The Best Is Yet to Come

Even though she’d refused to go with him to the auction, Ryder came by the house on his way. He was driving the farm’s four-wheel-drive this time, a big tan-and-brown pickup, and he was dressed in tan boots, tight jeans, and a chambray shirt that might have been tailor-made for him. A black Stetson was cocked over his pale eyes. Ivy stood at the back door and just stared at him, filling her empty heart with the sheer masculine perfection of him as he climbed out of the vehicle and strode lazily toward the porch.

She was wearing a denim skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse with a patterned scarf carelessly knotted at her throat. She had on her boots, too, because she’d planned to go for a walk so that she wouldn’t brood over having turned down Ryder’s invitation. If she’d left five minutes earlier, she’d have missed him. She didn’t know whether to be sorry or glad.

She opened the door as he came up the steps, noticing the way his eyes narrowed and skimmed lightly over her figure before they found their way to her own.

“Ready?” he asked with a taunting smile.

“I was going for a walk,” she began.

“Jean, we’re gone!” he called to her mother.

“Have fun!” Jean called back from her bedroom.

“But, I’m not going with you,” Ivy began weakly.

He swung her easily up in his hard arms, smiling at her consternation. “Yes, you are,” he said softly.

He turned and walked out the door, his taut-muscled, fit body taking her weight as easily as if she were a sack of feathers.

His chest was warm and hard against her breast, and she smelled the tangy cologne he wore and the faint scent of shaving cream on his face. He had lines beside his silvery eyes, and thick black lashes over them. His nose was slightly dented from a few free-for-alls in his younger days. But his mouth...she almost groaned aloud just looking at it. Wide and sensual, chiseled, with a thin upper lip and slightly fuller lower one over perfect white teeth. She wanted so badly to lift her face the fraction of an inch necessary to put her open mouth to his.

The feverish need shocked her. She’d never wanted to kiss anyone else so badly, and she’d dreamed about it for years. But she had to remember that Ryder was only being kind. He didn’t feel that way about her, and the sooner she realized it, the better.

Her convictions didn’t help, though, when he balanced her on one knee to open the door and slid her onto the seat. She fell against him in the process and his mouth came so close that she could all but taste the coffee on his breath.

He hesitated, his eyes narrow and glittery, his body tense for just an instant. Then he smiled and let her go, and the moment passed.

He climbed in beside her to start the truck, lifting an eyebrow at her fumbling efforts to fasten her seat belt.

“Bulldozer,” she accused.

He grinned. “Women are like machinery, you have to give them a push sometimes to get them going.”

She laughed in spite of herself. She couldn’t really picture another man with Ryder’s boldness. He was in a class of his own.

“What do you need to buy at an auction that you couldn’t afford at retail prices?” she asked curiously.

He draped his hand over the steering wheel as he sped down the driveway toward the main road. “Nothing in particular.” He shrugged. “It was someplace to go. I don’t like sitting at home. People know where to find me. And Kim Sun loves to put through people I don’t want to talk to,” he added, scowling. “Damn it, I ought to fire him!”

“What did you do to him?”

His eyebrows arched. “What?”

“You must have done something to irritate him,” she persisted.

He glanced at her. “All I did was throw a plate of fish at him,” he muttered. “Well, I hate most fish, anyway,” he said defensively. “But this wasn’t even cooked.”

“Sushi.” She nodded.

He glared at her. “No, not sushi,” he muttered. “I had my heart set on salmon croquettes like your mother makes. He brought me balls of raw salmon with, ugh, onions cut up on them.”

“Did you tell him how to make salmon croquettes?” she asked, trying not to laugh.

“Hell, I don’t know how to cook! If I knew how to cook, would I cart that vicious renegade around with me?”

“Kim Sun can’t read minds,” she said. “If you’ll send him down to us, mother can show him how to make the things you like.”

He shifted his eyes back to the road. “You can cook. You might come up to the house and show him yourself.”

She didn’t answer. She stared at her hands in her lap. The temptation was overwhelming, but he wouldn’t know that.

“We’d have a chaperone,” he said softly.

She flushed, refusing to meet his eyes. “Ryder...!”

“So shy of me,” he said on a heavy sigh. “I’ve stayed away too long. I guess I knew it wouldn’t be long enough, at that, but a man can stand just so much,” he added enigmatically. “I thought you’d be healed by now.”

She swallowed. “Healed?”

“You can’t climb into the grave with him,” he said through his teeth.

“I’m not trying to do that,” she said. She glanced at his strong profile and felt her heart jump. “I...missed you,” she said huskily.

He seemed to shiver. His pale eyes cut sideways, narrow, dangerous. “I’d have come home anytime you told me that,” he said roughly. “In the middle of the night, if you needed me.”

She felt warm all over at the tenderness in his tone, and wanted to cry because it was just friendship. He cared about her, of course he did, but not in the way she wanted him to. She straightened her full skirt. “You had enough to do, without worrying about me,” she said. “All I need is time, you know.”

He pulled into a drive-in and cut off the engine. “Want coffee?” he asked.

“Yes. Black, please.”

“I remember how you like it,” he said. He got out of the truck and came back less than five minutes later with coffee and doughnuts. He handed hers to her and made room for the cups in the holder he’d installed on the dash.

She sipped coffee and ate the doughnut. “Delicious,” she said with a smile. “I haven’t had breakfast.”

“Neither have I. Food bothers me if I eat too early.” He let his eyes slide over her figure. “You’re too thin, little one. You need to eat more.”

“I haven’t had much appetite lately.”

He turned toward her, crossing his long legs as he dipped his doughnut into his coffee and nibbled it. “Talk about it. Maybe it will help.”

She searched his pale eyes, finding nothing there to frighten her. “He was drunk,” she blurted out. “He went to work drinking and pushed the wrong buttons.”

His chiseled lips parted. “I see.”

“Didn’t you know? Don’t pretend you haven’t asked how it happened. The insurance company refused my claim, but the company stood for it, so that we could afford the funeral.” Her big black eyes searched his. “You did it, didn’t you? You made them pay it.”

“Employees pay into the credit union,” he said tersely. “Ben had accumulated a good bit, to which you were entitled. That’s what paid the funeral expense.”