don’t really need that heavy hammer, there’s a lighter one in the shed if you want me to go get it for you.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped, cradling her throbbing thumb.
“Doesn’t look fine,” he observed, his eyes twinkling with an amusement that made her blood boil. He pushed off the fence and ambled over, his presence suddenly sucking all the air out of the space between them. He gestured with the apple. “Let me see your hammer.”
“I can do it myself.”
“Sure, you can. You’ll have it done by sometime next Tuesday, maybe.” He effortlessly plucked the hammer from the dirt. “Hold the rail. Right there. Firm.”
Humiliated but seeing no other option, she did as she was told, pressing the splintered wood against the post. He produced the proper nail from his own pocket as if by magic. With three swift, economical blows, he drove it deep into the wood, securing the rail perfectly. He moved to the next point of connection.
“You’re supposed to be fixing the number three well, not supervising my… projects,” she muttered, acutely aware of how close he was. He smelled of sun, leather, and clean sweat, a scent that was both earthy and overwhelmingly masculine.
“Well’s fixed. Now I’m fixing the view,” he said without looking at her.
“What view? What are you talking about?”
“Ever watch one of those videos where they’re extracting a worm or something out of somebody’s skin?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Watching that is sort of like watching you fix this fence.” He drove another staple home. “It’s painful to watch.”
When he moved to the final spot, he had to lean in, his body brushing against hers. A traitorous jolt, sharp and electric, shot through her. His shoulder pressed against her arm, solid and warm. She could feel the heat radiating from him, see the corded muscles in his forearm flex as he raised the hammer. Her breath hitched. She was suddenly aware of every single point of contact, of the sheer size and power of him looming over her. This was not the calculated proximity of a crowded Manhattan subway; this was elemental, a current she hadn’t consented to but was swept up in all the same.
He finished with a final, resonant thwack. “There. Not pretty, but it’ll hold.”
The task was complete. Sierra scrambled back, putting much-needed space between them and turning away, her skin still tingling where he had touched her. She tried to regain her composure, to summon the icy professionalism that was her armor. Covered in a sheen of sweat, with dirt on her cheek, her expensive clothes ruined, and her hand throbbing, she must have looked like a disaster. She risked a glance at him over her shoulder.
He wasn’t smirking anymore. His gaze had dropped from her face, tracing the lines of her torn blouse, the smudge of dirt on her shoulder, the ripped knee of her jeans, before coming to rest, pointedly, on the hip pockets of her curve-hugging jeans, lingering there a moment too long. It wasn’t a mocking look. It was slower, heavier, an assessment of a different kind. And in that moment, as his eyes traveled back up to meet hers, a confusing, liquid warmth began to stir deep in her groin. To her profound shock, she realized she liked the way he was looking at her.
The realization hit her like a splash of cold water, jarring and unwelcome. This was the man who had just belittled her, challenged her, and represented everything she was trying to escape. The same gawky teen who had pursued her in her teen years, though he certainly wasn’t gawky and awkward anymore. This feeling was a complication she couldn't afford, a weakness she refused to indulge.
Anger, a much safer emotion, surged to her defense.
“Are you done?” she snapped, her voice sharper than she intended. “Don’t you have some cows to stare at or something better to do than stand here and examine my butt?”
She stormed away, not waiting for a response, her heart hammering against her ribs for reasons that had nothing to do with fixing a fence and everything to do with the man she was doing her best to escape.
Her retreat was a strategic one, executed with the precision of a corporate takeover. She marched back to the main house, leaving Ryder standing in the dust of her indignation, the half-repaired fence a testament to her failure and his infuriating competence. The screen door slammed behind her, a punctuation mark on her humiliation. She didn’t stop until she was under the scalding spray of the shower, scrubbing at the dirt and the phantom sensation of his arm against her, willing the tingling heat down the drain.
She spent the rest of the day in self-imposed exile, claiming a sudden migraine, a plausible excuse given the relentless Arizona sun, and locked herself in her childhood bedroom. Dust motes danced in the afternoon light, illuminating a past she had meticulously packed away: faded posters of bands she no longer listened to, a collection of horse show ribbons, a cracked photograph of her and her mother on the porch. She opened her laptop onto the small desk, the crisp, modern lines of the machine a stark contrast to the rustic pine furniture. The ranch might be bleeding money, but her mind was a well-oiled engine of commerce, and she threw herself into her work with a vengeance.